The moon shone full and splendid, silvering the garden. The garden was formal, paved paths outlining and enclosing flower beds geometrically shaped—squares, circles, and triangles. But the riot of flowers overslipped the edges. Flowers bloomed in multitude and made an ocean of perfume. Perpetually there was sound of water, sliding and falling water. It ran in narrow channels, and slept in a pool lined with marble, and fell from stair to stair in a cascade formed by art. Black cypress trees stood up like spires, on such a night silver spires, fairy spires. The garden belonged to a castle palace that with huge stone arms clipped it on three sides. The fourth saw cliffs and the sea, the sea like one smooth shield of silver. The moon shone so bright that it put out all but the larger stars. In the garden, in the trees, sang the nightingales.
Through a low, arched doorway came into the garden a man and a woman. “O the moon, the moonlight! O the nightingales!” They took the path that outlined a square of flowers. Followed them through the doorway a second couple—man and woman. “O the moon! Smell the orange trees!” They went the path by the orange trees. A third pair came forth—man and woman. “The moon on the sea! Hear the nightingales!” They paced around the circle of roses. A fourth pair followed—a fifth—a sixth—a seventh—an eighth. It seemed an Embark{346}ment for Cythera. Here were ladies and their knights—here were knights and ladies. Amaury and Adelaide—Balthasar and Bérengère—Barral and Constance—Guibour and Mélisande—Roland and Blanche—Thierry and Laure—Aldhelm and Eleanor—Raimbauld and Tiphaine.
The moon poured splendour, the nightingales were drunken with love.
There was a perron, a curving wide stair with landings mounting from the garden to a main doorway, and here were flung cushions and cloths of bright hues, all silvered now with the silver night. Here, after some pacing of the paths, gathered the couples.
“How much lovelier than in hall where candles put out the moon! Let us stay here and weave moonshine and go to the nightingales’ heaven! Let us not go indoors the livelong night!”
“It is midnight now. Dawn comes soon!”
“Let us tell tales and sing! But first we finish our question that we were debating—”
“Sing, Guibour, sing vers or canzon! Then shall we talk of love!”
“Where are Tanneguy and Beatrix?”
They came from the castle palace—Tanneguy and Beatrix. “Sing, Guibour! sing this perfect night!”
The troubadour sang—outsang the nightingales. “Love—love—love—love!” he sang.
The moon shone. When the singer ceased they heard again the nightingales. From the perron they saw, beyond the cypresses, the sea.
“O the nightingales! O the moon on the sea! O love!”
“Now let us talk! Where were we when we left the hall?{347}”
“Women blessed and crowned by the worship of Our Lady, the Ever Blessed Virgin—”
“When God and Sire Jesus and Holy Church said, ‘Men, over all the earth, you are to kneel and worship and sue for grace, for she is every man’s Queen of Heaven—’”
“Then fell a ray that broke into stars! See, they are in Beatrix’s hair and in Tiphaine’s and Adelaide’s and Mélisande’s and Laure’s—”
“O Tanneguy the Prince—! You borrow the nightingale’s note, but you smile in the moonlight!”
“And you are laughing, too, Beatrix!”
Said Guibour: “When the moon drew us forth, it was Beatrix who was speaking against that honour down-drifted upon women—”
“O Guibour the singer! I was not speaking against it! For doing that, I know not what Holy Church would do to me! I had not even a dream wish to speak against it! But here it is—but here it is—what knights so rarely think of! What God and Sire Jesus and Holy Church say is this, ‘Men and women, you are to kneel and worship and sue for grace, for she is every man’s and every woman’s Queen of Heaven!’—Fair and good! But the Queen is above women as she is above men—and she is in heaven and out of the world—and though the ray comes down and breaks into stars—oh, they are little stars and very faintly about the heads of women! For, see you! it is not because she is woman that she is Queen—for then were she Queen in herself and of herself—but because God and Sire Jesus chose her.... O knights and troubadours, do not the stars shine only about the heads of those ladies whom you choose? And though a music comes down—and I know not well what kind of music it is—yet I{348} know what kind troubadours and knights make of it!—Love—love! Nightingale love—rose-leaf love! Love, love!”
“What kind of love would Beatrix have?”
“True love—wide love, deep love and high love, round love and square love! Golden love out of leaden love! Lo, my diamond! Love with a myriad faces—love in the centre—love thrown afar—love sublimed—”
“Do we not love?”
“Tourney love—pilgrimage love—canzon and serenade and aubade love—glove in helm love—nightingale and nightingale love—and all for a time and a season! Then, ‘Sparrow, stay at home, while I, hawk and eagle, go sailing!’ But in words, ‘Immortal May and Guiding Star and Saint Enshrined!’... But few women are Saints, and only one is Queen of Heaven.... The mantle of love is not wide enough, and the thread that was spun for it is not strong enough, and the loom for its weaving not great enough.... We cannot get the furnace as it should be, and the lead rests lead! Whether the piece is man or woman, it rests lead! Man knows not how to love woman, and woman knows not how to love man.... Well, I have done! Sing ‘No!’ to all that, Guibour, as you will—as you will!”
Guibour sang “No” as she had said. But while he sang, and when he had done, it seemed that there was poison rankling. Said Tiphaine, and she spoke half angrily and half enviously: “Have we not declared that there is a treason against knight and ladies and love? Have we not, little by little, in our garden meetings, in our love courts, worked out rules and ways?—I hold that Beatrix is traitress, and should be penanced!{349}”
Cried Adelaide, and after her Constance: “I hold so, too!”—“And I!”
The famed in tourney, Aldhelm, spoke stiffly: “The Lady Beatrix says grievous things against love and lovers—”
Beatrix leaned against the stone, and on one side was a black cypress, and on the other a stream and torrent of roses. “Do I so, Sir Aldhelm? Truly I never meant such a thing!... You tourney—and this one and that one goes down beneath your spear. And Adelaide, her cheek upon her hand, sits and watches you and commends you to every Saint and the Queen of Heaven! And when you have won the wreath, you bring it upon your spear, and lay it at her feet.... There is beauty, Our Lady knows I would not deny it!... Hearken to the nightingales! Trill—trill—trill! The orange fragrance comes in waves, and the moonlight makes us silver folk!”
“Still you speak outrageously,” cried Tiphaine. “But we know you study strange things, with books and alembics, sulphur and mercury, tincture and quintessence and spirit—”
“Beatrix the traitress!”
“What penance?”
More or less, all were laughing, but the laughter of some carried threads of anger. “What penance?”
“If you talk of that, penance me, too,” said Tanneguy. “My mind and Beatrix’s pace together!”
But when it came to the majority they would not penance Tanneguy the Prince, who was their host, nor Beatrix whose scarf Tanneguy wore in joust and battle. The moon shone, the nightingales sang, ten thousand thousand flower chalices dropped perfume, a gauze-like wind breathed here, breathed there.{350}
Tanneguy took the lute from Guibour and sang,—
“‘I dreamed the All was whole and knew Itself,
A robe it wore of million hues,
And million shapes that moved and played.
And here were flowers and here were fruit,
The vine ran here, the tree sprang there,
The root was seen, the seed, the stem,
And there were women, there were men!—
Yet all were figures in Its robe,
And when It thought, they shifted form.
Whence drew the Robe but from Itself?
And all the dreams, and all the shapes?—
O man and woman, know Thyself!
O shaken notes, re-find the chord!’—
That is my song and Beatrix’s, for we made it together!”
The summer dawn began, the early summer, between spring and summer. There rang a convent bell. Cocks crew. The stars went out; the moon, like a pearl, like a fairy raft, like a bubble, hung in the west, above the sea. Behind the castle the sky spread branched with coral. The nightingales still sang, but out of sheer weariness with delight, the knights, the troubadours, the ladies, quitting the perron, went into castle.
The baron who was Beatrix’s lord and husband was gone with the better part of his knights and men overseas, upon the Fourth Crusade. He had been from home a year when two barons, ill neighbours of his, combined together, and taking advantage of a disordered world, thrust against his fief and castle. Then was the place besieged, and Beatrix, the baron’s wife, held it bravely and strongly.
Her lord, very far away, having seen the capture of Zara for the Venetians, now with other leaders schemed the taking of Constantinople, all in the interest of the young Alexius who would depose his uncle the Emperor, and{351} then, one good turn deserving another, aid the crusaders to win Jerusalem! The baron, who was able, proud, and ambitious, dreamed a kingdom of his own. Now and then he thought of his castle and fief and his son. His wife was there to keep the castle and care for the son she had borne. He loved her no more than another, but he knew that castle and son would get from her right watch and ward.... Tanneguy the Prince was Beatrix’s knight—that was quite correct in a time at once highflown and very, very practical. Lord and his wife, lady and knight—and so the lady and knight never forgot the lord and his wife, what harm in poetizing?... So the baron sailed in his ship for Constantinople, and dreamed of gold and power and Eastern delights.
Meantime, at home, Beatrix held with knowledge and courage that castle, but against her were great odds.... Then came Tanneguy the Prince, who for many a year had worn her colours. With a great force, in open field, he beat the warring barons. One was slain, the other made submission. But the castle walls lay in huge ruin, and half the keep was a flaming fire.... Tanneguy’s town rose not many leagues away. Under his escort, when she had taken good order for the wounded fief, came there Beatrix and her two children, a son and a daughter. He gave her a fair house and garden, close by his own great castle.
Here she dwelled in Tanneguy’s town. With her were steward and chamberlain and tirewomen from the ruined castle, and she had the two children Alard and Yolande. Tanneguy, all the world knew, was her knight, and with poesy and tourney did her honour. He visited her in her garden and hall, and often was she in his castle.
Tanneguy hod a stone room with groined roof upheld by{352} pillars. Outside its windows, cut in the thick, thick wall, quivered ivy and myrtle, sang the birds, hummed the bees, fell the gold light or the pleasant rain. By this room was a smaller room, and in this was built a furnace, and here tables held alembics and crucibles with a many other curiously shaped vessels, large and small, of glass or metal. Vials were there, and chests great and small, balances, and instruments with which to measure, manage, and design, earths and ores in heaps, and water falling from a stone lion’s head into a basin curved around by a stone gryphon. He had two men in brown who fed coals to his furnace, and for a helper an old, skilled man in green, a notable alchemist, but a lesser alchemist than Tanneguy himself. All this room held in a red-brown glow. With a magic hand and eye, it fascinated the children of Beatrix, often let to come and look from the great room or the deep, green garden. In the greater room of the stone pillars were Tanneguy’s books. His time considered, he had many.
He did not love books nor ............