Part 25

"What would happen," Argathona asked, "if he were to be overthrown?"

Count Ernault laughed gently.

"It could scarcely happen," he asserted.

"But if it did happen?" the shepherd persisted.

Count Ernault looked about him and saw that he and the shepherd stood alone, for the press of knights was thronging the great stairway.

"I think," he said, softly, "that the lady of Thebes would never forgive him."

"Is she so imperious a queen of beauty?" the shepherd questioned.

Count Ernault laughed compassionately, as the well-informed laugh that instruct a stranger in a strange land.

"She will suffer no man to wilt from allegiance to her will. She is the most insatiable fair, and would have all men for her lovers."

The shepherd looked at the courtly marshal with a strange smile.

"Would she condescend to a shepherd?" Argathona asked.

Count Ernault distorted his smooth face with a grimace.

"'Tis very likely," he answered, "none better being by; but when you ride radiant in coat-armor in the lists we shall see if she will pick you out. Till then, farewell, Knight of Eleusis."

He turned from the shepherd and joined the mounting crowd to pay his respects to the Lady Esclaramonde where she stood patent in beauty upon the gallery. Argathona looked about her for a place where she might see unseen. In the court-yard stood an ancient image of a god, headless and armless, which had been set up there in indifference, if not in derision, by those who had dug it up when the court-yard was a-making. Behind this image Argathona stationed herself, and Simon, who had kept apart in the crowd outside the knights, now came to her side. Argathona looked up at the gallery, where, above the bowed heads of obsequious lords, she could distinguish the dark, imperious loveliness of the Duchess Esclaramonde. Simon whispered confidentially in her ear, behind his big hand:

"There stands your fair foewoman."

Argathona still looked at the duchess with unchanged face.

"If I were a man," she said, slowly, "I would not be her lover."

Simon grunted.

"Many have loved her, and all have sorrowed in the loving. While I stood in the throng but now I heard strange tales of her from some of those Spanish rascals and some of the duke's people. They say that when the Duke of Thebes lived, whose unweeping widow she now is, she would send him to sleep at nights with a drugged draught, and then"--he coughed a little behind his hand, as if apologetically, and resumed--"and then entertain company."

Argathona's eyes were still set steadfast upon Esclaramonde where she smiled upon her flatterers.

"It is blasphemous to wear a fair face and hide a foul heart; but if she be as base as you say, she may help me well if I win in the tournament."

Simon whistled.

"Pray God you may win," he said; "but if you thrust your body where hard knocks are going you must not pule at bruises."

"I do not think I shall come to hurt," Argathona answered. "But I shall fight fair, trusting to my strength as the others trust, and using no more woodland work than this, that my spear is invincible against all false lovers."

XIV

THE TRIUMPH OF THEBES

The Lady Esclaramonde held a little court upon the gallery. Leaning against a pillar and playing with her fan, she summoned this lord and that from the throng of knights now mingled with the brilliant swarm of women, and gave each a few gracious moments of her sunshine ere she dismissed him from her side. Count Ernault had his turn, and the flash of their glances was always alive with intimate memories. Jaufre de Brabant came and Guy de Hainault, and pompous Andronicus Palæologus and the others; none was forgotten; each beamed with the conviction that the duchess preferred him above his fellows. The last that Esclaramonde called to her was Fernand Ximenes, and when the Spaniard was by her side she turned to look into the court-yard, and he following her example, none could hear their speech.

"You have not been brisk to wish me felicity," the duchess complained.