Part 40

"Sirs," he said to the knights, "these jars must not mar our festival. There are other women in the world, and will be other weddings, but in the mean time you will do well to return to the banqueting-hall and continue your cheer."

Sir Jaufre, Sir Guy, and the others quitted the room. The duke bade Simon stay where he was and went into the next room, where he found Rainouart stretched upon what should have been his marriage bed. The duke's physician was by his side, but he left the room on the entrance of the duke, after assuring him that the wound was slight, as being the work of an unpractised hand, and would soon heal.

Rainouart was very pale, less with the loss of blood than with all the dear and grievous emotions that had pillaged his heart so fiercely that night, but his spirit was high and bright in his eyes, and he spoke to his father with a firm voice.

"Where is my sweet lady?"

"If you mean the lady of Thebes," said Duke Baldwin, "she has gone hence in a great rage."

"I do not think of her," Rainouart said. "I think of the girl from the greenwood, the girl who saved my life once, and now has saved my honor."

Duke Baldwin grinned maliciously, for he was vexed with his son for being such a fool as to get tangled up in his love affairs and thereby bring people to loggerheads untimely.

"Why, she has gone, too. There came a squall of wind that blew the lights out, and in the blackness the valiant lass slipped away, with none to stay her."

At this news Rainouart's heart was wrung with such anguish that even the dull duke could read his misery in his eyes, and even Baldwin's tough composition felt something that was distinctly akin to a pulse of pity, and he added:

"The Jill-o'-lantern left her giant squire behind her."

Rainouart lifted himself eagerly on his elbow.

"I would see that squire at once."

"That may be easily done," said Duke Baldwin, "for he waits in the next room."

Therefore Duke Baldwin raised his voice and trumpeted loudly for Sir Simon of Florency, and instantly Simon lifted the curtain and came into the room and looked with some compassion at the young knight on the couch. Rainouart recognized him at once as the squire who stood by the pavilion of the Prince of Eleusis.

"Where is my lady?" Rainouart asked, feverishly. Simon answered him leisurely:

"She has gone back to the forest, being a little disheartened with your city and its citizens, but she left you these leaves for the healing of your hurt, and this message, that you are to come to her in the greenwood."

As Simon said his say, he drew from his pouch the leaves of the herb of healing that Argathona had given him, and laid them on the bed. Rainouart took them tenderly in his hands and kissed them fondly, while the duke smiled sourly at the folly that leads a man to the lipping of weeds.

"I will go to her in the morning," Rainouart declared; but here Duke Baldwin shook his head.

"That may not be, son," he said, emphatically.

"May not be," Rainouart flung back, hotly. "I tell you it must be. She saved my life and I loved her, and we swore our mutual troth. Then I was practised on by magic, and I forgot my true-love, and went in bondage to a false faith, and from this shame my true-love has saved me now as before she saved me from death. I am bound to her in honor as I am bound to her in love, and on my honor and by my love I will go to her with the dawn."

Again Duke Baldwin shook his head, and again Duke Baldwin answered as before.

"That may not be, son." Then seeing the anger shine in Rainouart's eyes, and the stubborn look on Rainouart's face that seemed to mirror his own native obstinacy, he went on in a voice that for him was gentle.

"Hear me out, son Rainouart, for your honor is as near to me and as dear to me as my own, and against that I think no tongue has ever wagged."

Rainouart's face darkened, for he thought of his mother, the gracious lady so basely abandoned, and he thanked God in his heart that his honor was not as the honor of Duke Baldwin. But Duke Baldwin was not skilled to read either his son's face or his son's heart, and he went on, bluffly:

"As for love, why, I am a jolly lover, too, though you and I read in the book of love at different chapters. But you cannot go to your lass yet awhile, for your very honor's sake."

"Why not?" Rainouart asked, with such a frown as might have wrinkled his father's forehead, and the big duke, who liked his son's manner best when most it resembled his own, went on very amiably to explain. He told how the Duchess of Thebes had declared war upon Athens, at which tidings Rainouart laughed contemptuously; and how Fernand Ximenes inclined to her, and would in all likelihood whistle the Grand Company to her cause. At this Rainouart's eyes shone and his pale cheeks flushed ruddy, for if this were so, it promised a fight that would be worth the fighting.

"Therefore," the duke went on, "your sweetheart must wait awhile till this little brawl be over, for I am sure that no lass who played the lad so gallantly as your fancy would have her lover lag aloof from a battle."

He smiled somewhat sourly as he spoke, for he had no great confidence in the martial constancy of knights that plied their books and fell in love with country wenches. But he read Rainouart's answer in his eyes before he got it from his lips, and it reassured him.