The King's Choice

by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur

 

THE KING’S CHOICE

A complete Novelette

by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur

Author of “For the Crown,” “With Song and Sword,” etc.

“THEY follow!”

Cercamon reined in on the crest of a low hill and gazed back over the road that paralleled the blue Loire across the plain, like a white stripe and a blue one across a richly broidered garment.

“All the way from the town have they followed me!” he muttered. “But the hunter that shows himself to his quarry has little chance of a kill.”

And he waved a scornful hand at the distant figures in gleaming mail, who had kept ever at his heels since dawn, without once gaining on him, without once losing sight of him.

Till now he had not been sure it was he they sought. It was no rare thing for armed men to take the high road from Tours to Paris. The riders of Anjou, who held Touraine for Duke Geoffrey le Bel, patroled it ceaselessly; merchants or pilgrims with their escorts, or men-at-arms seeking service, traveled that road often.

But Cercamon had reason to be wary of mailed men; and after leaving the Loire and the distant spires of Tours behind him he had become troubled. He had first caught sight of those riders at sunrise, half an hour after he had ridden out from the gate of the city. Their constant trailing at his heels fretted him more and more, till he resolved to test their purpose. Therefore, an hour ago, he had turned aside from the highway, down a little-used road lined with trees, where armed men could have no honest business.

If they kept to the main road, well and good; but if they turned off after him, he would know they sought but a favorable chance to overtake and assail him. And so, when he trotted out of the byway on to the high road again, having seen the shimmer of their mail thrice behind him, he was sure. And now he could glimpse the sunlight flashing full and bright on their harness as they rode out of the byway on his trail.

The certainty that he was pursued did not astonish him. Cercamon rode on a weighty errand, one fraught with vast significance for all of France. On his success hung the issues of peace or war between great princes, the fortunes of rival houses, perhaps the fate of two kingdoms.

It was early April of 1137, that year so fateful for the young realm of France. The Abbot Suger, ruling in the name of the boy King Louis VII, was soon to hand over his authority to his royal ward. It was, a dangerous burden for so fiery and untrained a lad, for the kingdom of France was but a little triangle with Paris, Sens, and Orleans for its corners, claiming a shadowy and perilous sovereignty over the mighty principalities that surrounded it on all sides.

Of all those principalities the mightiest was Aquitaine, its vast area rolling from Loire to Pyrenees, from the Gascon Gulf to the borders of Toulouse. Hated by his neighbors, feared by the Regent Suger, Duke Guiihem X of Aquitaine had just gone to an unmourned grave. Only the iron hand of his great seneschal, Bertrand d'Armagnac, warded the rich lands and the beautiful young daughter Guiihem had left from the greedy hands of rival barons.

“These letters to the Abbot Suger!” Armagnac had commanded, “Let them not go from your hands till they pass into his in Paris. And ride warily, Cercamon; keep your eyes open and your hand on your sword, for I fear your errand is known to our enemies. My late lord the duke was not discreet in this matter, and his court has swarmed with the spies of Champagne.”

“Why send me, my lord?” Cercamon had asked his master. “I am both too humble a man and too weak for such an errand.”

“Any messenger will be exposed to attack as soon as he leaves Poitou and our garrisons behind him,” Armagnac had answered. “If we send a strong force, it will be ambushed by a stronger. Touraine belongs to Anjou; and Anjou loves us little. The road lies too near the borders of Blois to be safe, even for a small army; for Thibault of Champagne has a strong garrison in Blois. A single man has more chance of slipping through than a troop; and of all men you are our best hope. You are brave, cunning, resourceful; you are a troubadour, and even the most lawless man in France scarce dares lay a hand on the sacred person of a troubadour. Castel-Roussillon's fate is fresh in men's memories; even kings fear to commit his crime, lest they perish as he perished.”

So Cercamon rode northeast, leaving Poitiers in the dead of night and bearing to the mighty Abbot Suger a proposal, signed by Aliénor, Duchess of Aquitaine, for a royal marriage between herself and the young King Louis. Even as the troubadour left the dark walls behind him, two scarce dead figures dangled from the walls of Poitiers' northern tower—Champenois merchants, who had been caught that afternoon in unlawful conversation with the guard at the North Gate. In their lodgings had been found parchments which—skilfully decoded by the duchess' secretary—had been discovered to contain a full report of the task entrusted to Cercamon.

The young troubadour—a Gascon, of low birth and rare genius—had been in Armagnac's service barely a year. In Poitiers he had first sung before a courtly audience, and now his name was known over all France for the sweetness of his song and the rich perfection of his verses. In Aquitaine he had equal repute as a swordsman, and Bertrand d'Armagnac, whom he served with deep devotion, knew him for as shrewd and cool a head as any in the south. Lie was well equipped even for so great a task as that which now rested on his broad shoulders.

He rode now, as always, in the rich garments of his calling; for if the sacredness of that vocation were to save him from attack, he must appear at first glance for what he was. But he wore his long, double-edged sword, and under his scarlet tunic he bore a shirt of fine-meshed, impenetrable Moorish mail. His long, black hair floated unbound beneath a flat cap of blue velvet, and his green-hosed legs clasped the sides of the swiftest horse in the stables of Poitiers.

He felt assured that Count Thibault of Champagne would seek to stop him, regardless of the inviolability which surrounded one of his calling. Thibault was a hard-handed, hard-headed tyrant, who feared not men's judgments. And Thibault was most ambitious of all the French barons; he hated Aquitaine and—he had a daughter of marriageable age. The dead Duke Guilhem was not the only feudal prince in the realm who stood to profit from a marriage between his daughter and the young king. The troubadour was not yet so highly honored in the north as in the south, and if men of birth feared to assail him there were rough-handed spearmen who would undertake the task for protection and a price.

As he rode down the hill from which he had spied back upon his pursuers, Cercamon felt small fear of them. So far they had been well able to keep him in sight, for he had carefully spared his horse's strength. Whenever he chose he could leave them far behind. But he did fear lest other enemies might lurk in ambush ahead of him, for he knew Count Thibault's repute for remorseless determination and was certain that the Champenois would not pin his sole hope of heading off the Aquitanian messenger to the questionable chance of overtaking a well-mounted man from behind.

Moreover, cunning had shown itself in the first moment of the pursuit. Cercamon had not been followed until he had left Poitou; his followers had first shown themselves after he had ridden out from Tours. He had had no chance but to pass through Tours, above which there were no fords across the Loire till one came to Blois. And Blois, Thibault's strongest fortalice, lay but a day's ride from Tours.

Cercamon had planned to ride north in a wide circuit around Blois, lest he be seen from its walls. But the very fact that pursuit started from Tours proved that his enemies understood his intentions. It also proved that some of Thibault's spies had left Poitiers and arrived in Tours before him and watched for the precise moment of his setting forth along the river road. And in that case it was probable that the spies had ridden on ahead of him, to warn Thibault of his coming.

There would be ambush ahead as well as pursuers behind. And that ambush would doubtless be laid, not on the highroad near Blois, but on the northerly roads by which he planned to make his circuit.

THE afternoon was half-gone when Cercamon heard a swiftly rising drum of hoofs behind him. The pursuit was drawing suddenly closer; plainly they were ready to close in and settle the matter. Smiling, he reined in and counted them. Twelve men, mailed from top to toe, on good horses. He pricked his beast with the spur, and the splendid animal shot forward like an arrow.

The pursuit was sharp for a while; but at last he drew so far ahead of them that they seemed to realize the hopelessness of riding him down, and checked their pace. Cercamon followed their example. Two or three times this was repeated, at intervals. Then Cercamon began to understand.

That handful of men-at-arms that tagged his heels had no expectation of catching him, with his swifter horse and lighter weight, for he was almost unencumbered by armor. Their task was to make him uneasy, to keep him in sight, keep him galloping. So long as their eyes could follow him, he dared not stop for food or sleep; and their sporadic spurts compelled him to wear down his mount with bursts of speed.

When his fleet roan was weary, and he himself grown desperate and careless with hunger and fatigue, they would have done their work. Somewhere ahead lay other riders, possibly hidden, who would either cut him off or take up the chase with fresh horses, when his own was no longer capable of its glorious swiftness.

There was only one way to defeat this stratagem, and Cercamon resolved to take it. On the chance that the road ahead concealed an ambush, he must leave that road—before it grew dark. If he would escape the pursuit behind, he must outdistance them now, must leave them so far behind that they could not gain sight or trace of him again. Once out of touch with him, they could not signal their relays to take up the pursuit; and he rejoiced that he had spared his horse's strength. He thrust home the spurs, and felt the long-limbed roan burst into beautiful speed beneath him.

The sun was sinking now and dusk filtering into the cool air. Cercamon knew the country well; the river lay still to the right, but to the left there was a network of roads leading off into the rich plain. At one of these—but not the first—he would turn off; and he would not return to the highway till he was well past Blois. Out of sight behind him, the hunters would not know which way he had taken.

It was at the third road he turned, to the north; and by that time the highway lay empty for so far behind him as he could see or hear. Slackening his pace, he let the horse idle for a few moments and shifted about on the saddle to ease his limbs. He was well-concealed from the main road by clumps of willow, behind which a little stream sang in the gathering darkness. He smiled at the thought that he had con founded his enemies. That his journey was still beset with peril he did not doubt; but he would find an escape from each difficulty as he met it.

The roan nickered at the smell of water, and he let it drink from the brook. The night drew in soft and dark about him. In the shelter of the trees that grew ever thicker on both sides the road was black as a tomb. He was now riding through a wood; the air was damp, and the earth so soft under his horse's hoofs that they made no sound. For perhaps an hour he rode on, till he came to a bridle-path and paused to think.

That path led to a monastery of Cistercians, La Ferté-en-Bois, which lay on the edge of the forest, with its own fat fields spreading north and west of low, wide stone buildings. There he could find food, a refuge from his pursuers and rest—of all of which he stood in dire need. Most of all his horse needed rest. The monks would give him sanctuary, and none would dare assail him within their walls.

But—if his foes should learn that he was there, they would camp before it till he was forced to surrender. And to spend the night there would give them time to quarter the country for him or to cut him off from every road leading toward Paris. With a pang of regret he resolved to ride on all night, and in a little while he trotted past the few faint fights of the cloister, thinking ruefully of the good food and peaceful harborage within.

Half an hour more passed, a mere morsel bitten out of the long night through which he must ride, on and on, till dawn should find him close to the walls of Orleans—a royal city, far beyond Blois, and a haven where the king's law would protect him. But there were hours of the saddle, hours of ceaseless vigilance, before he could reach the city nestled in the clasp of the Loire.

A thin, clear sound tinkled through the night. A moment he listened; then he pulled in the weary roan. From far down the road to the north—in his very path—came the faint jingle of mail, and under it the staccato pound of many hoofs. It was far ahead, but he was out in the open now—between him and those unseen lay no hiding-place, no shred of cover, only the great, flat plain with its young gardens and new crops.

The troop ahead must be hostile, for he was now within the very heart of that country over which Thibault of Champagne ruled from his eyrie of Blois. He must ride back and shelter either in the monastery or in the wood; else they who rode toward him would overwhelm him. The dozen that followed he had put off the scent.

He swung about, and the brave roan burst into a gallant spurt, which for a little seemed to have all the swiftness of fresh strength. And that little was just enough. For, as he glimpsed the first lights of the monastery again, his ears caught the drum of hoofs from the south, riding down the very bridle-path by which he had come so short a time before.

He had not thrown them off the scent after all—they had picked the very spot where they would force him from the highway; their occasional spurts had been so timed as to drive him either to take shelter with the monks or to ride straight into the ambush laid for him just past the cloister.

They had outguessed him, outmaneuvered him, driven him to earth as dogs drive a fox! And there was but one thing he could do—take to earth in the refuge they had chosen for him, out of which they could dig him at their leisure.

Having no choice, he took the one course open; it would at least give him a little time, since his foes would not dare drag him from a house of God. He turned into the road that led to the wide stone portal of La Ferté, with the tumult of pursuit so close that, but for their own noise, those who had followed all day must have heard him.

His knock roused the porter, an old gray monk yawning with sleep, and he was admitted instantly, though with a frown at his gay garb. Only the clergy scowled at troubadours. His horse was led to the stables, but he would not have it unsaddled.

“But you are weary, and your beast near exhaustion!” the hospitable porter protested.

“The abbot!” Cercamon interrupted. “For Heaven's sweet grace, I must speak with your abbot at once! There are enemies on my heels!”

The startled monk crossed himself with trembling fingers and broke into a hobbling run. As fast as his stiff legs would carry him he hastened down the corridor, into the cloistered court and to the abbot's cell. In an agony of impatience Cercamon waited, imagining his two-fold foe surrounding the monstery while he bided the coming of the father superior. But it was scarce three minutes before the abbot's tall, emaciated form appeared in the doorway.

He was a commanding old man, in gray gown and black apron, with features sharp with fasting and eyes that glowed with the indomitable spirit of Christ's warrior.

Cercamon fell on one knee and drew from his bosom the letter sealed with the great seal of Aquitaine.

“My father,” he began anxiously, “I am ambassador from the Duchess of Aquitaine to his holiness the Abbot Suger, Regent of France. Armed men, unrighteously violating the peace of this province, seek to intercept me and seize my despatches. It matters little what becomes of me, but it will be ill for France and for the Church if these letters do not reach the regent. I pray you, help me!”

The abbot took the letter from Cercamon's hand, examined the seal and read the superscription.

“It were ill indeed,” he commented, “if messages of weight for the noble Suger fell into the hands of evil men. But how am I to know that such an event would injure Holy Church and not rather your mistress, the Duchess of Aquitaine, alone?”

So eager was the troubadour to insure the safety of his despatches that he resolved to entrust their secret to the monk, knowing well that a man of his calling and sanctity would not betray them.

“Because, holy father,” he answered, “this letter concerns a marriage between the duchess and the King of France; and Thibault of Champagne, wishing to arrange a marriage between the young prince and his daughter, desires to prevent Aquitaine's offer from reaching the regent's ears. Your holiness knows how disastrous for the Cistercian order would be an alliance between Champagne and the Crown. Your houses are all within Thibault's territories; he would levy a heavy tax on every monastery to raise the dowry which the king would demand, and your pious order would be shaken to its foundations by the demand on its resources.”

The abbot eyed him sternly.

“The Count of Champagne has always been our order's benefactor,” he retorted. “This very house is within his territory. And your late duke, Guilhem X, was a heretic and an enemy of the true faith!”

Cercamon was prepared for this.

“The late Duke Guilhem reconciled himself with the Church, and under the guidance of your order's pillar, the holy Bernard, renounced his heresy. He died in the odor of sanctity, on a pilgrimage to Compostella. Your holiness surely would not take the responsibility for preventing a letter of greatest weight to the State from reaching Abbot Suger, the truest friend in France to both Church and throne?”

This shot told. Grateful as all Cistercians were to Thibault of Champagne for lands and money, they were even more devoted to the Crown. No pious churchman would suppress a letter to the regent, whose holiness and incorruptibility made him the Church's shield against the barons.

“What shall I do to help you?” the Abbot asked.

“Send this letter, by a safe hand, to the regent!” Cercamon answered. “A monk of your order—which has never meddled with the rivalries of princes—can pass unmolested even through embattled camps. But send the bearer secretly, by night, so that those who follow me shall not see him. And further, I pray you send a message to my master also, the Count of Armagnac, who is now in Poitiers. Tell him that I have been pursued, perhaps seized; and that his letters have gone on to Abbot Suger by one of the monks under your rule.”

“It were well,” the abbot reflected, “for the messengers to depart at once.”

But this was not what Cercamon desired.

“They who lie in wait for me,” he objected, “are even now close to your walls, whose thickness alone has prevented the clatter of their mail from reaching your ears. It were well to wait till they have passed,

His words were smothered in a sudden shout from the darkness without, by the thunder of hoofs and a challenging cry.

“THEY are here!” Cercamon gasped, clutching the wide sleeve of the abbot's gown. “They expected to seize me before this, but I eluded them. Now those who followed me have met with the troop which lurked ahead. They drove me to take shelter here, and will demand me at——”

A lance-butt thundered on the door. Seizing the troubadour's shoulder, the abbot dragged him off into the darkness of the cloistered court.

“We will hide you,” he whispered, “till they have gone!”

“They will not go!” Cercamon protested. “They know I am here, and need only wait till I am forced to come out. I must surrender to them; do you get my messages through—to the regent, and to Armagnac!”

The iron-bound door quivered beneath the impact of beating spears. At a sign from the abbot, the trembling porter tottered to the archway, fumbling with his great keys. The iron lock screeched, and the door flew open. Mailed men, their armor gleaming in the faint flare of the porter's rushlight, swarmed into the corridor.

The abbot came forward from the darkness of the cloister within which Cercamon still stood concealed.

“What seek ye, men of violence?” he upbraided them. “This is God's house!”

A thick-set officer thrust himself forward from the knot of men-at-arms, concealing his uneasiness under a swagger.

“We be king's men!” he answered. “We seek a strolling jongleur, who bears treasonable letters! Deliver him to us, or it will go ill with your house!”

The abbot raised his wooden crucifix, which dangled from a long chain of carven beads.

“It is rather you who are traitors!” he rebuked them. “If ye were honest soldiers of France, ye would bear its colors, instead of prowling through the night with no device upon your breasts, like thieves and outlaws. And if ye disturb this house, I will cast upon you the Church's ban, the curse of the unextinguishable flame and the worm that is not appeased! Go hence, and respect Christ's altar!”

The officer flinched. Bloody and ruthless as the times were, few men were so bold as to defy excommunication, with its threat of eternal torture. But, frightened to the core of his superstitious soul, he still clung to his purpose. His men were less daring; they crowded together as if seeking courage from contact with one another, and their eyes were downcast.

“It matters not to you whether we ride with or without badge of service,” the officer resumed doggedly, “whether we be king's men or outlaws. Yet I spoke in haste, and will not molest your roof. But we demand the body of him who we know has taken refuge here; and if you refuse him to us, we will quarter ourselves upon you till ye surrender him!”

This was a threat that would be fulfilled; and both the abbot and the listening Cercamon knew it. Once the unruly soldiers had free run of the monastery, Cercamon could not excape, nor could the monks who bore his messages pass through their lines. Therefore the troubadour, who had already formed his decision, advanced from his shelter into the dimly lighted corridor. So swift was his approach that the officer started back at sight of him. But straight way every soldier laid hand on sword, and the mass of them moved forward to seize their prisoner.

Cercamon raised both hands as a sign that he meditated no resistance. His fingers itched for his sword-hilt, and he knew his skill with his weapon was great enough to take more than one or two with him into darkness. But his deeply religious soul shrank from bloodshed in a holy place.

“I can not escape,” he said bluntly, “therefore I yield. But beware how ye lay hands on me, for I am a troubadour, whose blood not even kings dare shed!”

The soldiers, straining like hounds in leash, looked to their leader. Smiling his satisfaction, the officer answered:

“You have chosen wisely and saved us much mischief. Our orders are to take you, not to harm you, and we are glad indeed not to have your blood on our hands. To him, lads!”

The next instant Cercamon was seized, spun about, disarmed, pawed over by a dozen hands. His cloak, tunic, mail shirt, undertunic and hose were stripped from him, till he stood mother-naked between the jubilant troopers and the indignant abbot.

“Ha!” cried the officer, who had been rummaging through his captive's garments. “The clever fox thought to hide his booty, but a cunning old hound smelled it out!”

And he waved in one hand a folded and creased parchment, which he had rifled from Cercamon's hose. This parchment was an exact duplicate of the letter which Cercamon had given the abbot and which he had kept hidden between hose and foot-sole. An expression of consternation flitted over the abbot's face; but Cercamon turned his head ever so slightly and made a grimace of reassurance. Then he let his eyes meet the officer's, and his face was the picture of utter dismay. At sight of his long visage the soldiers burst into mocking laughter.

“We have what we came for, lads!” the leader exulted. “Truss him up now, and be swift!”

In a few moments Cercamon was clothed again—the rough hands of the spearmen forcing his garments on in utmost disorder—his hands were bound behind his back, he was gagged and his head muffled in a bag whose meshes were just coarse enough to let him breathe, but shut out the fight. Two stalwart troopers dragged him to the door, flung him out, lifted him up into a saddle and lashed his feet fast under a horse's belly.

It was not his own horse; but he soon realized that his beloved roan had not been left in the cloister stables. The commander of the troop was on its back, as his loud oaths of satisfaction proclaimed. Cercamon would have gritted his teeth if the gag had permitted, for the beast was the apple of his eye.

A COMMAND rang out; the horses began to move, and fourscore hoofs pounded away into the fresh spring night. His senses darkened more by the bag over his face than by the darkness, Cercamon knew not which direction they took. He only knew that he was in the rearmost rank and that his beast trotted with the often broken gait of the led horse. Yet his wits told him that he rode toward Blois and the dungeons of Count Thibault of Champagne.

The pace was swift, for his captors were anxious to have the business done with. Cercamon knew that the reason they did not wear their master's colors was that Thibault hoped to conceal from public knowledge his double crime—interference with an embassy to the Regent, and violation of the sacred person of a troubadour. If it should be discovered, he would have both the Regent and the troops of Aquitaine to reckon with; and his assault on a troubadour would set France—the south at least—on fire against him.

He played a desperate game, and Cercamon gave him ungrudging admiration for the skill with which he had played it. Thibault's men had plainly been carefully instructed not to hunt down their quarry on the soil of Touraine—which would have meant a quarrel with Anjou—but to chase him into the territory of Blois and lure him into the monastery of La Ferté.

The monks, who depended for protection on Thibault, might be presumed to say nothing. But to be sure that they said nothing Thibault's men gave themselves out as royal troops and wore no device.

And if they met others on the road, the fact that they wore no device would prevent their deed from being imputed to Thibault. Once their prisoner was safe in Blois, Thibault could deny all knowledge of his existence, and no one would dare accuse him without proof. To the eye these troopers were no man's men, probably marauders. To the casual glance—and nothing else was possible in the dark—Cercamon, whose face was hidden and over whose gay garments a coarse fustian robe had been lashed, was a mere captive about whose fate no one cared.

The troop had ridden perhaps an hour when Cercamon was aware of a faint red glow through the meshes of the bag and of a ringing challenge in a broad, thick-tongued French. With a shout of joy the troop answered it as one man. Weapons clattered, horses neighed, voices talked back and forth. The red glow grew till Cercamon could catch the shine of metal against it when he faced it directly. It was a huge fire high above the ground, a watch-fire on one of those squat, outlying towers that are the vedettes of fortified cities.

The voices died down, the troop rode on, the glow faded. On and on they trotted. The dawn breeze was in the air, and cocks crowing, when again the riders reined in, new challenges floated clear from some far height. The hoarse voice of the captain answered. There was a loud laugh from that height whence the challenge had rung; a horrible screech of iron rent the air.

Then, moving forward at a walk up a steep slope, the cavalcade advanced across a wooden bridge that rang hollow under their hoofs. The fresh air was shut out by thick walls; again the screech of. metal announced the raising of the drawbridge they had just crossed. Fingers fumbled at Cercamon's neck, the coarse bag slid across his features, the fight rushed in upon his dazzled eyes.

It was only the half-light of a great archway at early morning, but after his double darkness he felt it strike him like a whiplash across the eyes. It was some moments before his sight adjusted itself, and then he saw that the archway was the main gate of a large castle, whose outer bailey opened directly off the gate.

The wall was a good eighteen feet thick of squared masonry, and in the center of the court beyond he saw the massive base of a square tower, with rectangular turrets jutting out from each comer. Then the ropes that bound his feet were cut, he was dragged from his horse and fell, saddle-worn and unable to stand, in a heap on the flagstones.

A knot of men-at-arms surrounded him, some wearing no badges—and these were the men who had brought him—others flaunting the arms of Champagne. One fell to chafing the prisoner's ankles, till the blood began to sting unbearably in his constricted veins. After a time they raised him, and forced him to walk up and down, all the while railing at him. When he could keep his feet without help, a soldier grasped him by the shoulder and led him across the court toward the tower.

It was chilly in the court, for the sun had not yet risen above the crenellated walls. In the wooden stalls built around two sides of the bailey, horses nickered, smelling the hay being borne to them by bare-armed grooms. Red-cheeked maid-servants chattered and laughed about the well or swung lithely away with buckets balanced on their heads. A smell of cooking drifted from the soldiers' quarters. An unseen cow lowed, and chickens cackled. On the battlements a soldier sang.

Exhausted, Cercamon stumbled to the inner portal, the entrance to the tower or keep. The iron-bound door of massive oak was flung open, and his guide shoved him roughly into a guard-room, bare, bleak, lighted only by two high arrow-slits in the walls. A dozen men-at-arms in unbraced tunics were washing the sleep from their eyes or yawning as they waited their turn at the tub of well-water that stood on a crude bench.

Their beds—mere mats of straw laid over other benches—lay along two walls; beside the door stood a chest of arms, with a recruit squatting by it burnishing the mail of his older comrades. A pointed archway in the rear wall led to an inner room, which Cercamon guessed to be the great hall, with its long tables and its stairway leading to the upper stories.

But he was not to enter that room yet. His guide's hand impelled him to a dark opening that yawned, without railing, in the guard-room floor. A shout of laughter rang from the lolling men-at-arms.

“Another bird for the cage, eh, Simon?” one cried, and the soldier nodded.

“There is room, I trust?” he asked with assumed solicitude. “This bird is of fine plumage, as ye see, and his feathers must not be ruffled.” Grinning, he dragged Cercamon down a dark stair into a musty vault that reeked with damp and bad air.

A murky torch advanced from the blackness to meet them, and metal clinked dully. He who bore the light was a squat, thick-set fellow in stained leather, with a bunch of keys dangling from his belt and a short, broad sword by his side.

“Look to him well,” the soldier cautioned. “If he escapes, the old Bear will set up a new gallows on the wall. Thou hast not smelt fresh air for so long that it would choke thee—especially from a rope's end.”

And he sprang up the stairs, leaving Cercamon to the warder's care.

The latter led the troubadour to a row of cells in the solid wall of the keep. A key whined in a rusty lock; a heavy door grated open, and he was thrust within. The warder's hand guided him to a corner; strong fingers clutched his ankles and locked them in massy fetters.

“You will be fed in an hour,” the warder muttered, and disappeared.

The door clanged shut after him, and the key turned in the lock.

Though he was desperately hungry, panting for drink, and sore in every bone, Cercamon grinned to himself in the blackness of his cell. He had reason to grin; for he had tricked the men who had tricked him, outwitted those who had made him prisoner. When he surrendered himself at the monastery, and his hose had been despoiled of the letter he had hidden, he had pretended consternation. But the captured letter had gone far to insure the success of his mission.

IT HAD been at Cercamon's request that the Duchess Aliénor had let her clerk draw up two copies of the despatches to Suger and had signed both with her seal. If he had borne but one, and that one had not been found on his person, his captors would have searched every man and every corner in the monastery. But having found one copy on him, in a hiding-place which looked to have been chosen with a view to keeping it secret, Thibault's troopers had assumed that they had found that which they sought.

With these papers in his hands and their bearer safely under lock and key, the Count of Champagne would have no idea that the message, borne by a monk, was already on its way to Paris. Provided he were set free before prison broke his strength, Cercamon cared not how long he might lie in Thibault's cells. He cared only for the success of his mission; and he had already seen to that.

Nor did he fear greatly for his own life or comfort. He was a troubadour, known throughout France as its finest singer. What baron of that song-loving nation would let such a voice molder in his dungeons?

Cercamon's thoughts were so merry that he scarce heeded how time passed, till the great door screeched again and the warder's torch flared in its opening.

“Food!” the keeper muttered and, shoving a plate and a stone bottle within reach of his prisoner's corner, he stepped behind him.

The next moment Cercamon felt a steel point prick the base of his neck and understood that he was to sit motionless while the warder cut the bonds from his hands. He did so and soon was able to move his arms. With a nimble backward spring the jailer leaped out of his reach and slammed the door. But he need not have feared, for the prisoner's arms were still numb from their lashings.

When they pricked and tingled with new life, Cercamon examined his breakfast, a loaf of bread and a crock of water. The water was stale, the bread moldy.

“Pah!” he cried, and flung the food from him.

The blithe mood left him all at once, for he had not eaten in six-and-twenty hours, and the disappointment sickened him. He sat motionless, gritting his teeth.

In this attitude he was found when, about noon, the door opened again; but this time it was not the jailer who entered. It was a brace of spearmen with brightly glowing torches that lighted up the bare, damp cell, with the water trickling down its walls, the rotten straw on its stone floor and the disheveled prisoner with his despondent face and fettered ankles.

After the men-at-arms entered a big-boned man in middle age, clad in black velvet hose and tight-fitting tunic. The torchlight fell on his rugged, square face, florid with good living and scarred with battle, on a short, curling white beard and on the rich golden embroidery of his black surcoat. With obvious intent he stood so that the light illumined the golden device—the coronetted arms of Champagne, quartered with those of Blois.

Though he had never seen the man before, Cercamon knew him from his dress, his fierce, majestic features and the arrogance of his carriage. This was indeed Thibault of Champagne, the greatest baron of the North. Brother to King Stephen of England, he now cherished the ambition to become father-in-law to the King of France and so to make himself the mightiest uncrowned prince in Europe.

For a long time the two eyed each other in silence, and it was Cercamon who spoke first.

“Your grace will forgive me that I do not rise,” he said, with courtesy so deep as almost to be insulting. “I am prevented by these adornments with which your grace had honored my legs.”

And he pointed to his chains.

Count Thibault laughed, a rolling, good-natured laugh which thundered back from the stone vaulting of the dungeon.

“One sees that you are indeed Cercamon the Troubadour!” he answered.

His eyes examined his captive, noting the mighty shoulders, the unnaturally long arms, whose sinews showed through his rumpled, tight-fitting sleeves, and the handsome face with its blue-green eyes, that glowed like coals in the torchlight.

“I am sorry,” the count spoke again, with courtesy to match Cercamon's own, “that my men were forced to handle you so. My spies reported you a perilous man, shrewd of wit and a master with the sword. It would not have been wise to give you an equal chance. Moreover, I had to take you alive and uninjured. It goes ill with him who slays one of your calling.”

Cercamon nodded.

“Your grace will do me the justice to admit that I gave little trouble. I did not even draw weapon.”

Thibault's eyes clouded.

“So my men reported,” he mused. “It is that which disturbs me. It is unlike your reputation. You are said to be a man who fights for the love of fighting, kills when the odds are even and never gives up a task unfinished. Therefore I suspect that you have not begun to fight me yet.”

“Perhaps your grace is right,” Cercamon admitted demurely. “But it was not hospitable of you to feed me on foul bread and lodge me in a stinking pit.”

“That was only that you might the more appreciate the kindness I still hope to show you. But I can not treat like a guest a man who may meditate some dangerous plot against me. It rests with you, troubadour, whether you lie on slimy stone and gnaw foul crusts or sleep in a fair bed and share my table.

He paused, searching Cercamon's face the while.

Now Cercamon, confident that his message would go through to Abbot Suger, and being raw with famine and ill treatment, saw no cause for prolonging his own discomfort. He had done all in his power; the rest lay with the regent and Bertrand d'Armagnac.

“Your conditions?” he asked.

Thibault smiled.

“Merely those which I can enforce with or without your consent,” he replied. “You shall have the freedom of my castle and be treated with all honor—if you will but give me your parole of honor.”

“And that means?”

“That you will not try to escape, nor communicate to any man those things which have happened to you at my order, nor speak a word of the errand that brought you from Poitiers, until I let you leave my castle.”

Cercamon reflected a moment, but could not see that these terms could do any harm. Already a monk was on his way to Paris with the all-important despatches, and an other had set out for Poitou to bring word of Cercamon's probable plight to his master. And it was true that, if he refused, Thibault could insure his obedience by keeping him a miserable captive in this noisome cell. He looked up suddenly, grinning.

“I accept, my lord,” he said, “and I give you my word.”

“Strike the chains from his limbs!” the Count commanded. “You, Gilles, take him to the north chamber and give him fine garments. You, Watrequin, hie to the servants' offices and bring him good meat and drink! And now, troubadour, remember your promise well—for tonight King Louis of France sups with me!”

THE king came at nightfall, his approach heralded by the thunder of galloping hoofs and the sudden swoop of horsemen, who checked their fiery mounts in mid-career, flinging them back on their haunches at the very brink of the moat. Then rang the challenge from the walls and a fanfare of royal trumpets. It was half an hour afterward before the young monarch, with his escort of three hundred spears, rode with slow majesty across the lowered drawbridge. Louis of France loved to be well prepared for and always sent his avant-garde well ahead, that his welcome might be worthy his acceptance.

The great gate was open, the drawbridge down. The royal procession rode over splendid carpets from the looms of Arras, between lines of full-mailed men-at-arms. Thibault himself stood in the archway, bareheaded, bowing low. From the battlemented crest of the wall maidens dropped flowers upon the heads of the king and his knights. Beside the count stood his master of the garrison, Raymond de Montivre, armored from top to toe, but with his nasaled helmet in his hand.

Louis was a tall, slender lad of scarce twenty, with short, dark hair and dark eyes that blazed out of a pale face. His features had not yet assumed that austere reserve which, in later years, grief and misfortune stamped upon them; now, in his fiery youth, he had learned to conceal neither his swift, sensitive emotions nor his overbearing pride. A slight smile curled his thin lips as he acknowledged Thibault's obeisance; it pleased him to see the haughty Count of Champagne humbling himself. And he embraced Thibault with a graciousness born of that pleasure.

The two, attended by Montivre, crossed the bailey toward the tower, while the king's men rode slowly into the court and gave over their beasts to the bustling grooms who were in despair to find room for so many horses in the castle stables.

Conducted thus ceremoniously to his chamber on the third floor of the keep, Louis the King was left to the ministrations of the cringing castle servants; and Thibault, with a smile of triumph lighting his florid face, sought out Cercamon in the north turret; Cercamon was washed, fresh-shaven and habited in gay garments of Thibault's furnishing. The count entered without announcing himself.

“You are mindful of your parole?” he asked.

“My lord!” Cercamon exclaimed. “They call you the Bear of the North, but there is as much fox as bear in you. Had you told me of the king's coming before you offered me parole, I would never have promised to keep silent before him. But having given my word, I will keep it.”

Thibault laughed.

“That is well! Tonight, at supper, you are to sing before the King!”

The troubadour raised his eyebrows.

“You can not command song, my lord.”

Thibault shrugged his shoulders.

“I can outwit you, but I can not argue with you,” he answered. “I pray you to sing before the king, if that pleases you better.”

Cercamon bowed.

“What songs?” he asked. “The north does not know much of our southern poesy. I would not choose verses that the king will not approve.”

Once more the count laughed.

“See what an advantage I have, in that I know the king!” he exulted. “When Aquitaine wished to contract a royal marriage, it sent its offer, by a minstrel, to a monk. Truly that monk is Regent of France, but for all that he is a shaveling. If your letters had reached Suger, the king would have been enraged that his marriage should have been arranged over his head. Now I, knowing his pride, his ceaseless chafing against the tutelage of Suger, sent my proposal for a marriage between the king and my daughter to Louis himself—and he is here tonight to see the lass! Ah, you southerners are brave soldiers and rare singers, but ye are no statesmen!

“Likewise the foremost troubadour of France, being a southerner, has to ask me—a northern soldier—what to sing before the King. Knowing him, I can tell you. He is young, proud, hot-headed. Sing him songs of war and brave deeds—songs of chivalry in arms! Your whining love-ballads will not touch him, nor your dainty pastorelles of shepherds and shepherdesses. What are peasants, sheep and light-o'-loves to the son of Louis the Strong? Nay, pour out your fiercest notes and sing him of the clash of sword on shield!”

Cercamon's eyes were flashing, but less with the kindling words of the man who had beaten him than with anger at his own helplessness to strike back. He had given his word to say nothing to the king, either of his own capture or of the Duchess Aliénor's letters. And while he must sit silent, bound by his honor, Thibault would be using every art, every persuasion, to knit up a marriage between his daughter and the king. And to crown all, he, Cercamon, ambassador of Aquitaine, must sing to make them merry—must sing over the funeral of Aquitaine's proud hopes!

A sudden suspicion crossed the count's cunning mind.

“Ye troubadours are cunning fellows!” he said. “See to it that your songs contain no suggestion, no single hint, against the spirit of your parole!”

“My lord!” Cercamon cried proudly. “If we were both on the open plain, my sword would avenge that insult to my honor, baron though you are!”

The nobleman's rough-hewn face softened into contrition.

“Your pardon!” he replied. “I had forgotten the courtesy that becomes a host. You will sing for us?”

“I will,” Cercamon agreed.

But when he was left alone, he pondered long on Thibault's request, turning it over and over to find what hidden meaning, what cunning scheme, might lie beneath it. 'I can outwit you,' Thibault had said; and so far he was justified in his boast.

The troubadour had countered his first clever stroke—the ambush—by a cleverer parry, which the count did not yet suspect; but it had been shrewd of Thibault to lure him into that ambush. And Thibault had indeed outwitted him in the matter of his parole. But in this last request Cercamon could see nothing, save that the count wished to put the petulant Louis in a good mood, a mood that would make him more receptive to Thibault's proposals.

And a great flame of anger swept over Cercamon, that, in spite of all his caution, for all that he could do, the Bear of Champagne had beaten him and made a plaything of him.

If he could only tell the king all—that he, an ambassador on business of state from Aquitaine to France, had been ambushed by Thibault's men; that Thibault had intercepted, by force, a messenger who came with proposals that concerned the king, and even now sought to inveigle Louis into a pledge of marriage before Aquitaine's proposal could reach the royal ears—if he could only tell Louis this, the proud young prince would flame into righteous indignation, sweep Thibault and all Thibault's designs from his path and avenge a deed that was as much an insult to his royal dignity as to the pride of Aquitaine.

But cunning Thibault had sealed Cercamon's lips till he should be permitted to leave the castle of Blois. And then it would be too late, for Thibault would not let him go till the marriage between Champagne and the Crown should have been agreed upon.

But Cercamon was not the man to give all for lost while life still surged through his veins and his shrewd wits yet had some thing to feed on. There was always some way out of every trap, some weak link in every chain. As he pondered, it suddenly came to him that the weak link in Thibault's chain was the proposal that Cercamon, whom Thibault had hindered from fulfilling an errand that concerned the king, should now sing before the King.

True, he could not weave into his song anything that would violate his promise; but at some future time, Louis would know how Thibault had intrigued to keep the Aquitanian offer from his ears and then the king would remember that Cercamon had sung for him at Blois. Yes, it would be too late then—but something might happen in the mean time, if the monk of La Ferté had safely reached Paris and the regent.

This was as far as Cercamon could think the situation out, and he gave his mind to the choice of songs he would sing. Shortly after, a white-clad usher came to summon him to supper.

HE FOUND the bailey bright with torchlight and thronged with officers of the garrison and the knights who had come with the king. The great castle was crowded. Every chamber was filled, and from every turret men were flocking toward the keep. They walked by twos and threes, or in groups, talking animatedly, so that the courtyard rang with the strident hum of their voices.

Entering the tower, Cercamon followed the throng through the guard-room into the great hall, which occupied three-fourths the space of the first floor. It was a huge, high-ceiled room; its cold stone walls hung with Flemish tapestries that billowed in the draft from the arrow-slits. A score of banners, tattered and bloodstained, hung from the rafters; wood and broidered silk alike were dark with the accumulated smoke of the Winter fires that had risen from the hearth in the south corner; soot lay thick on the finely carven woodwork of the galleries which ran high up along each wall, for the archers posted to serve the arrow-slits.

Long tables—mere rectangles of deal laid on trestles—were ranged one beyond the other across the hall; one stood high on a daïs at the western end of the apartment, under the crossed standards of Champagne and France. Servants had already covered the bare boards with the finest napery of the province; splendidly molded flagons of silver stood, brimful with the rarest wines, at each table's end.

The busy sewers and ushers picked their way through the gathering crowd, the former shouting orders to the harassed servants, the latter striving valiantly to direct each guest to his appointed place. Their task was no light one; wo to them if, however many the guests, they failed to seat each in his due order of precedence, taking into account his birth, title and years of service.

Now Thibault of Champagne had done a bold thing; he had ordered Cercamon assigned to a place at that highest table on the daïs, the master's table, where he himself, his household and the king would sit. In the south the troubadour, as a matter of right, could claim a seat at the master's board; but here in the ruder north, where his art was still new, it was perilous for a low-born man, though he were a troubadour, to mingle on familiar terms with men of gentle blood.

But both Thibault and the young king knew by repute the fame of Cercamon, and Thibault knew he could keep his own proud vassals in order.

The great ones were already seated while yet their followers poured in, and as each entered and made obeisance to the daïs king and count bowed acknowledgment. With some trepidation Cercamon took his place at one end of that high table, after his low bow had been returned and the count had signed, to him to sit.

Thibault himself had given up his own place of honor—in the middle of the western side, overlooking the entire company—to Louis the King. On the king's right was Thibault; on his left, Thibault's daughter, the young Countess Alys. Beyond her sat de Montivre, master of the garrison, and the foremost of the king's and of Thibault's knights filled up the remaining places.

When all were seated, the servants came down between the tables in solemn procession, each bearing his appointed dish. Peacocks, roasted whole, their feathers carefully replaced as in life, rested on platters of silver; suckling pigs crisp and sleek; rich stews of mutton in deep bowls, spiced with every known delicacy; great mounds of grilled beef in thick slabs—all these followed, in the order of importance assigned them by fashion. The guests were already drinking, as they would all through the meal.

Accustomed to the refined luxury of the south, Cercamon paid scant attention to all these preparations and less to his wine, sipping only when the king drank, as was proper. All his attention was focused on the girl who sat at Louis' left, through whom her father had destined to unite the fortunes of Champagne with those of France.

She was a tall young woman, strongly made, yet graceful, perhaps a little older than the king. Her hair was brown, her eyes blue. It would have been flattery to call her beautiful. Yet her gaze was clear, frank and innocent, and both her features and her bearing bore the fine, subtle stamp of goodness. She seemed a little melancholy; though her lips and chin were firm, her smile was wistful.

“It were a good thing for this young prince,” Cercamon meditated, “and for the peace of France, if Thibault should win his game.”

For it was plain to any that had seen them both that Alys of Blois surpassed Aliénor of Aquitaine in beauty of soul as much as Aliénor surpassed her in beauty of face and body. In the year past, the troubadour had seen much of his duchess and knew that, far as she stood above other women in loveliness, her heart was filled with pride and cruelty and love of pleasure.

The company ate like men who had fasted for a week. Well might the king's men do so, for they had ridden far in the Spring air; but there was no moderation in their manners. As they ate, so they drank. Cercamon wondered, as he watched them, that these gourmands and the dainty folk of his own land could both be Frenchmen.

So fast they reached their fingers into the stew-bowls, so eagerly they grasped the slabs of meat in their sinewy hands, that the servants had scarce time to bring them towels and ewers of water between courses. Each man seized his food firmly in his left hand, hacked at it with his dagger, and carried it to his mouth in his fingers, washing down the mouthfuls with great gulps of wine. Of all that company only Cercamon, with his fine Gascon manners, the countess and the king, ate daintily or moderately; and Louis drank as sparsely as he ate.

At last the feast was cleared away and the cloths removed, but the flagons, constantly replenished, passed up and down incessantly. Thibault of Champagne rose from his place; a trumpeter behind him blew a blast on a silver horn, and the deep drone of conversation was cut off as by a sword-thrust. The count waved a hand toward Cercamon, who rose and bowed to the king, and with a sardonic smile on his lips, Thibault presented him.

“Many of you,” he said, “have exchanged blows with our countrymen of Provence or Aquitaine; a few have perchance heard their singers in their own courts. But who of us all has heard the voice of Cercamon? It is a high honor I have prepared for my king.”

CERCAMON felt every eye fasten upon him; the hot, impatient eye full of a boy's curiosity and a boy's restlessness; the gentle, brooding eyes of Countess Alys; the hard, cynical eyes of Thibault; and the unbroken stare of five hundred war-hardened knights of France. These men, untrained to value the polished verse of his southland and flushed with wine—these men he must please. But more than all he must please King Louis; and it was well for him the king was of finer stuff than his nobles.

Remembering his captor's advice, he wasted no time on the gentler, finer forms which most delighted the southern courts, but plunged forthwith into one of those fierce, wild-paced war-songs that had come down to his countryfolk from the battles of their grandsires.

It rang with the clash of sword on shield, the clang of steel, the breathless, thundering rhythm of charging horsemen. So furiously rolled its cadences that, before the company had time to realize, it had come to an end in one fierce, shouted syllable of triumph.

The warriors of France, leaning far over the tables, looked at the singer with eyes that burned with the passion of conflict; then, as at a signal, all caught their breath together, and all burst into wild shouts of applause:

“Ai! Ai! Ohé!”

It was the old battle-shout, the cry of martial spirits when the ranks are joined in the reeling ecstasy of onslaught. With these soldier-nobles the troubadour had triumphed.

He stole a glance at the king. Louis sat with tight-locked arms, clenched hands and smoldering eyes.

Now Cercamon had heard, and remembered, a chant of ancient days—a song of Charlemagne and Roland, and the last, lost fight of Roncevaux. It began with slow, measured cadences—the march of the gallant little Frankish army into the black and monstrous pass, a march overhung with the terror of monstrous mountains and with the black clouds of storm and fate.

Into this chant he swept, the rich tones throbbing like tolling bells; then, changing time and volume, he burst into the full fury of the Saracen attack, his voice ringing like finely tempered steel. As the fortune of battle waned and waxed and waned again, so his tones swelled, diminished and rose to the fullness of tempest; at last to die down to a deep, soft death-march, filled with the passion of mourning. Roland was dead, and Oliver, the glory of France, departed.

When he had done, the silence was long and profound; yet in that silence was a tribute greater than the clamor of shouting throats or beating hands. The spell broken at last, there came from somewhere in the hall the sound of a man sobbing; and between the sobs came broken cries:

“The dogs of Saracens! The murdering hounds! Wo, wo over the traitor Ganelon!”

The pent-up emotion of the company burst forth in a mighty peal of laughter. The naïve, half-drunken warrior who had spoken turned suddenly on his table-mates, fierce-eyed; then, as his glance fell on a wine flagon, it blurred again. He reached for the drink with shaking fingers.

The young king seized Cercamon's hand.

“Sung like a man and a soldier!” he cried. “But you, who are of the south, have sung us nothing that is the south's own—nothing that we also have not. I have heard often of the well-turned verses made in Aquitaine—them I would hear!”

For a moment the troubadour was strongly minded to sing one of his own songs; but he determined in favor of one written by a man long dead, a song that he loved above all songs. It was the brave, ironical lament composed by Guilhem IX of Aquitaine, prince, lover, soldier, when he returned beaten and shattered from his inglorious crusade. Lament though it was, there was no open grief expressed in its delicate measures—rather a gentle melancholy that dares to laugh at itself. And this he sang, with its perfect form and subdued, half-cynical passion.

This time the multitude did not applaud. The mood was too fine for their northern perceptions. But the king, scholar and gentleman for all his boyishness, was lifted out of himself into ecstatic admiration.

“So should a brave man bear his sorrow!” he cried. “And well for the prince who has such a troubadour to sing him! Ah, Cercamon, I must have you in Paris!”

And, filling his cup to the brim, he drank Cercamon's health.

DURING the next three days Cercamon derived a grim satisfaction from the subtle game played between Thibault and the king; the count trying by every device to bring his royal guest to a serious discussion of the proposed marriage, and at the same time making every opportunity for him to see and talk with the Countess Alys; while Louis as watchfully avoided all talk of the alliance and sought, by keeping Thibault anxious, to make him increase the sums he had offered as the girl's dowry.

For Louis, however young and hot-headed, had inherited his father's love of a bargain, and it was his duty to replenish the exhausted revenues of France. Moreover, the proud boy took a mischievous delight in his vassal's impatience.

Cercamon had great need of such comfort as he could get, for his anxiety over his own position grew more painful every day. Had his messages got through? Had the monk who bore the duchess's letter reached Abbot Suger? And had Armagnac heard of his danger? The time must soon come when Thibault and the king would reach an agreement, and then the cause of Aquitaine would be lost.

Such a result would be most perilous for Aquitaine: Thibault, her ancient enemy, would become the most powerful man in France next to the king; and the king's power to check his ambition would be overbalanced by his loyalty to a father-in-law. And to make Cercamon's trouble the greater, he could not hide from himself the fact that France would be much the better for just such an alliance with Champagne; and his allegiance to Aliénor was sorely tried by his growing admiration for the frank face and the noble heart of Countess Alys.

Rut his own pride upheld him. He could not endure being overreached; the trick Thibault had played on him irked his Gascon soul. He must win this game for Aquitaine, if he never played another. And he resolved that if, by any miracle, Thibault's schemes should fail, he would ask his master Armagnac to release him from his vassalage. For if Aliénor of Aquitaine became Queen of France, her ruthless ambition would involve her servants in intrigues that a man of honor could not stomach.

Those three days were spent chiefly in hunting, feasting, and dancing; for so the king willed. To fill his time with merriment was the surest way to prevent Thibault from coming to the point, and thus to whet his eagerness till he offered a greater dowry. The nobles of France were delighted with their entertainment; Louis went about with a thin, strained smile; Thibault grew more and more morose. And Cercamon waited, singing, thinking, fearing.

The evening of the third day the tide seemed to turn in Thibault's favor. That afternoon the royal hunting-party had roused a huge boar, at which Louis rode with his reckless courage. His horse had stumbled just as the boar turned at bay. His horse killed under him, the king had lain a moment helpless, pinned to the ground, with the pig's yellow fangs leering in his face. In that moment Thibault's spear entered the monster's side, and the king was saved.

Louis returned silent, but after supper he was exceptionally gracious to his host. When the women had left the hall and while the wine yet circulated, the king signed to Thibault, who rose with a smile of triumph.

But before they had passed through the door for that private discussion which might settle the kingdom's destiny, the blare of many horns sounding at once brought them back to their seats. An officer from the gate ran into the hall and announced—

“The Count Raoul de Vermandois, Grand Seneschal of France!”

Thibault scowled, and Louis filing himself back in his oaken chair with a gesture of impatience. But a wild thrill of hope shot through Cercamon's heart. A few moments later, Thibault's usher entered backward, bowing low at every other step, his white wand of office waving airily in one hand. Three paces from the king he turned, knelt and cried—

“His mightiness the grand seneschal!”

Raoul de Vermandois, who had entered at his very heels, thrust the usher aside and kissed the king's hand. His back was rudely turned to Thibault, whom he did not love, though they were kinsmen by marriage. With an exclamation of anger, Louis bade his seneschal show deference for their host.

Vermandois, a big-bodied, hot-tempered warrior, turned his hot young eyes on the count's.

“Deference?” cried he. “Deference? To one who intercepts messengers to the Crown and mishandles the ambassadors of princes?”

But as the last words fell from his lips, he caught sight of Cercamon, sitting at the table's end—Cercamon, richly clothed, well-fed, apparently at liberty and in high favor.

Louis was on his feet, looking angrily from Vermandois to Thibauit and back.

“What does this mean, Raoul?” he cried. “Has hatred made you mad, or have you indeed some charge to press against the Count of Champagne?”

The grand seneschal's eyes dropped, and he muttered incoherently. The sight of the troubadour had blunted the keen edge of his fury. At length he composed himself and spoke, though with some uncertainty.

“His excellence the regent, Abbot Suger,” he said, “has sent me with four hundred spears to escort your Majesty back to Paris. A messenger has come with tidings that cast grave doubts on Count Thibault's loyalty!”

Every man in the company sprang to his feet, the knights of France with exclamations of wonder; the warriors of Champagne with shouts of defiance, pressing round about the seneschal with threatening scowls and hands plucking at their sword-hilts. For a little it seemed as if they would draw steel and hack the daring accuser in pieces.

But Thibault was also on his feet, his cheeks flaming.

“Does that man live,” he roared, “who dares accuse Thibault of Champagne of disloyalty to his king? Raoul, Raoul, if it were not for the royal presence I would cram your lie down your throat with six inches of steel!”

Striding forward, the king caught his angry vassal's arm. His voice silenced every other; his cold, clear words drenched their passions as with water.

“Raoul,” he said, “ride back to Paris and say to the regent that he presumes too much on our patience! I will not go back till I am ready. You, Thibault, have this day rendered me a service which of itself confutes this charge.”

The grand seneschal blushed purple.

“Your Majesty's will is the will of God!” he answered in a choked voice. “I will go. But first I crave five minutes' private speech with your Majesty, in the interest of France. If I fail to satisfy your Majesty, I will go down on my knees before the Count of Champagne and ask his pardon for my words!”

Thibault strove in vain to catch the King's eye. Louis pondered, his face still angry; but at last he nodded.

“So be it!” he said. “Follow me to my apartments!”

IT WAS nearer half an hour than five minutes before the king returned. In that long, tense interval Thibault waited in angry bewilderment, his eyes turning questioningly from the puzzled knights of Paris to the troubadour. At last, as if making up his mind that the seneschal's charge of disloyalty must have some connection with his captive, he signed to Cercamon, who elbowed through the crowding, whispering throng to the count's side.

“Remember your promise!” Thibault whispered.

Cercamon whispered back:

“I will keep my promise; I will say no word to any man concerning your actions till I have left your roof.”

Thibault nodded, as if satisfied. If Cercamon said nothing, he should be safe; for the men who had captured the troubadour had worn no badges and had observed every caution. Yet Thibault was mightily troubled to know what lay behind Raoul's charge that he had intercepted a messenger to the Court.

At last Louis reentered the hall, Vermandois at his side. By the smoldering rage in the king's white face, by the unconcealed grin of triumph on Raoul's, the excited knights could see that Thibault had fared badly in that secret conversation. Louis strode swiftly up to the count, his eyes blazing, and shot one swift question—

“How dare you stop a messenger between Aquitaine and France?”

Thibault recoiled, but his bluff features, long practised in dissimulation, assumed an expression of injury and astonishment. With every air of innocence he asked:

“What means your gracious Majesty? Have I not always been faithful?”

Vermandois sneered openly. Louis, drawing from his breast a rolled parchment, struck it, rather than gave it, into Thibault's hand.

“Read!” he commanded.

The seal was already broken. Unrolling the parchment with fingers that trembled a little for all his forced composure, Thibault read. In spite of his efforts at self-control, the flush ebbed from his cheeks, and his teeth gritted. The paper was a proposal, from the Duchess Aliénor to the Regent Suger, for a marriage between herself and the king.

“My lord!” Thibault stammered. “This paper—I do not understand. I am accused of intercepting a message, which—” he paused, and gathering firmness, concluded with an air of virtue—“which has not been intercepted at all! For lo, I saw it first in your Majesty's hand!”

The king could not repress his fury.

“You dare to bandy words with me!” he exclaimed. “This letter was brought to the regent by a monk of the Cistercian abbey at La Ferté-en-Bois, who declared that its bearer, the troubadour Cercamon, had entrusted it to his prior but a few minutes before Cercamon was dragged from the abbey by soldiers who wore no badge. And here”—he pointed to Cercamon—“here I find this troubadour in your own castle! What better proof could I ask?”

Thibault raised his eyes to Cercamon's.

“You find him in my castle,” he repeated, “but as an honored guest—not as a captive!”

Louis turned to the troubadour.

“How came you hither?” he asked.

His tongue bound by his parole, Cercamon sought for an answer which would not break his word of honor.

“I rode north on an errand of my master, the Duke of Armagnac,” he answered slowly. “Meeting with men of Count Thibault's, I yielded to his invitation to pass some time at his court.”

Louis stamped his foot.

“What was the nature of your errand?” he demanded.

“Your pardon, my lord! I can not reveal my master's secrets!”

“Do you deny that you bore this letter from the Duchess of Aquitaine as far as La Ferté, and that it was there taken from you?”

“I neither affirm nor deny anything, my lord the king!”

Thibault drew a sigh of relief; but Louis was not satisfied.

“Your case, Raoul,” he said to his seneschal, “falls to the ground because the chief witness will not speak, Nevertheless there is sufficient evidence for me to acquit you of your promise to ask the count's pardon. Ride back to Paris and say to the regent that I will return in five days. The Count of Champagne has honored me with a proposal which demands my consideration, and I would consider it under his roof. Take also this troubadour to Paris and find means to make him tell all that he knows!”

Thibault looked most uncomfortable. It did not soothe him to see the king take back the letter from Aquitaine and replace it carefully in his tunic. But he was in no position to protest against the suspicion which rested upon him. The evidence against him was strong, even in the face of Cercamon's silence.

It was certain now—and he cursed himself for failing to foresee such a chance—that Cercamon had outplayed him in that swift scene of ambush and capture at the monastery. Now Cercamon was to be taken to Paris, by the king's order, which Thibault could not countermand. The worst was that as soon as Cercamon left Blois Castle he was free from his parole and would doubtless tell the whole story.

The only comfort was that the king still meant to tarry at Blois; and even that was no longer an unmixed blessing. For Louis would use Aquitaine's offer—now that he knew of it—as a bid against that of Champagne; and Thibault would be forced to increase his own offer. Louis held against him not only Aliénor's terms, which Thibault knew from the duplicate he had captured to offer greater advantage than his own, but also the fact that Thibault had sought to prevent the king from knowing of the Aquitanian proposals.

He was outbid, and he had committed a crime; for immunity and victory he must pay a high price. He must greatly increase the amount he offered as his daughter's dowry, and he resolved to do so as soon as Vermandois and the troubadour should depart.

That night, by royal order, Cercamon slept under guard; and at daybreak the next morning he was roused by one of the seneschal's spearmen. Raoul had no desire to wait one hour longer than the condition of his horses demanded; and after a cold breakfast on the remains of last night's banquet, he led his men out under the great gate and toward Paris.

CERCAMON took the road in no happy mood. His message had reached the regent, and he was free from his parole and out of reach of Thibault's vengeance; but fie was as yet neither at liberty nor victorious. The king had ordered him to Paris, whither he had no desire to go. He could see no advantage for Aquitaine in his telling his tale to the regent: the king's willingness to remain under Thibault's roof after he knew of the count's treachery was proof that Louis meant to balance the offer of Aquitaine against that of Champagne.

Thus forced to the wall, Thibault could hardly do anything but make so high a bid that Louis would be tempted. Nor was Aquitaine in a position to raise its own bid, seeing that Cercamon, alone of those who favored Aquitaine, knew what had just taken place at Blois. It might well be that, in the absence of a second and larger offer from Aliénor, the king would contract the alliance with Thibault's daughter. In Paris Cercamon would be helpless to inform either his master Armagnac or the duchess of what had happened.

He was still a prisoner, though in honorable captivity. Raoul meant to carry out the king's order and take him to the capital, and had therefore placed him between two keen-eyed young knights, with whom it was a point of honor to watch him with ceaseless vigilance. They rode close by his side, and before and, behind them were hundreds of men-at-arms to lend authority to their watchfulness. Yet Cercamon did not despair of eluding them if the slightest chance offered itself. And he was determined to make the chance if none came of itself, for the only hope for Aquitaine lay in his escaping to bring word to the duchess of that which was going on at Blois.

His own horse had been returned to him, and he trusted to its swiftness—if he could only win past his guards. He stole constant sidelong glances at the horses on either side of him, measuring as well as he could their probable speed and endurance. And thus the huge cavalcade cantered down the high road to Paris, in the chilly morning, through the bright noon, and in the cold twilight.

But with twilight a soft, persistent rain began to fall. The seneschal cursed furiously. At night so large a company must ride slowly, and there would be three hours more of drenching, chilling wet and of gradually worsening roads before they reached the shelter of Orleans, the first stopping-point of their three-day journey. Vermandois let his trumpets sound, and the horsemen made the most of the last light for a gallop that would take them as far toward the shelter of Orleans as possible before night shut down in earnest.

The gathering darkness brought new hope to the troubadour. He rode stirrup for stirrup beside his guards, to lull their suspicions. On his left were two men—one of the knights set to watch him, and another; on his right but the one guard, for they rode in column of fours. But on the right was also the river Loire, not easily forded in the dark and the rain. Yet it was on the right that Cercamon watched for his opportunity; it would be impossible to break past the two on his other side. Let his man but lag behind a little, let his horse stumble on the softened, slippery road, and Cercamon was ready to spur past him.

But, as if reading his thoughts, the young noble on his right caught at Cercamon's rein and held it. It was plain that strict orders had been given to prevent his escape. And once they reached Orleans, escape would be impossible. During the night he would be guarded closely, within walls whereon sentries would be posted; and the ride from Orleans to Paris would be through royal domain all the way, with king's troopers patrolling the roads.

They were still half a league from Orleans when the opportunity came. Cercamon was waiting for it with bated breath and did not let it slip. In the black darkness, the man on his right rode full into a deep crevice in the road, filled with rain-water. His horse stumbled, slithered and went down. Taken wholly unaware, the knight let Cercamon's bridle drop from his fingers as he clutched madly at his own; Cercamon tugged his beast's head sharply to the right, thrust home the spurs and shot past the fallen man into the night.

Hearing him dash by, his warder set up a shout, which was instantly echoed by those on the other side. Confused cries rang out; trumpets blew; the whole cavalcade drew raggedly to a halt. Officers rode down the line, demanding what had happened; those who first learned of the escape rode forward to report. A score of men gave tongue at once; none could see a yard ahead of him in the rain and the blackness; the officers began to curse and strike out.

The tumult lasted long enough so that, when it ceased, Cercamon's hoof-beats were no longer audible on the rain-softened earth. None could see him; it was only known that he had ridden to the right.

Calling his sergeants together, Vermandois bade them ride off hotspur toward the river, swim it and quarter the fields beyond on a front of more than a hundred yards. It was a desperate task, for the river was rising, and none could see his way to the broken bank. Only the urgency of the king's orders held them to it.

To the river they rode, some crashing over their horses' heads as they failed to take off well at the river's brim; others sinking in unexpected depths, and yet others carried down-stream in the muddy water before they could make a landing on the other side. Yet most of them won across; and then began the blind hunt through soaked meadows and plowed fields, slipping, stumbling, some going down in ditches or deep furrows.

The night bewildered their sense of direction; their mounts, afraid of the wicked footing and excited almost to frenzy by the pricking spurs and the shouting, bolted off to all sides. At last, some thrown and limping, all mired and weary, the troopers returned to report neither sight nor sound of the runaway.

Cercamon had had his own share of perils in his wild dash, but he kept his head, he was not weighted down by armor, and he had the advantage of being the pursued instead of the pursuer. In the murk night that pressed in all about him, he, too, had stumbled; but his horse, recovering on the very margin of the river, had taken off with a splendid leap into the stream.

The roan began to swim at once; and thanks to its rider's lack of mail, it had forty pounds handicap over its followers. Straight across the river it headed, made the opposite shore, floundered awhile in the fields; and the certainty of Cercamon's purpose kept the fine beast's muzzle pointed straight for refuge.

It was a precarious refuge he sought, uncomfortable and fraught with danger; but it was the best at hand. Turning southwest on the farther side of the Loire, he pressed on surely, cautiously, for the Sologne marshes. He scarcely feared being overhauled, knowing that an error of a single foot in estimating his direction from the road would widen to an error of a hundred yards in the first mile, what with darkness, rain, and excitement. But he greatly feared lest Vermandois take the back track, send men over the river at wide intervals and thus set ambushes for him at a score of points. In the Sologne he would have perfect shelter till the pursuit was lost.

The Sologne stretches along the south bank of the river in a vast chain of pools and marshes, with no roads and few and perilous footpaths between. He rode into the reeds after an hour of steady, careful going, and thereafter he let the roan pick its way, taking care only to keep it moving. The horse's sharper sense of danger kept them out of the deep pools and treacherous morasses, though more than once its feet sank deep. Only when he had ridden in so far into this land of hidden death that he felt sure none would dare follow, did Cercamon turn again toward the river.

And now began the worst stage of his adventure. Weary now, his horse lost its first alertness, and again and again Cercamon was forced to dismount and lead it for fear that it would carry him straight into a bottomless quag. A dozen times his feet sank to the knees, and he had to pull himself out as best he could; once he sank suddenly into deep standing water and was nearly drowned before he could find firm ground. But doggedly he worked on, unable to see, yet striving always toward the river.

He came on it at last, just as despair laid hold on him. Mounting to rest his weary legs, he rode straight into a pool, which proved to be an arm of the Loire. But here the ground was mixed clay and sand, fairly firm; and after a few minutes of swimming, the roan bore him to the stream, and to shallow water formed by rising ground, where the beast could wade. A moment later he rode out on to the bank.

He still had to get across the river again, for there was no road along the south bank, and the lurking tentacles of the Sologne thrust out to break the river's edge at a hundred points. Cercamon waited to rest his beast, and then, picking his ford as well as he could in the dark, he half-rode, half-swam to the north bank.

But he did not follow the high road, for to the northeast, somewhere in the night, rode the seneschal and his men, and to the southwest lay Blois. Instead, he rode across the plowed fields, slowly and with the utmost care, hoping to strike one of the roads that lead back into the rich country of the Orléanais. He had thrown the pursuit off the track, hopelessly; but of this he could not be sure. Yet he knew that they would look for him on the other side, or else believe him drowned in river or marsh.

The first cockcrow shrilled through the chill night before he found a cart-track leading west; and this he took, following it between plowed fields till it wound into a grove. Riding deep into the shelter of the trees, he picketed and blanketed his horse. He himself was young, had often experienced wet and chilly nights in the open, and was soon asleep on the sodden ground, wrapped in his cloak.

HE WAS up at sunrise, hungry and stiff; but the roan was somewhat refreshed. Creeping to the road, Cercamon spied up and down it for a time, but saw no one. There were few hoof-prints in the mud, and such as there were were the broad tracks of peasant's nags. The chase was over, and the quarry saved.

Yet he still rode cautiously, the more so since his way led through Thibault's domain. Straight west he pounded, till he was far enough from Blois to venture on a circuit that would take him safely past. The bend in the Loire between Orleans and Tours was so marked that he could at last take a cross-country short-cut, following, as it were, the bowstring while the river and the highroad formed the bent bow.

Tours was his objective: if his message to Bertrand d'Armagnac had been as successful as that to the Regent, his master would be on the road north to inquire after him; and through Tours Armagnac must pass.

For two days he rode on, no man stopping him; finding food and shelter with the peasants. On the second day, at evening, he rode through the gate of Tours, learning from the sentinels that none from Aquitaine had come that way. But the next morning, less than a league south of the city, he beheld a great cavalcade shining against the Spring sun. By their direction, they could only come from Poitou. And as they drew nearer, he saw the great banner of Aquitaine floating in the van. With a shout of joy he spurred to meet them.

The outriders recognized him with cries of astonishment, and from behind their ranks a horseman rode out to meet him. The nasaled helmet hid his features; but his lean, war-hardened body and centaur's carriage were those of Bertrand d'Armagnac, Seneschal of Aquitaine.

The great man wrung the hand of his friend and servant in an iron grip of fellow ship. Then, smiling but asking no questions, Armagnac led him to the front rank of the mainguard. Cercamon gave a gasp of surprize. There, in the midst of mail-clad soldiers, sitting the saddle with the ease of the perfect horseman, sat—his princess, Aliénor herself!

Slipping from the saddle, he kissed her hand. Aliénor laughed, and the sound was like the rippling of a brook. She rode astride, as was women's custom then; her wide cloak was of blue velvet, which well set off her bright cheeks and glowing golden hair, caught up in a net of twisted silver. Cercamon, himself and his beast plastered with the mud of the Sologne, made a sorry sight.

“When Cercamon is hard pressed, his duchess herself can not sit idle at home!” she smiled at him.

Bertrand d'Armagnac grinned wryly.

“Do not believe her grace!” he scoffed. “She followed not out of favor to thee, but from sheer mischief and love of peril!”

Aliénor motioned the troubadour to ride by her side.

“Now tell me!” she commanded; and as they rode on toward Tours, he told of all that had befallen him.

“Why, thou art fit to be one of the twelve peers of Charlemagne!” she applauded, but Armagnac only laughed.

“It was well done to choose Cistercians for your messengers,” he approved. “None dares stop the Gray Monks; no, not Thibault himself, who has befriended them till their grant abbot has grown mightier than he. Word of your plight reached us two days ago, and we rode north as fast as we could collect two hundred spears. The duchess would not remain behind; there is some devilry brooding behind that angel's smile of hers.”

Aliénor laughed again.

“In truth,” she explained, “we ride for Paris, to lay complaint before the king concerning Thibault's treatment of you, and to demand justice. But since the king is in Blois——””

“Since the king is in Blois,” Armagnac interrupted, “he will doubtless marry Thibault's daughter, and our project will be lost. Thibault will see to that. But you are weary, my lady, and well-nigh starved. Yonder looms the gate of Tours. We will talk more of this matter over the meat and wine.”

WHEN Thibault of Champagne, behind the locked door of his treasure-room, counted over his gold and silver, he was a rueful man; but when he reflected on all the advantages of state he stood to reap from the king's presence he was more than comforted. Louis had indeed dealt strictly with him, during the five days since Vermandois had ridden away with the troubadour. Though the king had not once given utterance to his suspicions concerning Thibault's offense, since Raoul's departure, he had taken care, by hints and scowls, to let his host see that he had not forgotten it.

And now the king had Aquitaine's offer, in black and white, as Vermandois had brought it from Paris—the six thousand gold marks that Aliénor promised in dowry, the five castles she ceded to the Crown, her thrice-welcome consent to the union of all her provinces with the royal demain. She held out on only one point—the lands of Poitou and Aquitaine must be reckoned as part of her dowry; in case of her divorce, or the king's death before her, they should revert to her.

This was a mighty offer. For generations the Crown had vainly striven to wrest from the Dukes of Aquitaine a recognition of the king's suzerainty over them; now Aquitaine itself made the proffer, if the king would marry Aliénor—and the Duchess Aliénor was reputed the most beautiful woman in France.

Thibault could not furnish such a tempting bait. He had already recognized Louis as his liege lord; he could not give up more than two castles. Therefore he must bid all the higher in gold, and it was fortunate for him that France needed gold more than anything else. The Countess Alys was not so fair as her rival, but the king had never seen Aliénor. Thibault had not scrupled to break the seal of the letter he had taken from Cercamon and knew Aquitaine's offer as well as the king, but since Louis also knew it, the count must empty his treasure-chest to tempt the king's fancy to his daughter. This thought tore at his frugal soul, and the close smile on the king's lips maddened him.

But—once the king should sign the marriage contract, Thibault would be the first baron of France. His royal son-in-law would be obliged, by the tie of kindred, to wink at Thibault's ambitions. His enemies would be as dirt under his feet. No longer checked by the envy of the Crown, he could stretch out his greedy hands to seize Burgundy; Flanders, too, should fall before him. Then he and his brother, King Stephen of England, would squeeze Normandy between them as in a vise.

He would be mightier than the king, mightier than Aquitaine. These his glittering dreams reconciled him to the loss of his gold, which he could recover many times in the loot of neighbor provinces. To secure this boundless advantage he must press Louis to a settlement before Vermandois should bribe or force Cercamon to tell his story, and before the regent could persuade the king to break with Champagne. Aye, all this must be done before morning, for in the morning the king planned to set forth for Paris.

So each of the two antagonists in this game of state played astutely during those five days, while the sweet young countess who was no more to either of them than a pawn was pushed about the broad gaming-board of France with no regard for her shy unhappiness. She knew, now, the rôle destined for her, and took no joy in it; but she had no choice but to obey her father. Well she knew that the players both cared more for gold and broad lands than for her happiness; and she was afraid of the fierce-eyed young king, with his gusts of rage and his cold cunning.

But Louis was well-content. The menace which he held over Thibault's head, in the still unheard testimony of Cercamon, gave him a high advantage in the bargaining. So, too, did the fact that he was in no hurry; while Thibault must win or lose all before Aquitaine learned of his intervention and raised its offer. The two gamesters seemed to change natures; the shrewd old count lost patience and self-control, while the young hot-head became cool, confident and overbearing.

Neither knew that Aquitaine had already heard, thanks to the troubadour's escape; but on the third day a messenger came galloping in on a blown horse to report that Cercamon had fled a»d could not be found. The King flew into a consuming passion, vowing death and torture to the fugitive so soon as he should be taken; but he retained enough prudence to hide the disaster from Thibault's ears, and so held his advantage.

Evening of the fifth day found the contract still unsigned, the two cunning adversaries still playing out their game of barter. Thibault had slowly raised his offer of dowry, till it now stood at eighteen thousand marks in gold—an enormous sum, to pay which he must pledge a sixth of his estates. He was trembling with suspense, well-nigh beyond himself at thought of parting with so much wealth.

Louis could scarce contain his satisfaction. Whichever won—Champagne or Aquitaine—he stood to win more by a marriage contract than his great father had been able to win by sword and statesmanship combined. If he allied with Aquitaine, he won half the south; if with Champagne, half the north would be pledged to support him in his impending war with Anjou, and his coffers, now nearly empty, would be crammed with gold.

Thibault drank heavily at supper, and his heart was emboldened by the heady wine. He raised his offer to twenty thousand marks. The young king, smiling sardonically, gestured as if to put the bid aside; but his spirits leaped. He knew Thibault had well-nigh reached his utmost, and the sum was indeed princely. What could he not do with twenty thousand marks? It would buy him many soldiers, professional fighting-men. He could easily overpower Geoffrey of Anjou—why not Brittany also, and even Normandy? Aye, he would seize Normandy from Anjou and hold it for himself.

So intent was Louis on his thoughts that the trumpet which blared without the walls scarce roused him, nor did Thibault regard it either. The prospect of interruption was like the buzzing of a troublesome insect. Thibault raised his shaggy brows inquiringly, and the king nodded. The count gestured to his master of the garrison.

“Admit whoso it may be, Raymond!” he muttered. “But let them not disturb us till I summon you. His Majesty and I must be untroubled.”

And, bowing, he led the way to his private chamber.

In preparation for this moment, when the King's defense should weaken, he had laid out on the table in his chamber a sheet of parchment, fairly engrossed by his clerk; his seal was already appended, and tapers and wax were ready for the king's use. He had but to strike the bell that hung by the table, and his clerk would summon his daughter and two knights, to sign the contract as party and witnesses.

It was on this parchment that Louis' eyes fell as soon as he entered the chamber. He sat down on the carven bench before the table and read, for he was as learned as any monk. His long, thin fingers pointed at the words; his lank hair, blown into his face by a draft from an arrow-slit, he shook impatiently back into place.

“The amount of the dowry is not set down,” he said, turning his keen eyes on the older man.

Thibault summoned his clerk, a lean fellow in rusty black.

“Write 'twenty thousand marks in gold,' Ambrose!” he said.

Louis glanced at him sardonically.

“Nay,” he contradicted. “Write 'Twenty-one thousand'!”

But though his lips smiled, his glance was hot, and his heart beat furiously.

The clerk caught his master's eye. Thibault hesitated, licking his dry lips. Then—

“Do as the king bids!” he cried.

The clerk wrote.

Louis caught the pen from his hand, dipped it in the oak-gall and caught the parchment to him. Thibault's hands, gripping the griffon's heads on his chair-arms, were white. The king would sign! All was won!

Louis' fingers poised over the parchment. For an instant he hesitated, then touched the pen to the sheet. At that instant a knock, thundering, impatient, beat on the door.

The king sprang back as if struck, the space for his signature still empty save for a round blot. Thibault was on his feet; but the door was flung violently open, and his master of the garrison came in with staring eyes.

“My lord!” he gasped. “You must go down to the hall—at once!”

Thibault clutched de Montivre's shoulder fiercely.

“Did I not say that I would not be interrupted?” he snarled.

“Aye, but, gracious lord—they who come——”

“Who is it?” Louis asked; and his tones endured no denial.

“It is—the Duchess of Aquitaine!”

Louis flung himself back in his chair, his mouth twitching in voiceless laughter. Thibault was staggered, white with rage and consternation. How had it happened? Who had brought word of his designs to Aquitaine? How dared the woman come here, to Blois, to his own castle?

But the king, risen, offered the old man his arm, with a courtesy just touched with mockery.

“Let us go down,” he said. “I would fain see this duchess, who is said to be so beautiful. Brave she must be as well as fair, to risk herself here at such a time!”

The king's wish was a command, and Thibault dared not disobey. As he passed through the door, Montivre whispered in his ear—

“Armagnac is with her, with a hundred spears, and—Cercamon!”

THIBAULT of Champagne took fire slowly, but his rage, once kindled, never died. In after years Louis often regretted that soundless laugh at the great baron's discomfiture; but at the moment Thibault stifled his emotions and prepared for the struggle that lay before him.

Twenty-one thousand marks! He had made the highest bid he dared; he had scarce enough left to pay his men-at-arms their wage. He could borrow of the Jews, but they would take his fattest lands in pledge and demand a frightful interest. And now that the Duchess of Aquitaine was here, with that accursed troubadour, Louis would seize the occasion to make her bid against him.

The sordidness of the thing—that a baron of France and a young princess should bargain one against the other for an advantageous marriage—troubled him no more than it would trouble Aliénor. He had never seen Aliénor, but he knew Aquitaine was richer than Champagne. If she was set on marrying Louis, she could offer more than he.

But one thing he knew and calculated on—she was a lady of birth and breeding and must have the grace to refrain from barter against him under his own roof—at least in his presence. If he used all his cunning, all his persuasion, he might yet close his deal with the king before Louis departed. And to that end he must keep Louis with him after Aliénor could be induced to leave.

Therefore he accepted the situation with what poise he could. The two princes entered the hall together, Louis assured and smiling, Thibault outwardly calm, but on fire within, But Aliénor was not there.

Surrounded by a crowd of knights—they of France, who had come in the king's suite, rubbing shoulders affably with Thibault's vassals and a knot of new-come lords from Aquitaine—stood Bertrand of Armagnac; and at his side was Cercamon. Armagnac was talking briskly, and the company listened breathlessly. Thibault's ears caught a few words here and there—vivid phrases of battle, to which the soldiers of France ever listen avidly. And Armagnac was a soldier whom every glory-loving soldier worshiped, whose skill to paint a mêlée was as great as his sword was trenchant.

At the threshold Thibault stepped back one pace, to give precedence to the king. It was Armagnac who first saw the young monarch's tall form and signed to the crowd about him to fall back. All bowed, and Bertrand stepped forward to kiss the king's hand. But Louis' eyes traveled past him to the troubadour, and anger sparkled in them.

“That man is yours, Bertrand,” he said, his finger pointing out Cercamon. “Five days hence I sent him to Paris, under escort. He escaped, ignoring my orders. I pray you give him to me, that I may deal with, him!”

Armagnac glanced over his shoulder at Cercamon.

“He was on my service, your Majesty,” he replied. “I take his guilt on my shoulders.”

Louis bit his lips. There was nothing he could say or do. Cercamon was vassal to Bertrand, Bertrand to Aliénor; and Aliénor of Aquitaine was a sovereign princess, who owed no vassalage to France. But in that moment Thibault tasted a shred of triumph: Armagnac's defiance of the king's will was a bad way to introduce Aquitaine's suit for a marriage with the king. Thibault almost forgave the troubadour for that tiny, precious advantage. And while he chewed that crumb of consolation, Armagnac, who was no courtier, made matters worse by turning from Louis and greeting his unwilling host.

“Your Grace will pardon the duchess that she has not waited your coming,” Bertrand said. “She has gone to Countess Alys' apartments to rest from the fatigues of her journey.”

But in that moment the voice of an usher rang from the door—

“Her Grace the Duchess of Aquitaine, Countess of Poitou and Suzeraine of Auvergne!”

Every voice was hushed, every eye lifted to the doorway. The king faced about, his eyes lighting with curiosity; Thibault stood stiff, gnawing his lip. The assembled knights fell apart to left and right, those of Aquitaine failing to one knee. Aliénor entered, on the arm of Alys; and at sight of her Thibault's heart sank.

Not for nothing had rumor heralded her the loveliest woman in France. She was tall and exquisitely graceful; not a dark beauty of that Roman kind for which the South is famous, but all gold and roses, with the perfect features which had been bred in her ancestry for three generations.

But more than mere perfection of line and color was the spirit within, that flooded all her being with a resplendent vitality. She seemed a princess of romance, descended from the gods of pagan story.

Yet there was not too much of the goddess in her to disdain human prudence, for she was clad not in the dusty robes of her journey, but in a fresh, close-fitting bodice of pale-blue silk, and a flowing gown of the same color, broidered in gold by the cunning Moors of Andalusia. Her fine arms were bare from the elbow, her wondrous golden hair was a crown upon her head. She wore no jewels, nor needed any.

Louis was nearest her, and first saw her full splendor. He uttered a soft gasp, and in the complete silence the sound was heard to the farthest corner of the room. He bent to kiss her hand, then, retaining her fingers, led her to Thibault. The count's reluctant back bent in as gracious a bow as he could manage. Though Aliénor caught the glint of anger in his eyes, her expression never altered from that meek graciousness which made her seem an angel from heaven.

And almost as such the knights of France regarded her in that moment. Adoration of beauty was in their blood; the worship of lovely women, born in the south, had already found its shrines in Paris. Never before had those soldiers seen such loveliness; never again would they see it in any other woman. Emulating her own vassals, they sank to their knees before her. Even Thibault's more stolid easterners felt her spell.

The old Count of Champagne was seized with panic. Beside this woman any other was as nothing; not a man in that hall had eyes for his daughter, hostess though she was in her father's house. She stood unseen, unregarded, her own eyes turned in rapturous admiration on Aliénor. Oh, that his master of the garrison had had the wit, the daring, to keep his drawbridge raised and his gates closed to these accursed folk of the south!

Yet Thibault knew in his heart that even he would not have dared to shut Aliénor out from his castle and bid defiance to a sovereign princess, while the King of France, with three hundred of his bravest knights, was within its walls.

IT WAS Bertrand of Armagnac who broke the tension. Striding past the king, he bowed one knee before the Countess Alys and raised her fingers to his lips. Her words of welcome lifted the spell. A huge chair, padded with the skins of beasts and silken cushions, was placed near the hearth for Aliénor; the king sat on her right, Thibault on her left and Alys behind her chair. The knights gathered round; the magic of Armagnac's martial tales vied with that of the duchess' beauty. So they sat till the tables were spread.

Aliénor knew when to be indiscreet and how to take the sting from indiscretion with her smiles. Over the wine she gave her loveliest glance to Thibault and laid her left hand on his arm.

“I have a quarrel to pick with you, my lord count!” she began. “It was ill done of you to seize my messenger!”

Thibault caught his breath and glanced at the king. The charge brought against him by Vermandois was proved now; surely all was lost! Louis was already under her spell; this would rouse him to fury. But Louis only shrugged his shoulders and returned Thibault's gaze sardonically. Thibault felt baffled and afraid; therefore he was silent.

“Fortunately that messenger was Cercamon,” the duchess's flute-like voice resumed. “He found others to take his letter to Paris and to warn me. I rode north at once, thinking to lay my complaint before the regent in Paris; and so I should have done, had Cercamon not met us.”

Cercamon! This was the first Thibault had heard of the troubadour's escape from Vermandois. Once more the count glanced at Louis, who laughed shortly.

“Aye!” the king exclaimed, with a hard look at Cercamon, who sat on Armagnac's left. “I would have had the truth from him, and then taken him into my service; but he was too slippery to hold. Will you make me such a song as never before was heard, troubadour, if I forgive you?”

Cercamon rose and bowed.

“Perchance,” he said, “but it will take time to make such a song. And in the mean time I may forfeit the pardon.”

Thibault felt as if the solid earth had opened under his feet, to plunge him into some topsy-turvy land of faerie. This woman had spoken out such truths as should blast his good repute and make every man of birth in France look askance at him—yet none of all that company seemed to sense their meaning. The king, who had every right to be furious with him for intercepting a messenger to the Court, merely shrugged and smiled. Cercamon, fresh from an escapade that had roused all the king's anger, even now was scarce civil in responding to an offer of pardon. That woman from the south had so bewitched them all that they neither saw nor heard but as she wished; and for the moment she seemed not to wish for discord.

But there were others who glanced at her with uneasy eyes, for they knew her—Armagnac and the troubadour. They had seen her in her own court, in all her rainbow moods; and they felt how heavy with peril the atmostphere had become. Cercamon, more than the old soldier his master, felt the tension. With all his poet's sensitiveness he responded to the undertones of Aliénor's voice, her quick, graceful gestures, the subtle note of pride and mischief that rose in her tones as she drank more wine.

Cercamon knew that beneath her lustrous beauty there dwelt a hidden demon, that fed on ambition, on greed, on lust of possessing and of using power. He watched her eyes, noting how they roved now and again, in little, catlike flashes, toward Thibault's daughter. The demon was stirring in Aliénor, laughing as she played with Thibault's fears, but able at any moment to leap into tempestuous, devastating life.

His eyes left her and sought the gentle, ingenuous girl on the king's left. Countess Alys would never kindle the tongues of singers to rapturous praise; she would not set princes to quarreling over her beauty. But she would bless with quiet happiness and with wise, honest counsel, the man who should know how to cherish her.

Thibault regained his tongue at last.

“You are very gracious,” he muttered. “I shall remember your kindness.”

In all honesty—for the disaster which he saw overwhelming his schemes had subdued both his cunning and his spirit for the moment—the old man was seeking to bury the memory of his offense; but Aliénor chose to misinterpret those ambiguous words, “I shall remember your kindness.” Her eyes flashed, and into her too-sweet voice there crept an undertone of sheer malice that made Cercamon, listening, feel sick at heart.

“Cercamon met us beyond Tours,” she said. “He and Armagnac advised me to ride straight on to Paris and demand of the regent that he summon you to a royal council, at which the king would have been compelled to be present also; and the charge would have been raised against you so that you could not have evaded it. But I thought otherwise. It is Louis who is king in France, not the regent; and I determined to place my case in the king's own hands. Therefore I ordered that we ride hither. I have you to thank for the thought, my lord of Champagne. Did not you choose to lay your suit before the king, rather than the regent?”

Her words were softly uttered, but they stung. Thibault recognized, as she meant him to, that his very cleverness in trapping Cercamon had been twisted against him by the troubadour's intelligence. Cercamon's message, sent just before his capture, had brought Vermandois from Paris, to give the king the means to extort a high offer and to furnish Cercamon a chance to escape and freedom from his parole.

Cercamon's report to the duchess concerning Thibault's direct suit to the king had inspired Aliénor to bring her offer, her accusation and her fatal beauty to Blois.

And Thibault glared at Cercamon with a concentrated fury, the threat of which he could not veil before the king had seen it. But Louis only laughed—a laugh which Thibault liked none the better because he could not understand it. He felt that Louis practised on him and had some trick in store; and no man likes less to be tricked than he who has himself intrigued.

BUT Aliénor had more in store for him, and worse. So far, what she had said had at least been so veiled that his daughter, who knew nothing of his dealings with Cercamon, did not understand what was at stake. Alys knew that her father had offered her hand to the king, but not that Aliénor was her rival; nor did she suspect it. But Thibault understood the covert thrust in the duchess' words, and he was still reddening at it when she dealt an open stab that revealed how concious she was of her advantage.

“I was sure,” she said—and her bewitching eyes sought Louis, who gazed into them with open admiration—“I was sure I could trust his Majesty's good taste.”

Unable to endure the torture longer, Thibault rose, trembling with rage. Once more he glared at Cercamon, the instrument that had made his humiliation possible. But it was a bitterly unhappy face that the troubadour turned toward him. Cercamon had few illusions about his duchess, but he had never before seen the soul of Jezebel so revoltingly plain behind her beauty.

And now Alys herself began to understand. The poor girl was aflame with affronted pride. The tension which held those in the secret spread through the company; though most of the knights knew only part of the negotiations on one side or the other, Aliénor's jeering words gave them material to guess the rest.

All were silent, scowling, or casting uneasy glances at one another. Champenois glowered at Aguitanian, while the Parisians strove to conceal an embarrassment which, for them, was unrelieved by the satisfaction of ancient hatreds.

Thibault, on his feet, bowed low to the king, stiffly to Aliénor. His pride, cut to the raw, was stronger now than greed or ambition. With an access of superb dignity, he confronted young Louis as he might have faced a haggling merchant.

“Your Majesty has received my last offer,” he began. “All too much have I chaffered over that which is above price. Your Majesty must choose as may seem best for the honor of France.”

Offering his arm to his daughter, he turned to leave the hall. At this, the whole company rose; but Louis flung out an arm to command attention. His prudence was flung to the winds; from the first moment of Aliénor's queenly entrance, her beauty had set his brain on fire. He had drunk more than his wont and was not his own master.

“Then hear!” he cried so that all turned in astonishment at the passion in his voice. He seized Aliénor's hand, drew her to him, and raised his wine-cup. “Then hear, Thibault, and all ye men of France! I have chosen, and now I offer you a health to Aliénor of Aquitaine, the fairest woman in the world, and soon to be queen of France!”

To Cercamon, watching with pitiful eyes, the astounded knights seemed to fade away from his vision, leaving nothing but the dark background of the walls, the glare of the torches, and between those two, standing out with terrible distinctness, the triumphant, jeering Aliénor and the humbled Countess Alys.

Why should not Louis choose Aliénor, loveliest of women even in her most evil moods, so lovely that her bodily perfection veiled the ugliness of her heart? What was a dowry of more than twenty thousand marks of finest gold beside a beauty which the world could not buy again with all its wealth, if she were no more?

No wonder the boy who bore the crown of France had no eyes for the girl who clung to Thibault's arm, red and white by turns, brutally humiliated, pointed at by Aliénor's scorn. A great pity for Alys welled in the troubadour's heart, and a fierce rage against Aliénor, whom he had served faithfully, but who was unworthy an honest man's regard.

He stood still beside his chair, his hand trembling on its carven back. Then, for an instant, the Countess Alys met his gaze and seemed to draw strength from it. Her firm chin went up, her eyes blazed; she faced Aliénor with a pride that dominated the other woman's triumph.

“I congratulate the Duchess of Aquitaine,” she said in low, clear tones. “France could have no fairer queen!”

Cercamon thrilled with response to her pride, that would not let her return scorn for scorn. But his anger was greater than before, that the king could be so blind, and Aliénor so cruel.

At the countess' words, the men of Aquitaine burst into applause; but they of Champagne muttered in their beards. The knights of the king's suite, as in duty bound, cheered loudly. As the tumult died down, one who had drunk more than was good spoke his mind, and his words pierced through the subsiding murmur with terrible clearness:

“The king has chosen well! She of Aquitaine is worth a thousand of the other!”

The silence that followed was quick with menace. Thibault of Champagne swung about as if he had been struck; his knights reached for their hilts. The Aquitanians, seeing the hostile glances and gestures, grouped about Bertrand of Armagnac as if to form battle-array. Then Cercamon's endurance broke. His whole soul was outraged at the insult; his fiery love of combat and his sensitive honor forced from his lips a reply that he scarce realized before it crossed his lips. But it rang through the hall like a peal of trumpets:

“Nay, the king has chosen like a fool! He has scorned the pure gold, and has chosen the gilded lead!”

He caught one glimpse of Thibault's astounded face before the tempest burst about him. Then, with hot cries of rage, the king's knights flung themselves upon him, their swords flashing from the scabbard. The Aquitanians would have been first in avenging the slight to their duchess, had they not known Cercamon better. For a year he had been among them, and they knew his terrible skill with his weapon. Only a moment they hesitated, but that moment sufficed. Bertrand d'Armagnac, who had led them a hundred times in the storm of battle, cast himself between them and the troubadour.

“Back!” he cried. “The first man of the south to draw sword against Cercamon dies by my blade! My lady duchess, your grace can afford to ignore such words from one who has served you well in the past, and who now is mad! Bethink you well what a crime it is to slay a troubadour!”

His last words had an effect which nothing else could have wrought. The Aquitanians indeed knew the shame and peril of drawing weapon on one of Cercamon's profession. He whose point drew Cercamon's blood would never again be safe south of Garonne, though he surrounded himself with armed men every moment of his life.

In single combat, in the cleared lists, or on the field of battle one might kill a troubadour without scruple, for that is fair fight; but to massacre a singer— One prince had done that, long ago; and nobles and kings had vied for the honor of slaying him.

But the Parisians pressed on. Not yet had the north learned the singer's sanctity; and even priests have died for angering kings. Cercamon, standing at the table's end, had its poor shelter for so long as his point might keep their weight at bay. He stood poised on the balls of his feet, his point raised, waiting.

But those about him were not all king's men; Thibault's vassals also were there. At a gesture from their lord they flung themselves in front of the troubadour. They came between him and the hungry French steel barely in time; already swords gleamed in the torchlight, and here and there the blades of Paris clashed with those of Blois.

“Call off your cutthroats, my lord!” cried Thibault to the king. “Dares even the King of France do murder in my house?”

Louis, pale with fury, was forced to call his men back. They withdrew reluctant, quivering with unleashed anger. But the outraged monarch was not ready to forego his vengeance for the slight to his chosen queen. Nor would she let him forget; she stood beside him, plucking at his velvet sleeve; and her beautiful features were twisted with fury.

“Kill him!” she whispered, and Louis, nodding, turned to Thibault.

“You hear?” he cried. “This pot-minstrel is the duchess' man, and she demands his death. He has affronted your king within your walls. Will you stand between him and his just punishment? By my father's soul, Thibault! If you protect him, you answer for it to me! Give me his life!”

Cercamon stood waiting with unsheathed sword, his eyes on Thibault. The old count measured his royal master with a gaze like a roused lion's. At last he spoke, slowly, his words loud and full of majesty:

“When you, my lord, insulted me over my own board; when this woman you have chosen to reign over us heaped her scorn on me and mine, did I demand your life or hers? Of all who have broken bread with me this day, only one dared speak in my defense—and he was my enemy, by whose wit alone the Duchess of Aquitaine has won her triumph. He, whom I would have slain had I had the chance, has risked his life to say that which I, your host, was bound not to say—but which was in my heart. You shall not have his life, nor shall any man lay hand on him within my territories!”

Turning his back on the fuming monarch, Thibault of Champagne strode to Cercamon and took his hand. Then, calling his master of the garrison, he issued his orders so that they were heard by all:

“Double the guard at the gate, and let no man of the king's, or of Aquitaine, issue forth for three hours! Bid a groom bring Cercamon's horse and grant him free passage. Make haste!”

Cercamon glanced at Bertrand d'Armagnac, the master and friend whose favor at court and comradeship in the field had been so dear to him; and Armagnac nodded in approval of Thibault's words. But Armagnac said nothing, for he knew that the demon roused in Aliénor's breast would never be assuaged with less than the troubadour's death.

Then Cercamon glanced at the king and saw him gnawing his fingers in helpless anger. Sheathing his sword, the troubadour strode between the ranks of men that fell back to give him passage, the Champenois grinning at him, the rest glaring their hate. At the door he paused, and swept a low bow to the Countess Alys.

His horse was waiting at the drawbridge. The great gate was thronged with mailed men-at-arms, and as he passed between them, their friendly glances told him they had heard the news. Montivre, the master of the garrison and a man of noble birth, ran forward to hold the stirrup. But Cercamon put him gently aside, and shook his hand.

“Now ride as if fiends were after you!” Montivre urged. “There will be no pursuit for three hours, that I promise you! The king dares not make war on my master, lest France shatter in his grasp!”

Masterless, with half of France thirsting for his blood, Cercamon rode. Nor was he afraid, but rather glad, with the lure of new lands and new adventures calling him. Night, and three hours' grace—enough to bring him safely into Burgundy. Then south—far south, to Barcelona—that last, far-flung island of French life on Spanish soil. There he would find new glory and carve out a new career.

He tossed his black locks back over his shoulders, and burst into song.