Troubadour Tales

by Evaleen Stein

doings that he could not go to sleep.

  The next day, as was his custom, Count Hugo lay abed till the sun waswell up, for the duel was not to take place until beyond the middle ofthe morning. When at last he arose, and his serving men came in to waiton him as he made his toilet, they adjusted all his ruffles and laceswith the greatest nicety, freshly curled his wig, tied up his queuewith a crimson ribbon, and smoothed out his velvets and satins; theneverything being ready, they looked about for the sword, without whichHugo never budged an inch. But when they turned to where he told themhe had left it the night before, to their great consternation, it wasnot there! When they timidly ventured to tell the count that he musthave put it somewhere else, Hugo, who was busy arranging a heavy goldchain about his lace collar, curtly replied, without turning his head:“Ye blind moles of the earth! I tell you it _is_ there!”

  But when again they were obliged to contradict him, the count flew intoa temper, and rushing over to the foot of the bed, put out his hand toseize the sword and give them a wrathful prick or two all round—butlo! sure enough, it was _not_ there!

  There then followed a tremendous uproar. They searched the room fromend to end; they tore down all the old tapestries; they peered underall the chairs; they climbed up and crawled all over the high canopyof the ancient bed; they shook the mattresses; and in their zeal, evenlooked in the count’s shaving mug and under the brass candlesticks.

  Meantime, Hugo himself, in a towering passion, was striding up anddown the room, cuffing his pages, accusing everybody of robbery, andthreatening right and left to hang every man of them if the sword werenot instantly found!

  At last, however, neither threats nor rage proving of the least availin bringing to light the lost sword, he descended, followed by histerrified retinue, to the inn courtyard, and calling out MonsieurJean, he stirred up another terrible commotion. He accused everybodyof everything, and finally wound up by insisting that the craven CountBoni had hired some robber to steal the sword in hopes that the duelmight not be fought. He swore that he would none the less kill poorBoni, sword or no sword, and meantime ordered the man-at-arms, who hadslept outside his door, to be mercilessly beaten; for Hugo declared thethief must have entered through the door, as no man could possibly havecome in between the bars of the window.

  At this Geoffrey, who had been up for a long while, and had witnessedall this uproar in the courtyard, felt himself in a very unhappyposition; he had not expected all this. Indeed, he had given verylittle thought as to what might happen to himself or anybody else,when once he had hidden the sword. He knew now that fearful punishmentawaited him if he were found out; but he could not bear to have thegood Count Boni’s honor blackened, or that the poor man-at-arms, whowas entirely innocent of blame, should suffer, because of what he,Geoffrey, had done.

  So biting his lips hard to keep up his courage and tightly clenchinghis hands behind him, Geoffrey, who was a brave, manly little fellow,straightway strode out and, standing in front of the raging Count Hugo,said:

  “Sir, neither Count Boni nor yonder man-at-arms had aught to do withthe loss of your evil sword. I took it away myself!”

  At this Count Hugo stared at the little boy for a moment in speechlesssurprise. Then, roaring out a terrible oath in a voice like thunder, hepounced like a wildcat upon poor Geoffrey, and shook him till his teethchattered.

  “Thou—thou—miserable varlet!” roared and sputtered the count.“Thou base-born knave! So thy monkey fingers have dared to meddlewith my precious sword! Faugh! Where hast thou put it? Tell meinstantly,—_parbleu!_—or I will crack every bone in thy worthlessbody!”

  And here he fell so viciously to shaking and cuffing him again, thatpoor Geoffrey could hardly open his mouth to answer; but at length hemanaged to gasp out resolutely:

  “I will not tell thee till to-morrow. Then I will restore it to thee! Ido not wish to keep the heathenish thing!”

  At this the rage of the count knew no bounds, and he doubtless wouldhave killed the poor little boy then and there, had not Monsieur Jeanand others among the terrified spectators rushed between them andbesought Hugo to be merciful, and give the boy at least till the morrowto fulfil his word.

  Hereupon, the count, who even in his wrath saw reason in what theysaid, savagely flung Geoffrey over to one of his men-at-arms,commanding him to chastise him, chain him, and keep close watch overhim till the morrow. For the count reflected that if he should hangthe boy then, as he fully intended to do by and by, he would cut offthe only possible means of finding out where his sword was hidden. Forwhile the lad was stubborn as a rock, Hugo had to admit that he seemedhonest, and so perhaps would keep his promise to restore his prizedweapon.

  But the more the count thought of Geoffrey’s act, the more it puzzledhim to account for it. As he recalled the disturbance of his sleepthe night before, he began to understand that Geoffrey was the realcockatoo of the affair.

  “Faugh!” he said to himself, “to think ’twas the clanking of myown good sword that I mistook for the rattling of that chatteringpopinjay’s chain!” But he could not account for the boy’s curiouspromise to restore the weapon on the morrow. If he meant to return it,why did he take it at all? And why did he confess and get himself intotrouble, when no one thought of accusing him? The first part of thisquestion Count Hugo could not answer, because he knew nothing of thecoming of the heralds and Geoffrey’s wish to put off the duel; whilethe last part was equally puzzling to him, because he had no sense ofhonor, and could not see why one should suffer if an innocent man woulddo just as well.

  At any rate, he soon tired trying to understand the matter. Havingplaced the boy in safe keeping till the morrow, the next thing was tohave his “second”—(for so the friends were called who arranged thedetails of duels for those who were to do the fighting)—see CountBoni’s second, who had arrived some time before, and have the duelfixed for the following morning, when Count Hugo vowed he would fightto the death with somebody’s sword,—whether his own or another’s.

  These matters settled, he remembered that it was fully noon, and he hadnot yet breakfasted; so he haughtily withdrew to the inn parlor, andcommanded Monsieur Jean to have him served instantly.

  Meanwhile poor Geoffrey went off with the man-at-arms, who was secretlysorry for the little boy, and so did not chastise him so cruelly asthe count would have wished; although he was obliged to give him a fewbloody cuts with the lash across his face and hands, for the sake ofappearances, in case Hugo should happen to inspect him.

  Poor little boy! Ah! how eagerly he longed for the arrival of theheralds, as the jongleur had predicted. But then the dreadful thoughtwould come, what if something should delay their journey! Or worstof all, what if the jongleur had not spoken the truth, and there wereno heralds anyway! These doubts and fears tormented Geoffrey more andmore as the hours wore on, and still no sign of the longed-for king’smessengers.

  He began to wish dismally that he had set farther off the time forrestoring the sword; though he felt sure that unless prevented by theking’s edict, Count Hugo would fight on the morrow anyhow, despite theloss of that particular weapon. It then suddenly occurred to him, thateven if the heralds came and stopped the duel as he wished, how was hehimself to escape from the clutches of Count Hugo? This thought senta cold chill through him; but when he thought of his dear Count Boniand the grief of poor little Isabeau, he was not a whit sorry for whathe had done, and with childish hopefulness looked forward to some goodchance to free him.

  Surely, surely, he said to himself, the king’s heralds were personsin authority, and would not see him killed by the cruel Hugo, even ifhe had taken and hidden the heathenish old sword. Did he not mean togive it back, and had he not done it because of the very law they werecoming to proclaim? Surely they would help him in some way!

  And so the afternoon wore wearily on. Count Hugo came once or twiceto see that the man-at-arms had properly beaten him, and evenmeditated putting him to some torture to make him disclose at oncethe whereabouts of the sword. But
he scarcely dared, as he feared anuprising of the people of the inn, who, he saw, were very fond ofGeoffrey; so he contented himself with cruelly striking the lad once ortwice, and determining to deal summarily with him when he should takehim away from Dives.

  For at that time powerful noblemen did very much as they pleased. Thegood King Louis had been away fighting in the Holy Land for so longthat affairs in France had for the most part taken care of themselves;and though since his return the king was striving hard to correct manyabuses, there were many things yet to be looked after. So Count Hugothought he should have no trouble in carrying Geoffrey away as hisprivate prisoner because of the taking of his sword.

  After the count’s last visit, when he had informed Geoffrey of someof the punishments he meant to visit upon him when he got him off inhis own castle, the poor boy began really to despair! It was growinglate, and the sun was almost to its setting, and still not a sound totell of any unusual arrival in Dives. The little boy lay back, andshut his eyes tight, trying to