The Merriest Knight

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  The Duchess dabbed at her wet eyes with tips of bejew-eled fingers and sighed. "Nothing ails the poor boy that a wise and witty wife—and rich, of course—couldn't cure."

  "Then why isn't he married? He seems personable enough, despite his self-conceit and his scurvy condemnation of the fruits of love. Can't he find a personable damosel or she him—witty and wise and rich enough to marry and mend him?"

  "A damosel! Pah an' bah! That's the poor foolish young man's trouble: damosels. A murrain on them!—present company excepted, of course. They are what ails him—the hussies! As faithless as witless, the chits have befuddled and befooled him till he—well, my dear, you have heard with your own ears what he thinks of the fruits of romantic love. They lack the brains and experience for wit and wisdom and understanding sympathy with a poet's mind and heart. So, in their feckless, shallow, selfish vanity they have made a railing cynic of him. Yet he can still—at my request—sing gloriously of love and lovers, as you but now heard him do. At my request, ah me! And if he spoke villainously of lovers mad and athirst and crippled and dead, it was not his true self speaking. Properly handled—fondly guided and guarded and appreciated by someone of equal wit and superior worldly experience—he would soon be cured of his cynicism."

  So that's it—you fat old goose! thought the girl, veiling her eyes. And she murmured: "I see what you mean, Duchess."

  * * *

  Now back to Sir Dinadan: because he was too proud, or too shy, to make the embarrassed state of his exchequer known to any of his knightly friends, and (as we have seen) too proud—or maybe too cautious—to accept gifts from ladies, the chattle-mortgage on his best suit of armor and spare charger and the pick of his wardrobe was foreclosed at high noon.

  "Always at Your Worship's service," said the moneylender, rubbing his hands together at the conclusion of the business. "Always ready to accommodate you, Sir Dinadan, and at the same infinitesimal charge in the future as in the past, though I starve and my children go in rags. Good fortune to Your Worship now, and power to your elbow. Call again soon."

  "God forbid!" muttered Dinadan.

  He dined dismally at his inn; then, with the assistance of the kindly taverner, got himself buckled and latched and laced into such articles of plate and chain body-armor as remained to him. The ensemble was complete, although some of the items were dented, and all were tarnished. Now he had only one horse, but it was the best he had ever owned and as good as any knight's best—the great Garry. And his arms were of the best, and so were the big charger's accouterments. But he and Garry were so hung about with gear, which included two spare lances, that they cut a conspicuous figure. So he rode forth by a back way and sought the hills behind the town by mean alleys and obscure lanes. Even so, he did not win through unobserved. Dogs barked and a donkey brayed; raggedy folk of various ages disappeared before him into low doorways of hovels and peered after him from windows that were no more than holes. A lad in green finery appeared suddenly from behind a hedge, stood staring for a moment, then turned and darted back out of sight.

  "Hah, a page!" said Dinadan. "Silks and velvet, and a gemmy gold brooch in his cap! What devilment is he up to here?"

  He soon won clear of the last poor hovel and was within the toss of a pint pot of the shade of a hanging wood.

  "A little faster now, good Garry," he urged; and the burdened charger lurched into a trot that set all their gear to jouncing and clanging.

  * * *

  They were within a spear's-length of the wood when the dappled shade directly in front stirred softly and emitted a lady all in white and silver atop a white jennet; and that was not all, for a lad in green finery and with a gemmy brooch in his cap was at the lady's stirrup. Dinadan pulled Garry to a jolty stop.

  "The same page!" he muttered. "Premeditated! What's the meaning of it? Who's spying on me?"

  A suspicion of the hospitable dowager duchess flickered in his mind but was instantly dismissed, for the lady on the jennet bore not the slightest resemblance in either shape or carriage to that generous and sprightly grandmamma. Now she rode forward and stopped close and brushed aside the little veil which fluttered from the front of her high, pointed cap. And she smiled and frowned with the one look—a thing he had never seen done before.

  "At your service, damosel," he said, but uncertainly, and glanced aside.

  "Gramercy, sir! But do you mean it?"

  "If you are threatened in person, honor, or estate—in dire peril of any kind, my sword and spear are at your service."

  "You would say the same to any damosel."

  "Damosel or dame—or wench or poor woman in need of protection—or any overmatched knight, or churl too, for that matter—according to the vows of knighthood."

  "But you don't know me."

  "Nay, you sat at our hostess's left last night at supper."

  "Ah!" she sighed; and now she smiled without frowning.

  She veiled her eyes with fluttering lashes and murmured: "I am but an ignorant country girl, and the ways of royal courts, and of mighty champions as well as of great poets, are all new to me, but I must venture now to beg a perilous service of you."

  "Name it," he cried impulsively.

  She said: "I would not do so if you had not spoken last night of hunting giants and dragons."

  He interrupted: "Nay, I spoke only of singing of hunting them. In truth, I've never so much as set eyes on either a dragon or a giant. Nay, I do not claim to rival Saint George or Jack the giant-killer: but I will undertake anything once, and mayhap twice at a pinch, within the rules of chivalry— and the pinch is upon me now."

  The damosel gazed upward from her low jennet at the knight on his tall horse, inclining toward him and making play with her eyes; and he met that play as well as he could, but with more of a goggle than a gaze.

  "It is a giant," she whispered.

  He continued to goggle in silence, stricken with the realization that her eyes were the most disrupting and altogether wonderful of his experience, and that—God defend him!—the rest of her was a match for them. Now those eyes filled with tears, and she bowed her head.

  "But never mind," she sighed.

  He made a sudden partial recovery of his wits and cried: "What's that?"

  "I said it's a giant," she murmured. "Hah, a giant!"

  "Eight feet high—and wide and thick. But never mind him. He devastates my father's lands—oh, the cruel monster!

  But it is too much to ask of any young knight. Forget it— and my thoughtlessness—and go your way in peace."

  She made as if to turn her jennet aside, but was stayed by his cry of protest.

  "Not so fast! Where is he? I´ll have a good go at him, mauger my head!"

  At that, she put a hand to her eyes and wept.

  "What now?" he asked, his voice thick and soft.

  "Nay—I'm afraid—for you," she sobbed.

  Then Sir Dinadan swore by his halidom that he would chop that giant down even if he stood as high and thick as a watchtower.

  At that, the damosel's tears ceased as suddenly as an April shower, and she cried "Gramercy!" brightly, and turned her head and spoke to the page in green.

  The page skipped back into the wood, to reappear in a minute mounted on a country cob and followed by a stout woman on another cob, and a groom leading a large horse loaded with bags and bundles and hampers. Then the page went ahead, with the groom and pack-horse next, and then the woman. The damosel and the knight brought up the rear. Thus they skirted the edge of the hanging forest for a short distance, and then turned up into it.

  "You were all ready for the journey, Damosel," remarked Dinadan.

  "Please call me Agnes," she said, with a shoot of an eye. "My mother eloped with my father on Saint Agnes' Eve, and so I was named for that saint."

  "Agnes," he murmured. "A lovely name. And you call me Dinadan."

  "Nay, not that mouthful!" she protested. "I’ll call you Din—or, better still, Dinny."

  He shuddered; for th
e very first girl who had made a monkey of him had called him that. Dinny! He shuddered again, and was about to suggested "Danny," when he realized that it too had humiliating and therefore unhappy associations. So he smiled as well as he could and said nothing. But he thought: I must be careful now. No one of them is to be trusted with a man's heart—not even the most beautiful in Christendom, as Agnes surely is. Ah, Agnes—as good as beautiful, I’ll swear! But I must be thrice careful now, for to take a wound from her would be mortal. But his only utterance was a profound sigh; and at that she shot him with both eyes.

  "What ails you, Dinny Boy?" she asked softly.

  That was better, for it was what his kind parents had called him in the carefree days of childhood; so he answered cheerfully: "Nothing." And she, thinking of the old Duchess's words to the effect that nothing ailed him that a wise and witty wife could not cure, smiled innocently with her lips and enigmatically with her eyes, but tenderly withal. They spoke little after that in the next hour, but all the while kept as closely side-by-side as the trees and bushes and the hazards underfoot permitted. So, perforce, they went slowly and joltily.

  At last Dinadan exclaimed: "You would have come away without me!"

  (A sharper stumble on Garry's part than usual had jolted the thought into words.)

  "Why do you say that?" she asked, with a quick look.

  "You were all ready for the road," he said.

  She laughed: "D'ye call this a road, Dinny Boy?"

  "Nay, nor even a track for wild swine," he answered. "And since you mention it, I´ll make so bold as to say that I doubt that gay springal's ability to lead the way. But road or track, you were all ready to take it without me."

  She glanced aside and said: "Don't worry, Dinny Boy. Victor is very clever in the woods, and out of them too; and he has a map of the way home, which we made together last night."

  "Victor? Do you mean that jackanapes in green?"

  She averted her face and smiled; and eyes and lips were in agreement this time; and neither was enigmatic or innocent, but both were complacent. But that smile meant nothing to Dinadan, for he couldn't see it; and when she looked at him again, it was with an expression of childish hurt. Her lower lip trembled, and her eyes were dim.

  "Why do you miscall him so? He is an honorable page— and will be a squire when he's old enough—and maybe as good as knight as you, some day."

  "That's not much to ask of him," sneered Dinadan.

  "I don't ask more of him—of my dear little brother," she sighed. "Unless it be a kinder heart than yours," she added, even more faintly.

  Dinadan's lips uncurled, and he actually gaped; and he blushed from scalp to chin and ear to ear, angered and confused for his unwarranted jealousy, and even more so for his uncouth display of it: for was he not a man of the world and a cynic to boot? So he hung his head and muttered: "Nay, I'm the fool of the world!" And now the damosel smiled complacently again, and this time without averting her face.

  Before sunset they halted beside a brook and there Dinadan, Victor, the groom, and the woman made camp while Agnes, seated on a moss-cushioned stump, looked on. They unloaded, unsaddled, unbitted and baited the horses; and then young Victor helped the knight get out of his armor, and the woman and the groom pitched a little tent of silk. Dinadan noticed that the servants had to shift the tent here and there several times before it was to the damosel's liking.

  "Agnes is hard to suit," said Victor.

  "Hah," said Dinadan noncommittally.

  "And she has her own way in everything."

  "D'ye tell me so?"

  "And she always thinks she knows best. Take yourself, for instance, sir."

  "Myself? For instance of what?"

  "Of her conceit of her own opinion, and her self-will. This giant business could have been handled without her butting into it. There was no need of coming to Camelot to find a knight to give battle to that giant. I could name at least three nearer home by twenty leagues who would be fools enough—no offense intended, sir!—to take him on if she asked them to. But not Sis! Not for Agnes! She must travel thirty leagues and more, and then back again, to fetch a champion."

  "Just so. But not so fast, if you please. You spoke but now of fools who would do battle with that giant. What d'ye mean by that?"

  "Just that, sir. Nobody but a fool would meet him in single combat. He can cut clean through a ten-ton haystack with one stroke."

  "A stark stroke indeed," said the knight thoughtfully. "But why single combat? Since he is a cruel monster who devastates your father's lands, why has he not been attacked in force and destroyed like any other mad beast?"

  "Nay, sir, this grisly Taulurd is no fool. Not fool enough to stand against odds or be ambushed by archers, at least. He retreats to the highest mountains, where only goats could find him, at the first sign of a gathering against him, and then comes down at night—but never twice in the same place in the one month—and knocks over a few farmsteads and carries off cheeses and hams and new-baked loaves and kegs of mead and ale. But he must be slightly mad too, for he leaves letters behind him in which he challenges the knightage of Christendom to meet him in fair single combat under the rules of chivalry and fight him to the death. But the challenge is for gentlemen only, for he claims to be one himself."

  "What, a giant a gentleman? I never heard of such a thing!"

  "Well, sir, if his claim be true, you shall not be dishonored by being cut in two by a churl." "Gramercy!" said Dinadan dryly.

  Then the damosel called them to supper. All supped well, though Sir Dinadan could not put the giant Taulurd from his thoughts until after his third horn of ale. Then he felt so much easier in his mind—to say nothing of his stomach—that at the damosel's request he played and sang three old songs and a new one; and the last one was the best of the four, and of love.

  * * *

  The Damosel Agnes and her nurse occupied the tent, and Dinadan, Victor, and the groom slept in their cloaks on moss and fern. They were early astir next morning, and Victor helped the knight into his hardware even as he had helped him out of it the night before, without being asked to. And while he latched and tied and buckled, he talked; and most of his talk consisted of questions, for he possessed an active and curious mind, and was just fourteen years of age.

  "D'ye know Sir Launcelot du Lake, sir?"

  "I have that honor."

  "Did you ever fight him?"

  "Nay, God forbid!"

  "Why, could he beat you?"

  "Ay, horsed or afoot—me or any other knight in the world."

  "How big is he, then?"

  "How big? Why, no bigger than myself."

  "Did he ever kill a giant?"

  "There's a song that says he killed the giant Brian Kelly in Ireland years ago, in an all-day combat, and all but died himself of the wounds he took in it."

  "How big was that giant?"

  "The song calls him as big as Goliath of Gath."

  "And 'twas almost more than the world's champion could do to master him in a day-long fight! And yet you— not one of the world's best, by your own saying—would give battle single-handed to giant Taulurd. You're mad, sir!"

  "Ah—not at all."

  "Sir, harky to me! I say this because I like you. If you are not mad, or at least bewitched, you're a fool! I say this for your own good, sir. Agnes went to Camelot to find a champion able enough to rid us of Taulurd in single combat, regardless of expense up to a half of all our father's earthly possessions, which are considerable. And what happened? Did she get Sir Launcelot? No, nor even asked him. Or Sir Lamorak, Sir Ector de Maris, Sir Bors, Sir Percival, Sir Tristram of Liones, or Sir Palamides the Saracen? No, nor addressed herself to any one of those champions, but came away with you, willy-nilly. You both must be mad! But it's you wholl die of it, sir."

  "But why?" Dinadan murmured uncertainly.

  "Because Taulurd's too big for you."

  "Nay, why did she pick on me?"

  "For no reason. For a whim.
She's full of whims, and has always been allowed to indulge them. If I were you, I'd turn aside and go my way right now, while she's still in the tent. I say this for your own sake, sir, because I like you."

  "Gramercy. But she has my knightly word for it. I swore by my halidom to have ado with that giant."

  "God defend you! But never say I didn't warn you."

  At that moment, the damosel emerged from the tent. She was all in green and silver this morning, and her cheeks were roses, her brows a lily and her eyes beyond any poet's power of description; and she smiled and waved a hand.

  "I'm not dead yet!" muttered Dinadan; and he smiled and waved in return.

  But the lad Victor swore hotly, though not loudly.

  So, after breakfast, they rode again, with Victor leading, and Agnes and the knight bringing up the rear, all as before. The way was still rough and tangled; and Dinadan felt an uneasy suspicion that Victor might be up to some trickery. But not for long. He encountered Agnes' upward gaze a few times, holding it longer each successive time, and soon forgot all else. So they stumbled through thick and thin till close upon noon. Then Victor called a halt and came bursting back to Dinadan.

  "There's a big knight on a big horse hovering in a glade just ahead!" he cried.

  "Hah!" exclaimed Dinadan, straightening in his saddle. "Does he want to fight?"

  "What else would he want, sir?—pacing up and down, spear in hand."

  "Good! I´ll be ready in a minute. Does he want it with sharp spears or blunted? I have one of each."

  Then the damosel laughed like tinkling bells.

  "Oh, no, Dinny Boy," she said. "You are on your way to slay a giant for me."

  "One thing at a time," he said, beginning to clear for action by casting off the bulkiest item—a great sack of oats—of the goods and gear which cumbered his saddle before and behind and on both sides.

  Victor told him that the hovering knight carried a blunted spear and a covered shield, and straightway fell to helping him clear for action. The damosel crowded in on her jennet.