The Merriest Knight

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  "All honey or fury or melancholy," said the page. "She keeps less court than some of the lords and knights who hold their lands at her pleasure, and yet Lucifer could not show more pride upon occasion. They tell me she was a great beauty in her day."

  "Is she not a beauty now?" I asked.

  Gervase stared at me as if he doubted his ears.

  "But she's old!" he protested. "Dame Rosamond says she has been a widow fifteen years, and that she was a grown woman with a big baby before the King was killed."

  The door opened again; Jorrill entered, this time. Now he was dressed in silk and velvet. He stood and gazed at me; and all the life of his still, dark face seemed to be in his yet darker eyes.

  "The Queen wants you," he said; and though he did not turn his head or even shift his glance, the page picked up the empty cup and the garments which had failed to meet my dimensions, and sauntered from the chamber.

  The elderly squire came closer to me. "Who are you?" he asked.

  "If you expect an answer, you will have to put the question more courteously, my good sir," I said.

  "Hah—my mistake!" he exclaimed. His gaze wavered but came back.

  "You are right, young sir," he went on, but in milder tones, "and I beg you to forgive my bluntness, which I come by honestly, and to tell me who you are."

  "When a man has never heard the name of his father or his mother, how is he to know who he is, Sir Squire?" I said.

  He considered that gravely for a moment and shook his head.

  "But surely you told the Queen something," he objected.

  I told him what I had told the lady on the jennet, but in fewer words. He twitched with excitement, and finally grasped me by both shoulders.

  "I see it!" he exclaimed, but his voice was no louder than a whisper. "You remember nothing before that mountainy life. You were too young. Fifteen years—nay, more than that by two, by three months. You were but an infant, fifteen years and three months ago. That's it! Hah!"

  "What?" I asked; and as his fingers were pinching into my shoulders like iron hooks, I put my hands up and removed them.

  Nothing daunted, he laid hold of the breast of my royal borrowed jerkin.

  "Your guardian—this Ambrose—what shape and size of a man is he?"

  Suspicion flashed in me and then burned clearly and steadily. My good and gentle friend had fled from the world. He had been in peril. But he had taken me, a squalling infant, into exile and hiding with him. Had the peril been to me? Or to both of us? And what manner of peril could it have been—could it be—to keep that good and brave and mighty man in hiding all these years? And did this hired captain think to frighten and confuse me into discovering him? And why? What did this Jorrill know or suspect, to excite all this questioning and conjecturing? I felt an enveloping anger.

  "Who are you to question me?" I whispered back at him, lowering and advancing my face toward his. "What is your concern with my friend's size and shape, or with my own age? If the Queen wants to know these things she—"

  He let go his hold on me as if the fine stuff of the dead King's jerkin had suddenly caught afire.

  "Nay, not that!" he cried. "Say nothing to her of this— my idle questioning—I beg you! I charge you! It is nothing. Forget that I asked. Come with me now, good boy—and keep your mouth shut!"

  I sneered at him.

  "Queen Carmel could have told you Brother Ambrose's size and shape, for she had heard it from me on our way from the ford. And as for keeping my mouth shut, good Jorrill—mind your own mouth, lest you find it choked with a churchyard sod!"

  He stepped back and dropped his right hand to the jeweled haft of his dagger. I shifted my weight a little for a jump in any direction, and fisted my low-hanging right hand, but did not shift my eyes from his eyes. And there I saw the red intent to kill cool to uncertainty and dim to fear.

  He whispered, "Not a word of this to the Queen, I beg of you, good Master Mark."

  "A quick change of tune!" I sneered. "And all for fear of your own royal mistress. But to me she seems a kind and right generous dame."

  He lowered his eyes and bunched his brows and stood there scowling as if in deep and difficult thought.

  "You misjudge me," he muttered. "I was not myself; I am distraught."

  He looked behind him at the half-open door by which he had come in, hesitated for a few twitching seconds, then turned and ran to it, paused for a moment to look out past and around the edge of it, set a hand to the great latch of iron and stepped back, shutting oak and iron tightly in place, but without sound. He faced the room again.

  "Hah!" he cried.

  For I was not where or as he had last seen me. Now I stood within a pace of the bed, and held the short sword of the dead jongleur in my hand.

  "You misjudge me," he muttered.

  With quick fingers he loosed his belt of fine Turkic leather, and with a quick swing of the arm he tossed it, sheathed dagger and all, to the floor at my feet. I was agreeably surprised, but still suspicious. I did not throw my sword away.

  "It is your fault if I misjudge you," I said grimly. "And what hocus-pocus is this?" I asked. "I learn the world's ways fast. What of the hidden knife in your breast?"

  At that, he cried out in a voice of hurt reproach, and fell to beating his front and sides with open hands to show that no weapon was concealed there.

  "So be it," I said unpleasantly. "Have done with the mummery now, and say your say."

  He advanced halfway to me and stood there.

  "You charge me with being afraid of Queen Carmel," he said. "It is the truth, young sir—but my fear of her is not for myself. I have served her long and faithfully without fear. But it is my Christian duty to warn you, young sir, even at the cost of my word of honor and oaths of fealty. You are in hourly deadly peril here from that queen. Remain till tomorrow's dawn, and you will not see tomorrow's sun."

  I was dazed and daunted; because of the creeping chill at my heart, my anger flared again, and I warned him to have done with his unseemly joking.

  "Joking?" he sighed. "Look at me, poor lad. Nay, 'tis no joke."

  I looked; the flurry of vain anger died in me, and terror gripped me.

  "And Sylvia? Is she in peril too?" I cried. "What of her? Where is she now?"

  "Not so loud!" he protested. He came nearer.

  I know nothing of that damosel," he whispered, fierce and fast. "The Queen pets her now—but that may mean no more than her petting of you. I don't know who she is— she's nothing to me—but you I know. Harken to me now! Take heed of every word!"

  He came yet nearer; and I listened like one spellbound.

  "She had a lover when she was a damosel. He was a knight, but poor—a seventh son. She married King Ban of the Marches; and within the year, that knight came from the court at Camelot and swore fealty to King Ban. The Queen gave birth to a son. When that child was in its third year, the King—he was in his cups and had been listening to a jealous lady of the household—suddenly accused his queen and that young knight of adultery, and disowned the infant. The knight struck him with a bare fist and fled with the infant. The King died of that blow—of a broken neck—but not before he had retracted that charge. For fifteen years and some months nothing was seen or heard of that knight or that child."

  Jorrill paused, regarding me with narrowed eyes.

  "What is this to me?" I whispered.

  "And she is Queen," he went on. "She had ruled the Marches all these years. She has had other lovers, and other babes, 'tis rumored; but now she plans to marry again."

  "What is this to me?" I asked again.

  "Ambrose was that knight's name," he answered, and flicked his tongue along thin lips. "Sir Ambrose. Brother Ambrose. A man of might, and yet a learned clerk."

  "I am his son?"

  "Nay, the King retracted that."

  "But I am her son?"

  He nodded.

  "Then why does she wish me harm?"

  "You are the King. She plans to we
d her latest lover, with King Arthur's sanction—unless she takes a fancy to yet another before the Overlord's permission comes from Camelot. In either case she is still the Queen of the Marches—unless the true King should come and claim his heritage.

  "I don't understand this, but I think you lie!"

  I slapped his face with my left hand, seized him by the throat with my right and flung him to the floor. I was about to stoop and raise him for another fling when—

  The Queen stood on the threshold of the open door. She came toward me, smiling. She did not so much as glance at Jorrill, where he crawled along the floor. I did not move. When she was nearer, I saw tears in her eyes and sliding down the white and red of her cheeks. She came close and put her arms around my neck and drew my face down to her lips. Her tears wet my cheeks, and her lips moved against it.

  "Well spoke—and well struck, my son."

  I had nothing but confusion in my head; and having nothing to do with my arms, and being somewhat off balance, I put them around her. So we stood embraced for minutes; but when the cramp in my bowed neck became unbearable, I had to straighten it; and then I saw that Jorrill was gone from the room, and his belt and dagger with him.

  "That squire has gone!" I exclaimed.

  She removed her face from my breast and looked around.

  "He will not return," she whispered. "He can do you no deadly mischief now: nor me, with his lies!"

  I remembered the murder in his half-shut eyes.

  "Why does he hate me, who never saw him before today?" I asked.

  "It is your father's son he hates. It was he, poor fool, who told the King—"

  She looked up at me through welling tears, her carmine lips parted and trembling, and all her face and brow and throat as red as the painted spots on her cheeks. My heart warmed and softened to her; and I knew the emotion for love, though it did not flame and sing, like my love for Sylvia.

  "His tongue was foul with lies, so I struck him," I said. She whispered: "That I am your mother is no lie." "Then what of me? God's wounds! Who am I?" "You are the King."

  "Did Brother Ambrose kill my father?"

  "Nay, he killed the King. But murder was not in his heart. He struck bare-handed—for pity and love of me. The sin was mine: but be merciful in your judgment, for I have loved only him and our little son all these weary years— though I thought you both lost to me forever."

  She clung to me again; and again I kissed her painted lips.

  "And what of sin and kisses now, Saint Mark?" cried a strange-sounding voice from the threshold of the open door.

  I raised my head and looked; and for a heartbeat I did not know the vision flaming there in gold and ermine and ice-green fire for my raggedy companion of the mountains.

  "This lady—this queen—is my mother," I stammered.

  Queen Carmel turned her face toward Sylvia without removing her head from the hollow of my left shoulder.

  "Come here, sweet fool," she said. "There is room here for both of us—sweetheart and poor old mother."

  She made a pitiful sound of sobbing laughter.

  "Brother Ambrose is my father," I said to Sylvia. "Which makes me a bastard," I added.

  "But King Ban withdrew that charge—and now you are the King," sobbed Queen Carmel.

  Then Sylvia cried: "What do I care what he is—king or knight or poor clerk—anything but a jongleur!—so long as he is mine?"

  She ran to me; and so it was that I had both of them in my arms when Gervase the page appeared on the scene. He halted and gawked.

  "What now?" asked the Queen.

  "Old Jorrill—he's dead, ma'am," stammered Gervase. "Of a broken neck. Captain Jorrill, ma'am. It was a big bearded rogue in wild skins. He asked to be brought to you, ma'am—at the buttery-hatch. And Jorrill was there and cried an oath and drew a knife on him. And he hit the squire with a bare fist—just once—and threw four archers into the yard. Now he battles against a dozen and shouts a war-cry. Hark! 'Strike straight! Strike hard!'"

  The Queen twisted away from me, knocked Gervase out of her way and was gone. Her screams of mingled endearments and threats rang back to us.

  "'Tis Brother Ambrose!" I cried. "I've heard him shout it at boar and bull—'Strike straight! Strike hard!' Come!"

  But the battle was over and my father had my mother in his arms when Sylvia and I got there.

  Strike Hard! Bite Deep!

  Chapter One

  The Mazed Knight

  The King and his court were but newly come to Carleon with a tail of captainless men-at-arms and bowmen, of itinerant armorers and smiths, farriers and horse-leeches, magicians in reduced circumstances and prophets without honor in their own countries, quacks and fortune-tellers and self-proclaimed discoverers of the Philosophers' Stone and the Fountain of Youth, conjurers and jongleurs and tumblers, troubadours of inferior talent or in hard luck, blind harpers, preaching friars, packmen and piemen, cutthroats, cutpurses, mendicants, gamecocks, dancing bears, and gypsies.

  The dust of this invasion and envelopment lay like a sea fog on the landscape, and was thickened by the smoke of multitudinous fires. But by the time of the arrival of the Lost Knight, or Sir Lorn le Perdu, and his party, which was past midnight, the dust had settled and most of the smoke had dissolved in starshine. The young knight, a still younger gentleman named Dennys ap Rhys, and the swineherds Oggle and Maggon who served them as grooms, found accommodation at a crowded inn, after showings of teeth and iron and even a few buffets.

  Might was right that night, in and around Carleon. Sir Lorn bestrode as high and heavy a charger as any of the King's stable, and as ponderous of tread as if he were shod with anvils; and the knight cleared his own mailed feet from the stirrups and kicked forward and outward ever and anon, now to the right and now to the left, when the riffraff massed about them and were slow to give way. And Dennys, on a strong mountain half-breed, wheeled and curveted, to clear a passage for the beasts of burden, which were hung about with spears and armor and provisions and gear. These were mountain ponies, small but of surprising hardihood. The grooms, flourishing boar-spears and bristling with back knives and spiked hammers, brought up the rear on two more ponies. The innkeeper protested at the door, but retreated when the warhorse splintered the threshold with a hoof. Horse and knight entered after him, bringing the frame of the door with them, both lintel and jambs. Sleepers on the floor rolled aside and staggered up in every direction, and their howls of fright and fury out-rang the rending and splintering of timber. The ashed embers on the hearth were kicked to flame and torches were fired: but by the time the dark was dispelled, so were many of the original occupants of the room, and the Lost Knight's party was in full possession, ponies and all.

  A door opened at the foot of a staircase, and a gentleman draped about in a robe of red silk was disclosed, holding above his head a candle of beeswax in a silver stick. The top of his skull was polished and pink, but his face was whiskered and mustached and bearded magnificently in pure white.

  "What's this?" he asked.

  "No doin' of mine, Yer Lordship!" cried the taverner. "This fellow—this knight—and his varlets and beasts, forced their entrance against my hand and voice, and have all but wrecked my house."

  "What knight are you?" the old lord asked of Sir Lorn.

  The knight, still in his saddle and stooped forward sharply for lack of headroom, did not reply. Dennys, who had dismounted, advanced and bowed and spoke respectfully.

  "Sir, you put a hard question, to which neither my master nor I know the answer; but he is called the Lost Knight, or Sir Lorn le Perdu, and with reason; and now we are come a long and crooked road to Carleon for the joustings. That we entered here against this honest fellow's protests I admit freely, but I assure Your Honor it was done without thought of evil on this good knight's part. In truth, it was done likely without thought of anything, in a mental abstraction."

  "Ah, so that's it," said the old lord, "a mazed knight. I have read of many such, and have ev
en known a few in my adventurous years. Gentlemen given to mental abstractions, that's to say. They are ill people to have ado with, as I learned to my cost when I jousted with one who called himself Sir Devilbane, and was pleased to mistake me for an imp out of hell. I was but one of a dozen he laid in the dust on that occasion; and it was for that day's work he received knighthood from King Uther Pendragon."

  He shifted his glance and addressed the innkeeper.

  "Look you to me for the damages, good Gyles. I am taking these gentlemen to my own chambers for refreshment and couching. Look you to the varlets and beasts and gear—and well, if you value your life!"

  He shifted his glance again, and addressed the silent young man doubled up there atop the tall white warhorse.

  "Sir, I beg you to step down and break bread with me. I have rare French vintages in my private vault here, and a lark-and-pigeon pie in my private larder."

  Sir Lorn dismounted and said, in a flat voice and without facial expression: "Gramercy, noble lord."

  And so he and Dennys left their horses and grooms and followed the old man in the red robe up the staircase and into a fine apartment lit by a score of candles in branched silver sticks. The walls were hung with arras upon which scenes and figures were wrought in glowing colors and lively attitudes: the chase of a unicorn in a forest glade by black hounds and a white bracket; a cavalier in half-armor on a red horse; a lady in azure and gold on a white jennet and fellows in leather toiling afoot with short spears in their hands; the meeting of two knights in full force at the moment when the lesser departs his saddle backward over his horse's tail; a troubadour twanging a lyre and singing to ladies and damosels in a garden of roses; knights at wine and meat in a hall hung with shields, and great hounds cracking bones among the rushes on the stone floor; the slaying of a fen-dragon by a young knight in a place of green reeds and waterlilies; and last a long cavalcade of chivalry crested with plumes and banners and uptossed spear-points, with the castellated towers of Camelot for background.

  Sir Lorn le Perdu went around the room slowly, gazing at the tapestries without comment. The old lord looked at Dennys with a lifting of eyebrows as big as mustaches. Dennys nodded.