Garin

“ Garin knew not if Raimbaut, carrying with him Castel-Noir, clave to Montmaure, or to the overlord that was Roche-de-Frêne. There sprang within him wish and belief that it was to Roche-de-Frêne. Montmaure! His lips moved, his brow darkened. In imagination he wrestled again with Jaufre de Montmaure. Then, athwart that mood, came again, and stronger than before, a great longing to follow once more that southward-slipping stream, and to hear the nightingale in the covert, and to come again through the laurels to the lawn, the cedar, and the chair of stone. The east was like a rose. ”

“ She had come from the White Tower to taste this quiet and to look afar, to bathe her senses in this stillness after clamour, and to feel overhead the enemyless expanse.
“You are welcome, Sir Garin of the Golden Island!” she said, and turned toward him. “I watched you lead the sally yesterday. No brave poet ever made men more one with him than you did then—”
Garin came to her side, bent and kissed her mantle edge where her arm brought it against the battlement. “Princess of Roche-de-Frêne!” he said, “watching you, in this war, all men turn brave and poets.” ”

“ Garin left him by the wayside cross, a terrible, unhelped person. He darkened his mood for him, or the stress and strain and elevation of the past week, flagging, left him suddenly in some dead backwater or black pool of being. He walked on, putting the miles behind him, but with no springing step and with a blank gaze. Light and colour seemed to withdraw from the day and the landscape. The cross-taking in the town behind him and the leper by the roadside conjoined with many another fact, attitude, and tendency of his world. ”

“ Garin sought his inn and his horse. He was in Roche-de-Frêne upon Raimbaut’s business, but that over, he had leave to ride to Castel-Noir and spend three days with his brother. The merry-making in the town tempted, but the way was long and he must go. A chain of five girls crossed his path, brown, laughing, making dancing steps, their robes kilted high, red and yellow flowers in their hair. “What a beautiful young man!” said their eyes. “Stay—stay!” Garin wanted to stay—but he was not without judgement and he went. At the inn he had a spare dinner, the only kind for which he could pay. ”

“ Here was a meadow that Garin knew. But no cattle stood within it, seeking the shade of the trees, and nowhere, field or meadow or narrow road, were there people. All lay silent, without motion, under the giant strength of the sun.
The road passed under the brow of a hill, turned, and he saw where had been the grim old keep and tower and wall where he had served Raimbaut the Six-fingered. In its shadow had clustered peasants’ huts. All was destroyed; he saw not a living man, not a beast, not a dog. “How like,” said Garin of the Golden Island, “are Paynimry and Christendom!” ”

“ Five days later he and Aimar rode away toward Toulouse. Behind them, well mounted, rode their esquires, bearing lance and shield; behind these, threescore mounted men. The two knights kneeled for Sir Eudes’s blessing, they kissed the cheek of the Lady of Panemonde and of the dark-eyed Aigletta; they went away like a piece of the summer, and all the castle out to see them go. Here was the bridge, here the road, here a lime tree that Garin remembered, but in an autumn dress. ”

“ Garin sang. “Ha!” cried the knights, “they sing that way in Paradise!”
The troubadour advanced to the front of the group and bade him sing again. He obeyed. “Gold hair of Our Lady!” swore the troubadour. “How comes it that you are not jongleur to a poet?”
“I had a master,” answered Garin, “but he foreswore song and, chaining himself to a rock, became an eremite. Good sirs, if the Count might hear me—”
“He will be here anon from the castle. He shall hear you, jongleur, and so shall our Lord, Duke Richard! Springtime in Heaven!” quoth the troubadour. ”

“ Garin rode with sunken head, trying to settle matters before he should see Foulque. If Raimbaut had been a liberal, noble, joyous lord! But he was none such. It was little that page or esquire could learn in his gloomy castle, and little chance might have knight of his. A gloomy castle, and a lord of little worth, and a lady old and shrewish.... Every man must have a lord—or so was Garin’s world arranged. But if only every man could choose one to his liking—
The road bent. ”

“ I thank you for your singing, Sir Garin.”
“I would, my princess,” answered Garin, “that, like the singers of old, I might build walls where they are broken! I would that, with armèd hand, I might bring you victory!”
“One paladin alone no longer does that,” said Audiart. “If we win, we all have part—you and Sir Aimar and Lord Stephen, for whom I grieve, and all the valiant chivalry and those who fight afoot. And Thibaut Canteleu and every brave townsman. And the women who are so brave, ready and constant. And the children who hush their crying. ”

“ The drawbridge mounted, creaking and groaning.
“Ah,” said Garin with a sob in his throat, “Foulque thinks that we are foes!”
He left his men among the firs, and rode on Noureddin up the path known so well—so well! He rode without spear and shield, and unhelmed. Watchers from loophole or battlement might see only a bronzed horseman, wearing a blue surcoat, worked upon the breast with a bird with outstretched wings. When he came to the edge of the moat, beneath the wall, he checked Noureddin, sat motionless for a minute, then raised his voice. “Castel-Noir!” ”

“ Wake me then, and look, Elias, that you do it!”
She pillowed her head upon the scrip or wallet which she carried slung over her shoulder, and lay motionless. The jongleur watched.... The barred moon mounted higher, the night wheeled, eastern lands were knowing light. Garin, resting against a pine trunk, lute and wallet beside him on the earth, kept his gaze from the sleeper, bestowed it instead upon the silver, gliding boat of the moon, or upon the not-distant, murky glare of unfriendly fires. But gaze here or gaze there, space and time sang to one presence! ”

“ Garin went on to this grove and it sang for him again. When it ceased he did not go back to the boundary stone. This country pleased him and he thought, “I will go on and see how Our Lady in Egypt looks from this side.”
He followed the stream a mile and more. It was slipping now beneath mighty trees. Their arching boughs made a roof; it was like walking in cloisters. Between the pillars, inland, could be seen fields and vineyards and, at last, the convent’s self, with her olive trees behind her. Garin came now to thickly planted laurels, a grove within a grove. ”

“ But if there is none set in your eyes to love—”
“Can you not,” said the jongleur, “like Lord Rudel, love one unseen?”
Garin sat regarding the green branch. “I do not know.... We love the unseen when we love Honour.” He sat for a moment in silence, then drew a sigh and spoke as though to himself. “It is with me as if all things were between coming and going, and a half-light, and a fulness that presses and yet knows not its path where it will go. I know not what I shall do, nor how I shall carry life. ”

“ Robert of Mercœur was again at Garin’s side.
“Do you mark that look of exaltation? One man has one heaven and another, another—or that is the case while they are men. Count Rainier has seen his heaven—felt the waving of its hands over his head!”
In Angoulême, in its widest street, they saw approaching a cavalcade from the castle, a brilliant troop, glittering steel, shimmering fine apparel, pushing with gaiety through the town upon some short journey, half errand of state, half of pleasure. At its head rode one who had the noblest steed, the richest dress. ”

“ This angle of the castle turned from the crowded town. The wall was built on sheer rock, and below the rock was the moat; beyond the moat rose scattered houses, and then the ultimate strong wall enclosing all, town and castle alike. And below, on the plain, was Montmaure, islanding Roche-de-Frêne.
The autumn air struck cool. Montmaure had camp-fires flaring here and flaring there, making red-gold blurs in the night. Garin, watching these, came, full-force, upon an awareness of fresh misliking for Montmaure—for Jaufre de Montmaure; misliking so strong that it came close to hatred. ”

“ The abbot with a gesture kept him kneeling. “There is some reason here that you hide. You are young, you are young! I guess that your reason goes by name of woman—”
Garin knelt silent, but Foulque uttered an exclamation. “No, Reverend Father, no! What has changed him I know not, but it has happened here at Castel-Noir, since yesterday! There is no woman here, in hut or tower, that could tempt him—”
But the Abbot of Saint Pamphilius continued to gaze upon Garin, and to tap gently with his fingers upon the arm of the great chair. ”

“ She was dressed in some fine weave of dark blue with a girdle of samite studded with gems. The ends of this girdle hung to her silken shoe. Her hair, black and long, was braided with gems. She seemed young, young as the youngest there. “Seemed” is used, because Garin saw not her face. She wore, as did several of the others, a veil of Eastern device, but hers was long and wide and threaded with gold and silver, and so worn that it overhung and shielded every feature.
Attention was called to the placing of the rugs, the cushions, the harp, the dishes of fruit and comfits. ”

“ He drew the ribbon over his head, laid the lute on the grass, and leaning back, closed his eyes. Garin gazed at the lute for a moment then, dismounting, picked it up and tried his hand. He sang a hunting stave, in a better voice by far than was the jongleur’s. None had ever told him that he had a nightingale in his throat.
The jongleur opened his eyes. “Good squire, I could teach you to sing not so badly! But sing of love—sing of love! Hunting is, poetically speaking, out of court favour.” ”

“ Garin laughed, but there was rue in his laughter. He suddenly grew grave, the rock-gate before his mind’s eye. “Come! let us have this stain. Shorten, too, my hair.” He took up Elias’s lute and tried its strings. “Play the jongleur—play the jongleur. Every man has in his garde-robe every dress! The king can play the beggar, and the beggar play the king. Be quick, courageous, and certain in the change—so is the trumpet answered!” He put the lute’s ribbon over his head. “It falls night. Hasten, Elias of Montaudon, and while you work tell me your own life these six years! ”

“ She turned her face toward the myrtles. “Come, Pierol—Maeut!” then spoke again to Garin of the Golden Island. “It seems to me sad that the Fair Goal, whoever she be, wherever she bides, should know naught of you! Did you perish to-morrow in Roche-de-Frêne, her tears would not flow. If she were laughing, her laughter would not break. No sense of loss where is no sense of possession! This siege never threats her happiness—so little do you know of each other!” ”

“ Pierol gave the lute, then with the dark-eyed girl drew back into the shade of myrtles. Garin touched the strings, but when he sang it was of love itself.
The Princess Audiart listened, wrapped in her mantle. When the song was ended, “That is of love [237] itself, and beautiful it was!—Now sing of your own love.”
Garin obeyed. When it was done, “That is loveliness!” said the Princess. “This very moment that fair lady has you, doubtless, in her thought.”
“She whom I sing, lady, and call the Fair Goal, has never seen me. She knows not that such a man lives.” ”

“ Garin saw that another two were coming through the grove. One of these would be the noble lady for whom it was all planned. His imagination was active to-day with a deep, involuntary pulsing. Foix or Toulouse, or the greater domains to the north and [42] west, or it might be Aragon, or it might be Italy? Or she might have come from Sicily, or like Prince Rudel’s far lady, from a kingdom or duchy carved from Paynim lands. Some Eastern touch in the scene made him dwell upon that. ”

“ She grew like to a goddess—like to the Unattainable Ideal, and he felt no longer like a king, but like the acolyte that lights the lamp and kneels as he places it. Now it was the Age for this to happen, and for one man to act as had acted that knight in the wood toward Roche-de-Frêne, and for another to do as now did Garin. ”

“ Farther, and here was the calvary, and the way that branched to church and monastery. Wherever there were people, they stopped in their tracks upon the road, or in the fields dropped their work and stood to see the knights go by, with the goodly men behind them. The sky was dazzling blue, the world drenched with light and heat.
They meant to lodge that night in the town to which Garin had come with the scholar, and where first he had seen the cross taken. Reaching it before sunset, they looked up at its castle. But said Garin, “Let us find some hostel! ”

“ Lastly, say that I am agreeable, but not too agreeable, in the eyes of women.”
“That is necessary?” asked Garin.
“Absolutely,” answered the jongleur. “Your lover is as jealous as God. There must not be two Gods in one miracle play.”
“Does every troubadour,” asked Garin, “love greatly?”
“He thinks he does,” said Elias. “Do not forget, if you meet a truly famed one, Elias of Montaudon. You may also say that I have been in the company of many poets, and that I know the secret soul of Guy of Perpignan.”
Both left the boulder and stepped into the road. Garin laid his hand on Paladin’s neck. ”

“ Morn will come a further thing.”
The jongleur ceased to finger his lute; Garin sat silent on the boulder. The light, sifting through the trees, chequered his olive-green, close-fitting dress and his brown mantle. He sat, clasping his knee, his eyes with the blue glints at once bright and dreamy.
“I have read,” he said, “that it is a great thing to be a great lover.” ”