The Holy Sinner

The Children-2

‘Glorious,’ he answered her, ‘are you, Sibylla, quite of yourself and with no buhurd at all! My s*x, it must bestir itself and do something to be glorious. For yours one need only be and bloom and is already glorious. That is the most general difference between male and female, aside from the more particular.’

‘We envy you,’ said she, ‘your differences, admire them, and are covered with shame, because we are broader in the hips instead of in the shoulders, and in consequence have too large a belly surface, also a much too ample derrière. But this I may say, that even so my legs are high and slim, leaving nothing to wish in this respect.’

‘That you may,’ he returned, ‘and you must not forget that we in our turn look on your differences if not with envy, yet with sweetest pleasure. Even the word “envy” might be in place, for where is our flowering-time? We have nothing either here or there, only somewhat of strength at best to hack ourselves out of our disadvantage.’

‘Say not that you have naught! But let us sit down in the window niche and causer cosily a little about the buhurd of today, how comic Count Kynewulf of Niederlahngau, named Weewight by reason of his smallness, looked on his huge black mare, and how Sir Kalamede, fils du comte Ulterlec, when his steed stumbled, came to lie under his horse, whereat Dame Garshiloye of the Belfontane almost lost her senses.’

They did as she proposed, sat, with their arms in velvet and silk across each other’s shoulders, on the bench in the niche and anon leaned their comely heads to each other. At their feet, head on his paws, lay their Anglo-Saxon hound, a pointer, Hanegiff by name, a very lovable creature, white, black only round one eye and both ear-flaps. He shared their sleeping-chamber and slept there always between their beds on a materas stuffed with horsehair. The view through the window was over the roofs and battlements of the castle and down upon a street in the valley, bordered with flowering shrubbery and meadows where flocks of thick-fleeced sheep moved leisurely and slow. Sibylla asked:

‘You had eyes of course for Alisse of Poitou in the silly gown she showed off in, half of silk worked through with gold and half of phelle from Nineveh, with the skirt embroidered in colours. There were many who found her most stately.’

To that he replied:

‘I had no eyes for her supposed stateliness. I have had eyes alone for you who are my female counterpart on earth. The others are foreign, not equal in birth like you who were born with me. She of Poitou, I know, makes herself so fine for men like the giant Hugebold, and for such bean-poles as Sir Rassalig of Lorraine, twice as tall as I am, and not much thicker than a lath. Since shadow of beard darkened my lip, many a lady makes her eyes melting when she looks on me. But I turn her the cold shoulder, for no one fits me but you et plus n’i quiers veoir.’

She said:

‘The King of Escavalon has addressed a letter to Grimald our lord, and sought of him my hand in marriage, who now am man-ripe and he still unwived. I know it from my maistresse, the von Cleve. You need not start, for the Duke has mildly denied him and told him I am, though man-ripe, still too young, unripe as queen even for so small a kingdom as Ascalon, and he should look round among other the princes’ daughters of Christendom. Indeed not on your account and that we may yet stay together hath our lord refused the King. Rather “will stay a while,” he wrote, “sit at table with both my children, my daughter on my right, my son on my left, not with the lad alone and then only my priest besides, opposite to me.” That was the ground of his refus.’

‘Let it,’ he said, as he gave himself to playing with her hand and looking at the rings on it, ‘be whatever ground it like, if only one does not part us in our sweet youth before the time of which I will not know when it will come. For of us two no one is worthy, neither of you nor of me, worthy is one of the other, since we are wholly exceptional children, high of birth, that all the world must behave lovingly dévotement to us, and born together out of death, each of us with our graven sign on our brow, they come of course only from chickenpox, which is no better than croup, measles, or mumps, but the origin of the sign does not signify, tout de même it is the pale little hollow that is important. When God will have lengthened the days of our lord and father dear and good up to the furthest measure of humanity, as it may please him to do, then shall I be duke over Artoys and Flaundres, a rich and blessed land, for here the grain waves on fat acres while on the hills ten thousand and more cropping sheep carry wool for good cloths, while below, towards the sea, the flax grows so abundantly that the peasants, as I hear, in clumsy joy dance in the taverns and the land is bestuck with splendid cities as your hand with rings: Ypren is joyous, Gent, Louvain, and Anvers stuffed full of wares, and Bruges-la-vive on the deep sea-bay where ships overladen with treasure from oceans south and north and east ride ceaselessly in and out. The burghers go in velvets and furs, but they have not learned to leap freehanded to horse nor to aim with the lance at the four nailes of the shield, nor yet to ride a buhurd, therefore they need a duke who protects them, and that am I. But you of all maids best, who alone are fit for me, I will, while they throw their caps in the air, lead by my hand among them as sister-duchess.’

And he kissed her.

‘I like it better,’ said she, ‘when you kiss me than when our dear and worthy lord scratches my neck and cheeks with his rust-coloured moustaches. How much must we be glad from our hearts if he came visiting us, as may any moment happen.’

For often, that is, when they so sat cosily chatting of many things, Duke Grimald might come to them, not to keep them company, but rather with harsh words to drive away the younker and chat with the maid.

‘Fils de duc Grimald,’ he said, ‘do I find you here, young puppy, with this sweet child your sister? That you affect her is to be praised and I praise it that you give her your best strength and stand by her and entertain her as well as a young stripling can do. But so long as I live, trust me, I am her protector before all others and still man enough to take it upon me, and if you flatter yourself that such a precious child is closer to the brother than to her sound and sturdy father, then you may expect a couple of smacks from me. Allez avant and away from here! Go shoot at the target with Master Patafrid! The Duke will have a chat with his little daughter.’

And then he sat down beside her in the niche and courtisiered her, old knight that he was, in a way a monk can but uneathe imagine.

‘Beau corps is yours,’ thus he spoke, ‘and what the frensche call florie, the bloom that rests upon you, you have of late most increased in loveliness. Hélas, the time is tender to youth, making it daily blossom sweeter, whereas it more and more uglifies the old, takes the hair from the skin of the head, and strews grey in the snout. Yes, yes, the greybeard must feel shame before the youth, for age is repulsive. Meanwhile, pourtant, dignity has to make up for beauty, and you, my dearest, must not forget that Grimald is your father, to whom you owe affection and thanks, that he brought you into the world, and so early lost his precious consort. As for thee we must see that you soon hold the wedding feast, for many sweet signs speak for thy nubility. I think only of thy happiness. But truly, as for me, the first comer is not the best, and not only you must he please, but I must give you to him, and, faith, I grant thee to no one so easily, old knight as I am.’

Thus, or the like, Sieur Grimald when he sat with her in the window-seat; I repeat it, as well as a monkish understanding can.

In the next year, when the children were sixteen, came for young Wiligis the celebration of his knighthood—but what can I know of such a thing? I know that in the world’s mouth it means for the younker to gird on the knightly sword. That Duke Grimald gave his son, and dubbed him knight amid vivats and ta-ra-ra, after solemn high mass in St Vaast, at Arras in the citadel, in the presence of many kindred and knights, and afterwards he strode between his children, leading his son with his right hand and with his left the virgin maid, before the eyes of the jubilant quemune down the perron d’honneur from the lofty tower. The new-made chevalier, used to wear only the short hunting-knife at his hip, had to take care lest the immense sword which now hung from his belt in front get between his legs. But to both children came the thought that after all how much nicer it would be if only they two, hand in hand, paced down the ramp and the father were not between them.

But now that Wiligis had been duly knighted, Sibylla was in her turn in all eyes of age and ripe for marriage, and there were ever more suits from proud princes of Christendom, who might well venture the offer. In part they wrote, in part sent noble wooers to Beaurepaire, in part they came themselves to woo. The old King of Anjou brought his son Shafillor, who forsooth was but simple. Count Schiolarss of Ipotente, the Gascon Duke Obilot, Plihopliheri Prince of Waleis, as well as the lords of Hainhault and Hespaye, they all came and made themselves fine with sable-bordered garments and ermine, and flowery addresses which they read in part from a sheet. But the Lord Grimald rejected them all, for to no one did he grant Sibylla, yes, he was scarcely able to dissemble the anger and hatred he felt against the wooers, and with his nay-word let them all, however fine, ride back again into their domains. And that caused much ill will round about the courts of Christendom.

But young Wiligis had at near this time a frightening dream from which he woke his whole body wet with sweat. He dreamed his father hovered over him with legs spread out behind in the air, copper-red in the face with rage, with bristling mustachios, and silently threatened him with both fists as though he would straightway take him by the throat. The dream was incomparably more frightful than it sounds in words and for sheer dread lest he dream it again he did so for the second time—the same or even more frightful still—the very next night.