The song of Renny

Dedication

To the Fountain of my long dream, To the Chalice of all my sorrow, To the Lamp held up, and the Stream Of Light that beacons tomorrow;

To the Bow, the Quiver and Dart, To the Bridle-rein, to the Yoke Proudly upborne, to the Heart On fire, to the Mercy-stroke;

To Apollo herding his cattle, To Proserpina grave in Dis; To the high Head in the battle, And the Crown — I consecrate this.

Book I The Strife For The Crown

CHAPTER PAGE

I. EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR ... 3 II. THE HIGH LITTLE LADY . . . . .12

III. SORGES ELECTS 25

IV. INCLYTA DOMUS ATQUE MISERRIMA ... 38 V. THE PROUD LADY .46

VI. DONNA MABILLA BEDAUBS HERSELF ... 58

vn. lanceilhot's progress 70

vni. the rennys head for the north ... 80

IX. DEEDS of BLANCHMAINS 88

X. BETWEEN CAMPFLORS AND CANHOE . . . lOI

XI. PIKPOYNTZ MUSTERS I05

XII. CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR II5

Xin. A FORTIORI 132

XIV. PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY I48

XV. THE RENNY WAY 166

XVI. CANZON DE REINI — ^PART I .... 180 viii CONTENTS

Book II Mistress Of The Robe Chaptsk Jagi

I. THE CANDIDATE 303

ra. THE TAVERN OP "THE HOLY GHOST " . .220

IV. MORTON DYKE 23I

V. THE EYE OP PAULET ...... 241

VI. DON John's alliances 255

VII. THE COUNTESS OP PIKPOYNTZ . . . .267

Vni. THE BATTLE OP THE WITS .... 289

rx. TREATY OP COLDSCAUR 303

X. LOVE AND THE COUNTESS OP PIKPOYNTZ . • 319

XI. THE MASKS ARE OFP 337

XII. THE MASKS ARE OFP — continued .... 348

Xin. THE PASSIONATE PILGRIMAGE . . . .36$ XIV. CANZON DE REINI — ^PART H . . . -377 XV. MABILLA DISCLAIMS THE RENNY RIGHT . . 395 XVI. LANCEILHOT SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF . . . 402 XVn. CANZON DE REINI — ^PART m . . . . 4II EPILOGUE . 416

BOOK I THE STRIFE FOR THE CROWN

Chapter I Earl Gernulf Comes To Speir

It used to be said that in the whole county of Pikpoyntz there was not to be found a single tree, but that must have been poet's licence. There was, in fact, a substantial sycamore in the courtyard of Speir, as many condemned wretches, who were hanged upon it, could have testified, and as the inhabitants did not fail to report when the calumny was uttered against them. The Speir sycamore, as the only tree, was likely to be as famous as Speir itself, the only castle, in Pikpoyntz. Pikpoyntz indeed was a barren fief, fruitful only of rocks and stones. It suffered all extremes and knew no mean. Periodically it was raked gaunt by deluges of rain, sodden anew beneath a mantle of snow, parched by frost, bleached under a brief onslaught of a pitiless summer sun. Being, as it were, a series of spikes and valleys, the former withered in heat and the latter lay hidden in fog the greater part of the year's round. Of all its valleys the deepest, the gloomiest, the most drenched in mildew and mist was the Valley of Stones through which raced the brawling S^; and of all its peaks the most terrible was that which threatened the valley and carried on its bare summit the Speir sycamore and the Castle of Speir.

Gunlaw was a white spike standing solitary in the Valley of Stones. Speir was a castle which followed exactly and occupied the whole of its summit. Shale and shingle, the debris of a great river-bed, filled the valley; mountains and clouds shut the sun from it; mist hung over and drenched it day after day. At high noon, or for an hour before and after, the sun might look down on the bare bones the river had left, on grey hovels and on the white faces of goitred peasants who crowded in them: but Speir bathed in his light the twelve hours through, so that folk below thought it a battlement of heaven and looked to see the wings of angels tipping the walls.

Once upon a time — in those dim days when Maximilian III. reigned over Jadis, and Sir Prosper le Gai adventured in Morgraunt, as has been related elsewhere — Gernulf de Salas was Lord of Speir and of the whole Valley of Stones. Being, indeed. Earl of Pikpoyntz, he was lord of the county; but he was doubly lord of the Valley of Stones because of his domineering white castle. There, and wherever he went within his lands, he was served fearfully — with knee service only, for there was little else to give him; but the fact is that he was more often in other counties than his own, and never for any good purpose, if common report may be trusted. He always had a strong force at Cantacute to watch the South and another at Montgrace to keep eyes on Logres and the North. Behind these he felt himself impregnable;

EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR 5

beyond them, he knew that they would hold the gates for him in case of need. Under these precautions he was seldom at home, and never for long. He would be away for a year at a time, none knowing where. At such times there was no white-barred flag to cow the Valley of Stones. The frontiers were too strait and too well watched. Half a dozen men kept the castle walls; the great gates only opened to admit the tenantry with their weekly dole. Father Sorges, the old chaplain, let himself in by the postern when he came up daily to say mass. He braved the six hundred steps of the lock and all the dangers of ice, snow, tempest and (worst of all) fog; for he was a meek man and would not trouble the door- ward's hours of ease. Inside the great windy house, besides the lacqueys and meaner sort, were only Clotilda the old Housekeeper, Shrike the black Chamberlain, and Nitidis and Blanchmains, Maids of the Hall.

The gardens of Speir stretched across the whole table of the mountain-top, and might be a mile one way and half a mile the other. They were mostly cut in broad terraces, one below another. There were no trees, no flowers: nothing but grass as deep as velvet, yew hedges of immense age, and many fountains. Before the southern front ran a flagged walk edged by a low parapet. Leaning upon this, you could trace the course of the jade-green Sar set as it was in a broad band of shingle; you saw the blue valleys, the great grey splinters of the mountains. Upon the eye level were the snowfields and the lonely pikes. You would be 5,000 feet above the river; almost impregnably secure. If you looked, you would see a white road cross the Sar and wind three times round Gunlaw, climbing always till it reached the Barbican. That was the pass, and the only pass on that side of the county. No need of a moat at Speir when you had such a way whereon your enemy must needs go at a foot's pace and be in view for the whole of it; no need of drawbridge, when nobody could live to hail the door- ward unless you had a mind to let him. From the terrace, also, you could see how fine a place Speir was, with its deep-set windows, its corbels and turrets and golden vanes. Looking on it you would share your gaze with the saints, of whom a whole row stretched from end to end, flanking the midmost shrine, a Mary and Jesus under a gilt baldacchin. All those paid court to Speir and turned their backs upon the plagues, the dry bones, the dwarfed shrubs and lean dwellers in the Valley of Stones. On all sides was the sound of water falling; and sometimes the ravens who nestled in the sycamore wheeled about the vanes and turrets with harsh croakings. So much must suffice (for the moment) for Speir in Pikpoyntz, which, in the great old days of Jadis, Earl Gernulf held of his lord the King by the nominal service of a pair of gerfalcons yearly, in golden hoods, upon a golden cadge.

Now, to Speir came the Earl in haste one frosty autumn morning, scantily attended, as his custom

EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR 7

was, and bringing with him a girl-child set before him on the saddle-bow. She seemed to be some twelve years old ; she neither cried nor showed traces of tears; neither spoke nor was surprised at anything; had no fear, and never ceased watching. The great man dismounted in the courtyard and set the child on her feet on the flags. Then he called for Clotilda the housekeeper.

"I am here, my lord," said she, who had watched him up from the valley. He passed the child over to her.

''She is a dead man's daughter," he said, and every one knew what that meant. "Guard her well and let her want for nothing."

Shrike the black shuddered and clattered his teeth.

''But how is she called, this dead man's daughter ? " cried old Clotilda, with her hands in the air.

"I never stayed to ask," said the Earl grimly. "Send for Father Sorges."

"Father Sorges will never wake the dead, my lord," sa3^s Clotilda, persisting in her own thoughts.

"I want him to sacre the living, old fool," bit the chill voice of her lord. And no more was to be added.

Father Sorges, the old priest who lived below Speir and climbed six hundred steps every morning to say mass there, came into the hall, a little lean old man with a hungry mouth and pale, wandering blue eyes. He put a hand on the child's head and looked at her a very long while. She, for her part, stood by the Earl's chair, her hands behind her back, her soft brown hair falling smoothly over her shoulders and curving inwards as it touched them, her solemn eyes fixed unwinking upon him. The Earl was having his riding-boots pulled off. Dame Clotilda watched the priest, who began the catechism.

**How were you called, my child, by your parents ? "

She answered him stilly, in a voice without a tremor, in a low voice, "Sabine."

Father Sorges struck his forehead. Under his breath, as if fearfully to himself, he whispered, "Sabine — a rape! a rape!" His lips formed like a whistler's; and Shrike's eyes bulged from rings of white.

Aloud he said, "A Roman name! Were you so christened, my child?"

She bowed her head. The old man turned to his master. "I cannot baptize the Lord's anointed," he said. "She is God's already."

The Earl had been bathing his hand deep in his red beard. He now got up. "Shrike, fetch me to eat and to drink," he said, and the black fled away to serve him. "As for the child, she is mine. Call her what you like among you."

Father Sorges, with a rapt look beyond his lord, said softly, "Then I call her Sabine, as she was named, and take the omen."

"Now what in God's name do you mean by that?" cried the Earl.

"My lord," said the priest, holding up his hand, "she will grow to be more beautiful than a summer's day, and women must pay for that."

EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR g

"When that day comes," said the Earl, "she shall pay me,'' and trampled down the hall to his meat and drink — to where Blanchmains and Nitidis awaited him.

In that noiseless night of fog there was talk of the little captive princess, who had named herself, and was to be called Donna Sabine. Blanchmains sat up in bed with clasped knees, blinking at the light. She was a white-faced girl with a very red mouth, and narrow eyes which were really yellow, but at night looked all black. Her hair too was black, long and heavy, as straight as if it were wetted. Nitidis had brown hair, gold in the ripples; she stood now before the glass braiding it. Her gown was made of thin white silk, and her slippers had gold threads in them. Beneath her bosom ran a crossed girdle, also of gold. She was fastening on a crown of red flowers: the glass showed her laughing face all a dimpled rose, and her brown eyes sharp as a mouse's.

"I have heard nothing yet," said she through lips encumbered with hair-pins.

"You should hear before long," replied the other in a low bell-voice.

"Yes, very like."

^ * Very like ? ' ' echoed Blanchmains. * ^ I don't know the word. You must make it your business, child. How can I calculate without figures? This may be a heavy matter for some of us."

Nitidis shivered at the shoulders. "Blanchmains, you would calculate on your death-bed, I do believe."

lo THE SONG OF RENNY

"I would calculate in any bed."

"Ah, I am not like that/' said Nitidis softly, achieving her flower crown. "It is a dear child," she added.

" May be dearer than we care for. That you must find out."

Nitidis had no answer ready, but as she put on her cloak and lighted herself a lamp, one could see by the puckers in her brow that she was troubled. Thinking hurt her; she sighed.

"Good-night, Blanchmains," said she, stooping to kiss her friend. Blanchmains peered and glimmered. "A good night, little rabbit." Nitidis went out, robed and crowned; and Blanchmains lay down to sleep, but tossed and turned about, finding none. In an hour she got up, lit a lamp, and went out in her turn. Down the long corridor she crept, shading her light; she entered the turret at the end, crept upstairs for a couple of flights, then turned very softly the handle of a door in front of her. She stole into a whitewalled room. Sabine was lying asleep in the bed, with her bare arms over the quilt; her little lips held tightly together, but her eyelids fluttered. Once she sighed deeply. Blanchmains held the lamp up in her thin white hand, and looked sharply at the unconscious child. Her eyes showed a mask of intense black which would have told you nothing. Going by her mouth — full it was and rather long — you would have seen it stretched and judged her anxious. After a time of hard looking she stooped to make certain that the girl slept. Satisfied of this, she set

EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR ii

down the lamp, gently pulled back the bed-clothes, and looked the child over from head to foot. Nothing escaped her, but she was most careful over the hands and feet; also she felt the texture of her hair, the softness of her skin. Round the loins she found a fine gold chain. This interested Blanchmains vastly; but it bore no mark of any sort, and had no visible fastening. She stood with one hand at her lower lip watching, judging, as if weighing the worth of the pretty thing lying there. Then she put everything as it had been and turned away — this time to bed and to sleep.

Speir, like an ice-castle, stared up to the frosty stars. The great mist- wreaths rolled over the deep Valley of Stones and brimmed up to the battlements. The sound of noisy Sar, the tinkling of goat-bells, the coughing of sick sheep, the barking of foxes, the owl's crying — all noises of the night came up hollow and startlingly near through the fog.

Chapter II

The Earl stayed but a short while at Speir. By the third morning after his arrival, before the sun was over the mountain-tops, there was a great array in the Valley of Stones of men, horses, and steel. Then the red Lord of Pikpoyntz rode out of his gates, bareheaded as his use was, thundered down the winding road in front of his clattering staff, flashed his long sword before his array, and was off for some two years. All that was known certainly was that he had again swept through Cantacute; therefore he was again for the southern parts. Not a soul in Pikpoyntz had more stuff for judgment than that fact. Nor was it meet that he should. Speir lived by rapine, and no doubt the stones would have cried it out if they could ; but since they could not, it was the Earl's firm policy that no tongued thing should have aught to tongue of. Not a soul in Speir knew where he went or what he did ; not a soul of all those who went with him ever set foot in Speir.

The little Personage left behind him was royally left. By orders which, you may be sure, did not fail to be explicit she was to want for nothing of all the clothes, all the thousand luxurious necessities and superfluities she could have need or no need of. No more could have been done for the heiress of Pikpoyntz, which Blanchmains was at first tempted to think her. Blanchmains herself and Nitidis were appointed to be her Maids of Honour, Shrike was her chamberlain; Father Sorges, as spiritual director, was to teach her Latin, the rudiments of religion and the lives of the Saints. The good man liked the task. **By the time you return, my lord," he had said, chafing his thin hands, "she shall have made her first communion." Pikpoyntz had then turned upon him like a savage dog. "What do you know of my return, you, Sorges?"

Sorges quailed, of course. "Ah, nothing, nothing, my lord. I am a poor priest."

"Attend to your priesthood, then, and leave my return to me," grunted the Earl. But Sorges fixed it at some two years, all the same, and was not more than a year out.

In addition to these honours, the little Lady Sabine was assigned a regiment of waiting and dressing women, horses, grooms, dogs; and two pages, one to wait upon her table, one to follow her whenever she chose to be abroad. Bubo, Clotilda's nephew, was the first of these: he was a hunchback, and could not ride. The other was a strapping youth of good parentage, called Firmin, reputed to be dumb. This he was not; but he was dull and slow-witted. Much better born than Bubo, there had been a question of his place when he first came to Speir; his parts found their own level; he was held to be but a finely-made block and sent to the guard-room instead of the hall. His title now was Esquire of the Bridle. Thus, according to the commands of the Earl, was Sabine encompassed and thus, on bent knees, was she to be served.

So, you may depend upon it, she was served, for Pikpoyntz had a way of making himself felt whether he was at home or abroad. He could strike heavily from a distance, and suddenly. Very early in her career Blanchmains had found that out. A couple of years or so before Donna Sabine was brought into the piece, upon one of her master's absences, she had found the days long and heavy within the thick walls. It was winter-time and the frost filmed the mirrors. She was sick of the loom, she could not look at her own arch face nor watch reflected the passage of her slim hands. She loved her bed dearly, yet she dared not lie in it beyond or before her appointed hours. At Speir everything went by a clock whose ticking was the stern pulse of Pikpoyntz. What was Blanchmains to do? She fretted, had not yet learned the conditions of Speir.

There was at that time a page in the castle named Leonard, a pretty, conceited boy. He had grown up in the service, and was just now able to see the down on his upper lip if the light were good. The light, however, was not good: the frost filmed the looking-glasses. Now of all things in the world, next to her still self, Miss Blanchmains loved looking-glasses. Since they were not to be had, she must needs see herself in this boy's fine eyes which, had she let him alone, had mirrored nothing but kitchenmaids, country girls, and other homely toys of a man's idleness. How far she led him, how far he needed to be led, I do not care to guess; but it is certain that one black February night she kissed him at her door and stood with a torch lighting him down the gallery. Next morning he was found under the castle ramp; frozen as stiff as a flower-stalk and dead of a cut throat. Father Sorges buried him in a hurry in four feet of ground : nothing was said. Pikpoyntz came home about the middle of March to find Blanchmains' broad tapestry very forward. She had completely finished the Triumph of Love and was immersed in that of Chastity, wherein Love, blindfolded, sits shrieking while his rainbow wings are torn out in handfuls by certain furious virgins. Love in this piece also was complete; but thfe virgins still lacked bodies. That night Shrike, in default of a page, served Pikpoyntz with his great two-handed cup at supper. Nothing was said. Yet when my Lord of Pikpoyntz had gone out again. Nitidis pillowed her face by Blanchmains at night and worked with her by day at the Triumph of Chastity. For page in the hall came Bubo, Clotilda's little crook-backed nephew, with eyes not adapted for mirrors. Firmin was added later, when the lesson was thought to have been learned. The story is quite unimportant, but will serve to explain the fact that little Donna Sabine, a child of twelve, friendless and a waif from none knew where, reigned as mistress of Speir, was served with earl's honours, sat (half-drowned) in his chair of estate, knelt at his emblazoned fald-stool in the chapel while Mass was saying, and was attended on crooked knees by Shrike and his crew.

At first she was willingly served, for everybody in the place was touched to laughter or tears by her, and either estate makes for tenderness. Father Sorges and the old chatelaine had lived so long in the service of the great that to obey was not only better, it was far easier than sacrifice. If they were to have no master they had rather humiliate themselves before a shadow of him than not at all. This solemn, preoccupied little girl, so soft and yet so desperately grave, drew deep upon the fund of pity they had. She was so small to be so great! They grew to love her and, good humble souls, being in love, they could not grovel enough. Father Sorges, schooled by his office, did his grovelling mentally: in time, indeed, his interest in the child's soul swallowed up his sense of tears, as his duty of teaching lent him power. Sabine never suspected his abasements. But Dame Clotilda, poor wretch, ruined herself. Whatever Sabine thought about anything she always kept locked behind her firm lips; but it is evident from what follows that she took the good woman at her own valuation, and would as soon have thought of confiding in a tame rat. The only asperity the mild-mannered child ever showed was to this fawning old hireling, who really loved her.

The other camp at Speir was of those who were quick to contrast the gigantic Earl with his chubby little viceroy, and to find much scornful entertainment in the; exercise. So long as this piqued them all went well; but pique is very apt to end in mortification or weariness. So it was here: Shrike was mortified and Blanchmains tired to death of serving somebody she could not rule and was ashamed to fear. As for Nitidis, she was a cipher, a rosy rogue bubbling over with vanities, who does not count one way or another. But the first-named couple had mass enough to spoil the comedy which they had been the first to detect.

Shrike, who had a gibing devil in him, attempted to make of the comedy a farce. And so indeed he did, though not as he had planned it. He burlesqued the situation, he postured and mouthed at his service, strutted, played the broad buffoon. Having no real wit and much more malice than vivacity, he overdid his part. Blanchmains might have helped him to sharpen his offence, but just then she was too intent upon watching. The servants, however, would have taken the cue before long and little Sabine's ship foundered in a stormy mock observance but for her own prompt action. The child's mind, through those quiet eyes of hers, read into the black, found out that there was something unfamiliar at the core of him, guessed it unclean. From that hour she ignored him, just as you would ignore a smear on the wall. She looked through him, never at him. It took all the heart out of his attitude and enabled her to see that she was being made a fool of. She acted at once — it was droll to see Shrike upon the occasion. It was on a day when he chose to play the abject devotee at her dinner. When he bowed her to her seat his head went down between his knees. He Hfted the covers as if he would elevate the Host; at Sorges' grace he fell flat on his stomach with his forehead on the floor. In handing the cup to his mistress he again plunged on all fours, with the vessel held over his head. There he had to remain, for Sabine simply let him kneel. He might have cracked his spine for all the notice she took. Tired at last. Shrike had to get up, hot, smarting and stiff. He found that Sabine had got another cup. The meal was making its usual way, nobody so much as smiled when he stood upright. Shrike seethed in shame. One case will do for all: the man was her slave from that time forth; but she showed another part of her quality in the affair, namely, that she never forgot nor forgave. It is doubtful if she ever saw, certain that she never addressed him again.

This little Sabine was a child so strangely silent, so strangely self-possessed, so deliberate in her aims, and so successful in them, that she was, for all her youth and exuberant beauty, almost grim. Locked behind the door of her rosebud mouth she kept everything in her life which had preceded her advent in the Valley of Stones, when she came thither like booty on the Red Earl's saddle-bow. Who she was, who her parents, what her rearing (save that it had been plainly delicate), what the hopes centred in her high little head, there were none at Speir could find out. All agreed from the first that she was highborn, probably an only child, greatly beloved. Pikpoyntz himself knew, and she knew, what that day had been — in what colour, what temperature, at what desperate pace it had sped — wherein she was lifted to his saddle and carried — how far from home ? how far to Speir? "The daughter of a dead man," said Pikpoyntz. That gave a spur to thought. Fire and sword, a burning roof; steel for the master, a rope for the servant ; and one only snatched alive from the blood and smoke. Plenty to guess! Why snatched at all? Why brought to Speir? Why not rescued, claimed, treated for, ransomed? Plenty to guess!

But she afforded no clues. They never saw her in tears. They listened at her chamber-door, but heard no sound of sobbing. The little head went royally high, the fierce little heart beat stealthily its own counsel. Queen of herself she was, and might well be queen of others, for as time went on she insisted (but without parade of insistence) on queenly observance. None might touch any part of her but her hand with the lips. If you did not bend the knee before her, she looked at you till you did. The Earl's high table did not suit her case : she must eat apart. A smaller table was brought on to the dais — the dame and Shrike found it there one morning; ever afterwards Sabine ate there alone. The customary civilities of cap-touching and the pulled forelock were discouraged. Every cap must come off when Sabine went out of the house. She would not cover her own head in chapel, and the good Father

Sorges was made to understand how impossible it was to ask it of her. The moment Dame Clotilda and Shrike found out the trend of affairs they helped her all they knew, the dame because she loved playacting, Shrike because he was writhing for notice. Thus the legend of royal birth began and thus it grew. You may judge if Blanchmains had food for speculation or Nitidis stuff for the romances which she loved to spin.

When the Earl came back for a night at the end of his time, he found her Queen indeed. Sabine was fourteen and reported ravishing to view.

"Fetch her down," said Pikpoyntz. Sabine refused point-blank to come. This was reported by Shrike in an agony.

"Fetch her down, I said," repeated his master. She was brought. He surveyed her. "Splendour of God, what a maid!" He spoke to her with gruff pleasantry, she looked at him without a word. "Come, come, mistress," said he, and roared at her; she still looked thoughtfully at him and let him roar. He bellowed, he swore, made to strike her: she did nothing else but as she had done. "Accursed race of mules," cried the Earl, beside himself, "may the Devil take one and all of you. Go souse!" And he sent her away. When he left next morning, he left her more a queen than ever.