Troubadour Tales
Page 2
skill.
So Count William and Count Reynaurd were escorted up the palacestairway to their chamber doors, and each agreed, upon his knightlyhonor, which was a very solemn vow indeed, that he would not set footbeyond his threshold until the day appointed by the good king; and itbecame the duty of Pierrot and Henri to bring food and wait upon theirnoble masters.
But these two masters fared differently in their song-making. Inthe apartments of Henri’s lord, things went far from smoothly; for,although Count William was really a very accomplished troubadour,yet when he found himself shut up and obliged to make a song, not aword could he write. Indeed, poets declare that this is often the waywith them; most beautiful verses will suddenly pop into their heads,sometimes in the middle of the night, so that they have to jump up inthe dark to get pencil and paper to write them down before they forget;while, many times, if they have paper and pen ready, so contrary aretheir wits that very likely they can not write a word! And so it waswith the Count William.
He fussed and fumed, but not even the least little bit of a rhyme couldhe make; and the more he wished it, the more impossible it seemed tobecome. He strode up and down the room; he snatched his paper and toreit into bits; and then he scolded Henri till the poor little fellowtiptoed out in his little pointed velvet shoes, and fled to the garden,where he sat down under an orange tree, and consoled himself with somefresh cookies that one of the kitchen scullions brought out to him. Ashe crunched down the sugary morsels he now and then flung a crumb tothe pretty goldfishes in a fountain by his side; and then he wonderedwhat any one wanted to make up poetry for anyway, especially when itwas May-time and one might sit in King René’s garden, and above all, ona day when King René’s cooks were making sweetmeats.
Meantime, across the corridor from Henri’s master things were goingon very differently with the noble Reynaurd and Pierrot. As luckwould have it, this count was getting on famously. He had composed amost beautiful poem, and lovely music by which to sing it, and wasaltogether so pleased with himself and all the world that he snappedhis fingers joyously, and fetched Pierrot a playful slap on theshoulder, crying, “Hey, Pierrot, just listen to this!” And then in aloud voice he began to sing.
Pierrot was so delighted that he clapped his hands, and declared he wasquite sure his lord would win the prize, and shame the Count Williaminto everlasting silence. Then he helped himself to a couple of greatgolden oranges from a basket he had just brought to Reynaurd, andstrutted out to air himself, and to boast to Henri of his master’ssuperior skill.
Meantime, Count Reynaurd sang over and over his new song, each timeroaring it out louder and louder, till his lungs fairly ached.
While all this was going on, the Count William, in a great rage, wasstill striding up and down the floor of his chamber, which happened tobe across the corridor and at no great distance from that of the happyReynaurd. And, as it happened also, when Pierrot went out he forgot toclose the door behind him—a fact which Count Reynaurd had not noticed.The door was very thick and heavy, and fitted badly between the stonewalls, so it was not to be wondered at that Pierrot did not manage tolatch it.
As it was, the loud voice of Count Reynaurd came rolling forth, andsuddenly the Count William, angrily pacing the floor, stood stock-stilland pricked up his ears.
Now, the count’s ears were famous for being extraordinarily sharp,and he was also wonderfully apt at remembering anything to which hehad once carefully listened. He knew in a moment the voice of CountReynaurd, and then a broad smile crept over his face, and he listenedharder than ever.
As Reynaurd kept singing over and over again, it was not long tillCount William had the whole song by heart, and then, seizing his ownlute, he began practising it very softly.
“Ha, ha, ha!” he laughed to himself. “Thou great foolish Reynaurd!Canst thou never learn how to hold thy tongue? But never mind, I willplay such a trick on thee as will teach thee a lesson thou’lt not soonforget. Ha, ha, ha!” And then he practised longer, till he knew boththe poetry and music as well as Count Reynaurd himself.
The next day, Pierrot, still exulting over his master’s skill, happenedto meet Henri in the garden, and asked how his noble lord was gettingon.
“Oh!” said Henri, “finely. He has just made a lovely new song!” Andwith that he hummed a snatch of the melody he had heard Count Williamsinging, and which he thought his master had composed.
As Pierrot heard the music he could scarce believe his ears; first hewas speechless with astonishment, but at last he sputtered out:
“It is not true—it is stolen! That is my dear master’s, the CountReynaurd’s!”
“Pierrot,” burst in Henri, “I would have thee understand that my noblelord, the Count William, does not steal, and is a far better singer,anyhow, than thy great Reynaurd!”
From this matters went from bad to worse, till the two little pageswere just on the point of coming to blows; but, fortunately, atthis point one of King René’s seneschals caught sight of them, and,hastening up, gave each a sound cuff on the ear, crying out as he didso:
“Ho, ye saucy little knaves! Know ye not the good king will have nobrawlers upon these palace grounds? Take that, sirrahs! and see to itthat ye behave more seemly hereafter.”
The pages being thus forcibly separated, Pierrot ran as fast as hislegs could carry him up the palace stairs, and burst into his master’schamber, panting out indignantly:
“Dear Lord Reynaurd, the wicked Count William has stolen thy beautifulsong and will win the prize! And I tried to stop Henri, and—o-o-oh—”Here poor Pierrot, still smarting under the cuff from the seneschal,quite broke down, and was obliged to double his fists very hard andbite his lips to keep back the angry tears.
At first Count Reynaurd gasped with astonishment, and then jumped upin a towering passion. But by and by his wits came back to him, and heremembered that Count William had always been a good friend of his; butthen his heart misgave him as he remembered, too, that Count Williamwas a famous joker, and loved a jest above all things.
The more he thought of it, the more sure he felt that William onlymeant in some way to tease him, though he could not understand howhe had learned the song. Just then his eyes fell on the door, thatPierrot in his haste had left unfastened, as usual; and then it flashedthrough Count Reynaurd’s mind how Count William had found out aboutthe music. Reynaurd, moreover, had no doubt but that, before the king,William would probably sing the piece as his own,—a thing which hecould easily do, as René had announced that they would be called onin alphabetical order, according to the names of their domains; and asAuvergne thus came before Poitiers, Reynaurd knew that Count Williamwould sing first, and that it would then be hard to make the peoplebelieve that the song was his and not William’s; yet he determined, ifpossible, to try in some way to get the better of him.
He thought and thought very hard for a little while, and then suddenlyhe said to Pierrot:
“Pierrot, dost thou still remember the Latin tongue that good FatherAmbrose taught thee last winter in our castle in Poitiers?”
The little page assured his lord that he did, for he was really aclever scholar in the Latin tongue, which both his master and the CountWilliam understood but indifferently.
Then Count Reynaurd called him close to his side, and whispered a planto him that seemed to please them both mightily. Pierrot at once tookthe goose-quill pen that Reynaurd handed him, and after screwing uphis face and working very carefully, he wrote these lines:
Hoc carmen non composui, Quod cano, quod cano!
and this he took great pains to teach his master.
The next day Count Reynaurd sang his song over again and again, andPierrot purposely left the door ajar. Count William noticed that afterevery stanza there were two new lines added in another tongue:
Hoc carmen non composui, Quod cano, quod cano!
At first this puzzled Count William very much indeed.
“Faugh!” he said to himself at length, “that ridiculous Reynaurd isseeking to give
a learned air to his poetry! I dare say he has pickedup those lines out of some old manuscript, and thinks to pass himselfoff for a great scholar.”
Then Count William tried to make out the meaning of the words, whichwere fitted into the rhyme of the stanzas in such a way that theycould not well be left out. He studied over them till he thought heunderstood them, though, as it turned out, he was quite mistaken. Butas it was a common way with the troubadours to end every stanza withsimilar lines, which they called the refrain, Count William suspectednothing, and set himself to work to learn the new words.
The time that the king had allowed the rival noblemen was now almostup, and in two days more the song-contest took place.
The great banqueting-hall had been beautifully hung with garlands offlowers and gay banners. At one end of it the king’s throne stood on adais, and over it swung a scarlet canopy like an enormous poppy-flowerturned upside down. In the middle of the room were placed long tables,and in the palace kitchens the cooks were running about busyingthemselves preparing the great feast that was to follow.
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