We dismounted together, and stood looking up at the bare grey stone of the castle, grim and forbidding against the blue sky. The castle of Bucelet was built for war; it shows little ornament and seems to smell of blood.
"Not a cheerful place," said Sir Geoffrey, "for all that I was born in it and feel at home in it. Carytena is more comfortable. All the same, the knight who commands in this castle is very much his own master. It must be someone I can trust. Cousin William, would you like to hold Bucelet for me?"
"In fee, my lord?" I asked; rather ungraciously, but I was too surprised to remember my manners.
"You forget, cousin William," my lord answered with a rueful smile. "How can I give land in fee when Escorta is mine only for my life? No, you would hold it as my castellan, during pleasure. But even that is promotion for a landless household knight."
He saw the disappointment in my face. Suddenly he sat down on a large stone, forgetting the dead castellan and the errand for which he had dismounted.
"It's time we settled your future, cousin William. Your children are growing up with no home but Carytena, and though they are welcome while I am lord of Escorta my successor may want that tower for his own cousins. That's the trouble. I can't make any plans. For myself it doesn't matter. I am the best knight in all Romanie, and if my uncle turned me out tomorrow I would be welcome in any mesnie. With any luck I shall be dead before I am too old to ride in mail. But you mustn't squander your life serving me for wages, just because we happen to hit it off together. Is there any other lord whom you would like to serve?"
"Indeed not, my lord. How could I serve a de la Roche or a Tournay after so many years in the mesnie of Bruyere, the best mesnie in all Romanie ? I should miss you every hour of the day."
"Very well. I thought that would be your answer. I have news for you. A Venetian has reached Clarence, saying that the lord Edward, son of your King Henry, is leading a great power to the Holy Land. You could join him in Cyprus. It's only right that you should visit Syria, since for so many years you have been a Crusader. Take your family with you. If the lord Edward gives you a place in his mesnie you may go back with him to the west. If all else fails Carytena will be waiting for you. But in Lamorie the sun is setting. When I am gone, and my uncle, this country will be a bad home for western knights. Go, while you are still young enough to begin again in your own country. Go, and take my affection with you."
In the autumn of 1272 I returned to England in the mesnie of Prince Edward, to find that King Henry was dead and my new lord King of England. Then my eldest brother died without children, and since my other brother was a clerk our little ancestral fee came to me. I live quietly on my manor, and my mail hangs on a peg; though when the young men muster against the Welsh they value the advice of a far-travelled Crusader who has seen battles greater even than Lewes or Evesham. My William is in religion, a Crusading knight of St. John of the Hospital. But both Geoffrey and Sophie have married; their children, always in and out of my solar, have been the occasion of my writing and the chief hindrance to it. The little patch of land that came to me from my father will descend to my grandson; no man can see further than that. Mine has been a good life, with adventure when I was young and the home of my childhood waiting for my old age. But the best thing of all was that I saw Lamorie in its glory, a land from out of the old romances, where good knights defended splendid castles against savages and infidels, a fairyland whose like will never come again.
Even now Melisande gets letters from her Grifon friends, who think nothing of sitting down to cover a big sheet of paper. We know the main lines of what has been happening in Lamorie.
In 1275 Sir Geoffrey died, by an absurd mischance. After a raid on an Esclavon village on a hot day he was imprudent enough to drink from the village fountain. When he was younger he would never allow his followers to taste Esclavon water; in England you cannot imagine how Esclavons live in their villages. The barony of Escorta escheated to the overlord, Prince William.
It is said that even the birds in their nests mourned for the best knight in all Romanie. In Lamorie both Franks and Grifons wept for him; and here on the remote March of Wales the family whom he fostered see the world as poorer and more grey without him.
Soon afterwards the lady Isabel married Sir Hugh de Brienne, Count of Lecce in the Kingdom of Sicily. She has borne children to her second husband, so there may have been something in her complaints about the climate of Carytena.
Prince William died in 1278 and King Charles of Sicily took over the Principality. An Angevin governor rules in Andreville, and the high court of Lamorie has lost its independence. The whole land is a mere outlying province of Sicily, ruled and defended by Italians who go there for a few years and never regard it as their home. French knights of good blood no longer ride over the thyme of the hillsides; "Frank" now means an Italian mercenary, thinking only of the next payday. The old courteous life has vanished.
But I have seen it: the colours of western blazonry burning under the bright sun, castles of shimmering white marble, the Latin chant in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Satines, columns erected by the wise men of old and the soaring domes of the cunning Grifons. That life will never come again. It ought to be remembered.
And I knew the best knight in the world, a knight so gallant that he did not hold himself bound by the rules which bind ordinary men. But even the best knight in the world can be too reckless of consequences.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This is in outline a true story, even to Sir Geoffrey's address to his tent-pole before the battle of Pelagonie. See Rennell Rodd, The Princess of Achaea, Edwin Arnold, 1907, and William Miller, The Latins in the Levant, John Murray, 1908. The only entirely imaginary characters are the narrator and his wife, though there was a genuine Briwerr family in England. Public events happened as I have described them, though I have used my imagination in supplying motives and explanations, especially for love affairs.
The narrator's opinion of Greeks, Turks, and other foreigners is his own, and not necessarily that of the author.
Lord Geoffrey's Fancy Page 28
