France -- History -- Capetians, 987-1328 -- Fiction; Knights and knighthood -- Fiction
A trumpet sounded from the town. A trumpet answered for Montmaure.
The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne rode through the gates upon her white
Arabian. Behind her came two ladies, Guida and Maeut, and after these
rode fifty knights. All wound down the hillside that was pitted and
scarred and strewn with many a battle token. To meet them, started from
the tented plain fifty knights of Montmaure, and at their head Count
Jaufre. Count Savaric, it was known, suffered yet at times with the
wound he had got in the spring from Stephen the Marshal. It seemed that
it was so in the week of this meeting. He was laid in his tent in the
hands of his leech. But by cry of herald he had made known that his
son’s voice and presence were his own. The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne
would meet in Count Jaufre no less a figure than the reigning count.
Thus Jaufre rode alone at the head of the fifty knights.
He rode a great steed caparisoned as for a royal tourney. He himself
wore mail beneath a surcoat of the richest samite, but he had
embroidered gloves, not battle gauntlets, and in place of helmet a cap
sewn with gems and carrying an eagle feather. The one train came down
the hill, the other crossed the level, overburned, and trodden earth.
The two met with fanfare of trumpets and caracoling of steeds and
chivalrous parade, close at hand the coloured pavilions, overhead the
sapphire sky, around the breath of autumn.
Jaufre sprang from his courser, hastened to the Arabian and would aid
the princess to dismount. He swept his cap from his head. Red-gold
locks and hawk nose, and on the right cheek a long scar, curiously
shaped.... The Princess Audiart sat very still upon her white Arabian.
Then she smiled, dismounted, and gave Jaufre de Montmaure her gloved
hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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