France -- History -- Capetians, 987-1328 -- Fiction; Knights and knighthood -- Fiction
The three elder men still stared at him. Mature years, advantageous
place, bulked large indeed in their day. A young Daniel might be very
wise, but was he not _young_? A squire might propose the solution of a
riddle, but it were unmannerly for the squire to take credit; a mouse
might gnaw the lion’s net, but the mouse remained mouse, and the lion
lion. The Abbot of Saint Pamphilius, and Raimbaut the Six-fingered,
and Foulque the elder brother looked doubtfully at Garin. But the air
of bloom and light and power held long enough. They devised no better
plan, and, for the time at least, their minds subdued themselves and
put away anger and ceased to consider rebuke.
Raimbaut spoke. “I give you leave. I have not been a bad lord to you.”
His squire looked at him with shining eyes. “No, lord, you have not. I
thank you for much. And some day if I may I will return good for good,
and pay the service that I owe!”
Foulque the Cripple limped from the hearth to a chest by the wall,
unlocked it with a key hanging from his belt, and took out a bag of
soft leather—a small bag and a lank. He turned with it. “You shall
have wherewith to fit you out. Escape harm now, little brother! But
when the wind has ceased to blow, come back—”
The abbot seemed to awake from a dream, and, awakening, became golden
and expansive even beyond his wont. “You hear him say himself that he
has no vocation.... Nay, if he begins so early by overthrowing knights
he may be called, who knoweth? to become a column and pattern of
chivalry! I will bring him safe out of the immediate clutch of danger.”
An hour, and Raimbaut departed, and none outside the hall of
Castel-Noir knew aught but that, hunting a stag, he had come riding
that way. The sun set, and the abbot and his following had supper and
Garin served his brother and Abbot Arnaut. Afterwards, it was said
about the place that the company—having a long way to make—would
ride away before dawn. So, after a few hours sleep, all did arise by
torchlight and ate a hasty breakfast, and the horses and mules and the
abbot’s palfrey stamped in the courtyard. Mistral was dead and the air
cool, still, and dark. The swung torches confused shadow and substance.
In the trampling and neighing and barking of dogs, clamour and shifting
of shapes, it went unnoticed that only Foulque was there to bid
farewell to the abbot and kinsman.
In the early night, under the one cypress between the tower and the
wall, Foulque and Garin had said farewell. The light was gone from
about Garin; he seemed but a youth, poor and stricken, fleeing before
a very actual danger. The two brothers embraced. They shed tears, for
in their time men wept when they felt like doing so. They commended
each other to God and Our Lady and all the saints, and they parted, not
knowing if ever they would see each other again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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