The Iron Trevet; or, Jocelyn the Champion: A Tale of the Jacquerie. Эжен Сю

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СКАЧАТЬ from the rays of the sun and from the rain, were two tents intended for the knights who participated in the jousts. There they don their heavy armors before the combat, and thither are they transported when hurt or unhorsed. Numerous banners emblazoned with the arms of the Sire of Nointel floated from the top of poles that surround the lists. The queen of the tournament is Gloriande, a noble young lady, the daughter of Raoul, count and seigneur of Chivry, and betrothed since the previous month to Conrad of Nointel. Magnificently bedizened in a scarlet robe embroidered with gold, her black hair braided with pearls, tall and of remarkable beauty but of a haughty and bold type, with disdainful lips and imperious mien, Gloriande was throned superbly under a species of canopy contrived in the center of the platform, whence she could command a view of the arena. Her father, proud of his daughter's beauty, stood behind her. The noblemen and ladies of all ages, were seated on benches flanking either side of the canopy where the young queen of the tournament paraded her wealth and her charms. Suddenly the clarions sound the opening of the passage of arms; and a herald, clad in red and yellow, the colors of Nointel, advances to the center of the arena and cries the formula:

      "Hear ye, hear ye, seigneurs and knights, and people of all estates: – our sovereign seigneur and master, by the grace of God, John, King of the French, forbids under penalty of life and of forfeiture of goods, all speaking, crying out, coughing, expectorating or uttering and giving of any signs during the combat."

      The profoundest silence ensues. One of the bars is lowered, and the Sire of Nointel, cased in a brilliant steel armor tipped with gold ornaments, rides into the arena. Mounted on a richly caparisoned charger that he causes to prance and caracole with ease, he reins in before the canopy of Gloriande, and the damosel, taking from her own neck the necklace of gold strands, ties it to the iron of the lance that her betrothed lowers before her. By that act he is accepted by the lady as her knight of honor, a quality by which he is to exercise sovereign surveillance over the combatants, and if the point of the weapon from which hangs the necklace touch any of the jousters, he must immediately withdraw from the combat. In giving her necklace to her knight, Gloriande's shoulders and bosom remain naked, and she receives without blushing the testimonies of admiration showered upon her by the knights in her vicinity, whose libertine praises savor strongly of the obscene crudities peculiar to the language of those days. After having made the tour of the field, during which he displays anew his skill in horsemanship, the Sire of Nointel returns to the foot of the platform where the queen of the tournament is seated, and raises his lance. The clarions forthwith resound, the bars are let down at the opposite sides of the arena, and each gives passage to a troop of knights armed cap-a-pie, visors down, recognizable only by their emblems or the color of their shields and the banners of their lances. The two sets, mounted on horses covered with iron, remain for an instant motionless like equestrian statues, at the extremities of the arena. The lances of these gallants, six feet long and stripped of their iron, are, in the parlance of tourneys, "courteous"; their thrust, no wise dangerous, can have for its only effect to roll the ill-mounted combatant off his horse. The Sire of Nointel consults the radiant Gloriande with the eye. With a majestic air she waves her embroidered handkerchief, and immediately her knight of honor utters three times the consecrated formula: "Let them go! Let them go! Let them go!"

      The two sets break loose; the horses are put to a gallop; and, lances in rest, they rush to the center of the lists, where they dash against one another, horses and riders, with an incredible clatter of hardware. In the shock the larger number of lances fly into splinters. The disarmed tilters thus declare themselves vanquished, and their armor and mounting belong by right to the vanquisher. Accordingly, these tourneys are as much a game of hazard as is a game of dice. Not a few renowned tilters, hankering after florins more than after a puerile glory, derive large revenues from their skill in these ridiculous jousts; almost always do the adversaries whom they have overcome ransom their arms and horses with considerable sums. At a signal of the Sire of Nointel, a few minutes' truce followed upon the disarming of two of the knights who rolled down upon the thick bed of sand that the ground is prudently covered with. There is nothing so pitifully grotesque as the appearance of these disarmed gallants. Their valets raise them up in almost one lump within their thick iron shell that impedes their movements, and with legs stiff and apart, they reach the barrier steaming in perspiration, seeing that, in order to soften the pressure, these noble combatants wear under their armor a skin shirt and hose thickly padded with horse's hair. The vanquished abandon the lists in disgrace, while the vanquishers, after prancing over the arena, approach the platform where the queen of the tournament is enthroned. There they lower their lances to her in token of gallant homage. The charmed Gloriande answers them with a condescending smile and they leave the lists in triumph. The remaining knights now continue the struggle on foot and with swords – swords no less "courteous" than their lances, without either point or edge, so that these valiant champions skirmish with steel bars three feet and a half long, and they carry themselves heroically in a combat that is all the less perilous, seeing that they are protected against all possible danger by their padded undergarments laid over by an impenetrable armor.

      At a fresh signal from the Sire of Nointel, a furious conflict is engaged in by the remaining combatants. One of them slips and falls over backward and remains motionless, as little able to rise as a tortoise laid on its back. Another of the Cæsars has his sword broken in two in his own hands. Only two combatants now remain, and continue the struggle with rage. The one carries a green buckler emblazoned with an argent lion, the other a red buckler emblazoned with a gold dolphin. The knight of the argent lion deals with his sword such a hard blow upon his adversary's casque, that, dazed by the shock, the latter falls heavily upon his haunches on the sand. The great conqueror superbly enjoyed his triumph by proudly contemplating his vanquished adversary, ridiculously seated at his feet; and, responding to the enthusiastic acclamations of the assembled nobility, he approached the throne of the queen of the tourney, bent one knee, and raised his visor. After placing a rich collar around the conqueror's neck in token of his prowess, Gloriande stooped down, and, following the custom of the time, deposited a loud and long kiss upon his lips. This duty, attached to her distinguished office, Gloriande fulfilled without blushing, and with an off-handedness that denoted ample experience. Thanks to her beauty, the young lady of Chivry had been often before chosen queen of tournaments. The clarions announced the victory of the knight of the argent lion, who, strutting proudly with the trophy around his neck, placed his right hand on his hip, walked around the arena, and marched out at the barriers.

      These first passages of arms were followed by an interval during which the valets of the Sire of Nointel, carrying cups, plates, and flagons of gold and silver, that glistened in the dazzled eyes of the peasants, served the noble company on the platform with spiced wines, refreshments and choice pastries, ample honor being done by all to the munificence of the Sire of Nointel.

      CHAPTER IV.

      THE JUDICIAL COMBAT

      The seigneurs, their wives and daughters on the platforms had just enjoyed the refection, while commenting upon the incidents of the tourney, when a shudder ran through the crowd of peasants and bourgeois massed outside of the barriers. Until then and while witnessing the jousts and the passages of arms they had been animated with curiosity only. In the combat, which it was murmured among them was to follow these harmless struggles, the populace felt themselves concerned. It was to be a combat to the death between a vassal and a knight, the latter on horseback and in full armor, the vassal on foot, dressed in his blouse and armed with a stick. Even the more timid and brutalized ones among the vassals revolted at the thought of so crassly unequal a conflict, in which one of their class was inevitably destined to death. It was, accordingly, amidst a silence laden with anxiety and suppressed anger that one of the heralds uttered three times from the center of the arena the consecrated formula: "Let the appellant enter!"

      The knight Gerard of Chaumontel, now summoned to the trial of a judicial combat against the accusation of theft made by Mazurec, issued from one of the contiguous tents and entered the arena on horseback, in full armor. His buckler hangs from his neck; his visor is up; in his hand he carries a little image of St. James, for whom the pious knight seemed to entertain a peculiar devotion. His two seconds, on horseback like himself, ride beside him. With СКАЧАТЬ