The Truce of God | Page 7

it for dismissal, went away.
When he opened them there were only the fire and the dogs about it,
and the Bishop, who was preparing to depart.
"I shall not stay, my lord," said the Bishop. "The thing is desecration.
No good can come from such a bond. It is Christmas and the Truce of
God, and yet you do this evil thing."
So the Bishop went, muffled in a cloak, and mantled with displeasure.
And with him, now that Clotilde had fled, went all that was good and
open to the sun, from the grey castle of Charles the Fair.
At evening Joan came again, still afoot, but now clad in her best. She
came alone, and the men at the gates, instructed, let her in. She gazed
around the courtyard with its burden of grain that had been crushed out
of her people below, with its loitering soldiers and cackling fowls, and
she shivered as the gates closed behind her.
She was a good girl, as the times went, and she knew well that she had
been brought up the hill as the stallion that morning had been driven
down. She remembered the cut of the whip, and in the twilight of the
courtyard she stretched out her arms toward the little town below,
where the old man, her father, lived in semi-darkness, and where on
that Christmas evening the women were gathered in the churches to
pray.
* * * * *
Having no seasonable merriment in himself, Charles surrounded
himself that night with cheer. A band of wandering minstrels had

arrived to sing, the great fire blazed, the dogs around it gnawed the
bones of the Christmas feast. But when the troubadours would have
sung of the Nativity, he bade them in a great voice to have done. So
they sang of war, and, remembering his cousin Philip, his eyes blazed.
When Joan came he motioned her to a seat beside him, not on his right,
but on his left, and there he let her sit without speech. But his mind was
working busily. He would have a son and the King would legitimise
him. Then let Philip go hang. These lands of his as far as the eye could
reach and as far again would never go to him.
The minstrels sang of war, and of his own great deeds, but there was no
one of them with so beautiful a voice as that of the Fool, who could
sing only of peace. And the Fool was missing.
However, their songs soothed his hurt pride. This was he; these things
he had done. If the Bishop had not turned sour and gone, he would have
heard what they sang. He might have understood, too, the craving of a
man's warrior soul for a warrior son, for one to hold what he had
gathered at such cost. Back always to this burning hope of his!
Joan sat on his left hand, and went hot and cold, hot with shame and
cold with fear.
So now, his own glory as a warrior commencing to pall on him,
Charles would have more tribute, this time as lord of peace. He would
celebrate this day of days, and at the same time throw a sop to
Providence.
He would release the Jew.
The troubadours sang louder; fresh liquor was passed about. Charles
waited for the Jew to be brought.
He remembered Clotilde then. She should see him do this noble thing.
Since her mother had gone she had shrunk from him. Now let her see
how magnanimous he could be. He, the seigneur, who held life and
death in his hands, would this day give, not death, but life.

Being not displeased with himself, he turned at last toward Joan and
put a hand over hers.
"You see," he said, "I am not so hard a man. By this Christian act shall
I celebrate your arrival."
But the Jew did not come. The singers learned the truth, and sang with
watchful eyes. The seigneur's anger was known to be mighty, and to
strike close at hand.
Guillem, the gaoler, had been waiting for the summons.
News had come to him late in the afternoon that had made him
indifferent to his fate. The girl Joan, whom he loved, had come up the
hill at the overlord's summons. So, instead of raising an alarm, Guillem
had waited sullenly. Death, which yesterday he would have blenched to
behold, now beckoned him. When he was brought in, he stood with
folded arms and asked no mercy.
"He is gone, my lord," said Guillem, and waited. He did not glance at
the girl.
"Gone?" said Charles. Then he laughed, such laughter as turned the girl
cold.
"Gone, earth-clod? How now? Perhaps you, too, wished to