La Chevaliere

Once there was an old man who lived in the woods near St. Albre. His name was Raymond de Brenhaut. The noble families of the province sent their sons to him to be taught the art of combat, for he had been a renowned master of arms in his day. More than that, he was a good man and a zealous teacher. His daughter Gisonde, called La Painesse for the airy goodness of her bread, kept his house in neat and merry order.

Alas! At sixteen Gisonde was led astray by one of Raymond's pupils and found herself with child. Too shamed to continue in her father's house, she fled, leaving her newborn daughter behind. Later word came that she was dead in a foreign land.

Raymond was much grieved. Determined to place the child left to him beyond the reach of care, he decided to bring her up as a boy and using his skills, to teach her to defend and honor other poor innocents as no one had defended or honored her unfortunate mother. Only the wetnurse knew the truth sheathed in the swaddling; her mouth might be easily sealed with silver.

And so it came to pass. Perscoral de Brenhaut grew as sturdy and vigorous as a chestnut. As soon as she was steady on her plump little feet, Raymond set her the same tasks as his other students -- polishing harness, mending arrows, holding horses as they were physicked. She was willing and quick and strong, and as she grew older, showed great tenderness for the weaker and more timid of her grandfather's students. With hair almost white from the sun, her glossy head was easy to pick out among the children scuffling like puppies in the horse yard. It was not until the son of the Seigneur de Rency, himself under the care of Brenhaut not many years before, joined the school, that a blond could be found fair as the arms master's grandchild.

There could be no mistake. Raymond darkened when he saw the two children together, alike as eggs, but he held his tongue. Perscoral was as ignorant of the circumstances of her birth as she was of her gender, and he did not wish to offer her the fruit of knowledge until she could crush the serpent's head as well. To avoid the tattle of indiscreet tongues, he settled her into an old dovecote some distance from the house, and gave out that the child had been carried away by a fever and buried in the night to avoid contagion.

Perscoral was sorry to lose her playmates, but she did not doubt her grandfather had a good reason for all that he did. Her dovecote was clean and comfortably furnished with all her own things, lances that gleamed with olive oil and elbowgrease, smartly feathered helms and scuffed boots. Above her head a pretty, long-nosed Virgin playfully urged her Babe to bless the slumbers of the prentice, and on the wall opposite hung a pine shelf holding the missals and chansons copied in winter dusk. Under the bed her own blade nested snug in lambswool, where she could reach her fingers down to the slippery cool of it when she said her prayers at night.

Now that there was no need to keep her to the measure of the other students, Raymond worked her like a Saracen. Goaded by equal parts pride and zeal, Perscoral stubbornly rose to every challenge, and though her teacher was sparing of praise, watching her grapple and vault made him blush for pleasure. She killed her first boar when she was fifteen. Bigboned, bold and passionate for justice, the youngest de Brenhaut was all he had wished to make of the helpless babe left worse than orphaned in his arms.

In the summer of her seventeenth year, a tournament was called at the Seigneur de Rency's seat in nearby Ferdeloine-sur-Arbres. Raymond hemmed and hawed, but finally declared her fit to enter the lists. Hardly able to eat or sit for excitement, she worked herself harder than even her grandfather thought wise, to prepare for her debut. When they pitched their modest tent by the pavilions of Ferdeloine on the night before the tournament, Raymond knew that it was time for Perscoral to learn of her mother's wrongs and her own ignomious birth.

The young chevaliére sat thinking in the lamplight. In her hands lay a locket painted with the miniature of a comely girl, saucy brown as a nut: Gisonde la Painesse at sixteen. "So this de Rency ruined my mother, honeying her with vows he could not fulfill?"

"Gisonde would never tell who had done the deed. But true it is that de Rency was among my pupils in those days, and true that his family was already deep in dealing for the hand of Athilda de Breghenze, whom you will see beside him tomorrow while your mother lies in a distant grave. It takes no gypsy's sight to see that you and his other children are as close in looks as hairs on a head. This is why I kept you apart from the world, that you might not see and wonder before your time."

Perscoral smiled. "But I have never had a mirror, grandpapa."

The morning of the tournament arrived hot and clear. The de Rency family broke its fast with Seville oranges and grapes in their box above the field while boys braided the horses' tails, and the combatants lined up to be shriven outside a little black tent. Perscoral girded herself without a word; her grandfather did all that was needful to aid her without interrupting her thoughts. Her shield and plumes were white without crest or device, her mount a well-seasoned dapple gelding with the stately air of a connoisseur. When it came time for her to take the field against the second son of a family in Thoulouse, she kissed her grandfather firmly and cried the old charge, "De Brenhaut for the love of right," as she grasped the stirrup.

Sorrow to tell it, her courage and passion were for naught. She pitched her opponent into the dirt on the first pass, leapt down and put her boot on his chest for a hasty yield, then took off her helm. Her roughly cropped hair bristled like a cat's back in the fine breeze as she strode towards the de Rency box. The crowd, which had been still much engaged in taking its seats and greeting its neighbors, abruptly quieted when she levelled her naked sword at the Seigneur himself. "Miscreant! Forsaken of God! Come forth and pay for the blood of an innocent maid wronged!"

The spectators dissolved into laughter. For the mysterious chevalier in white had the voice of a girl.

Raymond de Brenhaut wished himself dead as his granddaughter revolved bitterly to face the laughter of the public stands. His plan had fooled no one for a moment. "Is seduction and dishonor a matter for jest, friends?" she cried. "Is the betrayal of a family's trust dainty enough meat for your stained palates? Then here is a dish you shall relish -- I, the son of Gisonde de Brenhaut, demand the blood of her betrayer Rolford de Rency!"

Gusts of merriment rained down on the hapless girl, for as she had spoken, she had torn off her chain shirt, thinking that the inequality of their fittings had kept de Rency from answering her challenge like a man. The Seigneur sat frozen as a stone saint, a segment of orange still dewy between his lips, for the breasts of Perscoral de Brenhaut were not much, but they were enough to insure that her sex was now only a secret to one person at Ferdeloine that morning. Raymond scrambled through the palings into the field.

"Is it true, then?" she asked as he bathed the dust from her shoulders in the tent. "Am I really a girl?"

"Yes, Perscoral, it is true."

She said nothing more.

They rode back to St. Albre in silence. Raymond watched his granddaughter disappear into the dovecote without saying good night, trailing her mail through the wet grass. When she appeared at breakfast the next day, looking much as usual in trousers and tunic, and helped herself to a heel of bread, Raymond ventured a word about having a seamstress out to measure her for new clothes. Perscoral replied with sparse mildness that she had been brought up to fit herself this way and knew no other. "If I may not practice the calling I was raised for, at least I may help you instruct others more fortunate."

But to her great chagrin, the young chevaliére found that the noble youths her grandfather was grooming for knighthood, whom she had been accustomed to regard as bound together in the desire to see the dominions of Love, Law and Honor widen across the face of the earth, did not feel obliged to behave with particular chivalry toward her. Sly hands were thrust into the gaps in her tunic when she was accompanied into the darkness of the mews, where she cracked some heads harder than perhaps mere correction demanded. When her temper had purchased her some peace from these attempts, eyes still followed her, and giggles rose whenever she bent over to examine a horse's foot. When she retired to the archery range behind the dovecote to console herself with solitude and skill, the hedges boiled with peasant boys whispering challenges to one another about what they should do to "La Chevaliére." Stones could send them flying, but they came back.

When a procession of mummers passed through St. Albre during Pentecost and heard the story of the strange bastard daughter of de Rency and her appearance at the harvest games, the manager sought Perscoral out and offered her a place in his troupe. She did not hesitate a moment in accepting, and cleared out that night without leaving a whiff of a farewell to Raymond.

Her duties would be to perform the scene at the Ferdeloine tournament once a day when travelling from village to village and twice a day when they were encamped outside a city. The manager had some improvements to offer. First, the battle between herself and her opponent (a long, drooping Savoyard named Berthold) was to be much longer and more pitched. What objection could there be to that? Secondly, it would be much more striking if when she took off her helm, a few feet of hair could tumble forth. Could she perhaps try growing hers out? A well-tressed blonde provokes sympathy; he always had a blonde as the Magdalene in the mystery plays they gave at Easter. Until her own mane could perform respectably, she was given a wig of flax, which had inhabitants. Since Perscoral had never spent a day blessed by sun indoors, it was impossible to make her skin as pale and luminous as the idealistic manager imagined -- her face and visible limbs were painted with chalk and alum before each show.

The horse was allowed to reprise its role unaltered.

Perhaps she would have found less irritation in her new life as a wandering player if she had not continued to experience the vexations she had hoped to leave behind in her grandfather's village. This time it was her fellow performers who plucked at her shirttails or ran a quick palm down her buttocks when her attention was elsewhere. She found a friend in the muffin girl, a creature so freckled it was hard to believe she wasn't leprous, but otherwise made no secret of her loathing for the whole troupe. Her aloofness did not especially anger anyone. Give her time, and she'll come off her palfrey, they said, and dived back into their own affairs.

So without any incident to set aside one day from the next, the group ambled slowly north. Perscoral had brought her own armor, which was a mercy when she had to spend so much time in it (Berthold was constantly applying lanolin to the chafe marks under his arms and inside his knees; he was unpleasantly public in his toilette), but it no longer shone with the loving glow it had boasted in the woods of St. Albre. Her white plumes had to be replaced every week or two from the dust, but she was well paid to provide for these necessities. "The Maiden Knight" had quickly become a popular part of the show, and the manager meant to keep her as happy as he could. She found that she rather enjoyed the denouement, when she got to harangue some very fiery pentameters with her swordpoint about six inches from the throat of the mock-de Rency. This actor was a fat little man from the Loire who tried to lure children into his wagon with crystallized fruit, inevitably without success. She enjoyed seeing that he was genuinely frightened of her.

Then one day Berthold le Savoyard looked up from his lanolin, and began to heave words of desire when she put her armored knee across his chest and begged him loudly to yield for the love of God or she must strike off his wretched head. "Oh, but there are better ways you could kill me, slayer of hearts... I have a weapon that would make you yield, beloved enemy..." The muffin girl, in a spirit of misplaced helpfulness that Perscoral could not but deplore, tried to lure him off with her pathetic pied charms, without result. A memorable night, when he caught the young de Brenhaut watering the horses and with desperate celerity actually managed to insinuate his tongue into her mouth before she broke his nose, put a cap to her disgust; she determined to leave the troupe in Normandy, where she could find a ship across the Channel. Surely the English would know no better than to let her pass freely and comfortably as a boy.

So the day they were paid in Carteis, she cropped her hair and rode to the nearest port, where she sold her horse to a kind-looking collier and bought a passage to Dover. The sea air stirred her lightened head; she carried a lightened heart as well. She took out the locket of her mother and prayed for intercession from that cheerful little face, that she might live peacefully without the carnal persecutions that her beloved parent had known too well. It occurred to her that her grandfather Raymond de Brenhaut might be in the position to intercede for her as well, but she quickly shut her heart and her locket on that thought. As for occupation, she had some idea of attaching herself to a nobleman's guard, conducting pilgrims, or in the worst case, joining an army. Even becoming a Templar did not seem too farfetched on the first morning she set foot in England.

However, she landed in an unshaven port town where noblemen or pilgrims did not seem to be greatly in evidence, and if there were any Templars about, they could not be the sort of Templars she wished to fall in with. The loud braying that met her ears bore little resemblance to the words she had learned as being English while travelling with the troupe. She suspected that she was being cheated at the inns and taverns she stopped at, but the value of the numerous sizes and colors of the coins in her purse seemed to shift, and the logic of the change-making plainly defied her. It rained every day for a fortnight. The only thing she could say for her new homeland, she thought as she tramped along a quay in an agony of swollen ankles, was that her deception had gone unquestioned.

"For pity's sake, leave me be! Secours! O for the love of God, is there no one to help me?" It was her own tongue Perscoral heard -- a French voice, a Frenchwoman crying for help. Her blood leapt. With her blade drawn she pelted down the dock to where a man in seaman's clothes was shouting at a woman on her knees and showering blows around her face and shoulders. The chevaliére's angry cry of "Desist, rogue!" was perhaps not comprehensible, but her naked weapon spoke clear as the cathedral's noon bell. With a swipe at the woman's ribs for parting, the sailor turned tail and fled.

"Please compose yourself," Perscoral said in their language, kneeling to lift the unfortunate to her feet. "Are you hurt, madame? Can you walk? May I assist you to reach your friends?"

"O, I'm certain you've saved my life, my friend!" gasped the woman, clinging to her champion with an odor confined and sour. Perscoral could see that the woman was no longer young nor handsome. She felt a tempest of pity for this creature, as solitary as herself and twenty times more vulnerable, flapping dirty water out of her skirts. When the whore insisted that they both go into the public house behind them for a hot toddy, Perscoral could not refuse.

The woman bought a jug from the proprietor, waving away Perscoral's protests and purse. She dipped a kerchief into her first glass and while clutching it to her closing left eye, used her other hand to wring water from Perscoral's garments.

"Please don't trouble yourself," said the young chevaliére, trying without success to evade the helpful gestures. "You are in more need of care than I."

"That may be true, chér," sighed the woman. "But perhaps you can benefit from help more than I can." Her undamaged eye filled, and Perscoral felt her throat knotting in sympathy. Had someone sat with her mother at such a table and heard such hopelessness? It was a crime before both God and man. The prostitute regained herself then, and sat a little straighter with a smile. "Come on, son, drink up like a soldier, and we'll dry out our poor wits together."

The tenderness that Perscoral felt for her countrywoman increased as they sat before the fire. The level of the jug ebbed steadily, unlike the kennels of water that raced through the eaves almost above their heads. Tale after tale of the difficulties of the older woman's life unfolded -- this friend clapped and disfigured, that protegée kicked into a miscarriage. They talked of the obstacles to making your way honestly in the world when the callousness and rapacity of others know no bound. The whore asked about Perscoral's plans and prospects. She was forced to admit that she had neither, and that the state of her funds left much to be desired.

"Then you'd best come up to my room and stay there until you're better settled." The woman said this so firmly that Perscoral, a little hazy and hot with the unaccustomed spirits, could not find it in her to argue.

As there was only a bit of damp left in their garments and the room was just upstairs, they climbed up the stairs together at once, "so you can take the feel of it right away and perhaps feel a bit more homelike." As she stumbled up in the swaying wake of her benefactor, Perscoral found the warmth of gratitude in her heart almost overwhelming. Nay, she could have blushed, had the wine not already turned her as pink as ever she could be -- warmth had somehow been kindled into a thing unbecoming in her, whether in her real or borrowed gender.

When the door was closed, the older woman lit a small lamp and turned to her guest with a cheerful smile of welcome. Perscoral smiled back unsurely, wishing she did not feel so lightheaded, then felt all her uncertainty drain away when the whore took her between her arms. The embrace was so solid and loving that Perscoral felt all her loneliness, for her dead mother and abandoned Raymond, for her long-ago playmates and stablemates and kennelmates, even for the mangy muffin girl, collect and swell and burst out in a torrent that could not even be matched by the English spring raging outside. She clung to the other woman like a raft.

"I know, chére," murmured the whore. "I know all about it."

When the first storm of Perscoral's emotion was spent, the older woman quietly disentangled herself and began to undress. Perscoral's chest burned and her head sang like a locust; it was dishonest and mean to let the shabby garments continue to unwind and unwind, as firmly as her eyes were pegged to the sight. For the first time, she felt her deception truly as a fraud. Meanwhile, a once sateen bodice was coyly unhooked to loose a pendulous bosom. The room swayed like the Channel boat under Perscoral, groping to the safety of the mattress. The whore plumped down on the foot of the bed and unpeeled blue worsted stockings, laddered and musty with prior love.

With such a desperate summons of will that she almost passed out, Perscoral commended her voice forth through the prickles of heat that riddled her flesh and played fox-and-geese with her thoughts. "My dearest friend, I must confess before you go any farther. I am not what I seem. I am not a man."

"I know it, chére. Don't give it a second thought." And she dropped another fetid petticoat.

With great relief, Perscoral leaned back onto the pillows and let the woman loosen her breeches. Startlingly feathery kisses travelled up her belly and crept up towards the little hard coins of her breasts. Where the young woman's flanks burned, cool hands soothed.

Then rose a shriek, and the chevaliére felt the chain around her throat snap. The whore's head popped out from beneath her shirt with the miniature in hand. "How did you come by this picture?"

Dumbfounded and aching from the interrupted caresses, Perscoral replied, "It was given to me by my grandfather; it is the likeness of my dead mother, Gisonde de Brenhaut, called La Painesse."

"But I am Gisonde la Painesse!"

In the breathless flurry that followed, the women pummelled each other with questions like fists. "But who could have told Papa such a lie, that I was dead? I've hardly been sick in all these years, at least compared to some people. Ah, that must have been in the days when we followed the army in Alsace. A woman called La Papesse died -- best not to ask what her specialties were!" Here Gisonde crossed herself. "And to think of poor de Rency with that sourtempered Breghenze girl... Well, a lot of water has flowed under that bridge! But how bitter it is to see my beautiful daughter in these circumstances, so fallen, so unprotected!" Gisonde began to weep in earnest, pulling her discarded chemises closer. "How terrible your poor mother must appear!"

"No," said Perscoral, whose head was becoming lighter and clearer as her fine young body began to put the toddies behind it. "No, you do not seem terrible at all."

The next evening at the tavern when the district demimonde gathered for a strengthening tankard before setting out to the night's labor, Gisonde introduced them to a wonderfully tall, almost supernaturally flaxen person in full mail and broadsword -- her beloved only child, newly arrived from the Continent with no better wish than to uphold and defend her mother and her mother's companions. If any man had a quarrel with a portside whore, he had Perscoral de Brenhaut to deal with.

The Second Coming could not have relieved the public women of the town more effectively. Left to ply their trade without fear of violence or extortion, within a very short time they had money enough to buy their own house, which they requested Gisonde to manage. The establishment formed was a neat and decent one, and any children that were born within could look forward to being raised with honor and love instead of being thrown onto the parish's charity or drowned. The men of the port found the women there to be more relaxed and cheerful, not to mention cleaner and healthier than the lean and furtive alley dwellers they had formerly resorted to.

The house ran so harmoniously that Gisonde soon found that she had leisure to devote to the kitchen, and began to experiment with pastries less homely than her fabled bread, but not less light and sweet. And Perscoral found herself possessed of the grateful affection of all her mother's colleagues, who quickly discovered that the warmth, attentiveness and graciousness of young "Percival" (the English ladies could get no closer to their benefactor's name) made an agreeable change after a long day's work.

Both mother and daughter had long repented of the grief they had brought upon Raymond in fleeing St. Albre in their variously abrupt ways. So they wasted no time in writing to beg him to join them.

When Raymond first heard how his newly reunited family was procuring their livelihood, even his joy at the unlooked-for resurrection of Gisonde could not extinguish his rage and chagrin. However, he could not refute the justice of Perscoral's observation that they were merely following his dearest precepts in maintaining and defending the abandoned and dishonored: "de Brenhaut for the love of right" could do no less. After much persuasion and with many grumbles, he came north. There was not really anything left for him in St. Albre; the savor of his work had gone away with Perscoral, and gradually students had drifted away from the dispirited arms master. Young Montifer de Rency was the last to go, and ended by conducting his teacher up to Nantes before departing for the Holy Land himself. When Raymond finally held his precious Gisonde, ripe and warm and laughing in his arms, and beheld his finest pupil Perscoral, straight and strong and wise at her right hand, he could not help but call down the blessings of Heaven upon them, and vowed to live with them and serve them to his dying day. Plentifully supplied with absinthe and Gisonde's superexcellent marzipan, Raymond de Brenhaut served the ale in the happy brothel.