Bayard: the Good Knight Without Fear and Without Reproach

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

Pierre Terrail, the renowned Bayard of history, was born at the Castle of Bayard, in Dauphiné, about the year 1474, when Louis XI. was King of France. He came of an ancient and heroic race, whose chief privilege had been to shed their blood for France throughout the Middle Ages.

The lord of Bayard had married Hélène Alleman, a good and pious lady of a noble family, whose brother Laurent was the Bishop of Grenoble. Pierre Bayard, the hero of this story, was the second son of a large family; he had three brothers and four sisters. His eldest brother, Georges, was five or six years older than himself, then came his sisters, Catherine, Jeanne, and Marie, while younger than himself were Claudie, and two brothers, Jacques and Philippe.

Like so many other mediaeval strongholds, the Castle of Bayard was built upon a rocky hill, which always gave an advantage in case of attack. It had been erected by the great-grandfather and namesake of our Pierre Bayard, probably on the site of an earlier stronghold, in the year 1404. No better position could have been chosen, for it commanded a deep valley on two sides, in a wild and mountainous district of Dauphiné, near the village of Pontcharra in the Graisivaudan. Even now we can still see from its ruins what a powerful fortress it was in its time, with massive towers three stories high, standing out well in front of the castle wall, and defended by a strong drawbridge. Well fortified, it could have stood a siege before the days of artillery.

But towards the end of the fifteenth century, when Bayard's childhood was spent here, such castles as these were not looked upon as mainly places of defence and refuge, they were gradually becoming more like the later manor-houses—family homes, with comfortable chambers and halls, where once there had chiefly been the rude dwelling of a garrison used for defence and stored with missiles and arms.

Each story of the castle, as well as the towers, would contain various chambers, well lighted with windows pierced in the thick stone walls. On the first floor, approached by a broad flight of steps from the court, we find the oratory—scarcely large enough to be dignified by the name of chapel—the dining-hall, and the private chamber of the lord of the castle. On the floor above this the lady of Bayard had her own apartment, the "garde-robe" or closet where her dresses were kept, and the place where her daughters as they grew up, and any maidens who were brought up under her care, sat at their needlework, and where they slept at night. On the upper story were the rooms for the young children with their maids, and the various guest-chambers.

The ground floor below the dining-halls was a dark place given up to store-rooms and the servants' quarters, and below this again were cellars and grim dungeons, which could only be reached by trap-doors. The kitchen, usually a round building, stood in an outer court, and here great wood fires could be used for the needful hospitality of a country house....