Life on a Mediaeval Barony. William Stearns Davis
The swearing is evil, but the gambling is worse. There are at least ten gambling games, some with three dice, some needing six. Adela has been warning François, her eldest son, concerning a recent instance of reckless playing. A young squire, whose father held lands of Conon, set forth to seek his fortune at the king's court. He halted at Pontdebois, where he met an older soldier of fortune at the tavern. The poor young man was induced "to try a few casts." Soon he had lost his travel money; next his horse; next his armor. In desperation he began pledging his ordinary vesture to the tavern keeper (who acted as a kind of pawnbroker). Ill luck still pursued, and he was reduced to his bare shirt[15] before a friend of his father's, chancing about the inn, recovered his necessary clothes between them and sent him home, utterly humiliated. Such calamities are constant. Dice are daily the ruin of countless nobles and villeins—but the accursed gaming continues. It is even rumored that in certain disorderly monasteries these tools of the devil often intrude further to demoralize the brethren.
THE GAME OF CHESS
An ivory plaque of the fourteenth century
(Musée du Louvre).
Chess in Great Esteem
No such ill odor, however, attends that game in which Conon delights most. To play at chess is part of an aristocratic education. In a jongleur's romance we hear of a young prince who was brought up "first to know his letters," and then "to play at tables (backgammon), and at chess; and soon he learned these games so well that no man in this world could 'mate' him." François and Anseau, the baron's sons, make no such boasts, but both know the moves, and François takes great pride in having lately forced a visiting knight to a stalemate. Great seigneurs and kings carry chessboards around with them on campaigns and are said to amuse themselves with chess problems immediately before or after desperate battles. Plenty of other anecdotes tell of short-tempered nobles who lost self-control when checkmated, broke the chessboards over their opponents' heads, and ended the contest in a regular brawl.
This royal game has doubtless come from the Orient. Caliphs of the Infidels have long since boasted their skill in taking rooks and pawns, but in western lands about the first record comes from the time of Pope Alexander II (1061–73), to whom complaint was made that a bishop of Florence was "spending his evenings in the vanity of chess playing." The bishop's enemies alleged that this was forbidden by the canons prohibiting dice. But the bishop retorted that "dice and chess were entirely different things: the first sinful; the second a most honorable exercise for Christians." The Pope tactfully refrained from pressing the matter. Nevertheless, austere churchmen regarded the game as worldly, and impetuous religious reformers insisted on confounding it with games of chance. It was only in 1212 that a Council of Paris forbade French clerics to play chess, just as it (for about the thousandth time) forbade dice—despite which fact the Bishop of Pontdebois spent a whole afternoon over the chessboard the last time he visited the castle and could test his skill on the baron.
As for the nobility, no one thinks of refusing to play, although naturally it is the older knights who have the patience for long contests. According to the Song of Roland, after Charlemagne's host had taken Cordova the Emperor and all his knights rested themselves in a shady garden. The more sedate leaders immediately played chess, although the younger champions selected the more exciting backgammon.
The chessmen are often made of whalebone and imported from Scandinavia. They are models of warriors. The kings have their swords drawn; the knights are on horseback; in place of castles we have "warders," a kind of infantrymen; the bishops hold their croziers; and the queens upbear drinking horns like the great ladies in a northern house. Conon, however, has a fine ivory set made in the East; and Oriental models differ from the Norse. The Infidels, of course, have no bishops; instead there is a phil—a carved elephant; and since Moslems despise women, instead of a queen there is a phrez, or counselor. Chessboards are usually made of inlaid woods, or even metals, and Conon has an elegant one with squares of silver and gilt, the gift of a count whose life he once saved in battle.
Needless to say, chess is a game in which the women can excel. Alienor is well able to defeat her brother, despite his boasting; and among the duties of the ladies of a castle is to teach the young squires who are being "nourished" by its lord how to say "check."
Chess is supposed to be a game of such worth and intricacy as not to need the stimulus of wagering. But, alas! such is the old Adam in mankind that scandalous gambling often goes on around a chessboard. At festivals when nobles assemble, if two distinguished players match their skill, there is soon an excited, if decently silent, crowd around their table. Soon one spectator after another in whispers places wagers to support a contestant; the players themselves begin to bet on their own skill. The final result may leave them almost as poverty-stricken as the dicers in the tavern, as well as compromising salvation by awful oaths.
Young nobles also kill much time with out-of-door games resembling tennis and billiards. The tennis is played without rackets, by merely striking the ball with the open hand. The billiards require no tables, but are played on level ground with wooden balls struck with hooked sticks or mallets, somewhat resembling the hockey of another age. Here again reckless youths often wager and lose great sums. Lads and young maidens are fond, too, of guilles—a game resembling ninepins, although the pins are knocked down, not with balls, but with a stick thrown somewhat like a boomerang. Of course, they also enjoy tossing balls, and young ladies no less than their brothers practice often with the arbalist, shooting arrows with large heads for bringing down birds which take refuge in bushes when pursued by the hawks.
Hawking
But chess, dice and every other game indoors or outdoors pales before the pleasure of hawking or hunting. There is no peace-time sensation like the joy of feeling a fast horse whisk you over the verdant country, leaping fences, and crashing through thickets with some desperate quarry ahead. It is even a kind of substitute for the delights of war. If a visiting knight shows the least willingness, the baron will certainly urge him to tarry for a hunting party. It will then depend on the season, the desire of the guests, and reports from the kennels and mews and the forest whether the chase will be with hawks or with hounds.
Master huntsmen and falconers are always at swords' points. Their noble employers also lose their tempers in the arguments as to venery and falconry, but the truth is that both sports are carried on simultaneously at every castle. If fresh meat is needed, if most of the riders are men, if time is abundant, probably the order is "bring out the dogs." If only the sport is wanted, and the ladies can ride out merely for an afternoon, the call is for the hawks.
LADY WITH A FALCON ON HER WRIST
From a thirteenth-century seal (Archives nationales).
Hunting hawks are everywhere. Last Sunday Adela and Alienor rode over to mass at the abbey church. The good brethren chanting the service were nowise disturbed when each of their high-born worshipers kept a great hooded hawk strapped to her wrist during the whole service.[16] It is well to take your hawks everywhere with you, especially when there are crowds of people, to accustom them to bustle and shouting; but we suspect another reason for always taking hawks about is that the carrying of a hunting bird on your wrist is a recognized method of saying, "I am of gentle blood and need not do any disagreeable work with my hands."
Complicated Art of Falconry
Falcons are counted "noble birds"; they rank higher in the social hierarchy of beasts than even eagles. If one cannot afford large hawks and falcons one can at