CHAPTER IV
A poor rag of a man, with the pinched face of a sick girl, came limping on sore heels to the western gate of Pevensey. The man had a broken arrow through the flesh of his neck; his mouth was all awry, and his breath came in great heaves, for he had run ten miles that morning. When someone caught him round the middle as he tottered at the gate, he doubled up like a wet clout over a line, and emptied his very soul over the stones. The guards put him on his back awhile, rubbed his legs, and gave him a horn of mead to drink. One of them forced the back of the arrow through the skin, and whipped it out as a woman whips a broken bodkin out of a friend’s finger.
The beer, and the blunt heroism of this barber surgeon brought Barnabo’s man briskly upon his haunches. He clapped his hand to his neck, saw that there was blood on it, and promptly began to whimper.
“You’ve pulled the spiggot out,” he wailed. “Lord, did ever a hogshead gush faster! Linen—oil, and linen, for the love of the Saints.”
The men laughed at him. One of them took a smock that hung on a nail outside the porter’s lodge, tore a strip from it, spat on the wound, and bandaged Barnabo’s man till he had a gorget and whimple fit for a nun.
“Take a little more beer, comrade,” he said. “Never a rabbit ran more bravely.”
The fugitive sulked under their attentive and jeering faces.
“Go to perdition,” he retorted. “It was fifty to one, there, in the woods. Messire Gaillard must hear of it. You will all be very brave, sirs, when these devils begin to shoot at you from behind a hundred trees.”
Gaillard heard of it soon enough, as did Etoile, and Peter of Savoy. Barnabo had been waylaid in the woods that morning, and the pole-cats had clawed him off his mule. For no man was more hated than Dan Barnabo in those parts, a hard, shrewd man who held many benefices, and saw that his steward ground out the dues. The Italian could not speak ten words in the vulgar tongue. His ministrations would have been ridiculous had he ever troubled his soul about the people. It was told that a woman had once waylaid Barnabo, and demanded to be shriven. The Italian had understood nothing of what she said to him, but since she was pretty and importunate, he had created a scandal by misunderstanding her whole desire, and by seeking to comfort her in a fashion that was not fatherly. The woman had scratched Barnabo’s face. There were many people who had lusted to scarify him more viciously. Barnabo baptised no children, sought out none of the sick, buried none of the dead. Twice a year perhaps he had said mass in the churches that belonged to him. Few of the people had come to hear Barnabo’s Roman voice. He was a better lute player and lap-dog than priest, and the people knew it.
Gaillard had his orders from Peter of Savoy. Etoile laughed in his face when she met him upon the stairs.
“Let the pole-cats play a little with Barnabo,” she said. “Do not ride furiously, dear lord! I can learn to serve at chess better than Barnabo.”
Gaillard caught at her, but she slipped past him up the stairs.
“There are two sorts of fools in the world, my Gaillard,” she said. “One is killed for the sake of a woman, the other through greed for a woman. Keep out of Barnabo’s path.”
Both Peter of Savoy and the Gascon knew whither Barnabo had ridden that April day. It was notorious that the Italian had kept afocariaor hearth-ward at a priest’s house of his in a valley beyond the hill called Bright Ling because of the glory of its heathlands in the summer. The woman—a Norman—was more comely than was well for Dan Barnabo’s name, and she had kept the house for him, and rendered it to him sweet and garnished whenever he chose to ride that way.
Gaillard and his men marched past Dallington, where Guillaume Sancto de Leodegario was lord of the manor, and on over Bright Ling with the furze in full bloom. The little red spy jogged along beside the Gascon’s horse. He led them into a deep valley, a valley full of the grey-green trunks of oak trees, and the brown wreckage of last year’s bracken. A stream dived and winked in the bottoms, and at the end of a piece of grassland the thatch of the priest’s house shelved under the very boughs of the oaks. No smoke rose from the place. It seemed silent and deserted as Gaillard and his men came trampling through the dead bracken.
Gaillard’s eyes swept hillside and valley, for he was shrewd enough to guess that many an alert shadow had dogged them on the march that day. He dismounted, sent his archers into the woods as scouts, and taking the pick of his men-at-arms, marched up to the silent house, holding his shield ready to catch any treacherous arrow that might be shot from the dark squints. A wooden perch shadowed the main entry, and Gaillard saw that the door stood ajar, and that the flagstones paving the porch were littered with rushes, and caked with mud as though many feet had passed to and fro over the stones.
Gaillard pushed the door open with the point of his sword. It gave to him innocently enough, and he crossed the threshold, and stood staring at something that the men behind him could not see.
The place had the dimness of twilight, lit as it was by the narrow lancets cut in the thickness of the wall. Not three paces from Gaillard, their feet nearly touching the floor, two bodies dangled on ropes from the black beams of the roof. The face of the one was grey; of the other, black and turgid; for one had died by the sword, the other by the rope.
The body with the black face was still twisting to and fro as a joint twists on a spit before the fire. The arms had been pinioned, and the man’s tongue been drawn out, and the head of an arrow thrust through it. The face could scarcely be recognised, but by the clothes Gaillard knew him for Dan Barnabo, the Italian, lutanist, lover, spoiler of the poor.
Gaillard touched the body. It was still warm. His men were crowding in, peering over each other’s shoulders so that the doorway was full of faces, shields, and swords.
Gaillard waved them back. He swung his sword, struck at the rope that held Barnabo, and cut it so cleanly that the body came down upon its feet. For a moment it stood, poised there, before falling forward to hide its black face in the rushes.
Gaillard looked at it a little contemptuously, thinking of Etoile, and the rivalry between her and this thing that had been a man.
“Only fools come by such a death,” he said. “A dog’s death. This man had a woman’s hands.”
Dusk was falling, and Gaillard and his men settled themselves to pass the night in dead Barnabo’s house under the oak trees. Gaillard, who did not trouble himself about such a thing as a “crowner’s quest,” had the two bodies buried in the garden at the foot of a holly tree. Waleran de Monceaux had hanged Barnabo, and the priest was not pretty to look at with his black face and his swollen tongue. Nor was Gaillard going to quarrel with so convenient a coincidence. He called his archers back out of the woods, posted two sentinels, had the horses brought in and stabled in the hall. A fire was lit on the hearth, and the men gathered round it, and opened their wallets for supper.
Gaillard kept the red-headed hunchback at his elbow, and questioned him narrowly as to the woodways, and the manor houses, and the gentry with whom he would have to deal. These Sussex rebels had hanged Barnabo, and in the hanging, thrown down the blood gauge to Peter of Savoy. War was Gaillard’s business. He had learnt the trade in Gascony, where neighbour went out against neighbour as for a day’s hunting. Nor was it Gaillard’s concern to trouble about the law of the land, and how far feudal faith bound this man or that. The King was the great over-lord, and Peter of Savoy stood as his champion in those parts. Hence if rebels popped their heads up, it was only necessary to strike with the sword.
Night fell, and the men lay down to sleep in the long hall, crowding about the fire, for the horses were ranged along the walls. The air of the place was close and heavy with the smoke from the fire, the animal heat of the crowded bodies, and the pungent scent of horses’ dung. Faint flickers of light lost themselves in the black zenith of the timbered roof. Gaillard, sitting propped in a corner with his sword across his knees, could hear the wet murmur of the stream that ran close to the house. He could also hear the two sentinels answering each other, and since they seemed so whole-heartedly alert, Gaillard dozed off like a dog.
About midnight Gaillard opened his eyes, and sat staring at the dying fire, and though he remained motionless, his face sharpened like the face of one who listens. His eyes moved slowly from figure to figure, to rest at last on the shutter closing a window. And Gaillard saw that the shutter was shaking ever so little, and he knew that there was no wind.
Gaillard did not move. He could hear a vague scuffling as of many men moving about the house. But there were other sounds that made the Gascon’s lips tighten and retract so that the teeth showed, a faint crackling as of dry brushwood being piled against the door of Barnabo’s house.
The Gascon saw the shutter open. A white face peered in with eyes that moved like the eyes of a wonder-working image. Then the face disappeared, and the shutter closed again, but Gaillard was on his feet, and going to and fro, silently rousing his men. Hardly a word was spoken. The men caught up their arms, and stood like listening dogs, while the archers marked the windows.
Gaillard was at the door trying to lift the bar, but some weight from without had jammed it in the sockets. He stood listening, sniffing the air, and watching grey puffs of smoke come curling in through the crevices. Then he shouted an order through the hall, an order that brought his men crowding forward for a sally. Some of the strongest of them put their shoulders to the bar. It flew up, letting the door swing in with a gush of smoke and a crash of falling faggots.
“Out—out!”
Gaillard and his men broke through, hurling the brushwood aside, dragging it into the hall, cursing as they realised the devil’s trick that had been played them. Only the outer faggots were alight. There was a gush of flame under the hooded entry, but Gaillard and his men sprang through it with a weird glitter of gold upon their harness, and an uprush of smoke and sparks. Dark figures flitted about the priest’s garden. Arrows whistled and struck the walls as the Savoyard’s men came tumbling out over the burning faggots.
There was a sharp tussle in the garden; blows were given and taken in the dark; arrows shot at a venture; torches thrust into hairy faces. Gaillard’s men-at-arms in their heavy mail, for they had lain down armed to sleep, were more than a match for the woodlanders in their leather jerkins. Soon—scampering shadows went away into the moonlight. Gaillard and his men were left to put out the fire about the porch.
And savage men they were, men with the hot flare of that death trap in their nostrils. The two sentinels had been stalked and killed, and the brushwood piled against the door. The windows were so narrow that men could have been shot while struggling through them. The flames and smoke would have leapt in, making the place a hell of plunging, terrified beasts, and mad and half-dazed men.
Gaillard watched his fellows trampling on the brushwood. Now and again an arrow came whistling out of the moonlight.
“We will pay them for this,” he said grimly. “God, but they meant to burn us like blind mice in a stack!”
The fire was soon out, and there was nothing left but to wait for the daylight, and to keep the house in darkness so that no lurking woodlander should have the outline of a window for a mark. Gaillard’s men were very sullen and bitter over the night’s adventure. They had brought in the two dead sentinels, and crowded about them, letting their fury break out in growls for to-morrow’s reckoning. There was no more sleep for Gaillard’s men that night; they squatted round the walls, telling each other what they would do to these people who murdered priests and set fire to houses where the King’s men slept.
The dawn came with a thick mist hanging over the woods, even covering the crowns of the uplands of Bright Ling. Gaillard had made his plans, and in the garden the little spy was drawing a map on the soil with the point of a charred stake. The archers had gone out to scout, but had found nothing but fog and rotting bracken. Gaillard ordered his men to horse, and they were soon on the move through the mist, the drippings from the trees falling on them, and on grass that was grey with dew.
The hunchback, marching beside Gaillard’s horse, led them towards Goldspur, following the high ground where there was less chance of an ambuscade. Gaillard had ordered silence. Not a man spoke. The grey shapes moved through the greyer mist with no sounds but the dull shuffle of hoofs, the occasional snort of a horse, the creaking of saddles, and the faint jingle of steel.
It was still very early when they came to the hill above Goldspur, and skirted the great beech wood whose topmost boughs were beginning to glitter in the sunlight. The mist lifted quite suddenly like a white diaphanous curtain drawn up into the sky. A broad beam of sunlight clove like a sword into the deeps of the beech wood. And to these rough riders of Peter of Savoy was revealed a vision, a vision such as a crystal-gazer might watch growing from nothingness in the heart of a crystal.
In the full sunlight at the opening of a glade a woman stood washing herself at a forest pool. The woman’s figure gleamed like snow against the sombre trunks of the trees. Her hair blazed about her naked body like flames licking a white tower. As yet she had not seen that line of armed men winding along the hillside not a hundred paces from where she stood.
Gaillard reined in, and held up a hand for his men to halt. He looked from the woman to the hunchback who held his stirrup strap.
“Hallo, what have we here?”
The cripple crossed himself, cur that he was.
“It is Denise of the Forest, lording,” he said. “They call her their Lady of Healing in these parts. She has a cell yonder, in the wood. She can work miracles, so they say.”
The rough faces behind Gaillard were all agog. A short, yapping laugh came from some man in the rear. Gaillard turned in the saddle, and looked for the man who had made the noise.
“Enough of that, sirs,” he said. “Shall we laugh because a saint happens not to cherish vermin.”
Perhaps curiosity pricked Gaillard, perhaps something still more human. At all events he pushed his horse forward and rode alone up the stretch of green turf that sloped towards the beech wood. The men grinned like apes so soon as his back was turned. Messire Gaillard might be a great captain, but assuredly he was no saint.
Gaillard was laughing to himself with a coarse spirit of mischief, being inquisitive as to what this woman would do when she discovered that she was no longer alone. He carried his chin high in the air, his hard eyes gleaming like the eyes of a man who has drunk strong wine. But Denise made her womanhood a thing of pride and splendour that spring morning. Her tunic was still open at the bosom when the Gascon’s horse threw a shadow on the grass close to the pool.
Denise looked Gaillard straight in the eyes, and yet not at him, but past him, as though he were so much vapour. Gaillard, Gascon that he was, had not a word to say for himself, though he boasted himself so debonair with women. Denise took her hair with her hands, put it behind her shoulders, and picking up the clean cloth that she had brought, turned and walked away into the wood.
For once in his life Gaillard felt a fool, and his arrant sheepishness did not please him. He comforted himself with that infallible sneer that is the refuge of a vain man who has done something mean and cowardly.
“Red-headed Pharisee, go your way,” he said. “A woman’s sanctity is as thick as her skin. Fool! I am not the first sheep that has bleated in these parts.”
CHAPTER V
Grimbald the priest stood on guard under the ash tree where the road left Goldspur for the open fields. He had a buckler on his arm, and an axe over his shoulder. His short, frayed cassock showed the beginnings of a brown and mighty pair of calves, and the feet in the leather sandals looked like the feet of an Atlas whose shoulders wedged up the heavens.
There had been a panic at Goldspur that morning, when a lad had run in with the news that he had seen armed men riding through the mist, and that they were marching towards Goldspur. And Grimbald, stalking down into the village, had met some of the younger men skulking off as though there were no women and children to be remembered. Grimbald had twisted a stake out of the hedge, dusted some decent shame into these cowards, and driven them back into Goldspur much as a drover drives his cattle.
Grimbald had found the village in an uproar, for Aymery was away with Waleran, and the folk had tumbled over each other for the lack of a leader. Men and boys had herded in sheep and cattle, and the beasts were bolting all ways, and taking every road but the right one. Women, weeping, scolding, chattering, were carrying out their chattels from the cottages. One had a baby at the breast; another clutched a young pig; a third sat at her door, and screamed like a silly girl. Men were arguing, shouting, quarrelling, eager to do the same thing, but obstinate in trying to do it each in his several way.
Then Grimbald had come and shepherded the people, knocked together the heads of the men who quarrelled, and turned disorder into order. The sheep, cattle, and pigs were driven off towards the woods. Men, women, and children followed, carrying all that they could put upon their backs. In a quarter of an hour from Grimbald’s coming Goldspur village was a row of empty hovels, with nothing alive there but a few chickens, and the sparrows, who trusted in God, and continued to build in the thatch.
Grimbald had set himself at the lower end of the village, and stood there like the giant figure of some protecting saint. He was about to follow his flock when he saw a man on horseback round a spur of woodland in the valley. He came on at a canter for the village, and Grimbald knew him for Aymery by the colours of his surcoat and his horse.
Aymery reined in, hot with galloping, his eyes keen and full of flashes of light. He had been with Waleran, and had ridden to warn his people of what they might expect that day.
Grimbald pointed with his axe to the open doors of the hovels.
“They are safe in the woods by now. Have you had view of Peter’s gentry?”
Aymery turned his horse, and shaded his eyes with his hand.
“They left the priest’s house under Bright Ling—at dawn. Waleran tried a trick there, but the dogs smelt the smoke. I saw their spears coming down the hill as I crossed the valley.”
Aymery looked towards the beech wood on the hill, his eyes flashing back the morning sunlight. The muscles of his jaw were hard and tense.
“We must bide our time, and watch them,” he said; “they are coming to make a bonfire here. They can burn every stick of the place so long as they have not meddled with Denise.”
Grimbald shifted his axe from one shoulder to the other. If ever a man had cause to be jealous of a woman, that man was Grimbald. But his heart was too warm and too well tilled to harbour such a weed. He thanked God for the good he found in the world, and did not quarrel with it because it was not part of his own halo.
“She cannot be left yonder,” he said.
Aymery still looked at the beech wood, head thrown back, grey eyes a-glitter.
“We must take cover and watch. They will be here soon, and we shall see. To-night, I will take her away.”
A gleam of spears showed in the valley, and Aymery rode off to the nearest wood with Grimbald holding to his stirrups. They saw Gaillard and his men come over the fields to Goldspur village, and Denise was not with them. Aymery’s eyes made sure of that. The Gascon found nothing but the empty hovels, the untroubled sparrows, and a black cock crowing and scratching on a dunghill. One of Gaillard’s men fitted an arrow to the string, shot the black cock through the body, and laughed at the way the bird tumbled and flapped in the death agony.
“Brother Barnabo may find use for him,” said someone, and there was a laugh.
“He will wake him before daylight,” quoth another. “Such birds are useful to gallant clerks.”
Goldspur village did not go up in smoke that morning, for Gaillard, cunning as a fox, did not always run straight for the game in view.
“We will take our dinner elsewhere, sirs,” he said. “When we are over the hill, the fools may think that they will see us no more. When does a cat catch mice? We shall do better in the dark.”
And Aymery and Grimbald saw him and his men ride on towards the west as though an empty village were too miserable a thing even to be burnt. Nor did they turn aside to where the gable end of the manor house showed amid the oak trees. It seemed that Gaillard had another quest in view. Goldspur was left to the sparrows and the dead cock on the dunghill.
Aymery and Grimbald watched the raiders till they had disappeared.
“We are free of them for one day, brother. What about our people?”
“We had better look to the fools,” said Grimbald. “They are as frightened as rabbits.”
And they went off together into the woods.
Aymery and the priest found the Goldspur folk penning their cattle in a wild part of the forest. The men had cut boughs and furze bushes, and the women were building rude huts for shelter at night. Aymery sent some of the boys to scout through the forest, and bring back any news of Gaillard that they could gather. About noon one of Waleran’s men came in, with a word to Aymery that Waleran and the woodlanders were gathering to ambush the Savoyard’s men. Grimbald and Aymery went off to join in the tussle, but saw nothing of Waleran though they sought him most of the day. A woodman who was felling oak trees to bark for the tanner, told them that young St. Leger had ridden by, and that Gaillard and his company had marched back beyond Bright Ling. Aymery and the priest turned homewards towards Goldspur. The long shadows of evening were purple upon the grass, and Aymery’s heart remembered Denise.
They came to Goldspur manor as the dusk was falling, and the song of the birds went up towards the sunset, and everything was very still. The bridge was down over the narrow moat, and the gate open; no man had been there all that day, for Aymery’s servants had fled with the village folk, and two men who could handle their bows had been sent two days ago with Waleran into the woods.
Grimbald drew the bridge, while Aymery went to the stable to feed and water his horse. They had no fear of Peter of Savoy’s riders that night, and took their augury from the fact that Gaillard had left the place untouched that morning. Grimbald carried tinder and steel in his wallet, and he lit a torch in the hall, and went to the pantry and kitchen to get bread, beer, and meat for supper. He and Aymery sat down in the empty hall, and ate for a while in silence, like men who were weary, or were sunk in thought.
They were nearly through with their hunger, and were talking of Denise and the hermitage, when Grimbald, who was about to finish his mead, paused with the horn between the table and his mouth. The men’s eyes met across the board. They were both listening, motionless as images carved in stone.
The night seemed dark and silent without, the woodlands asleep, the night empty of all unrest. Yet there had come to Grimbald a sense of something moving in the darkness. And as they listened there was a faint splash from the moat, and a sound like the creaking of wet leather.
Grimbald’s eyes were fixed on Aymery’s face.
“Listen!”
“A rat in the moat?”
Grimbald put his horn down on the table, rose up swiftly and silently, and taking his axe, went out into the courtyard. Aymery’s sword and shield hung from a peg in the wall. He took them down, and had gained the door of the hall when he heard a sudden scuffling of feet, an oath in the darkness, the harsh breathing of men at grips, the splash of something into the water of the moat.
A scattering of arrows whirred and pecked at the walls, one slanting in and smiting the flagstones close to Aymery’s feet. He heard the dull jingle of armed men on the move. Grimbald towered back suddenly out of the night, a red splash of blood on his forehead, his eyes shining in the torchlight.
He flung the door to, and ran the oak bar through the staples.
“Brother, we are trapped! I took the first of them and pitched him into the moat.”
He shook his shaggy head, and looked round the hall. Aymery was buckling on his sword.
“There is the garden bridge,” he said. “We can make a dash for it.”
“Away, then; they are wading the moat, and climbing the palisade.”
Aymery pushed in front of Grimbald as they hurried down a narrow passage-way that led from the hall and the kitchen quarters into the garden.
“I go first, brother,” he said. “I have my steel coat; a stab in the dark might find your heart.”
Grimbald passed a huge arm about Aymery as they went.
“Lad, what is that to me!”
They came out into the garden, and stood for a moment listening. They could hear Gaillard’s men beating in the door of the hall, but towards the garden everything seemed quiet.
Aymery laid a hand on Grimbald’s arm.
“If one of us is taken, brother, let not the other tarry. Remember Denise.”
Grimbald understood him.
“Come,” he said in an undertone, and they crossed the garden side by side.
Now there was a trestle-bridge from the garden over the moat, a footbridge made of a single plank that could be thrust across and withdrawn at pleasure. A wicket in the palisade led to the bridge. Aymery unbarred the gate, and ran the plank forward on to the trestles.
“We shall trick them,” he said grimly, “quick, they have broken in.”
He ran across the bridge, Grimbald following, the plank creaking and sagging under the priest’s weight. Aymery had stooped to drag the plank away again, when he heard Grimbald give a short, deep cry, and saw him spring forward and smite at something with his axe.
“Guard, brother, guard.”
Steel crashed upon steel, a glitter of sparks flying from axe and helmet. An arrow stopped quivering in Aymery’s shield as he sprang forward to Grimbald’s aid. Men rose at him out of the darkness. Dimly in the midst of the waving swords, he had a glimpse of two men clinging to Grimbald. He saw the priest shake them off, and beat them down before him as a boy snaps thistles with a stick. There was a rush of armed men in the darkness, the dash of steel against steel as they blundered one against another. The red splutter of a torch came tossing out of the night, with the hoarse shouting of men trying to tell friend from foe. Grimbald and Aymery lost each other, and fought each for his own hand.
CHAPTER VI
Through the darkness of the night went Denise, her grey cloak passing amid the beech trees like some dim ghost shape that drifts with the night breeze. She had been restless and distraught all day, her splendour of peace ruffled, her heart filling with a distrust of the near future. To begin with, out of the grey fog of the morning had come the man on the black horse, the man with the red eyes and the insolent scoffing mouth. Gaillard had made her shudder despite her pride, for she had learnt to hate the look of such a man before the woods had hidden her from the world. Feeling a shadow of evil near her, Denise had gone down to Goldspur after the Gascon and his men had ridden on, and had found the place deserted, so many silent hovels in a silent landscape. She had wandered up to the manor house, and found the same silence there, the same foreshadowings of tragedy.
The rest of the day had dragged slowly for her in the great beech wood, and she had found her thoughts wandering like children into a forbidden place. And Denise’s pride would start up after these same thoughts, seize on them in that little pleasaunce of dreams, drag them forth, and bar the door. But there was a restless refrain in the mood of the day. The future seemed to fly open before her eyes like the magic gate of an enchanted garden, and she had a glimpse of paradise bathed in a mist of gold. Her thoughts were lured thither, though her pride arose and drove them back.
With the dusk the spirit of unrest in her had deepened, and she had seemed to hear voices calling through the twilight of the woods. A thrush had perched on the topmost bough of a beech tree, and had uttered his desire, till the plaint had rung and rung into Denise’s heart. She had tossed her cloak at the bird, but none of the wild things feared her. And though the dusk fell, the song of the thrush seemed to thrill through the brown gloom.
Then night had come, and her cell had seemed small and stifling, a vault for a live soul. She had thrown her grey cloak over her shoulders, and gone out into the beech wood, following the path that led towards Goldspur manor. Her brown eyes had more than human vision in the darkness, and she knew the wood ways even at night. It was as though she went out to watch over the place, and to dispel the shadow of dread that had settled over her own heart.
Denise had come to the end of the wood where the grassland swept down into the valley, when she stopped to listen, putting her hood back so that she might hear more clearly. Her face was towards Goldspur, and she merged her body into shadow of the trunk of a great tree. Abruptly out of the night came the sudden sound of men shouting, a vague clamour that rose and fell like the noise of a wind through trees. Dots of light shone out in the darkness, jerking to and fro like sparks blown hither and thither by the wind.
Denise stood there watching these dots of fire, afraid yet not afraid, striving to understand what was happening down there in the darkness. The shouting died down suddenly, to change into the scattered cries of men running to and fro. The torches tossed this way and that as though Gaillard’s fellows were hunting for fugitives, calling to one another as they doubled upon their tracks. One of the torches came some little distance up the hill towards the beech wood and then halted, and remained motionless, flaming like the eye of a cyclops.
Denise had drawn back behind the tree, when she heard the sound of something moving in the darkness. A black shape passed momentarily between her and the torch burning below upon the hillside. Footsteps came near to her, the stumbling, irregular, running steps of a man hard put for breath, and perhaps—for blood. He passed close to her in the darkness, labouring for breath, and staggering from side to side. She could still see the moving shadow in the gloom, when it plunged like a man falling forward over a cliff, and she heard the sound of a body striking the crisp, dead leaves. Fear was beneath Denise’s feet for the moment. The man had fallen over the straggling root of a tree, and he was struggling to rise as Denise came up with him.
He had gained his feet, and stood rocking like a drunken man, trying to steady himself, and to win forward into the wood. But his legs would not carry him, and he went swaying as though struck on the chest, to stagger against Denise before she could avoid him. She felt the hard rings of his hauberk against her bosom, and to save herself she held the man, throwing an arm about his body.
Caught thus from behind, he turned his head and looked at her, not questioning the strangeness of it, being dazed and almost dead with what had passed. His face was so close to hers that Denise could not but know him, even in the darkness.
“Aymery!”
Her voice set his dull brain thrilling.
“Denise!”
She kept her arm about him, for there was nothing else for her to do, and he would have fallen had she not held him. Aymery’s face was as white as linen, and she could feel him quivering as he stood.
“Peter of Savoy’s men, we were caught yonder, Grimbald and I.”
He spoke in jerks, and tried to stand apart from her, as though one purpose had carried him so far, and as though the same purpose dominated him still.
“I want breath, that is all; they pressed us hard, there, at Goldspur; we broke through, and I ran for the hills. You must go, Denise, to-night; make for one of the coast towns. I can look to myself.”
He was at the end of his strength, however, for all his hardihood, with a sword cut through the shoulder, an arrow broken in his thigh. Denise could see nothing of all this, but she knew that he could hardly stand. Moreover, he had struggled up into the wood to warn her, and her heart was the heart of a woman though the people called her a saint.
Looking back over her shoulder she saw tongues of yellow flame rising from Goldspur in the valley. Gaillard’s men had set fire to the place. The glow from it caught Aymery’s eyes as he stood, swaying at the knees, great sickness upon him, even his wrath feeble in him because of his wounds and his weariness.
“They have lit me a torch to travel by,” he said bitterly.
Denise was shading her eyes with her hand. She turned swiftly upon Aymery, for she had seen mounted men moving on the hillside between her, and the burning house.
“Lord,” she said simply, “yesterday, you were afraid for my sake; to-night, it is I who fear.”
Her eyes met his, and held them. The secret thoughts of the day no longer had their half treacherous significance. Denise had no thought of self in her that moment; the succouring hands hid the dull radiance of the heart beneath.
“To-night you must rest and sleep.”
He looked at her, as though trying to understand. The darkness began to deepen about him, and he felt cold, and numb to the core.
“I can crawl to cover. If you could bring me wine and food, and a little linen——”
She went close to him suddenly, and passed her hands over his hauberk. Touch told her the whole truth. She had no false shame to make her weak and careful.
“Wounds, and you would have hidden them!”
“A little blood, nothing more. Let me lie here, Denise.”
“To die,” and her voice had a deep, quiet passion in it; “lord, would you choose death for a piece of pride! Come, I know the ways.”
She put an arm about him, as though she was stronger than Aymery that night, and had the will and courage to do for him what he, in his full strength, would have done for her. Suffering and sickness sweep the small prides of life aside. The heart of a woman is as elemental, then, as the wind or the sea.
“Lean on me.”
He looked at her half rebelliously, and then hung his head, and obeyed.
How great his need was became apparent before they had reached the clearing amid the beech trees. The man stumbled and faltered at every step, his head fell forward, he muttered incoherently, like one in the heat of a fever. Denise felt his weight bearing more heavily upon her arm. His head drooped, and rested upon her shoulder. Before they reached the wattle gate of the garden the conscious life was out of him, and Denise, borne down like a vine-ladened sapling bent by the wind, let the man slip from her gently to the ground.
She stood irresolute a moment, then stooping and putting her two hands under his shoulders, she found that she could drag him slowly up the stone path into her cell. Once within she closed the door, and slipping off her cloak, she covered the slit of a window with it. There was a little earthen lamp in the cell, and Denise sought and found it in the darkness, also tinder, flint, and steel. Yet her hands shook so with her labour of bearing up under Aymery’s weight, that it was a minute or more before she had the lamp burning.
Setting it upon a stone sconce in the wall, she bent over Aymery, the light of the lamp making his face seem white as the face of the dead. Her brown eyes grew frightened at the sight of his wounds, and at the way he lay so quiet, and so still. But there was something greater than fear in Denise’s heart that night. In a corner of the cell were some rough boards covered with dry bracken, a coarse white sheet, and a coverlet of wool. Denise, putting her arms once more under the man’s body, half dragged and half lifted him to her own rough bed.
CHAPTER VII
The night was far spent, and the oil in the earthen lamp had failed some hours ago. Denise, sitting in the darkness, with her chin resting on her hands, listened to Aymery’s breathing, and waited for the dawn. Nerving herself, she had twisted the arrow’s head from the flesh, unlaced his hauberk and bound up the wounded shoulder, and poured some wine between his lips. For a long time she had watched him for signs of returning consciousness. Then the lamp had died out and left them in the darkness, and Denise had sat wondering whether the man’s quietude meant sleep or death.
Denise did not close her eyes that night. She was wakeful, strangely wakeful, almost conscious of the beating of her heart. More than once she had bent forward and touched Aymery’s hand, and its coldness chilled her, so that she longed for the day. Often too in the strained suspense of the night’s silence she would fancy that he had ceased to breathe, and she would fall a-praying with a passion that startled even her own heart.
A faint greyness beneath the door, a sudden tentative cry from some awakened bird. For a while silence, then sudden and strange, a thrilling up of note on note, a sense as of golden light mounting in sweeping spirals towards the sky. Wizard’s magic in the grey of the great wood, a thousand throats throbbing in unison till the whole world seemed full of a glory of sound. The very air quivered within the cell. It was as though invisible wings were beating everywhere, while the trees of the forest were tongued with prophetic fire.
Denise rose, opened wide the door, and let the song of the birds come to her with the cold fragrance of the breaking day. As yet greyness everywhere, grey grass, grey trees. A gradual gathering of light, then, of a sudden, as though some god had hurled fire into the sky, a blur of gold, a cry of crimson from the mouths of the pale clouds. Soon, an arch of amber in the east, the forest black against the splendour thereof, the grass a-gleam, the sky in the zenith still dim like a woman’s eyes dim with tears. A beautiful tenderness transfigured the face of the world; no wicked thing seemed thinkable while those birds were singing.
So the dawn came, and flung his torch into the cell at Denise’s feet.
Now that the daylight absolved her from suspense, she turned, a little fearfully, and knelt down beside the bed. The man’s face was in the shadow, so that it looked very sharp and grey to her, yet he was breathing quietly with his lips closed. Only a little blood had soaked through the bandages. Yet Denise knelt watching him, unable to shake off the haunting dread that he might not wake to see another dawn.
Whether it was the daylight playing on his face, or the long gaze of Denise’s eyes, Aymery awoke without so much as the stirring of a hand, and looked up straight into the woman’s face. And for some moments those two stared silently into each other’s eyes.
Aymery half rose upon his elbow, but Denise’s hand went to his unwounded shoulder.
“Lie still,” she said to him, with a pressure of the hand.
He obeyed her, and sank back upon the bed. Denise saw his lips move, but no words came from them. His eyes wandered from her face about the cell, as though the slow consciousness of it all were flowing into his brain. And as the daylight broadened, his mind’s awakening seemed to keep pace with it. He was lying in Denise’s cell, and upon Denise’s bed.
“How long have I been here?”
She bent towards him, her hair shining about her face. Aymery’s eyes caught the sheen thereof, and seemed dazzled by its glory.
“Only lie still,” she said. “In the night I thought that you would die. You are safe here. None but friends know the ways.”
He seemed to feel the first burning of his wounds, for his hand went to his right shoulder, but Denise caught it, and laid it upon the coverlet.
“I have looked to your wounds.”
“How did I come here?”
His eyes searched her face.
“You are safe, is not that enough; yet, you were very heavy,” and she smiled at him.
“Have you seen Grimbald?”
“No, no one.”
Aymery was silent for a moment, looking at Denise with a kind of quiet wonder. Her face was turned from him. And suddenly he caught her hand, and lifted it, and for a moment its whiteness lay across Aymery’s mouth.
“God guard you, Denise.”
Her eyes flashed down at him.
“You must live. I ask that.”
“Assuredly, I cannot die.”
Denise rose up and went out into the sunlight, for her face had blazed suddenly with blood that rushed from the heart.
The first thing that Denise did that morning was to take a pitcher that stood beside the door, and to go down to the spring to draw water. There were drops of the man’s blood upon the stones of the path, and Denise, bringing back her pitcher, washed the stains away so that they should offer no betrayal. The beech wood seemed still and empty in the morning sunlight. Yet the peril of the night haunted her heart continually with an innocence that had no thought of self.
She went to refill the pitcher at the spring, looking watchfully down every dwindling woodway, and listening even for the rustle of dead leaves. Aymery was lying awake when she returned. His eyes watched her a little restlessly, and there was something in those eyes of his that made the blood come more quickly to her face.
Turning to a cupboard she took out bread, honey, and a little jar of wine.
“Is that water, there?”
He was looking at the pitcher.
“Yes.”
Denise understood him instantly, for she found a clean napkin in the cupboard, moistened it, and bent over the bed.
“Your lips are dry.”
She put a hand under his head, raised it, and washed his mouth and face. He held out his hands to her, and she washed those also, yet her eyes avoided Aymery’s, and their deeps were hidden from him by the shadows of their lashes.
“Are you hungry?”
“No, not even a little.”
“But you must eat for your strength’s sake.”
“I will do all that you desire.”
She would not suffer him to manage for himself, but spread the honey on the bread, and held the wine flask for him to drink.
“It is all that I can give,” she said simply.
He looked at her, but found no answer for the moment. Both of them had grown suddenly shy of one another and when their hands touched, the touch thrilled them from hand to heart.
Denise left him at last, and going to the doorway of the cell, stood to break bread for her own need. Yet though her face was turned from him, she could not put the man’s nearness from her, and the bread as she crumbled it, fell in waste on the stones at her feet.
“Denise.”
Aymery’s voice startled her. He had not spoken loudly, but there was a return of strength in the tone thereof.
“Yes?”
“You shall be rid of me before nightfall. I only ask for a day’s grace.”
She had turned and was looking down at him with solemn eyes.
“It will be days before you must stir,” she said. “Remember that I saw your wounds.”
“They are nothing.”
“Lord, I know otherwise. You will bide there on that bed.”
She spoke quietly enough, but Aymery looked up at her restlessly, watching the sunlight shining through her hair.
“I cannot lie here, Denise.”
“You are safe.”
“Too safe, perhaps; it is not of my own safety——”
He paused, but not before she had caught his meaning. The truth was difficult for Aymery to utter, and yet she honoured him for thinking of her honour.
“None but our friends come this way,” she answered.
He half rose in bed with the strong and generous passion that made his pale face shine on her out of the darkness of the cell.
“Mother of God, child, am I so selfish, and so blind! Do I not remember what you are, to all of us in these parts. If these dogs found me here! I would rather crawl on my hands and knees than tempt that chance.”
Her face flushed deeply, but not because of the mere words that he had spoken. A sudden impulse seized her, an impulse that came she knew not whither. Aymery had sunk back again, and the sight of this strong man’s weakness went to her heart. In the taking of a breath she was bending over him, and holding the wooden cross that hung at her girdle. Kissing it she held it before Aymery’s eyes.
“Lord, let this be as a sign between us, for I have no fear.”
He looked at the cross, then at Denise, and his eyes seemed to catch the glimmer of her hair.
“Denise, but one day,” he said. “To-morrow——”
“Leave God the morrow.”
“Yet, who knows what even the morrow may bring.”
Denise turned from him, and going out, closed the door. She stood leaning against it, looking above the trees into the blue of a spring sky. Infinitely strange, infinitely wonderful seemed this mysterious fire that had been kindled suddenly within her heart. Quench it she could not, though she strove to smother and hide it even from herself. As for Aymery, the cell seemed very dark to him, for lack of the radiance that had streamed from her hair.
Denise went down through the beech wood towards Goldspur that morning, meaning to see whether Gaillard and his men had gone. The valley was full of sunlight, but over the village hung a thin dun-coloured mist, with pale smoke curling upwards into the blue. No live thing moved in the valley, and even her hope of the glimpse of a friend failed her. Still, her heart was glad that there were no riders there, and that the violence of the night seemed farther from her world.
Gaillard had gone. He and his men had passed the night, drinking and warming themselves before the burning house, none too pleased with the evening’s handiwork. Soon after dawn a rider had come galloping in, beaconed through the darkness by the glare of the burning manor, and Gaillard, when he had spoken with the fellow, had ordered his men to horse, after they had buried two comrades who had fallen beneath Grimbald’s axe. They had ridden away towards the sea, since my Lord of Savoy had called Gaillard back to Pevensey.
The night before, some thirty “spears” and a company of archers had marched in from Lewes, sent thence by John de Warenne, the Earl.
“Since the iron is hot in your parts, sire,” ran the Earl’s message, “I send you a hammer for your anvil. God keep the King.”
Peter of Savoy had laughed at the message, and thrown a jewel into Etoile’s lap.
“The book tells us that we should go a-hunting,” he had said. “We will send for the Gascon back again. There are lusty rebels to be pulled down when the King’s need is paramount.”
Etoile had laughed in turn, with a gleam of black eyes and of white teeth.
“Let our horns blow, sire, I too will ride with you.”
“A bolt in time saves twine,” quoth her man.
When Gaillard returned that morning, and Peter of Savoy heard the news of Dan Barnabo’s death, and the way the mesne lords had called out their men, he smiled at Gaillard very grimly, and twitted him with the little that he had done.
“You are clever at lighting bonfires, my Gascon,” he said. “But singeing the bear makes him only madder. We have no need of our clerks and lawyers, for when such work is afoot we can shut justiciar, coroner, and sheriff up in the same box. Will any man tell me that I have no right of private war in my own manors. The King is defied! Go to now, we have our warrant.”
Gaillard showed his teeth, and shot a stealthy, swaggering look towards Etoile.
“To catch the fox, sire, we must have hounds enough.”
“Take them, my boaster, and sweep the countryside. We will ride with you to see the chase.”
“And madame, also? We will show her how these pigs of Englishmen can run.”
That same evening as the sun sank low, Denise went down to draw water at the spring. The woods were full of a glory of gold, and the chequered shadows of the trees fell upon the brown leaves, and the vivid grass. The gorse seemed lit as for the evening of All Souls. Perfumes rose out of the pregnant earth. A hundred thrushes seemed chanting a vesper song.
The heart of Denise also was full of strange, elfin music. There was a smile upon her mouth, and her eyes caught the enchanted distance of dreams. As she drew water at the spring and the ripples of the pool were inset with gold, she sang to herself softly, a song that she had learnt as a young girl, a song of the tower, and not of the cell.
Aymery heard her singing as she came across the glade to the gate of the garden. The door of the cell stood open, but Denise had hung her cloak so as to hide the bed.
When she came in to him, Aymery watched her with the eyes of a man whose heart is troubled. For he felt the guilt of his presence in that place, and the fairness of Denise had made him afraid. True, she had taken no formal vows, but to the world she was a creature whose very feet made the brown earth holy.
“No news of Grimbald?”
“None.”
Her deep voice thrilled him, but he stirred uneasily upon the bed.
“I have gained strength to-day.”
“Do not waste it, then, lord,” she answered him.
His eyes pleaded with her like the eyes of a dog.
“Give me a hand, Denise; I will try if I can stand.”
“No; why, you will but open your wounds again.”
“My thoughts are more to me than my wounds, Denise.”
He struggled up suddenly before she could hinder him, only to turn faint and dizzy, for the blood fell from his brain. He swayed, and went grey as Denise’s gown.
“Are you mad, lord; you will die of your wilfulness!”
She put her arm about his shoulders, and her hair brushed against his cheek.
“Denise, if I could so much as crawl——”
His wistfulness woke a rush of tenderness in her.
“No, no, rest here.”
“Rest! I cannot rest, cannot you understand?”
Denise’s arm was still about his shoulders. They looked into each other’s eyes, one long look full of mystery, of sadness, and unrest.
“My heart understands you,” she said very softly. “Yet, is there shame in my wishing you to live.”
She let him lie back on the bed, and taking the wine, she made him drink, and her hand brushed the hair from off his forehead.
“You must sleep,” she said. “No harm can come while I am watching.”
And Aymery’s eyes were full of a silent awe.