CHAPTER VIII
There was a sound of horns in the woodlands as the morning of the second day drew towards noon, and Denise, who had gone down towards Goldspur to discover whether Grimbald or any of the villagers had returned, heard the distant winding of the horns, and stood still to listen.
The day was sunny, with a light breeze blowing, and Denise could see no live thing stirring in the whole valley where the ashes of Goldspur still threw out silver smoke. Yet those distant horns beyond the hills seemed to carry a cry of strangeness and unrest. Denise would have given much to know all that was passing yonder, but no man came that way and she dared not leave the beech wood, and the wounded man in the cell. The very silence and emptiness of the landscape filled her with vague dread. No one had dared to return to the fields or the burnt village. The hawk was still hovering, and the small birds kept their cover.
Aymery was asleep when Denise returned to the cell, but he woke at her coming, and looked up at her for news.
“I have seen nothing but the smoke from Goldspur,” she said calmly enough. “Grimbald and the people still keep to the woods. They may be with us any hour.”
Aymery lay quiet for a while as though sunk in thought. His consciousness reflected clearly the meaning of the past and the promise of the future.
“So they have burnt Goldspur,” he said, as though speaking the words of a prayer.
Denise had set the door wide, and drawn a stool into the sunlight.
“Surely there is some law left in the land?”
“We have surfeited ourselves with law,” he said bitterly; “only to learn that the law bows itself to the man with the sword and the title.”
Denise leant back against the rough oak door-post.
“You will build the house again?” she asked.
He did not answer her for a moment.
“No, not yet,” he said at last. “The sword is the first tool that we Englishmen must handle. These Frenchmen laugh at us, calling us English swine, but the day is near when the tusks of the English boar shall be red with their blood.”
He spoke with the fierceness of the man of the sword, but Denise’s heart was with him, though her hands were held to be hands of mercy.
“Such men as Hubert of Kent, they are our need,” she said.
“Hubert! The land shall give us a hundred Huberts,” and his face blazed up at her. “It will be the bills of England against the spears of this hired scum from France and Flanders, these dogs in the service of dogs who have plundered our lands and shamed our women. They have laughed at us, robbed us, made a puppet of our king. ‘Get you to England,’ has been the cry, ‘It is a land of fools, of heavy men stupid with mead and swine’s flesh. Take what you will. The savages will only gape and grumble.’ But I tell you, Denise, the heart of England has grown hot with a slow, sure wrath. We are Normans no longer, nor Saxons, nor Danes. Men are gripping hands from sea to sea. God see to it, but the years will prove that England is England, the land of the English, and woe to those who shall trifle with our strength.”
Like a mocking voice came the cry of a horn, echoing tauntingly amid the hills. Another took up the blast, and yet another, cheerily braying through the young green of the woods. The two in the cell were mute for the moment, looking questioningly into each other’s eyes.
Aymery raised himself upon his elbow.
“The Savoyard’s men!”
Denise’s eyes were full of a startled brightness.
“Why not Waleran?” she asked him as she stood listening at the door.
“I know the sound of our Sussex horns.”
She stepped out into the sunlight, and went swiftly down the path towards the gate.
“Lie still,” she called to him. “I will go and see what may be learnt.”
Denise knew every alley in the wood, and her grey gown glided westwards amid the dark boles of the trees. Ever and again the horns sang lustily to one another, coming nearer and ever nearer, swelled by the faint but ominous tonguing of dogs. Denise went forward more slowly, pausing often to listen, her brown eyes growing more watchful as the sounds came nearer to her through the maze of the woods. She could feel even her own heart beating; and her face sharpened with the keenness of her vigilance.
Denise drew back abruptly behind the trunk of a great tree. She had heard a crackling of dry leaves, a sound of men moving, voices calling in harsh undertones, one to the other. She crouched down amid the gnarled tree roots, her lips apart, her eyes at gaze. The heavy breathing of tired beasts came to her, with the rustle of leaves, and the quick plodding of many feet. As she crouched there she saw figures go scurrying away through the mysterious shadowland of the woods. Some were mounted on forest ponies, others fleeing on foot. One man passed within ten yards of Denise, his mouth open, his hands clawing the air beside him as he ran. None of them saw her, none of them looked back. They disappeared like so many flitting shadows, and a second silence covered their tracks as water closes behind the keel of a ship.
Denise tarried no longer, but rose and ran back towards the cell. Those flying shadows amid the beech trees had told her all that she could need to know. As for Aymery, she must hide him and take her chance. Her gown gleamed in and out through shadow and sunshine, while the tonguing of the dogs and the scream of the horns haunted her like the discords of a dream.
Denise had half crossed the clearing when she saw a sight that made her catch her breath. Close by the gate lay Aymery, propping himself upon one arm, his head drooping like the head of a man who has been smitten through with a sword.
She ran to him, her eyes a-fire.
“Lord, what have you done?”
He lifted his face to her, a face that was grey and moist in the sunlight. She saw that the linen swathings over his shoulder were red with vivid stains.
“I have time—yet.”
Denise bent over him.
“You are mad, you are bleeding anew.”
“Give me wine, Denise; I can crawl, if I cannot walk.”
She put her arms about him and tried to lift him to his feet.
“No, no, come back to the cell. They are beating the woods. I saw men flying for their lives.”
Aymery clung to her, and gained his feet.
“Denise, I must take my chance, help me into the woods.”
But his eyes went dim and blind in the sunlight, and Denise, as she looked at him, uttered a sharp, passionate cry.
“Lord, you have tempted death enough. Come. There is no time to lose.”
Denise was strong beyond her strength as she put an arm about him, and half led, half carried him into the cell. She let Aymery sink upon the bed, and covered him with the coverlet that he had thrown aside.
“For God’s love, lie still,” she said. “Should they come this way I will put them off with lies.”
Denise went out from him and closed the door. For a moment a great faintness seized her, for she had taxed her very soul in carrying Aymery within. The sunlight flashed and flickered before her eyes, so that she put her hands up before her face, and leant, trembling, against the door. But the sound of the horns and the dogs grew louder in the beech wood, and Denise’s strength came back to her with that fine courage that women show when life and death hang in the balance.
With one quick glance at the woods she went down on her knees on the stone-paved path, and began to pull up the few weeds that she could find in the borders. Her hair had become loosened in her flight through the wood, and hung in waves about her neck and shoulders. Denise kept her eyes on the ground before her, though her ears were straining to catch the slightest sound. She prayed as she knelt there, as she had never prayed for a boon before, that these men might pass by without seeing the dark thatch of her cell.
The trampling of many horses swelled the shrill whimpering and tonguing of the dogs. A horn blared close by. The wood seemed full of voices, of swift movement, of hurrying sounds. Denise heard the laughter of a woman peal out suddenly, strange and unfamiliar in the midst of such a chorus. A man’s voice shouted a fierce command. The whole wood about the place seemed to become alive with colour, and the gleam and clangour of steel.
Denise bent her head over the brown soil and gave no sign. Her fingers plucked at a tuft of grass, but could not close on it because of their great trembling. Her heart told her that these people would not pass by. Swiftly, half fearfully, she raised her head, and looked up over the wattle fence.
Before her the shadowy wood seemed to swim with the faces and figures of armed men. Horses crowded in with tossing manes, shields flickered, surcoats with many colours. Brown-faced archers walked between the horses, their steel caps shining, bows ready with arrows on the strings. Rangers and servants held the dogs in leash, sweating, panting men who cursed the beasts that strained, and yelped, and rose upon their haunches.
In the forefront of the whole rout, like a great gem set in the centre of a crown, Denise saw a woman seated on a milk-white horse. Her green gown was diapered over with golden lilies, and in her hand she carried a bow. The woman’s face was flushed with riding, and her hair disordered in its golden caul. On her right hand rode a lord in a surcoat of purple, and the trappings of his horse were of white and blue. On her left, with a drawn sword over his shoulder, Denise saw the man who had surprised her at the spring.
Since there was no help for it, Denise sat back upon her heels, her face flushed with stooping over the soil. All those hundred eyes seemed fastened upon her. Yet there was a sudden silence save for the whimpering and the chafing of the dogs.
Over the wattle fence, and across the narrow stretch of grass, the eyes of the woman on the white horse met the eyes of Denise. And some instant instinct of enmity seemed to flash between the two, as though—being women—they could read each other’s hearts.
Denise saw her turn to Gaillard, and point with her bow in the direction of the cell. The Gascon laughed, and pretended to pray to the cross of his sword. Then he flapped the bridle upon the neck of his horse, and rode forward to speak with Denise.
CHAPTER IX
Gaillard rode up to the wicket and saw Denise kneeling on the path with weeds and grass tufts scattered along the stones. Paltry, misplaced labour, this, for a woman with such a body and such eyes and hair! Gaillard had his grudge against Denise, and though his impulse was to humble her, he could not forget how the morning sunlight had struck upon her that morning at the pool.
“The best of matins to you, Sanctissima,” he said. “I trust that you are rid of your sins as easily as you are rid of those weeds.”
Denise rose to her feet, his scoffing voice bringing the colour to her face. The look in Gaillard’s eyes made her hate him, a jeering, masterful, boastful look that showed that he was insolently sure of himself, and knew how to play the bully on occasions.
“What would you, messire?” and she felt her face hot under the man’s eyes.
Gaillard stared her over, as though he had no high opinion of women, and especially of those who were comely and yet pretended to be righteous.
“Holy Sister,” and his eyes looked beyond her towards the cell, “why do you shut your door so close of a May morning?”
His red eyes flashed down at her again, and Denise, with a fierce burning of the cheeks, felt that he was watching her, and that her secret might hang upon the tremor of a word.
“You are curious over trifles,” she said curtly. “I live alone here after my own fashion. What would you with all your dogs and men?”
Gaillard heeled his horse close to the gate. Count Peter, Etoile, and all their company watched and waited.
“Come nearer, Sanctissima,” said the Gascon, keeping his eyes fixed upon her face.
Denise did not stir.
“Come now, saint of the beech woods, put your pride aside, and let us talk together. And keep those eyes of yours from anger. It may be that I can give service for service.”
He spoke softly to her, almost suggestively, but Denise hated his smoothness more than his insolence.
“I do not understand you, messire,” she said.
Gaillard’s eyes grew keen and greedy.
“Such a woman as you, my lady, should not be rash in refusing courtesies. Now, if I ask you to open yonder door?”
She tried to outstare him, but his eyes seemed to look her innocence through and through.
“Say what you please,” she said. “Men fled through the wood here before you came. But I have not meddled in your affairs.”
He tossed his head back suddenly and laughed, so that Denise saw the red roof of his mouth above his smooth, strong, shining chin.
“Sister, do they write of such things in heaven? Clerks tell us a tale that whenever a cock crowed, St. Peter was seized with a spasm of coughing. Who is it that you are hiding, yonder?”
Denise stood dumb before him. The man’s face mocked her like the face of a mocking Faun.
“I have no answer for you, messire,” she said. “Go back to those who sent you, and to your horns and your dogs.”
She turned slowly, meaning to reach the cell and bar the door, hoping the last hope that these people would ride on and leave her in peace. But Gaillard was too shrewd to be cheated thus. He struck his horse with the spurs, set him at the low fence, cleared it, and trampling the garden under foot, put himself between Denise and the cell.
“A capture, a capture!”
He laughed down in Denise’s face, as he waved his sword to those who were waiting on the fringes of the beech wood.
The flash of the Gascon’s sword brought the whole rout swarming down upon the place, dogs, men, and horses, fur, steel and colour. The wattle fence went down before them; the herbs and the spring flowers were trampled into the soil. A horse plunged and reared close beside Denise, so that she had a glimpse of a black muzzle with the teeth showing, and soaring hoofs ready to crush her to the earth. Some unknown hand thrust her roughly aside, when a hound sprang at her, and was dragged back snarling on the end of a leash. Suddenly in the whirl of it she found Gaillard beside her on his horse, pushing the beast forward so as to shelter her from the rout that had stormed in as though half Waleran’s rebels held the hermitage.
“Back, fools,” and he struck at some of them with the flat of his sword. “Out, out! Who called for a charge?”
He turned his horse this way and that, driving the men back, and clearing a space about the cell.
“Roland, on guard there, man, by the door. Stand to your arms, sirs; am I captain of a drove of swine?”
There was something fine in the way he wheeled his great horse to and fro, driving men and dogs like so many sheep. Denise, her hair falling upon her shoulders, drew back towards the cell, her senses dazed for the moment by all this violence and roughness.
The crowd of armed men parted suddenly, and through the gap between their swords and lances came riding the woman on the milk-white horse, haughty, yet smiling, her bow across her knees. Peter of Savoy rode close beside her, a quiet, noiseless man, whose cold eyes were more dangerous than a dozen swords. Gaillard wheeled towards them, touching his horse with the spur so that the beast caracoled and showed off his lord’s masterfulness in the saddle.
Peter of Savoy smoothed his beard with a gloved hand that showed a great ruby upon the leather.
“What have we here, my friend? The lady in the grey gown looks as though she would kill you an she could.”
Gaillard laughed, and glanced at Etoile.
“That is our Lady of the Woods, sire, a saint whom the boors worship. Yet I might swear that she has more than her scourge, her stone bed, and her cross in that cell.”
Etoile’s black eyes covered Denise.
“Does a saint carry such a fleece of hair,” she sneered. “This man-chase pleases me better and better, sire. See how Madame Dorcas is standing on live coals!”
She laughed, and looked at Denise, tilting her chin, her eyes inquisitively insolent.
“Have the door opened, sire, and let us see what her man is like.”
Peter of Savoy glanced shrewdly at Etoile.
“How fair women love one another! Rosamond’s cup is always ready to the hand.”
Denise had drawn back close to the door of the cell, and stood leaning against the wall under the shadow of the overhanging thatch. Her hair seemed to burn under that band of shade like stormy sunlight under a ragged cloud. Her hands were folded over her bosom, her brown eyes fixed on the white forehead of Etoile’s horse. There was no furtiveness about her face, no flickering of a half confessed shame. The open space between her and Gaillard’s men seemed to symbolise something, perhaps an awe of her that made these rough men of the sword hold back.
Etoile pointed with her bow towards the door, and her eyes challenged Denise.
“Perhaps our Holy Sister will satisfy us with an oath,” she said. “For the lips of a saint cannot utter a lie.”
Denise answered her nothing, and Etoile’s face darkened maliciously under her golden caul.
“Will you lay me a wager, sire?” and she tapped Peter of Savoy on the knee with her bow.
His eyes gleamed at her.
“A star is made wise by the stars; I keep an open mind.”
“Then have the door opened, and let us see whether this good woman cannot hide a lover.”
Peter of Savoy nodded towards the cell, and Gaillard wheeled his horse, catching a glimpse of Denise’s white and waiting face.
“Roland, Jean, Guillaume!”
His strident voice rang out. The three men stood forward with their eyes fixed on him. Gaillard pointed with his sword to the door of the cell.
“Open it.”
They turned to obey him, one of the fellows forcing the door back with the point of his sword, all three of them upon the alert with their shields forward as though expecting the rush of armed men.
The door had swung back showing nothing but a shadowy interior, a dark and deep recess in the midst of the day’s sunlight. The three men craned their heads over their shields. Gaillard heeled his horse forward, and ordered the men aside. Stooping low in the saddle he looked into the cell, his face lean and intent, his eyes like the eyes of a suspicious dog. At first he could distinguish nothing. Then he laughed very softly, straightened in the saddle, and looked down at Denise.
“Perhaps, Sister, your bed works miracles!” he said.
He laughed a little more loudly, his mouth mocking her, his eyes sparkling over the humbling of her pride. The three men began to laugh also. The pother seemed as infectious as the cackling in a farmyard; the dogs opened their mouths, and bayed; the wood became full of stupid, Bacchic mirth.
Etoile laughed as loudly as any of the men, yet with a metallic hardness that was not beautiful.
“Here is a quaint tale,” she said. “Who is it, the lord of Goldspur, did someone say? She has prayed over him like a saint!”
The woman’s shrill laughter stung Denise like the lash of a whip. Her lips moved, but she said nothing.
They were all laughing, and looking upon Denise when a man appeared in the doorway of the cell. He was unarmed, with reddened bandages about one shoulder, and his white face blazed out from the shadows as though all the wrath in the world burnt like a torch behind his eyes. There was something so grim and scornful about that face that the men nearest him fell back, silenced, repulsed, crowding upon one another.
Aymery came out into the sunlight. He looked right and left, his eyes sweeping the circle of rough faces, and leaving on each the mark of his sharp contempt. Gaillard alone had a smile upon his face. He sat in the saddle with his sword over his shoulder, and pouted out his lips as though to whistle. Denise had not turned her head. Yet it was as though she were trying to look at Aymery without betraying the quest of her brown eyes, for Etoile was watching her with a sneer lifting the corners of her mouth.
Aymery glanced up at the Gascon, and then beyond him towards Lord Peter and the lady.
Gaillard laughed aloud.
“It is our friend who ran away from us two nights ago,” he said. “I hope you were happy, sir, hiding under a lady’s bed.”
Aymery’s knees shook under him, and his eyes had turned to grey steel.
“If your heart and mouth are foul,” he said, “make no boast thereof, my hireling. God give me the chance some day, and I will choke you with those words.”
He held his head high, and looked Gaillard in the eyes. But the strength was ebbing from him; he had lost more blood. Two of the Gascon’s men caught him by the arms as he began to totter.
Etoile touched Count Peter with her bow.
“The man has courage in him. We have bated him enough.”
The lord of the castles smiled like a cynic.
“We men are so deserving of pity, we are such fine fellows! Lend him your horse, my desire!”
Peter of Savoy laid a hand over his heart, looking at Etoile under half-closed lids as though she were a child to be humoured. He gave Gaillard his orders. A spare horse was led forward, and Aymery lifted into the saddle. He held to the pommel with both hands, trying to steady himself, a confusion of faces before his eyes.
“Wine, and I shall not hinder you.”
A horn set with silver and closed with an ivory lid, passed from hand to hand. It had come from the wallet that hung from Etoile’s saddle. A soldier held it to Aymery’s mouth, steadying him with one arm. Aymery drank, his hand shaking, so that the red wine stained his chin.
“Thanks, friend, for that.”
He gave the horn back again, raised his head, and looked round him for Denise. She was still leaning against the wall of the cell. Their eyes met for a moment in one quick look that left sadness and joy and pain in the hearts of both.
Gaillard’s voice rang out. A horn screamed. Dogs, men, and horses moved suddenly like a crowd that has been held behind a barrier. Etoile remained motionless upon her horse, watching the men pass by her with Aymery in their midst. Already Gaillard’s red surcoat beaconed towards the gloom of the beech wood, the sun shining upon it so that it looked the colour of blood.
Peter of Savoy loitered beyond the trampled garden, waiting for Etoile, and wondering what whim kept her near the cell. The men had streamed away before she turned her horse and walked the beast slowly past Denise. And she stared at Denise boldly as she passed, her black eyes mocking her from the vantage of her horse.
“Sweet dreams to you, Holy Sister!” she said.
And she rode on laughing, and leapt her horse over the wattle fence.
Denise stood there motionless, her face bleak and cold, her eyes looking into the distance as though they saw and understood nothing. Suddenly her face blazed with a rush of blood. She hung her head, and seemed to be praying.
CHAPTER X
So briskly did the Lord of Pevensey sweep the woods that Maytide, hunting his enemies with horn and hound, that he drove such mesne lords as had drawn the sword beyond his borders into other parts. The mere gentleman and the yeoman could make no fight of it as yet against a great lord who held the castles. The peasants were cowed by the lances of the troopers; a few still lurked in the deeps of the woods, chased hither and thither like wild things that fly from the cry of the hound. The finer and fiercer spirits fled with savage thoughts in their hearts, counting on the day when their chance should come again. Waleran de Monceaux took refuge in Winchelsea, and joined himself to the men of that town. Others galloped away to seek Earl Simon, and to ease their wrath under De Montfort’s banner. As for Grimbald the priest, he lay near to death, hidden near a swineherd’s hovel, stricken with the wounds that he had gotten him at Goldspur manor.
When Waleran de Monceaux, that man of the fierce face and the bristling beard, fled to Winchelsea town, he rode by the Abbey of Battle as the dawn was breaking and halted there and called for food. He and his men had touched neither meat nor bread for a day and a night. Some were wounded, all of them ragged, famished, and caked with the mire of the woodland ways. The hosteler looked sulkily at these savage and beaten men. Love them he could not because of their importunity, and their great hunger. And while they cursed him because of his slowness, he sent word to the Abbot, desiring his commands.
Abbot Reginald’s message came to him with curt good sense.
“Feed them, and be rid of them.”
So Waleran and his men had their paunches filled, because Reginald of Battle was a man of discretion and desired to keep his lands untainted. There were sundry inconveniences that clung even to the right of sanctuary and such high prerogatives. Reginald of Brecon was a smooth and astute man, a fine farmer, and keen as any Lombard. He would have no neighbour’s sparks from over the hedge setting fire to his own hayrick. If fools quarrelled, he could pray for both parties, and hold up the Cross benignantly, provided no one came trampling his crops.
In those days Dom Silvius was almoner at the Abbey, a quiet, sharp-faced, gliding mortal, very devout yet very shrewd. Men said that Dom Silvius loved his “house” better than he loved his soul. Never was a mouse more quick to scent out peas. He knew the ploughlands in every manor, every hog in every wood, how much salt each pan should yield, the value of the timber and the underwood, the measure of the corn ground at the mills, the honey each hive yielded, the number of fish that might be taken from the stews. The Abbey’s charter, and each and every several bequest might have been written on Dom Silvius’s brain. He was ever on the alert, ever contriving, and such a man was to be encouraged. His brethren loved him, for he was not miserly towards the “girdle,” and their pittances were bettered by Dom Silvius’s briskness. What did it matter if a monk meddled with more than concerned him, provided the buildings were in good repair, and his brethren had red wine to warm their bellies.
Dom Silvius’s ears were always open. He was a quiet man who did not frighten folk, but he learnt their secrets, and he often touched their money. Few lawyers could have snatched a grant from under the almoner’s cold, white fingers. He was a man of foresight, and of some imagination. Property to him was not merely a matter of so many plough teams and so many hides, pannage for hogs, and grindings at the mill. The Church held all charters in the land of the Spirit; she could take toll from the lay folk, and make them pay for using her road to heaven.
The very day that Waleran rode through Battle, Dom Silvius walked with folded arms and bowed head into the Abbot’s parlour. He stood meekly within the door, his face full of a smooth humility, his eyes fixed upon the rushes.
Abbot Reginald trusted greatly in this monk. The man was ever courteous and debonair, never turbulent or facetious, always inspired for the “glory” of his “house.”
“The blessing of the day, Brother. What business lies between us?”
Dom Silvius lifted his eyes for the first time to his superior’s face.
“If I repeat myself, Father, my importunity is an earnest failing. It concerns the Red Saint for whom Olivia of Goldspur built a cell.”
Reginald of Brecon leant back in his chair, and closed the book that he had been reading.
“The woman whom they call Denise?”
Silvius looked demure, as though his sanctity were especially sensitive where a woman was concerned.
“Her fame has become very great these months,” he said quietly.
“You covet it, Silvius.”
The almoner bowed his head.
“I grudge no soul its good works, Father. But in these days of burnings, and of spilling of blood——”
“The woods have grown perilous, Silvius, with Lord Peter’s men abroad.”
“That is the very truth, sir. There is no place safe outside the sanctuaries. I have heard it said that the Prior of Mickleham has offered protection to the woman.”
Abbot Reginald smiled, the smile of a philosopher.
“Speak your thoughts, brother.”
Silvius spread his hands.
“The woman is certainly a saint,” he said. “It is common report that she has worked many and strange cures. And, lord, with the foresight of faith I look towards the future. From simple beginnings great things have arisen. We do not draw pilgrims here—to our Abbey. How much glory, sir, has the altar of Canterbury won by the swords of those violent men.”
Reginald of Brecon saw Dom Silvius’s vision.
“A hundred years hence, brother, we shall be blessed through the relics of St. Denise!”
Silvius had no mistrust of his inspiration.
“The maid is certainly miraculous,” he said. “We could grant her a cell within our bounds.”
He of the mitre put the tips of his fingers in opposition.
“Our brethren of Mickleham or of Robertsbridge would forestall us, if they could?”
“They love their ‘houses,’ Father, and for that I praise them.”
“Worthy men! Where would you lodge her, Silvius?”
“There is that stone cot near Mountjoye, sir, with the croft below it. We could set up a cross there that would be seen from the road. If the maid can but work miracles here, people will flock to her; then gifts can be laid upon our altar.”
A sudden clangour of bells from the tower brought the almoner’s audience to an end. Reginald of Brecon rose, and laid aside his book.
“What does the woman say?” he asked, touching the core of Silvius’s conception.
“That, lord, must be discovered. If I have your grace in this——?”
“Go, Brother, and prosper.”
And Silvius went out noiselessly from the parlour, his hands hidden in the sleeves of his habit.
Though the may was whitening in the woods, and the blue bells spread an azure mist above the green, May was a harsh and rugged month that year, with north winds blowing, and the sky hard and grey. And Dom Silvius when he mounted a quiet saddle horse and trotted away followed by two servants, drew his thick cloak about him, and was glad of his gloves and his lamb’s-wool stockings.
Up in the beech wood above Goldspur the wind made a restless moan through the branches of the trees. Sometimes the sun struck through the racing clouds, and a wavering chequer of light and shadow fell on the thin forest grass. There was a shimmer of young green everywhere, yet the year seemed sad and plaintive as though chilled to heart by the north winds.
Denise, wrapped in her grey cloak, wandered that morning along the grass paths of her trampled garden, brooding over the wreck thereof. Here were her thyme and lavender bushes trodden under foot, or snapped and shredded by the browsing teeth of a horse. Crushed plants peered at her pathetically from the pits where hoofs had sunk into the soft soil; a bed of pansies seemed to scowl at her with their quaint and many-coloured faces, as though reviling her for having brought such barbarians to trample them. Almost the whole of the wattle fence had fallen, dragging down into the dirt the roses that had been trained to it.
Yet never had Denise’s garden been a more intimate part of herself than that May morning with the wind tossing the beech boughs against a heavy sky. What a change from yesterday, what a breaking in of violent life, what revelations, what regret! The quiet days seemed behind her, far in the distance, for the vivid present had made even the near past seem unreal. As for her own heart, Denise was almost afraid to look therein. It was like her garden, with the barriers broken, and the life of yesterday trodden into the soil.
She had tried to put these passionate things from her, and to turn again to the life that she had known. There were a hundred things for her hands to do, but do them she could not, for the will in her seemed dead. Even the familiar trifles of her woodland hermitage were full of treachery and of suggestive guile. Her bed, Aymery had lain there. Her earthen pitcher, she had brought him water therein. The very stones of the path still seemed to show to her the stains of the man’s blood. Memories were everywhere, memories that would not vanish, and would not pale.
Denise’s face still burnt when she remembered Etoile’s laughter, that hard, metallic laughter like the clash of cymbals. The woman’s insolence showed her the mocking face of the world, yet for the life of her, Denise could not tear her thoughts from the happenings of those two days. Had the whole country risen to jeer at her, she could have suffered it because of the mystery that made of the ordeal a sacrifice. She had not saved the man, and yet she did not grudge all that she had borne, all that she still might bear. The violence of yesterday had opened the woman’s eyes in Denise. The world had a new strangeness, and the chant of the wind a more plaintive meaning.
She had been unable to sleep with thinking of Aymery, and of what had befallen him, for she still seemed to see his white, furious face, throwing its scorn into the scoffing mouths of the Gascon’s men. Nor could she forget the last look that had passed between them, the appeal in the man’s eyes as though he would have said to her: “God forgive me, for all this.” Where were they taking him, would they be rough with him, would he die of his wounds upon the road? What offence had he committed that his house should be burnt, and his life hazarded, and who was this Peter of Savoy, this Provençal that he should lord it over the men of the land, claiming to act for his over-lord the King? It was the right of the strong over the weak, the pride of the men who held the castles crushing those who refused to be exploited. The curse of a weak King was over the country. These hawks of his whom he had let loose in England obeyed no one, not even their own lord.
But Denise’s conscience took scourge in hand at last, and drove her from her broodings and her visions. Work, something to fill the mind, something tangible to fasten the hands upon! What did it avail her to loiter, to dream, and to conjecture? There was no salvation in mere feeling. Her heart was turning to wax in her, she who had worked for others, and who had been knelt to as a saint. A rush of shame smote her upon the bosom. The peasant women, these men of the fields, what would they think of her if they could read her thoughts? She had held up the Cross before their eyes, and was forgetting to look at it herself.
So Denise drove herself to work that morning, lifting the fallen fence and propping it with stakes, gathering the wreckage, binding up the broken life of the place. It eased her a little this labour under the grey sky, with the wind in the woods, and the smell of the soil. For in simple things the heart finds comfort, and idleness is no salve to the soul.
It was about noon when Dom Silvius came to the clearing in the beech wood, and Denise, who was binding up her trailing roses, saw figures moving amid the trees. Her brown eyes were alert instantly as the eyes of a deer. But there was nothing fierce about Dom Silvius’s figure, and nothing martial or masterful about the paces of his horse.
The almoner left the two servants under the woodshaw and rode forward slowly over the grass. Silvius’s eyes had a habit of seeing everything, even when they happened to express a vacant yet inspired preoccupation. He saw the scarred turf, the hoof marks everywhere, the broken fence about the garden, the woman in the grey cloak at work upon her roses.
Silvius kept a staid and thoughtful face till he had come close to the hermitage. Then his eyes beamed out suddenly as though he had only just discovered Denise behind the spring foliage of her roses. And Dom Silvius could put much sweetness into his smile so that his face shone like the face of a saint out of an Italian picture.
“Peace to you, Sister; we were nearer than I prophesied.”
Denise lifted her head and looked at him. A rose tendril had hooked a thorn in the cloth of her cloak. And to Silvius as he gazed down into the questioning brown of her eyes, that thorn seemed to point a moral.
“I come as a friend,” he said, hiding his curiosity behind smooth kindness. “Silvius the almoner of the Abbey of Battle.”
“I have heard of you, Father,” she answered him.
Silvius smiled, as though there were no such thing as spite and gossip in the world.
“May my grace fly as far as yours, Sister,” he said. “You are wondering why I have ridden hither? Well, I will tell you. It is because of the rumours of violence and of bloodshed that have come to us. Even here, I see that you have not been spared.”
He looked about him gravely, yet with no inquisitive, insinuating briskness. His eyes travelled slowly round the circle of the broken fence, and came to point at last upon Denise.
“I have come with brotherly greetings to you, Sister, from Lord Reginald our Abbot. All men know what a light has burnt here these many months upon the hills. It is a holy fire to be cherished by us, and all men would grieve to see it dimmed or quenched.”
After some such preamble he began to speak softly to Denise, for he was a good soul despite his shrewdness, and the woman’s face was like a face out of heaven. He put the simple truth before her, speaking with a devout fatherliness that betrayed no subtler motive. Peace should be hers, and a sure sanctuary, roof, clothes, bed, and garden, and a daily corrody from the Abbey. The times were full of violence, lust, and oppression, and Silvius feared for those far from the protecting shadow of some great lord or priest. At Battle she should enjoy all the sweetness of sanctity; she should have even her flowers there, and he waved a hand towards the ruinous garden.
Denise listened to him with a pale and unpersuaded face. Perhaps a flicker of distrust had leapt up at first into her eyes. But the monk’s simplicity seemed so sincere a thing that she put distrust out of her heart.
When he had ended, she looked towards the woods in silence for a while, and Silvius made no sound, as though he reverenced her silence, and understood its earnestness.
“For all this I thank you, Father,” she said at last. “But come to you I cannot. It is not in my heart to leave this place.”
Silvius smiled down at her very patiently.
“Who shall deny that the Spirit must guide you. Yet even St. Innocence may remember what God has given.”
Denise reddened momentarily, and Silvius looked away from her towards the sky.
“I am not a child, Father,” she said simply. “The people in these parts love me, and I, them. They will return home in time, and will come and seek for me. I should seem to them the worst of cowards, if they found that I had fled.”
Silvius was too sensitive and too shrewd to press his importunity upon her, seeing that she was prejudiced in her heart. He could leave her to think over what he had said to her. Her pride might refuse to waver at the first skirmish.
“You are living your life for others, Sister,” he said. “Nor do we live in the midst of a wilderness at Battle. Trust the Spirit in you; do not be misled. Yet I would beseech you to remember what manner of world this is. Had not St. Paul fled from the city of Damascus, the Faith would have lacked a flame of fire.”
Denise looked up at him with miraculous eyes.
“And yet, I would stay here,” she said.
“So be it, Sister; some day I will ride this way again.”
So Denise sent Dom Silvius away, clinging with all this strange new tenderness of hers to a place that seemed sacred by reason of its memories. Yet if she had known what others knew, or guessed what was passing beyond her ken, she might have fled with Silvius that day, and left her cell to the wild winds, the sun, and the rain.