CHAPTER XI
It was possible for such a man as Gaillard to be in love with two women at one and the same moment, if indeed what Gaillard felt for a woman could be called love. Peter of Savoy was at Lewes, and the Gascon had the command at Pevensey, and had taken to oiling his hair, and having musk sewn up in a corner of his surcoat. He and Etoile saw much of one another, but the lute girl knew how to keep Gaillard at arm’s length. He might play the troubadour, and make himself ridiculous by singing under her window at night. Etoile wished to try the man further before she trusted such a cousin as Gaillard with her power over Count Peter of Savoy.
One thing Etoile did not know, that Gaillard had ridden more than once to the beech wood above Goldspur, and that he had seen Denise, and come away feeling baulked and foolish. The Red Saint had shut herself obstinately in her cell, and as for singing her love songs, even Gaillard had not the gross conceit to treat Denise as he would have treated Etoile. Yet Gaillard had no sense of the comic in life, and accepted himself with such enthusiasm that anything was possible to so blatant a creature. Display was a passion with him, and any clouding of his conceit, an injury that made him scowl like a spoilt child. Life had to be full of noise and bustle, the blowing of trumpets, and the applause of women. Gaillard was so much in love with himself that he ran about like a fanatic waving a torch, and expecting all the world to listen to what he said.
The Gascon might be a fool, but he was a pernicious fool in those rough days, when there was a woman to be pleased. Denise had shut her door on him, but Gaillard did not doubt but that she would open it in due season. Her pride was a thing on the surface, so Gaillard told himself, and she had more to surrender than had most women. Etoile also was unapproachable, but in very different fashion to Denise. The one was a white glare that blinded and repulsed, the other a glittering point that lured and kept its distance. And Gaillard, like a great gross red moth, blundered to and fro, making a great flutter.
Etoile had much of the spirit of those Byzantine women who had the devil’s poison under their tongues. Gaillard amused her. It pleased her to discover how far she could drive him into making a fool or a cur of himself, even as she might tease Count Peter’s leopards, playing on their jealousy, or tantalising them by holding out food and snatching it away between the bars. And Etoile’s ingenuity searched out an adventure that should show her how far Gaillard could be trusted. She was shrewd enough to realise that the man might be of use to her. Peter of Savoy was but a child with a play-thing. It was worth Etoile’s discretion to have a man upon whom she could rely.
Gaillard grew more importunate, and was for ever offering her his homage. “Well,” said Etoile to herself, “let him prove himself, but not in the matter of brute courage.” She knew that it is always more dangerous for a man to be tempted than to be dared. And Etoile gave Gaillard a tryst at dusk among the cypresses of Count Peter’s garden, and turning on him like a cat challenged Gaillard to prove his faith.
No man was ever more astonished than the Gascon when she told him what she would have him do. At first he hailed the devil of mischief in her, but Etoile was in earnest, and flamed up when he laughed at her. Gaillard shrugged his shoulders, and saw destiny stirring the live coals of his desire.
“It would be simpler to bring you her head,” he said, wondering whether Etoile knew more than she had betrayed. “Cut off the woman’s hair, indeed! The folk yonder would crucify me, if they caught me harming their saint.”
Etoile looked him in the eyes.
“You are for ever shouting at me to prove you my Gaillard. Here is your chance. There is often some wisdom in a whim. You are to bring me her wooden cross, too, remember, as well as a piece of her hair.”
Gaillard, uneasy under Etoile’s eyes, hid his more intimate thoughts behind an incredulous obstinacy. He could have scoffed at the absurdity of the thing. And yet, when he looked at it squarely, the adventure was not so physically absurd. What did it mean but the robbing of one woman to win another, the plundering of one treasure house to use the spoil to bribe the keeper of other treasures! The fine rascality of the thing delighted him. He threw back his head and laughed, though Etoile mistook the meaning of his laughter.
“You have not the courage, Gaillard, eh? The man who sings under my window must be something better than a troubadour fool.”
Gaillard bit his nails as though in the grip of a dilemma. The devil in him applauded. He could have clapped himself on the back over the broad humour of his cleverness.
“What a road to set a man on, my desire,” he said, looking rather sullen over it. “There is a sin that they call sacrilege——”
Etoile clapped her hands.
“Cousin Gaillard with a conscience! Oh, you fool, am I worth a piece of hair, and the wood of a cross?”
Gaillard spread his arms.
“Fool! Do you think that I want a man with weak knees to serve me, a boy who empties half the cup and then turns sick?”
Gaillard made a show of faltering, rocking to and fro on his heels, and looking at her under half closed lids.
“Assuredly,” said he, “you are a devil. And to win a devil I will rob a saint.”
Denise’s inward vision helped her so little those days that she had no foreshadowings of Gaillard’s treachery. He had shown none of his rougher nature to her when he had ridden through the beech wood to her cell. And Denise had let him talk to her once or twice, intent on discovering all that had befallen Aymery since he had fallen into the hands of Peter of Savoy. Only when Gaillard had tried to come too near had she closed the door on him, frightened by the look in the man’s eyes, and yet feeling herself very helpless in that solitary wood. For some days she had seen nothing of the Goldspur folk, nor did she know whether Grimbald was dead or alive. Gaillard had gone off sulking from the frost that she had thrown out on him. Denise believed herself rid of the man. And yet in her unrest, and loneliness, she thought of what Dom Silvius had said to her, and was half persuaded to put herself within sanctuary at Battle.
Gaillard had told her nothing about Aymery, save that he was alive, and waiting the King’s pleasure. And of all these happenings Aymery knew nothing as he lay on the straw in a tower room at Pevensey. His wounds were mending, for Peter of Savoy had some of the instincts of a Christian, and had sent his own barber surgeon to minister to Aymery’s needs. Yet the lord of Goldspur manor thought little of his own wounds those days.
Though Aymery’s flesh was free from fever, the spirit chafed in him, tossing and turning with an unceasing flux of thought. Those happenings at the hermitage haunted him, and in the spirit he drank wine that was both bitter and sweet, cursing himself for the helplessness that had brought such things to pass, and laying to his own charge all the shame that had fallen upon Denise.
Yet Aymery had other thoughts to trouble him, for those hours at the hermitage came back more clearly and vividly, as though they had happened in the twilight, and been remembered in the day. He felt again the touch of Denise’s hands, saw the gleam of her hair, and caught the mystery of tenderness that had flashed and faded in the deeps of her eyes. Aymery would be very still in the narrow room, still as one who lies dead with a smile on his lips, and in blind eyes a vision of things splendid.
Sometimes Aymery would take to preaching to himself, growing sensible and almost prosy, like a merchant looking methodically into his ledgers. Without doubt Grimbald would be at Goldspur, the people would come back to the village, they would think no shame of Denise, even if they heard of the thing that she had attempted. The quiet life would begin again, for there was no cause now for my Lord Peter to harry the countryside. No harm might come of all these adventures, and to insure that end, Aymery preached to himself still further.
“Heart of mine,” said he. “Denise is for no such worldly desires. True, she has taken no sworn vows, but for all that, my friend, she is as good as a nun. Take heed how you tempt sacrilege. For to the people Denise is a lady of many marvels. She is not of mere clay, there is mystery yonder—and her love is the love of the angels and the saints.”
In some such simple and sturdy fashion Aymery spoke often to his own heart. Yet there was always an enchanted distance shining beyond these vows of his like a sunset seen through trees. Flashes of passion lingered that should not linger. A look of the eyes, a touch of the hand, such things are not forgotten.
As for his own fortune, Aymery had no grip thereon; he could only eat his food and shake up the straw of his bed for comfort. He was mewed there, “waiting the King’s pleasure,” a useful phrase in the mouth of a lord who shared with others in persuading the King. Aymery might have stood at his window and shouted “Charter” till the barber surgeon decreed that he was turgid and feverish, and should be bled. There was no such thing as a rescue to be thought of. Presently he might scheme at breaking out in other and grimmer fashion if they did not release him. For there was still much talk in the land of “Stephen’s days,” and it was said that when the saints saved a soul, the devil erected a castle.
CHAPTER XII
Denise had some sign at last from the Goldspur folk, for she found that offerings had been left at her gate, and since her store of food had fallen to half a very dry loaf and a pot of honey, she was carnally glad of such a godsend.
The evening of the same day while she was at work in her garden, two of Aymery’s villeins came out of the wood, each carrying a bundle of ash stakes and an axe, for they had heard that the saint’s fence was as flat in places as the walls of Jericho. The two men, Oswald and Peter, were a little shy of Denise, as though the Goldspur conscience had accused the community of neglecting the Red Saint. They told her that the cattle had broken out from the pen, and strayed far and wide through the woods. It had taken them days to recover the beasts, and they had been hampered by the knowledge that the men of Pevensey were still sweeping the hundreds of the rape.
Both of the men knew that Aymery was a prisoner at Pevensey, but they did not know that he had been taken at the very doorway of the Red Saint’s cell. Nor did Denise betray to them all that had passed; she had too much pride and a sacred sense of secrecy for that. Oswald and Peter set to work, their axes catching the sunlight that sifted through the trees, white chips flying, their brown faces intent and stolid. Denise stood and watched them for a time, and Oswald, the elder of the two, told her what had befallen Father Grimbald. A swineherd had found him half dead in the woods, and had hidden him in a saw-pit for fear of Gaillard and his men. It had been a sharp escape, and a sharp sickness for Grimbald. He was still in hiding, and being healed of his wounds, and there was not a woman in the whole hundred who would not have had her tongue cut out rather than betray Grimbald to Peter of Savoy.
Dusk was falling before the men had finished mending the fence, and a wind had risen like a restless and plaintive voice, making the twilight seem more grey and melancholy. The whole beech wood had begun to shiver with a sense of loneliness that made the earth itself seem cold. Oswald and Peter knelt down before Denise, and asked her to bless them before they shouldered their axes and marched off into the wood.
The two men followed the winding path that struck the main “ride” running through the heart of the wood, and they walked fast because of the twilight, and because it was believed that the wood was haunted. For the wilds were the haunts of the evil things of the night, and when a saint lived a holy life in such a place she was sure of being tempted and vexed by devils. The tale of St. Guthlac of Crowland was a tale that was told of many a saint. When the lamp of sanctity was lit in some such wilderness the spirits of evil would fly at it in fury, and seek to beat it out with the rush of their black wings.
Oswald and Peter were no more superstitious than their neighbours, but they were as timid as children in the thick of that dark wood. And to frighten their credulity a strange sound seemed on the gallop with the gusts of the wind, a sound that was like the trampling of a horse under the sad gloom of the trees. The sound came so uncomfortably near to them, that Oswald and Peter bolted into the underwood like a couple of brown rabbits. And looking back half furtively, as they scrambled through brambles and under hazels, they had a glimpse of a great black shape rushing through the darkness on the wings of the wind.
The two men did not wait to see more of it, but got out of the wood as fast as their legs could carry them.
“It was a ghost or a devil,” they said to one another. “God defend us, but surely it is a terrible thing to be a saint.”
They pushed on, heartily glad to be free of the far-reaching hands of the spectral trees.
“It was good for us that we had the saint’s blessing.”
“God and St. Martin hearten her. The devil vexes those who live for good works.”
“Father Grimbald must know of it. He is man enough to come and take a devil by the beard.”
So Oswald and Peter went back to their womenfolk and their cattle, glad to be near warm bodies, snug under their woodland huts. The night passed, and the dawn came, a slow, stealthy dawn muffled in silver mist. Rabbits scampered in the glades, brushing the dew from the wet grass. Birds hunted for worms, and fluttered away to feed their young. And the devil whom Oswald and Peter had seen, sent the rabbits bolting for their burrows as he rode away through the beech wood towards the sea.
Before noon Etoile the lute girl had a wreath of hair curled like a snake about the little wooden cross in her lap. Gaillard had brought them to her, hiding a guilty memory in the eyes behind a laughing swagger. The Gascon’s voluble tongue was driven to deal very fancifully with the adventure, since Etoile was very curious, and intent on hearing everything. The Red Saint was very ready to be worshipped, such was Gaillard’s explanation. She was a little vainer than the majority of women, and Gaillard shrugged his shoulders and laughed.
“A red apple is always a red apple,” he said. “Mother Eve taught us that.”
The mischievous devil in Etoile was not yet satisfied.
“Never trust a saint, Gaillard,” she said. “I have not forgotten that the man in the tower might be glad of this piece of hair. It will give him something to think about while he sits and nibbles straws. Take it up and push it under his door, and tell him it comes from his lady.”
The joke caught Gaillard’s fancy. He climbed the tower, and pushed the trophy under Aymery’s door with the point of his poniard.
“A woman gave it me, my man,” he said. “But since I have something better for a keepsake, you can have the hair.”
He went away, laughing, a thorough Gascon in his gross self-satisfaction. And Aymery picked up what Gaillard had left him. He knew it for Denise’s hair, for there was none like it in all those parts.
CHAPTER XIII
The may was budding into bloom, and Dom Silvius came riding Goldspur way again, thinking of the many things that may occupy the mind of a man who keeps both eyes fixed upon the affairs of the “house.” Silvius’s soul felt very comfortable within him that morning. The bloom was setting well upon the orchard trees, such a sea of foam that the autumn should be red with fruit. Word had come from the shepherds in the pasture lands that hardly a lamb had been lost that spring. There was little sickness anywhere, but few poor to need alms, and no shortage of dues from the tenants. Dom Silvius made it his business to know of all these things, even though they might not concern his authority. He was like a child and a miser in his joy and carefulness in working for the wealth and honour of his Abbey.
So Dom Silvius came to the beech wood above Goldspur, and followed the main ride, talking to himself like a happy starling, for he rode alone that morning. And he would lean forward and fondle his nag’s ears, for the beast was provided by one of the tenants, and Dom Silvius loved the horse because he had not to feed him.
“A little more roundly, my good Dobbin,” he prattled. “But beware of worldliness, for the sake of my dignity; we must not bump like a butcher to market. What will Sancta Denise say to us this morning? The child should not set herself alone here like a white dove for any hawk to swoop at.Mea culpa, but the girl has hair like dead beech leaves touched by the sun, saving, Dobbin, that the leaves have no glitter of gold. And what eyes! God bless us, but we may hope for miracles. And if the folk flock to be healed, they shall lodge in the Abbey, and surely their gratitude will make us rich.”
The almoner sobered himself however when he turned aside by the white stone that marked the path leading to the hermitage. The woodlands might have eyes and ears, and it would not be seemly for a man of Silvius’s age and estate to be overheard babbling like a lover who must talk even though it be only to his horse. So he rode very demurely into Denise’s glade, with his chin on his chest, and his lips moving as though he said a prayer for every furlong.
The door of Denise’s cell was shut, nor could Dom Silvius see her stirring in her garden. “Perhaps she is abroad,” thought he, “or maybe she is at her prayers,” so he rode up quietly, dismounted, and looped his bridle over the post of the wicket gate. Then he went in and up the path, and was about to knock softly, when the door opened under his very hand, and Silvius saw a figure in grey standing upon the threshold.
Dom Silvius dropped his eyes suddenly as though he blamed himself for being surprised into staring at a woman’s face.
“The grace of Our Lady to you, Sister,” he said. “I was in doubt whether I should find you at home or no.”
Now Silvius was not a shred embarrassed, though he pretended to a kind of saintly coyness. He had his eyes on the sandalled feet that showed under the hem of the grey gown. They were very comely feet, with the brown straps of the sandals contrasting with the nut brown of the skin, and Dom Silvius was thinking how different these feet were with their arched insteps and straight toes from the gouty and behumped members that shuffled and progressed in the Abbey cloisters. Yet in looking at Denise’s feet the almoner missed the first shadows of a tragedy.
Denise stood very still, her hood drawn forward, one hand holding the edge of the door. The face under the hood expressed nothing, if despair be nothing more than a pale, mute mask. Yet the eyes that looked at the monk were the eyes of one whose blood was full of a spiritual fever.
“It is Dom Silvius?” she asked at last, and her voice sounded steady and even tame.
Silvius folded his hands together, and raised his eyes to the level of Denise’s knees.
“You may remember, my Sister, how I said that I might ride this way again.”
She was silent, as though absorbed by some memory that pervaded all her consciousness. Silvius’s eyes climbed a little higher and rested upon her bosom.
“We did not agree then, Sancta Denise. It may be that you still love the life in the wilderness. The winter is past with us, for which God be thanked; you will have summer here, and the woods are pleasant in summer. Perhaps you have your birds to feed. The fruit promises well. I am never one for importunities.”
He spoke like a man who had rushed too quickly towards the point aimed at, and who covered up his retreat with irrelevancies. For Dom Silvius felt that his wisdom had slipped for the once, and that he should have begun with a digression. Women like love tokens hidden in a posy of flowers, and passion pledged in a song. But Denise’s directness saved Silvius from tracking her whims through a maze.
“Your words have been with me,” she said.
Her voice surprised him, so much so that he looked up sharply into her face. The hood was drawn, but an immovable mute pallor, a kind of deadness, struck on Silvius’s eyes like the whiteness of a whitened wall.
“I am not unthankful for that, Sister.”
“And you are of the same mind?”
“What God and the Church offer is ever an offer,” he said, dropping his eyes again, and finding his intuition in touch with something that was invisible, and yet to be felt.
He heard Denise draw her breath in deeply.
“Sometimes we seem wise, sometimes foolish,” she said. “Life teaches the heart many things. You offer me some such place as this to lodge in? And that I shall be alone?”
Silvius threw aside vague conjectures, to seize the prize he had long coveted.
“It is a sweet place,” said he. “With a garden, and fruit trees, and a croft below it. The garden has a good quick hedge all about it. As to the flesh, your soul shall be as Solomon’s lily, Sanctissima. We have no ritual for those whose eyes see into Paradise.”
So as the great purple cloud shadows drifted over the young green of the beech wood, and the sun shone forth with moments of gold, Dom Silvius warmed with his own words, and in his kindling never so much as saw that Denise listened like one who struggled against some inward anguish. What light and shade were there over her own soul as Silvius put his visions into his voice? The monk thought her calm and sensible, a little cold perhaps, but then the snow of her chastity would make her that. Silvius was no coarse colourist, no noisy twanger of strings. There should be mysticism, aloofness, a play of pearly light about such a part. His exultation burnt delicate flattery. For Silvius knew that many sacred souls loved their sanctity as a gay quean loves her clothes. How many Magdalenes were there who dreamt of being seen while they washed the feet of God and the Saints! And Silvius wished to lead this child of the Miraculous Heart so that she should walk in a path of his own conceiving, a sweet saint who should draw the country, aye far countrysides, as the moon draws the sea. The coming of Denise to the bounds of Battle should be as the coming of the Bride to the Church of God. It should be a pageant, and a poem. For in those days pageantry preached to the people, and through the eyes the heart was persuaded.
Denise heard him, like one very weary, one who listens because there is no escape. And in good season Silvius had the wit to see that he had pressed wine enough for the day. Denise had given him her promise, and he took his leave of her with sweetness, and all reverence, putting himself beneath her, and speaking of her wishes as commands.
“Would their most blessed Sister take up her new cell soon?”
Denise leant her weight against the door, feeling that if she were not rid of Silvius she would drop at his feet and weep.
“Before the moon is full,” she answered.
And the monk mounted his horse, and rode away like one who has received a pallium, dreaming miraculous dreams, and beholding innumerable pilgrims, peasant and prince, knight and lady, riding and journeying towards Senlac over hill and dale.
As for Denise she stood at the door of her cell long after Silvius had left her, as though she lacked even the power to move. What help was there, what other means should she devise? This cell of stone had become a den of evil dreams for her; the tenderness and mystery had fled. She had no heart to live there any longer, no heart to meet those who had knelt to her before this thing had happened.
CHAPTER XIV
Since the fight at Goldspur Father Grimbald had lain hidden in a saw-pit on one of the forest manors, the swineherd who had hidden him being also woodman and sawyer when his hogs were rooting amid the beech mast and the acorns. Saw-dust with heather spread over it made none so miserable a bed, and the swineherd had fortified Grimbald against wind, rain, and the inquisitiveness of enemies by covering the mouth of the pit with faggots. For a month Grimbald had lain there, his shirt and cassock clotted to great wounds that no man dared to touch. At first a fever had taken him, and he had roared and stormed at night like some sturdy saint at grips with Apollyon in a corner of hell. The swineherd had banked up the faggots to deaden the sound, praying God to abate Father Grimbald’s fever, for a dozen of Gaillard’s men were camped that very night not two furlongs from the saw-pit. Yet Grimbald’s shouts had come rumbling out of the earth, “Strike, strike, St. George!” “Shine, brown bills, and beat the Frenchmen into the sea!” And so strenuous and bellicose had the fever grown in him, that the swineherd, staking purgatory or peace on a pail of water, had lifted the faggots and doused Grimbald to cool him. Nor had any harm come of it, but rather good, for Grimbald had grown less fiery, and fallen into a deep sleep.
About the time that Dom Silvius made his second pilgrimage to the beech wood above Goldspur, Grimbald was so well recovered of his wounds that he could sit up on his bed, and take his food with great relish. Being also an industrious soul he made the swineherd throw him down billets of seasoned oak, a knife, and a hatchet, and set himself to carve heads of the saints for decorating the corbels of his little church. But either St. Paul and St. Simon were in an ill humour, or Grimbald knew little of his craft, for the saints emerged pulling most villainous faces, sour, evil, and grotesque, with flat noses, and slits for eyes. So Grimbald gave up his struggle with them, and heaved them up out of the pit to be burnt, and took to pointing and feathering arrows, for your woodlander was often his own fletcher.
The flesh prospering so well with him, and the end of his sojourn in the saw-pit seeming near, Grimbald sent the swineherd for some of the Goldspur folk. The very same evening the swineherd brought in the two men Oswald and Peter, both of them full to the brim with gossip, and ready to empty themselves at their spiritual father’s feet. Grimbald sat on his bed in the pit, whittling a yew bough with his knife; Oswald and Peter squatted side by side on a faggot like a couple of solemn brown owls on a bough.
“Father,” quoth Oswald, “we have seen the devil in St. Denise’s wood.”
Peter chimed in to add to the impression.
“A black devil with a black horse that breathed fire and smoke.”
“And he came and went like the wind, Father!”
Even such honest men as these had imaginations wherewith to decorate an experience. Grimbald’s face looked the colour of brown earth in the darkness of the pit, and to Oswald and Peter his eyeballs seemed to glare like two white pebbles at the bottom of a well.
“And you ran away from this devil?” he said. “Yes, you ran, my sons, as fast as your legs could carry you. When shall I come by a Christian who is not afraid to stand on his own feet, and to astonish us by making the devil run?”
Though Grimbald scoffed at them, the two men knew his methods. No one had anything to fear from Grimbald so long as he looked him straight in the face and spoke the simple truth. But a liar or a fawner were likely to be thrashed, since Grimbald’s chastening of souls was not wholly a matter of the tongue. He used his hands like a Christian, and for the love of their flesh he did not spare them.
“Assuredly, Father, it was the devil we saw in the beech wood. Night was just falling——”
“So! And he was very black was he? Just as black as charcoal, and had two live coals for eyes?”
The good man’s grim irony drove neither Oswald nor Peter from his breastwork of conviction.
“We would take oath it was the devil, Father.”
“Oswald, Oswald, you seem too familiar with the face of Satan! You are too fond of the mead-horn, my man.”
The accused one accepted the charge meekly, knowing that it was true in the abstract, and that Father Grimbald knew it, for there had been an occasion of second baptism in a somewhat dirty ditch. But Oswald was stolidly sure of his innocence on the night in question, nor had he as yet finished his confessions.
“I had no mead froth on my beard that day, Father,” said he. “Whether it was the devil or no we saw, we saw him with these eyes of ours. And he rode like a black north wind. But what is worse, Father, we have never had sight of our saint since then.”
This was news that struck the irony out of Grimbald’s mouth. He laid the yew bough aside on the heather, and became at once the demi-god, and the seer.
“What is that you are saying, man Oswald? Why are you troubled for Denise?”
Oswald looked like a wise dog that has come by kicks undeservedly, and is now to be commended.
“The door of the cell is always shut,” he said, “and never a word or a sound have we now from our lady. What is more, Father, the stuff we took there two days ago was still by the wicket when one of the lads went up this morning.”
Grimbald looked thoughtful.
“Have you tried the door?” he asked.
“We durst not, thinking she might be in a vision or in prayer.”
“Did you call to her?”
“Not above asking her blessing, Father, and telling of the food, and news of you. And it was four days ago that her voice answered us, but since then we have heard no sound.”
Grimbald stood up slowly on the bed, propping himself with his arms against the walls of the pit.
“God helping me, I could sit a horse,” he said. “This must be looked to. Oswald, my son, you had a fat pony. Bring the beast here to-morrow, at dawn.”
“It shall be done, Father.”
And they departed with his blessing, but Grimbald was awake all that night, troubled lest any harm should have befallen Denise.
“Devil!” thought he. “Oswald’s devil was one of good human kidney, or I have no sense of smell. Satan need not heat himself with galloping in these parts. We have enough of him in the flesh.”
Meanwhile at Pevensey, Aymery of Goldspur had thrown the preaching part of himself aside, for that which Gaillard had thrust under his door had stung the manhood in him, and left the poison of a great fear in his blood. The hair was Denise’s hair; he could have sworn to that on the relics of the Cross. How had they come by it, here in Pevensey? Was Denise also a caged bird, and if not, what had happened in that beech wood, where the great trees built dark winding ways with the sweep of their mighty branches? Aymery’s thoughts plunged in amid those trees, grimly and passionately, yet with the sheen of a woman’s hair luring him on like the mystic light from the Holy Grael. Had evil befallen her because of him? What devil’s mockery might there be in the way the truth had been thrust into his ken! Had Gaillard any hand in it? And at the thought of Gaillard, Aymery twisted Denise’s hair about his wrists, and yearned to feel those hands of his leaping at the Gascon’s throat. God! What did it avail him to pretend that he feared for Denise as he would have feared for a sister? She was the ripe earth to him, the dawn of dawns, the freshness of June woods after rain. He could cover his eyes no longer as to what was in his heart.
To break out into the world, to gallop a horse, to feel his muscles in their strength, that was the fever in him, the restless fever of a chained hawk beating his wings upon a perch. To be out of this hole in a stone tower, but how? He had no weapons, not so much as a piece of wood, or the rag of a linen sheet. They had taken his leather belt, but left him his shirt, tunic and shoes, and he laughed despite his grimness, for they might as well have left him naked. The man who brought him bread and water, filled a cracked flask for him, and took the water-pot away. And what a weapon that great earthen jar would have made, swung with the verve and sinew of a young man’s arm.
Impatient with his own impotence, he stood at the narrow window looking seawards, drawing Denise’s hair to and fro between his fingers as he would have drawn a swath of silk. A thought came to him, but at first he revolted from it as from a piece of sacrilege. His sturdy sense saved him, however, from being fooled by a shred of sentiment, and he twisted the strands of hair till he had wound them into a fine and silken cord. Wrapping the ends about his wrists he looped the cord over his bent knee, tried the strength thereof, and smiled as though satisfied.
That evening there was the sound of a scuffle when the bread bringer drew back the bolts and pushed the heavy door open with his foot. The fellow had made light of his duty of late, for Aymery had seemed quiet and tame, and still feeble after his wounds. He had marched in perfunctorily while Aymery waited for him behind the door. There was the crash of the pitcher on the stones. The jailer’s knees gave under him; he sank sideways driving the door to with his weight.
Aymery had no wish to end the poor devil’s life, so he left him there to get back breath and consciousness, after robbing him of his rough cloak and the knife he carried at his girdle. Pushing the body aside, he swung the door to cautiously, and shot the bolts. Almost instinctively he had wound Denise’s hair about his wrist, and as he descended the winding stair he tossed the man’s cloak over his shoulders, turned up the hood, and kept the knife hidden but ready for any hazard. Going down boldly he came out into the inner court, crossed it and reached the gate without being challenged by any of the men who loitered there.
Aymery’s heels were itching for a gallop, but he held himself in hand, and walked on coolly, whistling through his teeth. He was under the gateway, through it, and crossing the bridge. Someone called to him, but he laughed, crowed like a cock, and gave a wave of the hand.
The outer court with its great garden still lay before him, and he followed the paved track, praying God to keep all officious fools at a distance. Fifty paces, twenty paces, ten paces, and he was at the outer gate, with the cypresses black behind him, and no betrayal as yet. The gate still stood open, though it was closed at sunset, and to Aymery it was an arch of gold, a dark tunnel way with a tympanum cut from the evening sky.
He was half through it, when a lounger at the guard-room door lurched forward and caught him roughly by the cloak. It may have been a mere challenge to horse-play or the grip of a swift suspicion. Aymery did not wait to decide the matter, but struck the man across the face with the knife, broke loose, and ran.
CHAPTER XV
They brought the Red Saint to Battle when the meadows were a sheet of gold, and the thorn trees white above the lush green grass. Dom Silvius and two of the Abbey servants came for her in the morning, bringing a white palfrey to carry her on the way.
Denise had kept vigil all that night, praying, and striving to quiet a heart that would not be quieted. And when the dawn had come she had gone out into the garden and stood there silently, looking at the familiar things that had mingled with her life. Yet very strange had garden, hermitage, and woodland seemed to Denise that morning; the strangeness of leave-taking was over them, and the sadness of farewell. Even the rose trees that had been given her, and which she had cherished, had seemed to catch her memory, with their thorns. Memories, memories! Some infinitely dear; others, brutal and full of shame. The thatch would rot, the walls crumble, the garden beckon back the wilderness. And a great bitterness had fallen upon her, because of what she was losing, and of what she had suffered, and yet might suffer. She had felt glad in measure when she had heard the tinkling bells on Dom Silvius’s bridle as he had come riding through the beech wood. Her love of the place had hurt her. The very stones had cried out, and the pansies had scowled at her as she went down the path.
At Battle there was joy that day, and a ringing of bells, for Abbot Reginald had ordered it. And the song of the bells went over the woodlands that gleamed or grew gloomy as the clouds drifted. The cuckoo called; green herbs rose to the knees; the meadows rippled with gold; the oaks were in leaf. Over the blue hills, and through slumbrous valleys filled with haze, Silvius and Denise came to the Abbey lands.
Before her there, beside a wayside cross, Denise saw many people gathered to welcome her, but her heart wished them away. She would have come quietly to this new refuge, nor had she foreshadowed Dom Silvius’s pageantry. Here were gathered the Abbey singing boys in white stoles, the precentor with them; also a number of the Brethren, two and two, solemn figures with hoods and hanging sleeves that seemed to catch the shadows. All the townsfolk had streamed out from their boroughs, old and young. Some carried green boughs, the girls had their bosoms full of flowers, even toddling children had their posies.
Denise’s blood became as water in her when she saw all these people gathered there, ready with their gaping awe, and their inquisitive reverence. The bright colours of their clothes, the greens, blues, and russets became a blur before eyes that felt hot with bitter tears. It was all so much mockery to Denise. The precentor’s arms waved; the singing boys moved off two and two to lead her, singing some quaint chant. The people were down on their knees beside the road, all save the girls who strewed their flowers before her. And Denise rode by on her white palfrey, her eyes blind, her cheeks burning, a strangle of humiliation in her throat, knowing what these people could not know, and shamed to the heart because of it. She saw neither the silent faces under the row of cowls, nor the green boughs that waved, nor the hands that were stretched out to her by children and by women. Nor did she see Dom Silvius’s subtle and happy face as he rode beside her, carrying a wooden cross upon his shoulder.
So the white-stoled boys chanted, the bells rang and the slow and sombre Brethren threaded their way between the green boughs and the colours. The people followed on, and began to buzz and to chatter. “The Lady of Miracles has come to dwell with us,” they said. Their mouths were full of all manner of marvels, and each began to think of the advantage that might be dreamed of.
“She shall keep the sheep rot from us,” quoth one.
“And cure the bone ache and the rheumatics,” said another.
A fat, pork butcher with a face the colour of swine’s flesh remembered that his dame was to take to her bed in a month, and that he would have her blessed by Denise. A charm against “the staggers” was the desire of a carrier. Wuluric, a wax chandler, wondered whether his trade would be increased. One old woman was eaten up with a sore that would not heal. “I shall beg me a little of her spittle,” said she, “a holy virgin’s spittle on a dock leaf is a wondrous cure.”
So they brought Denise to her cell near Mountjoye Hill, and from that hour they began to call the little field below it “Virgin’s Croft.”
All this had happened the day before Oswald and Peter had told the Lord of the Saw-pit the tale of the devil in the Goldspur beech wood. According to Grimbald’s bidding they brought the pony to him at dawn, helped him from his hiding-place, and set him upon the beast which bore up bravely though Grimbald’s heels nearly ploughed the ground. They started off through the woods, thinking to make Goldspur within two hours, but their reckonings were without the sanction of heaven, for Grimbald’s pony stumbled over a red ant’s mound, and threw the priest heavily, for he was weak after his many days abed. And Grimbald lay on his back with his arms spread out like the arms of a man crucified, and Oswald and Peter stood and stared at him, and wondered whether he was dead.
They knelt down and chafed his feet and hands until Grimbald came to his senses again, and cheered them with the uttering of a few godly curses. The men lifted him up, and for their clumsiness he cursed them further, and bade them put him with his back against a tree. Grimbald, being a heavy man, had broken his right collar-bone in the fall, and he was still weak for such rough byplay.
“Give me a mouthful of water,” he said.
But neither Oswald nor Peter had water with them, nor was there a pool near, nor a running brook. Grimbald looked at them with mighty disdain, and Oswald, sneaking off, mounted his pony to get what he could. Five miles rode Oswald that morning before he came to Burghersh village, and begged a hornful of mead there, and a bottle of water. He bumped back again at a rollicking canter, till his pony’s coat was as wet as if he had swum a stream. Grimbald had been sick as a dog with the twist of the fall, but the mead heartened him, and he bade Oswald splash the water on his face. Then they bound his right arm to his body with their girdles, and when he had rested awhile, he made them put him again upon the pony.
Nor was this mounting an easy matter, though approached in subtle and backward fashion over the pony’s tail. Happily the beast had no kick in him, being tired and subdued. So they had Grimbald astride, and started off once more, the men walking one on either side, and steadying him as they went.
What with the time wasted, and the slow travelling that they made, evening was making the beech wood brilliant as they climbed up out of the valley. The great sentinel trees that stood forward from the main host cast purple shadows upon the grass. A small herd of red deer went trotting into the green-wood, and there was a great silence save for the sucking patter of their hoofs.
One corner of Denise’s glade was still steeped in sunlight when Grimbald and his men came from under the beech trees. They could see that both the wicket gate and the cell door stood open. Grimbald dismounted at the wicket, and leaning on Oswald’s shoulder, went up the path towards the cell. They were close to the threshold when a brownish thing flew forth into their faces, screamed, and sped away on noiseless wings. It was only a great owl, but Oswald had covered his face with his arm like one who fears a blow.
“Assuredly it was the devil, Father!” said he, uncovering a pair of round and credulous eyes.
Grimbald pushed on alone and entered the cell. One glance showed him that it was empty. He saw the rough bed with the coverlet spread awry, the wooden settle, the hutch where Denise had kept her clothes, the great water-jar in the corner. In the cupboard he found nothing but a dry loaf, a drinking horn, and the lamp that she had used. There seemed no sign of violence, nor even of a hurried flight.
Grimbald stood there awhile considering, and then went out into the gathering dusk. It seemed probable to him that Denise had not been in the cell for some days, for was not the bread dry and the water-jar empty? He walked about the garden, turning his beak of a nose this way and that like an eagle, his weakness and his broken bone forgotten in the unravelling of this coil. The little lodge built of faggots where Denise had kept her tools and wood, enlightened him no further, and he was ruffling his brows over it when he heard Oswald calling. The man had caught all Grimbald’s spirit of unrest, just as a dog catches the moods of his master, and searching the ground he had found hoof marks on the grass.
Grimbald found him kneeling outside the wattle fence, pointing at something that lay across a grass tussock, something that glistened like a few shreds from a woman’s hair. Oswald went on his hands and knees with his face close to the turf. He beat to and fro awhile, crawled forward across the glade, lay almost flat a moment, and then started up with an eager cry. He had found the fresh print of a horse’s hoofs in the grass under the fringe of a tree whose boughs nearly touched the ground.
Grimbald went to see what Oswald had to show him. Dusk was falling fast, and they both stooped low over the marks in the grass. But Oswald started up on his haunches and sniffed the air like a dog.
“Hist!”
His eyes dilated as he turned his head to and fro, staring into the deepening gloom under the trees. Something was moving out yonder. They heard one bough strike another, a dead branch crack, the faint brushing of feet through leaves and grass. Oswald laid a hand on the knife at his belt; his teeth showed between snarling lips.
But Grimbald caught him by the shoulder, and they turned back towards the cell where Peter loitered at the wicket in the dusk, and the pony stood with tired and drooping head. They were half across the glade when a man came running after them, and they could see that he was armed.
Grimbald swung round instantly, and stood with head thrown back, shoulders squared. A sword flashed not three paces from him before his lion’s roar made the dusk quiver. The man’s sword dropped, and he came to a dead pause.
“Grimbald!”
They caught each other as men do who love greatly, and for a moment neither spoke. Then Aymery stood back, and picked up his sword.
“Denise? Is she here?”
Grimbald’s forehead became seamed with lines. His short silence betrayed perhaps more than he could tell.
“We came to find her, brother,” he said.
“And she is gone?”
“The cell is empty.”
Aymery’s voice sounded harsh as the rasp of a saw. He swung his sword up and let it rest upon his shoulder. Even in the dusk Grimbald saw that glitter in the eyes, that fierce closure of the lips, that spreading of the nostrils.
“The cell has been empty some days, I judge. I was troubled for the sake of Denise, for I had heard a strange tale from Oswald here. We came, and found nothing.”
Aymery swung to and fro with swift, sharp strides. Then his sword shot out and pointed Oswald away.
“Go. Out of earshot.”
The man went. Aymery brought his sword back to his shoulder, stretched out an arm, and showed Grimbald something coiled about his wrist.
“Look, a coil of her hair!”
Grimbald bent his head, and then straightened with a deep-drawn breath.
“This——?”
“They put it under my door at Pevensey, the dogs! Yesterday I broke out and hid in the marshes. They gave chase, and I killed one of those who followed, and took his horse and arms. That was to-day. Then I galloped here.”
He tossed his head, shaking back his hair, his eyes hard as a frost. Then he pointed towards the hermitage with his sword.
“What is there in yonder?”
He seemed to stiffen himself against the truth, challenging Grimbald to tell him all.
“There is nothing, brother, but her bed, hutch and cupboard and the like.”
“No more than that?”
“Nothing.”
Aymery bent forward slightly, and looked into Grimbald’s face. For a moment they stared each other in the eyes as though asking and answering silent questions. Then Aymery seemed to understand.
“There has been some devil’s work here,” he said, and Grimbald told him Oswald’s tale, and showed where the hoof prints might be seen by daylight.
“God knows the rest!” he said, smoothing his beard.
But Aymery was kneeling, and praying to the cross of his sword.