CHAPTER XL
Aymery had searched the hillsides that day for a blue surcoat shining with golden suns, but since Gaillard had charged among Prince Edward’s spears, he was miles away on the heels of the Londoners while the men of the White Cross were driving the King back in rout upon Lewes town.
But Simon had not forgotten to look for the return of the Prince. He had gathered the pick of his knights and men-at-arms together, and when they brought him news of the plundering of his camp, he smiled and bided his time. Steady and motionless, a mass of steel half hidden by a rise in the ground, De Montfort’s cavalry waited in the evening light for the coming of the Prince.
And a riotous and disordered troop it was that marched back towards Lewes after plundering the Barons’ camp. Edward and his lords seemed to have accepted their victory as assured, and never doubted but that the White Cross had been trodden into the dust. The scene that stretched before them, flooded by the evening sunlight, was deceptive in the extreme. De Warenne’s banner still flew from the castle, and that of the King from the bell tower of St. Pancras. There were scattered bodies of armed men moving over the slopes and about the town, and the dead strewing the field made no confession of victory or defeat.
It was then that the most tragic thing of the day happened, for the mob of fighting men under the Prince, marching as they pleased, had some hundreds of women mingled with them, unfortunates who had thought of nothing but making a joyous night of it after the great victory, and the plunder that they had won. De Montfort’s mass of knights and men-at-arms, rising suddenly like a grey sea out of the twilight, came on at a gallop, fresh and lusty after a long rest. Isoult was one of those gay queans, riding with Gaillard’s arm about her, chattering and laughing to keep her man amused. Following these two, half as comrades, half as prisoners, came Denise and Marpasse, mounted upon cart-horses, that had been taken from the Barons’ camp. Luckily for them they were in the rear of Prince Edward’s host or they would have been trampled down at the first charge, as were many of the women.
Marpasse and Denise were riding close together, watching Gaillard as sheep might watch a dangerous dog, and waiting their chance to break away in the gathering darkness. Although he had an arm about Isoult’s body, Gaillard’s eyes wandered round towards Denise, stealing half-furtive glances at her, as though he were already tired of Isoult, and suffered his passions to embrace a contrast. Marpasse saw how it was with Gaillard, and hated him for Denise’s sake, and because she could tell what manner of man he was, insolent, lustful, ever ready to throw aside things that had sated him. He was like a great lean spider with his long legs and his sinewy arms, and Marpasse could have stabbed him for the way he held Isoult.
They were crowded together, and Marpasse and Denise saw nothing of the storm that was tearing down upon the Prince’s following. A strange silence fell suddenly on that mass of humanity, broken here and there by a loud and querulous cry. A moment ago there had been nothing but singing, shouting, and coarse jests.
A shudder seemed to pass through the whole mob. It wavered, stood still, swayed to and fro. Marpasse heard women shrieking. Then a roar of voices rose, the furious voices of men caught at a disadvantage with death rushing upon them like a flood. Utter confusion spread, trumpets screaming like frightened beasts, spears swaying this way and that. Then the shock came. The bodies of men were thrown in the air like stones torn from a sea wall by a furious wave.
Marpasse saw Gaillard rise in his stirrups, draw his sword, and turn a bleak, wolf-like profile towards them. He caught his battle helmet from the saddle bow, dipped his head into it, and came up a grotesque monster with a face like a gaping frog. Marpasse had a vision of sloped spears pouring down on them through the golden haze of the evening. Then chaos seemed to come again, and the world crumbled with the rushing of many waters and the rending of solid rock.
Marpasse had a glimpse of Denise clinging to her horse that had reared in terror. Gaillard had left Isoult, and was trying to clear a path with his sword, making his horse swerve to and fro in the press. Then Marpasse had no sense left in her, but the sense of falling, of being thrown hither and thither, of being trampled on and hurt. A horse crashed to the ground close to her and lay still, and with the blind instinct of the moment, Marpasse flung herself down and huddled close under the beast’s body as an Arab shelters behind a camel when a dust storm sweeps the desert. Yet with swiftness and tumult and fierce anguish the storm passed, and was gone. Marpasse found herself peering up over the horse’s body, and looking at a splendid sky against which dark figures struggled together as on the edge of an abyss.
Marpasse scrambled up, wondering how she had come out of the storm so easily, and stood and stared stupidly about her, dazed for the moment by the violence of it all. A tempest of horsemen was rolling away over the hillside like a grey cloud curling over a mountain. Broken bodies lay everywhere, some still squirming like worms that have been trodden under foot; others motionless, contorted, and grotesque, like bodies thrown at random from a high tower. And where life and noise and movement had been but a few minutes before, a slow silence seemed to ooze in and to stagnate under the melancholy of the coming night.
Marpasse’s wits came back to her, and she looked round for any sign of those who had been with her a few moments ago. Gaillard had gone, Denise also, like people swept off a rock by an ocean wave.
Looking about her, Marpasse saw a white horse lying dead upon the hillside, and something that moved half under and half beside it, with the whimpering cry of a child. Marpasse stumbled forward, for one foot had been bruised, and found Death sitting upon the carcase of the white horse. Isoult lay there with the beast’s body upon her legs, and her back broken. She could stretch out her hands to Marpasse, with a shuddering spasm of cursing that was piteous and futile.
“Curse Simon, and his bulls, curse Gaillard, the great coward! I am done for, and this white hog, this devil’s bitch lies on my legs like a rock. Hold off, great fool. Do I want to be pulled about when my back’s broken, and my ribs are pricking my liver.”
Marpasse tried to drag her clear of the horse, but Isoult’s screams and curses sobered her. She saw that Isoult was near her end, crushed like a wild cat in the steel jaws of a trap. The girl, too, had the spiteful valour of a cat, and pushed Marpasse’s hands away when she tried to fondle her.
“None of your spittle,” she said, biting her lips with the anguish in her; “it is jolly, I tell you, to be trampled into the dirt! Just the sort of end I was made for. Who cares? Oh, yes, I shall go straight to hell.”
She chattered on at random, laughing, sneering, and biting her lips. Marpasse sat by her, her heart full of inarticulate and half-angry pity.
“What are you sitting there for, great fool? There is that red-headed Denise of yours; you left me for her; I know, Gaillard told me the story. Oh yes, you had what you wanted, Messire Gaillard, you held me in your arms, devil; you saw me trampled on, and rode after the red head. God curse you, my Gaillard, you bundle of burning straw in a body of clay. Tell me, Marpasse, are not we women accursed fools?”
She began to curse Gaillard bitterly under her breath. Marpasse saw a change come over her, for she seemed to grow thinner and greyer in the dusk. A great sob gathered in Marpasse’s throat. She fell a-weeping, and hung dearly over Isoult.
“There, child, what does it avail? Lie in my arms now, and fall asleep.”
Isoult ceased her cursing suddenly, and shuddered a little as she felt Marpasse’s tears falling upon her face. Her black eyes became dark, and very wistful.
“What are you weeping for, great fool?”
Marpasse hung over her, and smoothed her hair.
“You were a little slip of a thing when we first were friends,” she said, “and you often slept in my bosom. We had rough days and rough weather together. All the roads were rough for us, and so is the last track.”
Isoult lay very still, though her cold hands crept up, and rested in the warmth between Marpasse’s breasts. She grew very grey and feeble, and blood came into her mouth. Isoult spat it out, and looked up at Marpasse.
“What a fool of a world,” she said hoarsely; “but if I could work a miracle, I would just mend you, and set you on your feet. And if God and His saints are harder hearted, let them keep their pride, I would rather sup with the devil.”
Isoult gave a great sigh.
“How could I help it all,” she said; “I was branded when I was born, and I was no man’s child. No one ever taught me prayers, or fed me on white bread. And when I was kicked, I learnt to scratch back.”
Marpasse lay down beside her, and in a little while the end came. Nor did Isoult die easily, but with pain and revolt, and blood choking her throat. Marpasse put her arms about her, and held her till she died. And with the passing of Isoult’s spirit, something seemed to break in the heart of Marpasse.
The dusk deepened, and the living woman was sitting there with her head between her hands, and staring at the dead woman’s face, when a gaunt man in the dress of a priest came by, and seeing them, turned aside. He had a wooden cross in his hand, an axe thrust into his girdle, and a buckler at his back. If Grimbald had served the White Cross with his axe that day down amid the windings of the Ouse, he had put the iron aside now, and taken to compassion.
He spoke to Marpasse, but she did not hear him. Grimbald touched her on the shoulder.
“Peace, sister,” he said.
Marpasse jumped up and looked Grimbald over in the dusk. Her glance lighted on his cross.
“What is the use of that,” she said; “bah, take it away, my brother!”
Grimbald nodded his head. Marpasse spread her arms, and then pointed to Isoult.
“See, there, what has God to say to such a thing? When we are born in a ditch, and kept in a ditch, and kicked into a ditch at the end, what has the Cross to do with it?”
Grimbald knelt down quite solemnly, and looked at Isoult.
“What a child! Who said that she had sinned, sister?”
Marpasse’s mouth was full of scoffing.
“We have stones thrown at us. We are too black for the good folk to soil their hands in washing us.”
Grimbald turned his face to her, and his eyes shone.
“The Lord said ‘let those who are without sin cast the first stone.’ What do you make of those words, sister?”
“That the devil must put his tongue in his cheek when the good people go to church,” said Marpasse.
Grimbald got up, and went and stood in front of Marpasse. They looked each other in the eyes like two sturdy souls sure of hearing the truth.
“Do you see her in eternal flames, sister?” asked the man.
“On my oath, I do not. The child had good in her, when people did not thrust thorns into her face.”
Grimbald nodded his head solemnly.
“I would have the flaying of all hypocrites,” he said, “as for such lives, I would mend them in heaven.”
“You will put up a prayer, Father. I have money.”
Grimbald almost glowered at her.
“Will my tongue do any better for the stuff! Help me to pull the child away. We can find her a clean grave somewhere. As for my prayers, God knows the ways of the world.”
Marpasse had an impetuous heart. She took Grimbald by the girdle.
“I could kiss that mouth of yours, Father,” she said, “because it talks out straight, and is the mouth of a man.”
The river Ouse took toll that evening from the King’s host, drawing many a rider into its deeps, while the bogs and the morasses opened their slimy mouths for food. The Prince had saved a portion of his following from the rout upon the hillside, and breaking away he found the west gate of Lewes held against him, and was compelled to gallop round the town to join the King at the Priory of St. Pancras. The greater number of the royalist leaders had fled, riding for the castle of Pevensey, whence they could cross into France. The King’s brothers, William de Valence and Guy de Lusignan, were galloping for their lives, and with them a crowd of adventurers and free-lances who knew that they would be hanged on the forest trees if the country folk could lay their hands on them. Hugh Bigot and Earl de Warenne were with the fugitives. The King of the Romans and his son, the Scotch nobles, many English lords, and a crowd of lesser men had been taken by Earl Simon.
Meanwhile Denise had been saved by the terror of her horse from being trampled and crushed like Black Isoult. The beast had broken through, and fled at a gallop, with Denise lying out like a child along his neck. There were other horses galloping about her, some with riders, many with empty saddles, and one common instinct seemed to shepherd the beasts together, so that Denise found herself swept along in the thick of the herd.
Lying upon her nag’s neck, with her cheek laid against the coarse coat, and her hair blowing in the wind, Denise became conscious at last of a black horse galloping beside hers, stride for stride. At first she saw only the beast’s head with its red nostrils, and ill-tempered ears laid back, and the whites of its eyes showing. Then a man’s figure drew into view, and she had a glimpse of a blue surcoat with a blur of gold thereon, and a great iron helmet that gaped like a frog. Denise was no longer a piece of wreckage carried along in the thick of the flood. The black horse seemed to know his master’s mind, and began to guide Denise’s nag as one beast will guide and rule another.
The man, who had been sitting stiffly in the saddle, bent forward and caught the trailing halter of Denise’s horse.
“Hold fast, Sanctissima,” he said, “we shall soon be out of the mill race.”
Denise knew that it was Gaillard, but fate carried her at the gallop, and she was too conscious of the wind in her ears and the way the ground rushed under her.
“If I can save you a broken neck,” he went on, shouting the words through the black cleft in the great helmet, “I shall deserve your forgiveness. The fools yonder are rushing like a drove of pigs for the river. They will drown one another. We will take our own road.”
Denise felt like one falling and falling in a dream. There was no end to it, and she had not enough breath in her to feel the finer, spiritual fear. It was impossible to so much as think in the rush and welter of all those flying, thundering shapes. Her body was taken up with holding to the body of her horse.
They drew clear of the main torrent at last, and went cantering in the dusk over the rolling grassland. Gaillard was sitting straight in the saddle, and watching a gush of flame that had leapt up over Lewes town. The King’s men who still held the castle, had thrown springalds of fire down upon the houses, setting the thatch ablaze so that the houses should not cover Simon’s men who were crowding to the assault. The glare of the burning town seemed an echo from the red sunset above the western hills. A distant uproar rose into the twilight, though the summits of the downs were solemn and still. Denise felt her horse slacken under her now that they had turned aside from the rush of the pursuit.
The power to think and to feel came back to her. She escaped from the chaos of things to a consciousness of self, and of that other self beside her. The blind life-instinct that had carried her over the hills into the twilight, gave place to a quick, spiritual dread of the man at her side. She had not seen Gaillard desert Isoult, and leave the girl to be trampled under foot. But her own being had a passionate loathing for the man, a loathing so great that it tempted her to throw herself from her horse. Her broken and unconscious body would be nothing to Gaillard, and he would leave her as a drunkard would leave a broken and empty jar.
Gaillard, alert and masterful, reined in suddenly as though to listen. He had caught some sound following them out of the dusk, but the trampling of their own horses had smothered it, and robbed it of significance. Gaillard kept his hold of the halter of Denise’s horse, and towered over her as he turned in the saddle to look back.
The ridge of a hill ran bleak and sharp against a stretch of yellow sky. And outlined against this streak of gold came the figure of a man riding a black horse. He was not two hundred paces away, and Gaillard saw him shake his sword.
Denise also saw that solitary rider black against the sunset, and the heart leapt in her, and beat more quickly.
Gaillard kicked in the spurs, dragging Denise’s rough nag after him.
“Hold fast,” he said, “if that fellow is after us, he will not rob a Gascon of his supper.”
They were galloping again, rushing on into a vague and dolorous dusk. The wind swept Denise’s hair, and once a shout followed after them, but Gaillard kept her horse at the gallop, and Denise was at the mercy of the two strong beasts, and of that yet stronger beast, man. A streak of dull silver parted the darkness in front of them. Before Denise had understood the nature of the thing before them, water was splashed over her, and their horses were swimming the river.
Gaillard had not spoken a word. When they were out of the muddy shallows and on the firm ground beyond, he reined in, turned the horses, and looked back over the river. An indistinct figure loomed out of the dusk with a scamper of hoofs, and the heavy breathing of a hard-ridden horse.
Gaillard had drawn his sword. He lifted his helmet, and putting it on the point of his sword, stood in the stirrups, holding sword and helmet high above his head. Denise was near enough to see his face in the dusk. It was half fierce, and half amused, yet wholly confident, the face of a strong man and a libertine whose strength made him take a bully’s joy in cheating weaker men of their women.
“Hallo, there!”
The pursuer had drawn in on the farther bank, with his horse’s hoofs sucking the spongy grass.
“Keep over there, my friend, if you value a sound skull. I am not to be meddled with when I ride with a gay lady.”
There was a splashing of hoofs in the shallows, and a voice came over the river.
“Denise!” it said, “is it Denise, yonder?”
Gaillard looked down at her, and opened his mouth scoffingly when she answered the man’s call.
“Hallo, Golden-head, you would have a lover in your lap, eh! We will see to it to-night, my desire. I promise you it shall not be the fool yonder.”
The water had broken into fresh ripples that came lapping among the sedges. Aymery’s horse was swimming the river.
Gaillard dropped his great helmet on to his shoulders, and holding the halter in the same big hand as held his sword, turned the horses, and rode off so close to Denise that his knee touched hers.
“Grace before meat,” he said, laughing under his helmet, “your man is probably clumsy enough. I know how to deal with such a windmill.”
He dragged Denise’s horse to a canter, and turning in the saddle, saw Aymery floundering up through the crackling shadows.
“Some people are in a great hurry to get to heaven,” said Gaillard; “it is a pity, Sanctissima, that you have such a head of hair, and such a body. They are things that make a man cut other men’s throats.”
CHAPTER XLI
The plunge through the cold Ouse freshened Aymery’s horse, and Gaillard, who rode only to put some miles between him and Simon’s host at Lewes, heard the rhythm of the hoofs behind him drawing ever nearer. The knowledge that he was chased by one man did not bustle the Gascon in the least, for Gaillard knew his own strength, and had never taken a thrashing. The day’s battle had beggared him, and his brother adventurers, for the lords who had hired them would soon be scattered over the sea. Moreover Gaillard remembered De Montfort in Gascony, and that Earl Simon had dealt very roughly with hired gentlemen of the sword who meddled where they had no cause. Yet Gaillard did not snap his jaws at the chance that had beggared him. He felt in fettle, and ready for a scrimmage, arrogantly confident in himself, and with sufficient animal spite in the mood to put him in an excellent temper. He would thrash the fool who followed them, have his way with Denise, and make Pevensey on the morrow, and sail with some of the King’s lords who were seized with a desire to visit France.
Had Gaillard had a glimpse of the face of the man who followed him, he might have taken the escapade more grimly, and talked less of “Sussex boors who could better fix a spiggot in a barrel than handle a sword.” The Gascon could not keep the froth from the surface. Loquacity was a habit of his when he had anything strenuous in hand. He gabbled away to Denise as they cantered on in the dusk, keeping a sharp eye however on the ground before him, very wide awake in spite of his loquacity.
“Come, now, Sanctissima,” he said, “tell me when you are tired of your horse, and we will stop and talk to the gentleman behind us. A gallop at night makes one sleep more soundly. We shall find a bed somewhere, and no one shall wake you early if you would play the sluggard.”
Denise, listening to the rhythm of hoofs behind them in the dusk, hated Gaillard for his flamboyant spirit and his arrogance. She held her breath for Aymery’s sake. If Gaillard should kill him! If she should see him beaten, and crushed! She cast frightened brown eyes over Gaillard’s figure, and hated him the more because he seemed so big and lusty.
“Hallo, we are coming up fast behind there! The gentleman is very hot, and in a great hurry, Sanctissima! Do you see a wood over yonder. We can make a bed under the trees when we have had our talk with Messire Mead-horn. Beer, Sanctissima, makes these boors hot in the head and quarrelsome.”
Denise felt the canter slacken, for Gaillard was drawing in. A swift and inarticulate horror, a vivid sense of what was to follow, seized on her. These two men would be at each other’s throats. And in the dusk and the silence of that night in May she might see lust conquer and strangle love.
The dull plodding of hoofs behind them beat a measure in her brain. She would have cried out to Aymery, and could not. And on that hard, brown face under the helmet she imagined a callous and self-assured smile.
They neared the trees, masses of fresh foliage hanging motionless under the quiet sky. It would be peaceful, and odorous, and silent in among those trees. Yet their black plumes had a sinister sadness for Denise. They were so calm, and black, and motionless, with never the sound of a night wind in them.
Gaillard reined in abruptly, threw a sharp glance over his shoulder, and then pushed Denise roughly from her horse.
“Try to run, my minion, and I will ride over you,” he said, “no fool of a mesne lord shall stand in the way of it.”
He still had her horse by the halter, and Denise saw him jerk it, so that the beast tossed its head. And the brutal thing that Gaillard did sickened her to the heart, so that she stood still with wide eyes and quivering mouth. For Gaillard had slashed the horse’s throat, and Denise saw the poor beast rear, break free, and then sink on its knees with a smothered sound that was all too human.
Denise forgot even the maimed horse with the coming of Aymery out of the dusk. Gaillard had circled round so that he stood between Denise and the trees. He had begun to sing some southern song, throwing his sword from hand to hand, his voice reverberating in his helmet.
Denise stood and watched and waited as though her whole soul had withdrawn into her eyes. Aymery was quite close to her, yet she neither moved nor spoke to him. Perhaps she was dazed by the imminent dread of what would follow.
Gaillard broke off his song, drew his shield forward, and crowed like a cock.
“Good evening, my little gentleman,” he said; “there you are, white cross and all. I will put a red mark on that cross of yours. Ladies are always pleased by a red rose.”
Aymery said nothing, but glanced aside at Denise. Then Gaillard came cantering up, tossing his sword, and crowing in his helmet.
“Up with your shield, my friend, I have a lady to love, and the night is ready.”
Denise watched them, half in a stupor. The men were sword to sword, shield to shield, and horse to horse. Confusedly, like one half asleep, she heard Gaillard prattling as they began the tussle, a grim and half playful babble, like the chatter of a waterfall when men are struggling in the pool beneath.
Soon, however, Gaillard grew very silent, save for a sudden and spasmodic oath. To Denise there seemed nothing in the world but two strong men lashing at each other from the backs of two ever moving and circling horses. Then in the thick of the clangour, and the heavy breathing, she heard Gaillard give a sharp, fierce cry, the cry of a strong man cut beneath his harness. A horse swerved, stumbled, and rolled over. Whose, Denise could not tell for the moment, in the whirl of the tussle, and the darkness.
It was Gaillard’s horse, but he was free of the beast, up, and no longer the complacent sworder, but a man fighting with the valour of a beast that fights to live. He blundered against the other’s horse, grappled a leg, and twisted Aymery out of the saddle. They were on foot now, still close to her, dodging, striking, circling round and round. Denise could hear the sound of their breathing above the rattle of blows, and the dull rustling of feet.
Then she saw a man stumble, jerk forward, and recover though cut across the shoulders with a sword. A head was bare, the great helmet had fallen, and a white face showed in its stead. Denise knew Gaillard by his greater height. His shield was up, sure as a pent-house at the foot of a wall, and Denise would have crushed that shield had the power of a Greek goddess been hers that moment.
Gaillard had blood on his face, she saw the dark smirch thereof above the eyes and down one cheek. A broken shield was thrown aside, Aymery’s, and fell like a dead crow with flapping wings into the grass. Gaillard sprang on him. There was a meeting of swords, a moment’s locking of the blades, a swift up-thrust by the one that first broke free. Again Denise heard that great cry of Gaillard’s with more of the roar of the wild beast in it than before.
He rolled from side to side as though drunk, and then throwing aside his shield, made a blind and blundering charge with an upheave of the sword. Aymery sprang to the right with a twist of the body, using that swing of the body for the sweep of the counter-blow. Gaillard sprawled, spun round, caught Aymery’s ankle, and dragged him to earth. For a while there was a confused struggle in the grass. Denise heard a man groaning, and straining like a giant trying to lift a rock that is crushing him into the ground. Then there was the sharp sound of steel wrenching its way through steel. The end had come, and one of the men lay still.
Why the horror of the thing should take possession of her as it did Denise did not consider. She saw the wood, dark, cool, and still, before her, and fled into it, seeing nothing but hearing ever Gaillard’s cry. And though she fell often, stumbling against the great trees in the darkness, she ran like one without reason, not noticing whether anyone followed, and that the silence of the place closed on her like water over a stone.
CHAPTER XLII
From a chance word that Marpasse let fall while they were burying Isoult, Grimbald discovered all that she knew concerning Aymery and Denise, and he made her tell the story. Marpasse had been breaking up the ground with a sword, and Grimbald using a shield for a shovel, scooped a shallow trough for the body wrapped in its scarlet surcoat. That labour together over the grave, and the way Grimbald made her talk of herself and Denise, brought Marpasse and the parish priest to a sudden sense of comradeship.
With Isoult laid to rest they trudged off together to Lewes town, but could gain no sure news of Aymery there, though Grimbald found a Sussex man, Geoffrey de St. Leger, who swore that the Knight of the Hawk’s Claw had ridden in that last charge against Prince Edward’s company. Grimbald and Marpasse had already searched the ground in the dusk without coming upon Denise’s grey gown. A truce had been called, and torches were moving to and fro over the battlefield like corpse candles in the darkness.
The parish priest and the bona-roba watched the night out under a hedge, and Marpasse fell asleep while Grimbald watched. They were up before dawn, however, and breaking bread as they went, they searched the scarred track along which Simon’s knights had ridden in pursuit of the flying royalists. Grimbald bent over many a body in the twilight, and though there were women lying dead and stiff upon the grass, Denise was not among them, nor did they find Aymery among the slain.
The dawn was just breaking when they came to the river; grey fog hung there; and it was very still. The dead were here also, horse and man, and Grimbald saw that the richer bodies had been plundered, even stripped naked and left upon the grass. Their search had lessened the chances, save what the grey river might be hiding under its shroud. But Grimbald chose to be an optimist that morning, and swore, as though he had seen the thing in crystal, that neither Aymery nor Denise was under the quiet water. He chose the simplest explanation, and put it forward so confidently that Marpasse believed also, and fell in with his plan. Aymery had found Denise, and taken her away with him out of reach of the storm.
“As sure as I live,” he said, “we shall find them at Goldspur. It is not the first time that I have prophesied the truth.”
And Marpasse accepted Grimbald as a prophet, and he looked the part with his gaunt face and fiery eyes.
They were walking towards the bridge when a splashing sound came up the river, and a black boat glided out of the mist, driven along by a man who wielded a long pole. A second man was drawing in a rope, and there was something at the end thereof, for the rope was taut and straight, with drops of water falling from it. The first man shipped his pole, and went to help his comrade with the rope, nor had either of them noticed Grimbald and Marpasse.
A thing that glistened rose to the surface. The men reached over, and between them, dragged the body of a man in gilded harness into the boat. They grunted cheerfully over the catch, and disappeared below the gunwale. The boat lay in mid-stream, and there was the plash of the grapnel as one of the men heaved it out again into the river.
Grimbald held up a hand to Marpasse, slipped down the bank, and dropped quietly into the water. A few long strokes carried him under the boat’s stern. And the great brown head that appeared suddenly over the gunwale so scared the two spoilers of the dead that they gaped at Grimbald, and lost the chance of knocking him back into the river. The bottom of the boat was littered with plunder from the bodies along the bank; and one of the men was cutting the rings from the hands of the knight they had fished up with the grapnel. Grimbald scrambled in, axe in hand. But he looked so huge, and fierce, and fateful in the grey of the morning that the men jumped for it, and swam like water rats, leaving the parish priest lord of the spoil.
Grimbald poled the boat to the bank, lifted the dead man out, and laid him on the grass. He knelt and said a prayer for him, while Marpasse stood on guard with the axe, watching the two thieves who had crawled out on the near bank and were skulking behind a bush. Grimbald ended his prayer, and stood up and shook himself like a great dog.
“Providence is at work here,” he said; “my prophecy will come true.”
They climbed into the boat and ferried across, watched by the men who were waiting to recover their spoil. But Grimbald cheated them of their desire, for he stove out the planks with the end of the pole, and pushed the boat out to sink in the deeper water.
“Let it return to the dead,” he said. “Those rogues shall catch no more fish to-day.”
Grimbald and Marpasse set out on their five-league trudge to Goldspur, both of them being stout walkers, and eager to come to the end of the tale. These two warm, rough natures were quickly in sympathy, for Grimbald discovered the “woman” in Marpasse, and being nothing of the Pharisee he had no exquisite dread of soiling his robes. Marpasse talked to him on the way as she had never talked to a man before. Grimbald was so strong and so honest that the woman’s eyes gleamed out at him approvingly. Isoult’s death had stirred her deeply, following as it had on her comradeship with Denise. Marpasse put her life in its crude and simple colours before Grimbald’s eyes, not justifying herself, but talking as though it helped her to talk to a priest who understood.
“It is just like climbing a ladder,” she said, “to get inside a castle. The good people above throw stones, and potsherds, and boiling oil. And if you get to the top—they try to pitch you down again. If I had my way I would have a door in the side of the world, and the poor drabs should be let in quietly, and put out to work to earn their bread.”
“Sometimes it is very dull—being good,” said Grimbald with a twinkle.
“It is often very dreary being sinful, Father. Give me a chance to choose, and I would have a fire-side, and a bed, and a broom to use, and a man to cuff me—at times—if he kissed me an hour afterwards. A smack on the cheek does a woman a world of good.”
“And a kiss on the mouth?” asked Grimbald.
“Oh, that makes the puddings turn out well. And I have a taste for puddings.”
Grimbald’s prophetic instinct fulfilled itself that morning, for they were not a mile from Goldspur village, and following a track that ran over a stretch of heathland between the woods, when they saw a man ride out from a woodland way. He was not a furlong from them, so near that they could see the red stains on the white cross sewn to his surcoat, and the way the reins were slack upon the horse’s neck. In fact, the horse seemed to carry the man, and not the man to guide the horse. It was Aymery himself, grey-faced, battered, forlorn as a ship struggling home after a storm.
Grimbald’s long legs left Marpasse far behind. Aymery smiled at him as a sick man smiles at the face of a friend. He had grown gaunt and haggard in a night, and the unshaven stubble on his chin showed black against his pallor.
“Victory at Lewes.”
Grimbald took his bridle.
“And a wound—somewhere,” he said.
“Wounds—plenty of them. I am tired, Grimbald—tired as a dog.”
Aymery left his horse to the priest, for it was as much as he could do to steady himself in the saddle by holding to the pommel with both hands. Marpasse came to meet them, and Aymery looked at her stupidly, as though his brain were clouded.
A faint gleam passed across his face as he recognised Marpasse.
“I have killed him,” he said; “yes—it was on the edge of the woods—over yonder.”
He relapsed again into a half stupor, staring at Marpasse with eyes that seemed heavy with sleep.
“Denise?” she asked him.
He echoed her, slowly. Marpasse nodded.
“Denise was with Gaillard—I killed him. She had disappeared when we had ended it,” and he looked at Marpasse as though it was she who was wise in the matter, an appealing look like the appeal of a dumb child.
Grimbald gave Marpasse a most unpriestly wink.
“Bed and bread,” he said in a whisper, “and good wine to wash it down. The oil is low in the lamp. Keep it burning.”
Marpasse understood, and was all cheerfulness.
“Never was I better pleased by the thought of a corpse,” she said; “as for Denise, she was born to run away—as I always tell her. She knows the woodways hereabouts, Father, eh? To be sure. Madame will not be long on the road.”
Aymery was at the end of himself, and lay along his horse’s neck, his arms hanging down on either side. Grimbald looked fierce, being combative where death, sickness, and the Devil were concerned.
“Hum—white as a clean dish clout!”
Marpasse touched Aymery’s cheek.
“Asleep,” she said.
“Speak out; no metaphors.”
“I speak what I mean—and your long words can go to the eel pond, Father. He is asleep. What could be better? Gaillard, Messire Gaillard, you met your match! And Denise—the fool—ran away!”
She went close, kissed Aymery’s neck, and then turned on Grimbald with a defiant glare of the eyes.
“Mayn’t I kiss a brave man?” she asked.
Grimbald threw up his head and laughed.
“Who said you ‘nay’?” he retorted; “you women are in such a hurry.”
“Then I shall kiss you, Father!”
“Will you!” quoth he grimly.
Goldspur manor house was still a mute gathering of charred posts, though some of the lodges and the barn had been rebuilt. Aymery was taken that day to the priest’s house that stood on the edge of a glimmering birch wood, whose boles rose like silver pillars above the brown wattle fence about the church. Grimbald carried him in in his arms, and laid him on his own bed. There was nofocariaor servant, and Marpasse was soon as busy as any hearth-ward. She found the aumbry where Grimbald kept his oil and wine, gathered sticks from the wood lodge, lit a fire, and hung the iron pot on the hook. Grimbald was stripping Aymery of his harness, unfastening the gorget and greaves, peeling the heavy hauberk off him with much trouble, and unlacing the gambeson beneath. Marpasse came in with the wine and the water-pot, for Grimbald had his bed in the little room at the end of the great hall. She began to covet and handle some of the parish priest’s vestments that hung on pegs along the wall. Marpasse’s brown hands made a white alb scream into strips for bandages. Grimbald glanced round at her with philosophic consent.
“I shall never get such another,” he said.
“Shall I put up an oath for you, Father?”
“Quiet, fool! His mother gave it me—five years ago.”
“It has washed well,” said Marpasse.
And the alb was used to bind up Aymery’s wounds.
Much loss of blood from a few deep flesh cuts, that was the main mischief, and Grimbald and Marpasse soon had him under the coverlet. He was half asleep all the while they were handling him, heavy and stupid with long hours in the saddle, the death tussle with Gaillard, and lack of food. There was no epic heroism in the episode. Aymery was put to bed like a small boy, and the washing that Marpasse had given him had made the illusion more complete. Beyond making him drink some wine they did not trouble him, but left him to have his sleep out, and wake—if God willed it—hungry.
Marpasse’s thoughts turned to Denise, but she and Grimbald were sufficiently carnal to rejoice in a good round meal of bread and mead and bacon. They sat at the table with the door of the house wide open, so that they had a glimpse of the green and mysterious world beyond. Grimbald had little to say, and Marpasse was very hungry, and so little overawed by a seat at a priest’s table that her hunger walked boldly, and would not be abashed. And Grimbald was amused by it, and commended the healthiness of the instinct, the more so because it proved its value in the person of a very comely woman with a sunburnt face, clear eyes, and a mass of tawny hair.
They began at last to talk of Denise, and Marpasse made Grimbald take her to the door, and point her out the way to the beech wood where Denise had had her cell. Grimbald could show her the wood itself, a green cloud adrift across the blue of the May sky. Marpasse saw to her shoes, dropped half a loaf into her bag, and made it plain to Grimbald whither she was going.
“Birds fly back to the same haunts in the spring,” she said; “nor do I see, Father, why you alone should be a prophet.”
Grimbald looked at her as a wise man of five and forty looks at a mischievous yet lovable girl.
“Go—and prove it,” he said; “I shall get down to the village and send the people out to search the woods. Not a word to them—mind you—of all that has happened in the past.”
Marpasse showed the curve of a strong brown chin.
“Am I so much a fool?” she asked.
Grimbald appeared to consider the question. He did not give his verdict till Marpasse had reached the gate.
“Death alone saves us from being fools,” he said, and his eyes had a seriousness as he watched her go.
Marpasse went down the hill, leaving the village on her left, and crossing the valley, climbed the slope to the great beech wood. The trunks were black and smooth under a splendour of green that shone in the sunlight. The earth still seemed virginal, for the flowers that had been touched by the bees were lost in the rich, rank lustiness of early summer. The valleys rippled with gold, and the may trees were still in bloom, and full of infinite fragrance.
Marpasse made her way through the wood, and came at last to the place where the beech boles stood like great pillars about an open court. There was a blur of colour against the green, the pink blush of an early rose that had run in riot over the wattle fence, and flowered like a rose tree in a garden of Shiraz. The dark brown thatch of the cell showed ragged holes where birds had burrowed in and built their nests. The grass stood knee deep in the glade, grass that seemed asleep in the warm sunlight, dreamed over by moon-faced daisies bewitched by the song of the bees.
Marpasse had taken cover behind the trunk of a beech tree. She had seen a track in the long grass where someone had passed but a short while ago. And Marpasse’s eyes beamed in her brown face. Her prophecy had also been fulfilled, for there, under the shade of the rose tree she saw Denise amid the grass, her knees drawn up, and her chin resting in the palms of her two hands.
Marpasse watched her awhile, indulging her own philosophy much like a nurse commenting upon a child.
“Heart of mine, but somebody should be here in my place. What a sad, white face, to be sure, and what eyes—as though the whole world were on its death bed! We will change all that, my dear. You shall be the colour of the rose bush before the day is out.”
She slipped from behind the tree, and crossed the grass, singing a song that she had often sung upon the road. And she saw Denise’s face start up into the sunlight out of its mood of mists and sadness. A tendril of the rose tree caught Denise’s hair as Marpasse pushed open the rotting gate.
Marpasse laughed, happy, yet with a lovable shyness in her eyes.
“See what it is to be desired,” said she, “even the rose tree must catch at that hair of yours. Heart of mine—how you tremble!”
She took Denise and held her, kissing her mouth.
“So you ran away—for the last time, hey—when St. George had finished slaying the dragon! That was a mad thing to do, my dear. You should have stopped to succour him, should he have been wounded.”
Denise’s brown eyes searched Marpasse’s face, looking beyond the other’s playfulness.
“Gaillard?” she asked.
“Dead, heart of mine; the best thing that ever he did was to die. Those brown eyes of yours need not look so frightened, St. George has been put to bed to sleep till he is hungry.”
Marpasse sat down under the rose tree, and drew Denise into her lap.
“Try to smile a little, my dear,” she said, “for summer is coming in, and the cuckoo is singing.”
Denise did not rest long in Marpasse’s lap, nor would she touch any of the bread that Marpasse had brought with her. She drew aside in the grass, turned her face away, and sat staring into the shadowy spaces under the trees. Marpasse watched her, and let the mood take its course. She could be patient with Denise as yet, knowing that suffering and sorrow leave the heart sore and easily hurt.
Denise spoke at last in a low voice, still keeping her face hidden from Marpasse.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“Down yonder—in the priest’s house.”
“Wounded?”
“He killed Gaillard, heart of mine, and Gaillard was a good man at his weapons.”
Her vagueness did not work as a lure. Denise did not swoop to it; so Marpasse told the truth.
“There is nothing to fear. Messire Aymery was not born to die a bachelor.”
“Does he know that I am here?”
“How should he, heart of mine, when I left him asleep—tired out, and came up here at a venture.”
Denise fell again into a long silence. There was something in the poise of her head—and in the way she sat motionless in the long grass that betrayed troubled thoughts and deep self-questioning. Denise had the mirror of her life before her, and found it full of shadows, and of reflections that she could not smother.
“Marpasse.”
“Heart of mine.”
“He must never see me again; no—I could not bear it.”
“God help us now! Why, it is the month of May—and the sun is shining——”
“It is the truth, Marpasse. How can I—I——? Look; it all happened here! How can I put that out of my heart?”
Marpasse stretched out a hand and touched her.
“Come, come, look at the sun, not at the shadows.”
“It is not in me—to forget everything.”
“Even that the man loves you?”
Denise turned on her suddenly with eyes full of a fierce light.
“Yes, and should I take his love, I—who cannot go to him as a woman should! It is not in my heart, Marpasse, whatever you may say. God help me, but I love him better than that!”
Her passion spent itself, and she lay down in the grass, covering her face, and trying to hide a rush of tears. Marpasse bent over her, moved by great pity, and yet impatient with Denise for pulling so simple a thread into a tangle. But Denise would not listen to Marpasse. She was even angry with her own tears.
“No, no—let me be; I am a fool; it will soon pass.”
Marpasse grimaced.
“Why will you walk on thorns?” she said; “some people can never satisfy their consciences!”
Denise still hid her face in the long grass.
“It is for Aymery’s sake.”
“Bah!” quoth Marpasse; “you will give him a stone, will you—when he is hungry.”
She got up from under the rose tree, and went towards the gate.
“I have left you the bread,” she said, “and it is better to eat bread and be contented than to look for rents in one’s own soul. Messire Aymery shall not know that you are here, if you will promise me one thing.”
Denise raised herself upon her elbow.
“Stay here till to-morrow. I will put it all before Father Grimbald. He is a man with a head and a heart. For the rest, my dear, put that bread into your body and sleep ten hours by the sun.”