CHAPTER XVI
Twilight had fallen, a twilight of blue mists and vague, mysterious distances. A young moon was in the sky, and in a thicket near Denise’s cell nightingales were singing. She was to offer herself at the high altar that night, to strip her body before God, St. Martin, and Our Lady, for Dom Silvius had so persuaded her, arguing that her chaste holiness would be the more miraculous when offered publicly to God. Denise had had no heart to determine for herself, and to withstand Dom Silvius’s arguments. Her womanhood stood mute and humbled, feeling that some subtle virtue had fled out of her, and left her without purpose. She had lost faith in her own genius; in the magic crystal of her heart she could no longer see visions. And like one very weary she was leaving her destiny in the hands of others, letting them think for her, and guide her as they pleased.
When the twilight had fallen Denise went out into the little grass close before the cell, a close that was shut in by a high thorn hedge. She carried with her a jar of water that Abbot Reginald had blessed, a napkin, a vial of perfumed oil, and a pure white shift and tunic, given by the devout. No one could see her there, and Denise stripped off her old clothes, washed her body from head to foot, dried it, and anointed it with oil.
Now the warmth of her bosom made the perfume of the oil rise up into her nostrils, and the perfume seemed to steal straight into Denise’s heart. The night was very still, save for the song of the nightingales. Dew had fallen on the grass, yet a sweet warmth rose out of the earth, a warmth that is rare in the month of May. There was the moon yonder, and far hills faint under a mysterious sky. And Denise who a moment ago had felt miserable and weary of soul, in one breath was blushing as red as a rose, her whole body quivering in the moonlight, her eyes full of some inward fire.
A call from the unknown had come to her, and her heart had answered it, and for the moment she stood transfigured. The night seemed magical, a-whisper with mystery. She felt that she must steal away into the sweet green gloom of the woods, taking all hazards, dreaming a great love. She stretched her arms above her head, so their white and anointed sheen caught the faint light of the moon. Then as a white flame leaps and falls again into the darkness, so Denise’s arms fell suddenly across her bosom. The warmth and the perfume had gone again, and she felt cold in body and in heart.
What could it avail her that she was a woman and could dream dreams? The torch was quenched, the wine spilt from the jar. There was no other path than this even though it was strewn with thorns. She must follow it to the end, forgetting that other life, and yet remembering it, hating the world, yet thinking of one heart that might have stood for the whole world. If she escaped bitterness and shame, surely she should be grateful, and contented with such mercies. There was no other life for her but this one of self-renunciation.
Slowly, and very sadly she put on the white shift and tunic, emblems of what the world believed in. She bound up her hair and the touch of it brought back the memory of that night, a memory that stung like an asp at the breast. When she had dressed herself, she knelt on the threshold to pray until the midnight offering. But her misery fled forth into other ways, and she thought of man before she thought of God.
Hours had passed, and there was a sense of stir somewhere over yonder where the abbey lay. A bell began to toll, slowly and sonorously, the first clang of its clapper sounding a note of dismal sanctity. Torches were being lit, for a faint glare began to rise above the orchards and the thickets, and Denise, kneeling on the bare stones, knew that the hour of her renunciation was near.
The sound of their coming was still a sound in the distance when Denise heard the trampling of a horse along the road that ran not very far from her cell. It ceased suddenly, and a murmur of voices came up to her in the darkness. Then all was still again save for the tolling of the bell, and the solemn chanting which told her that Dom Silvius and the Brethren who had charge of her were coming with torches over the hill.
Now Denise had risen and gone out into the green close when the trampling of hoofs came along the thorn hedge with the creaking of harness, and the snorting of a horse. Denise stood still, holding her breath as she listened. The moon had gone, and the only light was the glare of the torches that were topping the hill.
Denise heard a voice calling.
“Denise,” it said; “Sancta Denise.”
The trampling of hoofs had ceased, and there was silence save for the chanting of the monks upon the hill top. Something moved beyond the hedge, and Denise heard the latch of the gate lifted. The heart stood still in her a moment. Someone was near her in the close, for she heard the sound of breathing, and the rustling of feet in the grass.
A man’s whisper came to her out of the dark.
“Denise!”
In a moment, she knew not how, the warm silence of the night grew full of love and life. He was close to her with a white, passionate face looking into hers, questioning her very soul. Perhaps their hands touched. It was like the tumult and yearning of waters in a dark and narrow place.
Denise was trembling from head to foot. Aymery had touched her hand, no more than that, yet nothing but a thin film of darkness seemed to hold the two apart. Denise heard the outpouring of his words, a man’s words, poignant and tender, striking her very heart. What could she say to him, with this renunciation of hers so near.
“Denise, why have you left us?”
She covered her face with her arms.
“Lord, lord, was it not you who told me to seek a surer refuge?”
His hands were straining back, and straining forward, as though to touch her, and not to touch.
“Yes, but that was a while ago. Things happen in this world, when a man is tied to his bed. If all has been well with you——”
She let her arms fall from before her face, and there, above them, the dark hillside was seamed with a stream of light. And in the flare of the torches she could see many shadowy figures moving, and the outline of a great cross carried in the van.
Aymery had seemed blind to all save the white figure before him. But the torch flare struck across his face, and he seemed suddenly to understand.
Then Denise spoke, as though compelling herself.
“They are coming for me,” she said. “To-night, I offer myself at the high altar. They must not find you here.”
He did not answer her for the moment, but stood looking at the torches, almost stupidly, like a man stunned. Then he bowed his head before her, spoke her name, and went out into the night.
Aymery remembered all that followed as a man remembers few things in the course of his life. He hid his horse in a thicket, and followed on foot when the cross and the torches turned back towards the abbey. The abbey town seemed full of strange curious faces, of shadowy figures that jostled him, of the light of torches, of folk whispering together. There were many people moving under the gate, and on towards the abbey church. Aymery moved with them, silently, dully, like one carried along in the midst of a stream. They flowed in at the doors, these people, and on between pillars that towered up into darkness, and along aisles that were shadowy and dim. The high altar alone was lit with many waxen candles. The Brethren were in their stalls, the sound of chanting came from somewhere out of the dusk.
Then began in that great church the last episode of Dom Silvius’s pageant. Aymery, leaning against a pillar in the darkness, saw Denise kneeling before the altar, Reginald of Brecon near her, and two of the most aged of the monks. A bell rang; a strong and strident voice spoke some prayer; then the chanting soared and rolled into the far vaultings of the roof. Heads were bowed everywhere; the monks in the choir had their faces hidden. But Aymery’s eyes were turned towards the altar where the candles flickered and the smoke of incense seemed to curl and ascend.
He saw Denise rise, drop her white tunic and shift, and kneel naked upon the altar steps. An old monk bent over her, and clipped away her hair so that it fell like light about her body. She bent before the altar with outstretched arms, and holy water was sprinkled upon her body and her clothes. A voice sounded. She rose slowly and re-arrayed herself. One long murmur seemed to pass like a wind through the darkened church.
The year of a novitiate had begun, a season of probation that should pass before more solemn and final vows should be put upon her. Silvius, shrewd man, had advised Denise guardedly for the sake of the honour of his “house.” There should be a ceremony, a kneeling before the altar. That would please the people, and bring her more solemnly before their eyes. Then let Denise prove herself as a child of miracles, and they could talk of the greater and more lasting vows.
Then the aisles seemed alive with swirling water. The people were moving forth with lowered heads, while Denise knelt again before the high altar with its candles. Aymery went with the people, looking back but once when he had reached the western door. The night struck warm after the cold air of the great church. He found himself in the abbey town, walking aimlessly in the midst of many moving, whispering figures.
Then a great hunger to be alone seized him. He almost ran through the straggling town, up past Mountjoye to where he had hidden his horse. And when the first grey of the dawn came he was galloping northwards along the forest roads as though trying to distance the memories of the past night.
CHAPTER XVII
At Pevensey that June-tide Peter of Savoy discovered something that concerned him, thanks to Gaillard’s foolhardiness, and the Gascon’s boastful, passionate nature. There were bitter words between the Lady of the Lute, and Peter of Savoy, though much of the bitterness was in Etoile’s mouth, for the Count could be cold as a frost, when cheated.
“Madame,” said he, looking her coolly in the face, “it is every man’s privilege to see that he is not fooled. Let us be merciful to one another. You will find a horse at the gate.”
Now Etoile might have persuaded most men with her beauty, but in my Lord Peter’s eyes there was a look that told her that he would use steel if she made a mocking of his pride. She smothered her words, and dissembled her wrath before him, for he was too cold and clever a man to be treated as she would have treated Gaillard. “Go,” his eyes said to her, “and be thankful in the going.” And Etoile hid her rage, and went, half wondering the while whether some man had orders to stab her in the back.
Then Peter of Savoy sent for Messire Gaillard, but the Gascon had become suddenly discreet, and betaken himself early to the stable.
His master snapped his fingers.
“Let the fool go,” he said. “Madame will need company on the road to the devil.”
One of his gentlemen, a very young man, showed some concern for the Lady of the Peacocks.
“Will you turn her out next to naked, sire?”
Peter of Savoy laughed in his face.
“Are you a fool, also, Raymond? Go with her if it pleases you, you will have to fight the Gascon. God knows, I would prevent no man drinking green wine.”
So they turned Etoile out of Pevensey, suffering her to take nothing with her but the horse, the clothes she rode in, a little money, and such jewels as were hers.
Peter of Savoy had not judged the case amiss, for if Raymond of the Easy Heart had followed Dame Etoile some miles that morning, he would have found Gaillard waiting for her under the shade of a beech wood near the road. But at first Etoile would not look at the man, for her anger was still hot in her because of all that had passed. She reviled Gaillard without mercy, letting the whip of her tongue flay him as he rode along beside her horse, half loving her and half hating her for her taunts and for her fury.
Whether Gaillard spoke up well for himself, or whether Etoile began to consider her necessity, it came about that she gave up mocking him, and let him ride more peaceably beside her. Probably it was not what Gaillard said, but what Etoile thought that brought them to softer speaking. The woman looked at once to the future, and the future to her was a forecasting of the importunities of self. Here was she, worse off in pride than any beggar woman, she whom Peter of Savoy had brought with pomp and homage out of the South. Gaillard had brought all this upon her, and Gaillard seemed her necessity since she was set adrift in a strange land. Perhaps she loved him a very little, with the treacherous, transient love of a leopardess. For the present he must serve her. The husk of to-day might be the gold shoe of the morrow.
Matters were so well mended between them that they halted to rest under the shade of a tree. And there Gaillard knelt in his foolish, passionate way, and swore many oaths on the cross of his sword. Etoile curled her lip at him, and bade him save his breath. She was in no mood for such philanderings, and had other thoughts in her head.
“Come, Messire Gaillard,” said she, “you and I must understand each other if we are to travel the road together. Those who are turned out of doors must learn to face rough weather.”
Gaillard showed his temper by pulling out a purse, and pouring the gold in it at her feet.
“Such stuff is to be won. I will fight to win pay for you, my desire, as never man fought before.”
Etoile touched the money contemptuously with her foot.
“Put it back again, you may need it.”
Gaillard shrugged, and humoured her. He spun one of the coins, caught it, and balanced it on his thumb.
“A woman is made a wife for less,” he said.
“And kept, for less. Listen, fool, we are not a girl and a boy.”
She spoke to Gaillard a long while, looking in his eyes as she spoke. At first Gaillard carried his head sulkily, but little pleased with what she said. Presently his eyes began to glitter, he protruded his chin, and once more his shoulders seemed ready to swagger. Before Etoile had ended she had made him her man, ready to skip to the tune she piped.
“Splendour of God!” and he began to laugh. “That is a game after my own heart. In a year the King shall give us the best of his castles. What Fulk de Brauté did, I can do even better.”
He sprang up, happy, vain, and audacious, not thinking to read into the deeps of Etoile’s eyes.
“You are a great man, my Gaillard,” she said. “You and I shall make our fortunes without waiting for Peter’s pence.”
Hardly three leagues away from these two worldlings the Church took cognizance of holier things, and sought to boast of a miracle at the hands of Denise. More than a month had passed since the Lady of Healing, as the folk called her, had knelt at midnight before the altar, and offered her body to the glory of God. Dom Silvius, dreaming his dreams, and chaffering over his ambitions, thought the time ripe for Denise to prove her sanctity. For a month she had been left in solitude to commune with the saints, save that an Abbey servant had daily brought her food and drink. The thoughts of all the people turned to the thorn hedge and the brown thatched cell that stood on the northern slope of Mountjoye Hill; and human nature being self-seeking, especially in its prayers, each soul had some hope of profiting by the miraculous hands of Denise.
While Etoile and Gaillard rode together in the course of adventure, Dom Silvius came to Virgin’s Croft, and a servant with him bearing a young child in his arms. Several women followed devoutly at the almoner’s heels, keeping their distance because of Dom Silvius’s carefulness towards the sex. The child was said to be possessed by a devil, and when a fit took him he would fall down foaming, struggle awhile, and then lie like one dead. The devil had brought him to such a pass, that he seemed frailer and feebler after each seizure. The boy was the only son of his mother, the brawny wife of a still more brawny smith, and they had great hopes for the child now that Denise had come.
Silvius had the child laid before her door.
“A devil teareth him, Sister,” said he. “Your purity shall drive the devil out.”
And they left the child with her, and went their way.
Now Denise was very miserable that day because of something in herself that she had begun to fear, and she needed her own heart healing before she might dream of healing others. The world remained with her, though she was shut up as a saint, and the solitude and the loneliness had preyed the more upon her mind. At Goldspur the wild woodland life and the life of the people had been hers. Here she had only her own haunting thoughts, and a voice that whispered that the virtue had gone out of her, and that she no longer had the power to help and to heal.
It was with a kind of anguish that she watched over the child, taking him to her bed, and praying that the devil of epilepsy might go forth. All that day she watched and prayed, the boy lying in a stupor with wide eyes and open mouth. So the night came, and Denise lit her taper, and knelt down again beside the child. All that night she pleaded and strove with God, beseeching Him to show His grace to her for her own sake and the child’s.
Just before dawn the boy was taken with a strong seizure, crying out at first, and then lying stiff and straight and silent as a stone image. Denise took him into her lap, put her mouth to his mouth, and held him against her bosom. As the dawn came, so the truth dawned also that the boy was dead, dead in her lap despite her prayers. And a great horror came upon her, as though God had deserted her, nor had the saints listened to her prayers. A new shame chilled her heart. The virtue had gone out of her, she felt alone with her own thoughts, and the dead.
When Dom Silvius and the women came some two hours after dawn they found Denise seated upon the bed with the dead child in her lap. A kind of stupor seemed upon her. She did not so much as move, but sat there with vacant face.
“He is dead. Take him.”
That was all she said to Dom Silvius. The almoner took the boy, not able to hide the mortification on his face as he carried the dead child to his mother. Denise heard the woman’s cry, though the cry seemed far away like a voice in a dream. Dom Silvius sought to comfort her, but comfort her he could not, because she had hoped so much from Denise’s prayers. And as is the way so often with the human heart, the woman went home in bitterness and anger, holding the dead child to her breast, and murmuring against Denise.
If Denise felt herself deserted of God, there was one Sussex man who did not lack for inspiration, and whose heart was possessed by both God and the devil. Aymery of Goldspur had ridden from the Thames to the Severn, to join Earl Simon’s army that was on the march from the Welsh borders. The great Earl was like a rock in a troubled sea, or a beacon that drew all those who loved their land, and who strove for better things. The King might call him a “turbulent schemer”; sneers never killed a man like De Montfort. For the heart of England was full of turbulence, and it seemed that England’s heart beat in Earl Simon’s breast.
Aymery, wild as a hawk, borne along by the storm-wind of his restless manhood, grieving, exulting, torn by a great tenderness that could have no hope, came within the ken of the People’s Earl. For it was Aymery’s need that month to throw himself at the gallop into some cause, to live in the midst of tumult, to let his face burn wherever the banners blew. Perhaps fortune set her seal on him because he was ready to hazard his life with the fierce carelessness of a man who had no traffic with the future. Be that as it may, Simon’s host marched down from the West, taking Hereford and Gloucester on its way, and Aymery had caught the great Earl’s eye before they came to Reading Town.
Moreover, on the march from Reading to Guildford, over the heathlands and wild wastes, there were skirmishes with the King’s men who had pushed out from Windsor. Sharp tussles these, horsemen galloping each other down, spear breaking on the hillsides, men slain on the purple heather. Here the fiercer, bolder spirits were to be found, the young eagles who would redden their talons. In one such skirmish Aymery charged in, and rescued young John de Montfort who had been taken prisoner through too much zeal and daring. At Reigate again there was more fighting, though the place soon fell, yet Fortune pushed Aymery into a lucky chance. Certain of the King’s men, hired ruffians most of them, had barricaded themselves in a church, nor would they budge, though an assault was given under the eyes of the Earl himself. Fortune helped Aymery as she so often helps the man who is careless as to his own end. He found the window of a side chapel unguarded, broke in, and held his ground desperately till others followed, and the place was won.
Earl Simon himself came into the church, and knelt there before the altar, close to where two of the King’s men lay dead in their blood. When he had finished his prayer, he stood on the altar steps and called for the man who had leaped down first into the church. And they put Aymery forward, finding him standing behind a pillar, and so gave him the glory.
Simon made ready to knight him there in the church, but Aymery begged seven days to chasten himself, keep vigils, and be blessed with his sword and shield. Simon looked at him steadily, for he was a man after his own heart, grim, resourceful, dangerously quiet, and no boaster. He granted Aymery the seven days, telling him to come to Tonbridge whither the host went towards the siege of Dover.
“God first, man afterwards,” he said. “You have chosen as I would have you choose.”
So Aymery slept that night at Guildford before the altar of the church. When the dawn came he mounted his horse, and rode southwards, alone.
CHAPTER XVIII
A man’s chivalry must have a queen to crown it with the crown of a high purpose, and Aymery had no will to forget Denise, nor the mystical beauty of her womanhood. The thought of her drew him as the Holy City drew those who had taken the cross. Since he was to be made a knight, she should bless his arms for him, and serve as a Lady who looked at him out of Heaven. Thus Aymery went riding southwards in the July heat, saying his prayers devoutly at dawn and at sunset, bathing his body when he found clear water; and filling his soul with the thought of Denise. He had broken himself to the belief that she was lost to the world, though he was still troubled as to the happenings that had driven her from Goldspur. Denise’s silence seemed sacred to him, and her unapproachableness made his love the greater. Now, like a man who has found a good excuse, he returned again to win a glimpse of her face.
Late on the afternoon of the first day Aymery turned aside from the road under the shade of an oak tree to rest his horse. Below him stretched a deep valley with the road running through it like a white thread; the place seemed very desolate, while on the farther side of the valley the woods came down close to the road. The day was full of a shimmer of gold, and no mowers had come to mow the summer grass.
As Aymery sat there under the shade of the tree, he saw a man in a blue surcoat riding a grey horse along the road below. Aymery had hardly set eyes on him when he saw the man halt, and remain motionless under the July sun that glittered on him and showed that he was armed. A woman had come out from the woods close to the road, a woman with black hair and a scarlet tunic that shone up against the green. What was passing between them Aymery could not tell, but he saw the woman disappear into the woods and the man on the grey horse follow her.
Some time had passed, and Aymery’s thoughts had flown elsewhere, when a cry rose out of the summer silence, held a moment, and then died down. Presently he saw a grey horse and a rider in blue reappear out of the woods with another horse and rider beside him. The second man wore green, and carried a plain, black shield.
Aymery saw them ride away westwards into the golden light that covered the woods and the valley. The way they rode seemed strange to him, for the horses went shoulder to shoulder, and one arm of the man in green lay about the body of the rider in blue. He was puzzled moreover by the thought of the woman in the red tunic, and the cry that he had heard, and it crossed his mind that there had been foul play yonder.
When he had mounted and come down to the place where the blue knight had turned aside, Aymery turned aside also into the woods. A little way in, under the trees where a bank rose covered with bracken, he found a track that had been trampled leading to a place where someone seemed to have lain. But he saw nothing else beyond the tree boles, the cool green foliage, and the bracken splashed here and there with sunlight. When he called, no voice answered him, so he rode out of the wood and went his way. Yet there was more in the wood than he had seen, nor did he guess that he would meet again with the rider on the grey horse.
On the evening of the second day Aymery came to the hills by Montifeld, and saw the Senlac uplands smitten by the evening light. Beyond Watlingtun he found a man mowing grass beside the road, and stopped to question him concerning Denise. The man pointed towards Mountjoye Hill, for they could see from where they stood the thatched roof of the cell above the thorn hedge.
“The Virgin’s cell is yonder, lording,” he said, thinking perhaps that Aymery rode thither to be cured of some wound, and that he would be disappointed, for the Lady of Healing had worked no cures since they had brought her to the Abbey lands.
Denise was at her prayers, kneeling on the threshold with the door of the cell wide open, when she heard the trampling of Aymery’s horse, a sound from the outer world that made her heart stand still and listen. There was a minute’s silence before she heard the latch of the gate lifted, and someone moving through the unmown grass.
“Aymery! Lord!”
He saw the wave of colour go over her face, for he had come upon her suddenly as she knelt there upon the threshold. The rush of blood from the heart died down again. She looked at him, and prayed that he should not see that she was trembling.
Denise rose up from her knees as though the sound of her own voice had broken some spell. A kind of dumb discomfiture possessed them both. Aymery, with the sunlight shining on his battle harness, felt challenged by his own silence. The words he had meant to utter stuck in his throat, for that wave of redness over the woman’s face had somehow made him feel ungenerous and a coward. What right had he to come galloping into her life again, when they had put a day of dreams behind them?
And like a man who would be honest, he stumbled to the blunt perfunctoriness of a boy going down on his knees in a church. There was something to be gone through with, and the sooner the better, since he had begun so clumsily. Many women would have misunderstood the mood in him. Denise understood it, perhaps more clearly than Aymery himself.
“Yes?”
Her eyes questioned him, more than her voice. Aymery put his shield before him as he knelt.
“I have been with Earl Simon,” he said, looking at his shield. “It is to be the sword on the shoulder, and a pair of spurs.”
He spoke, with a slight shrug of the shoulders, a man ill at ease under his own eyes, even though self-consciousness was not part of his normal nature. Denise’s heart had dropped to a steadier rhythm. The quicker wit of the woman has always the advantage of the man.
“Earl Simon gave me some days, to keep vigils, wash, and be cleansed. I would have my arms blessed also, they will serve in a good cause.”
He drew out his sword, set it point downwards in the grass, and looked at it, and not at Denise.
She had her two hands over her bosom, and seemed to draw several breaths before she could speak.
“There is the Abbot Reginald.”
“Should I ride forty miles to be blessed by Reginald of Brecon? Here are my sword and shield. Bless them, or they shall go unblessed.”
She looked at him, recoiling upon the consciousness of all that had happened to her since the days at Goldspur.
“I?”
“You can bless them, Denise. Who better?”
The fog in the air between them thinned and vanished. But neither Aymery nor Denise noticed its passing. Life, and the infinite earnestness thereof had both their hearts in thrall.
“Is it so great a thing to ask, Denise?”
He was looking at her steadily now, the self-consciousness had slipped from him.
“Lord, if my blessing were but worthy.”
“Need you ask that!”
“It is I who ask it of my own heart,” she answered.
He flung out his arms suddenly, and his face blazed up at her.
“For England, for the land, not for me alone, Denise. Mother of God—I will have no other. Am I not wise as to my own desire?”
His ardour caught her spirit and sent it soaring above the earth as a wind blows a half-dead beacon into flame. The miserable self-fear, the consciousness of coming shame fell away from her like a ragged garment. She was the Denise of the woods again, with miraculous eyes and hands.
“Give them to me.”
She stretched out her arms, took his shield, held it to her bosom, and spoke words over it that Aymery could not hear. Yet how much love and how much supplication there were in those words of hers, the heart of a woman alone could tell. She took his sword also, kissed the cross thereof, and held it on high.
“Break not, fail not. Keep troth, rust never.”
She gave him the sword again, and Aymery kissed it, and knelt awhile with bowed head, as though in prayer. Then he rose up out of the grass, holding the cross of the sword before his eyes.
“I would keep my vigil here,” he said. “Yonder where there is a thicket of young oaks. Before dawn, I shall be gone.”
Denise’s face was still transfigured. The realisation of her earthliness had not returned as yet.
“God guard you in the wars,” she said to him.
Aymery lifted his head, and for a moment they looked into each other’s eyes. Then he turned from her as though his own heart bade him go. And it seemed to each that they had snatched a moment of joy from that half-closed hand of life that holds more pain than gladness.
There were some children standing staring at his horse when Aymery came out from the wicket in the hedge of thorns. He paid no heed to them however, and taking his horse by the bridle, led him to the oak thicket on the hillside below Virgin’s Croft. The children ran away into the town, and told their mothers that they had seen a knight come out of St. Denise’s gate with a naked sword over his shoulder. The children’s tale-bearing caused some tattle in the Abbey town, and the Abbey servants heard it.
Thus these two, soldier and saint, passed the night within call of one another; Aymery kneeling bareheaded under the stars, with sword and shield before him; Denise pitiably wakeful in her cell, conscious of the darkness, and of that shadow of darkness that grew each day more heavy about her heart. She prayed for Aymery that night, prayed for herself, and against the future that she dreaded. They were so near to each other, and yet so utterly apart. It seemed to Denise that night that she had fled to this place of refuge, only to meet the greater bitterness and shame.
At last the dawn came, and with it the sound of a horse moving over the grass. She heard Aymery come riding up to the hedge of thorns. She saw his sword flash out against the dawn as he stood in the stirrups and called her name.
“Denise, Denise!”
“God keep you,” she answered him in her heart.
He went away into the world at a gallop, as though it was easier to leave her thus in the gold and green of a summer morning.
Aymery had been gone but half an hour when a monk and two lay brethren came hurrying over Mountjoye Hill. Their figures looked dark, intent, outlined against the virginal clearness of the dawn. The monk was Dom Silvius, and his eyes were sharp and watchful.
He came alone to Denise’s cell, leaving the two lay brothers at the gate in the hedge. Denise was washing her neck and bosom; she had closed the door, and suffered Silvius to speak to her from without. She soon learnt that he had heard of Aymery’s coming, and that he desired to discover the reason thereof.
“It was one who rode here, Father, to have his arms blessed. He is on the eve of knighthood, and kept his vigil in the wood, yonder.”
Silvius’s face was very astute, he stroked his chin and considered. There was nothing of the dreamer about him that morning.
“And the offering, Sister, the offering?”
Denise did not choose to understand.
“What offering, Father?”
“That which the man left, for the blessing.”
“He left no offering with me,” she said.
“No gift, Sister, nothing out of gratitude for the blessing?”
“No.”
“Not even a ring or a piece of money?”
“Nothing.”
Silvius’s face condemned such vagrant meanness. He hid his vexation, and spoke softly, remembering that he was dealing with a certain sensitive thing called woman.
“Sister,” said he. “Perhaps the man was poor. We grudge nothing to those who are blessed with poverty. But an offering should always be made, even though it be but the half of an apple. God loves not niggardliness, my sister, and I would not have our good Lord, St. Martin, offended.”
Denise could not see Silvius because of the closed door, but there was something in his voice that made her see him as a sharp-faced, shrewd, insinuating figure hiding covetousness under the cloak of humility.
“I asked for nothing, Father,” she said.
Silvius’s face was very cunning.
“True, my Sister, we do not barter with our own souls. But there are the poor to be remembered, the fabric of the church, the glory of St. Martin. There is no shame in holding out the hand for these.”
Denise’s hands were fastening her tunic. And in the darkness of the cell she seemed to understand suddenly, as one comes by the understanding of the deeper things of life in the midst of some great sorrow, the reason of their eagerness to win her to the Abbey. The realisation of it was like the discovery of simony and self-seeking in the character of one beloved. She stood motionless, staring at the door beyond which Silvius listened. And the day seemed bitter and sordid to her after the night of Aymery’s vigil.
“Such things as I receive,” she said, “shall be laid before the altar,” and from that moment she felt that she hated Silvius because she had seen the motives that moved his soul.
“That is well, Sister,” he answered her. “St. Martin is generous to all who give.”
The almoner went away grumbling to himself, disgusted as any Jew that a man who had benefited should have left nothing in return.
“The woman needs more shrewdness,” he thought. “Nor have we had any marvel from her yet to open the people’s hearts, and purses. God grant that we have not made an indifferent bargain. We are losing rental, and giving food and gear,” and he returned in a temper, and thought mercenary thoughts all through Matins in the Abbey Church. For to Silvius his “house” was a great treasure-chest to be guarded, and enriched.
Denise was glad when Silvius had gone, and though she strove to put the sneering suspicions from her, they remained like dead trees, white and ugly in the green of a living wood. To count the money in the alms-box, to clutch at the offering, with the prayer hardly gone from the mouth! It was not in her soul to suffer such a traffic.
The day seemed very grey to her, though the sun was shining, because of that other thing that haunted her more than the thought of Dom Silvius’s keenness. She felt more and more that the virtue had gone out of her, and that the Lord of the Abbey would have no miracles to bring him treasure. If this thing were to mature, what then would follow? She shut the eyes of her soul to it, and tried to think of that night in May as but the memory of an evil dream.
CHAPTER XIX
From the gold of the wheat harvest to the picking of red apples no great time passes, yet in those few weeks the people began to scoff openly at the healing powers of Denise. She had been brought in with such quaint pomp and ceremony, with such singing, and such a show of blossom on the boughs, that folk had looked for a wonderful fruiting, and for an especial blessedness that should show itself in each man’s house.
Denise, poor wench, had come into the wilds of life, to find primitive things dragging her beautiful altruism into ruins. She had lost her wings and could no longer soar, because of the earthliness that grew more apparent to her day by day. Everything that she attempted failed with her, and faith in her own power dwindled out of her heart. Long ago she had noticed the prophetic change in Dom Silvius’s attitude. He was suspicious, grieved, hesitatory, always hoping for some lucky miracle, some splendid coincidence that might fire the beacon of his imaginings. He had boasted a little of this Virgin Saint out of the woods, and the eyes of some of the Brethren were beginning to twinkle.
One sunny day early in October Dom Silvius went down to the stews to fish. There happened to be some of the younger monks there, and Guimar the hosteler, a long, lean quiz of a man whom Silvius hated.
“Brother,” said he to the almoner. “Have you come to fish?”
Dom Silvius answered the question by settling his stool with great deliberation at the edge of the pond. Guimar glanced at the rest.
“My Brothers,” he said. “See, here is Silvius come a-fishing. Let us kneel and pray for him, and perchance his saint may catch a miracle!”
They all laughed at the joke, all save Silvius, who bit his lips. And from that moment his pride began to work like a slow poison in him, filling him with a hatred of Denise.
Once only, and that in August, Father Grimbald had come stalking up the hill to Virgin’s Croft, when the people were busy with the harvest, and there were none to see his coming. What he said to Denise, and she to him, no man knew, for Grimbald held his peace concerning it. But Denise wept when he had gone, bitter, impassioned tears that welled up out of her heart. Grimbald’s brow was heavy with a thunder cloud of thought as he trudged home to Goldspur over the hills. He opened and closed his great fists as he went, as though yearning to smite something, or to take an enemy by the throat. He had been unable to learn much from Denise, save that she seemed unhappy, and that she had left Goldspur because of the violence of the times. Grimbald had his own suspicions, but speak them he could not, though he was troubled within himself for Denise’s sake. He knew that it had not been a matter of vainglory with her, a desire to be flattered by the worship of a wider world. Oswald’s tale of the Devil on the Black Horse loomed largely in the background of Grimbald’s mind. Denise had hidden something from him. Of that Grimbald felt assured.
The burgher folk of Battle and the people on the Abbey lands began to have their grievances against Denise, grumbling with superstitious pettiness because their hopes had profited so little. There was a multitude of small things remembered against her, for of what use was a holy woman if her sanctity brought no blessings. Grubs had attacked the apples; why had not Denise prevented that? The sheep had been worried with the “fly”; again Denise had been besought to pray against the pest. Many of the wells had run dry with the hot summer; what was the use of a saint who could not bring back water?
There were many more things quoted against her.
Mulgar the carrier had brought a horse cursed with “wind sucking” and the staggers. A holy woman should be able to conjure such trifles, and Mulgar had brought three pennies as an offering. The horse had died on the road next day.
Gilbert the miller was plagued with rats. And the rats prospered, even though he had brought a dead buck rat to Denise, and besought her to curse the vermin.
Olivia, the goldsmith’s wife, brought a girl with a purple birth-mark on her cheek. She desired Denise to touch the stain that it might disappear. The birth-mark remained for all to see.
A woman in child-bed sent for Denise’s blessing. The child was still-born the very same night.
Well might Denise feel that the virtue had gone out of her, that the people were beginning to mock, and that her prayers were as so much chaff. The bitterness and the humiliation were not of her own seeking. They had set her upon a pinnacle, crowded about her open-mouthed, ready for the blessings she should bestow. Her white garments, and her burning aureole of hair had dazzled them, and the power of her beauty remained with her still. But the mystery was passing; she had profited none of the people; her prayers had burst like bubbles in the air. And since the human heart is ever a fickle thing, ready to scoff and sneer, and think itself cheated when its own fancies fall to the ground, the very children began to catch the spirit of their elders, and to throw surreptitious stones at Denise’s door. They invented a game, too, that they called the Silly Saint, in which one of the girls wore a halo of straw and attempted to work wonders which were never wonderful, till the audience rose and rolled her in the grass. No one chided them for such indecent blasphemy. Even Dom Silvius was ready to wash his hands of Denise.
There were more sinister whisperings in the air as the autumn drew on and merged into the winter. Bridget, the smith’s wife, whose boy had died on Denise’s knees, had set her tongue and her spite against the saint. The woman had been very bitter against Denise all through the summer, laughing maliciously over her failures, and nodding her head with the air of “I could have told you so.” When neighbours had still seemed credulous, she had put her tongue in her cheek, and mocked.
Bridget and some other women were spreading their linen on the grass one windy October day, and their talk turned upon Denise. As women will, they spoke of the things that had been noised abroad of late. There were some that said that Denise was no saint, that she was no better than they themselves were, far worse in fact because of her vows. It had been told that a strange knight had kept a vigil near her cell, and the women laughed, as only women of a kind can.
Bridget, the smith’s wife, was the bitterest of them all, because of her dead child, and the spite that she had nurtured against Denise. And as they spread their linen on the grass she began to tease the women, and to tantalise them with all manner of cryptic nods, and sneers, and insinuations. The end of it all was that much of the linen blew hither and thither because the women were so eager to listen to Bridget, and forgot to weigh the sheets and body gear down with stones.
Bridget was the fat hen with the worm in her beak, and they all crowded about her as though to thieve it. But all she did was to laugh and to smooth her frock with her two hands.
The women set up a great cackling, and then ran to and fro to catch the linen that was blowing in the wind.
“Blessed Martin,” said one, “when the Abbot hears of it!”
“A mighty poor miracle for Dom Silvius to boast of! I could do as well myself.”