CHAPTER XX
The early days of December found Earl Simon lodged at Southwark, while the King and his men prowled to and fro in Kent, coveting England’s sea gate, Dover, that the barons had taken in the summer. Earl Simon had no great gathering with him in Southwark, for he had London at his back, an ant’s nest into which the King would not venture to thrust his spear. There had been much bloodshed and violence in the land, and it was De Montfort’s hope that Henry would show some wisdom now that he had seen many of his great lords in arms against him. A truce had been mooted, with Louis of France to judge between the two parties. Yet no man trusted Henry, because of his fickleness and his foolish cunning, and because of the favourites who had his ear.
Henry had hated the Londoners with exceeding bitterness since they had pelted his Queen from London Bridge when she had sought to escape to Windsor in the summer. They had thrown stones and offal at her barge, and the King, and Edward his son, talked of the blood of the city as though it were the blood of swine. It was even said that they had sworn upon relics to make a slaughter there that should be remembered for many years. Yet a number of the wealthier merchants were for the King, partly because they hated the lesser men and the mob, and partly because they had taken bribes. There was treachery afoot of which Earl Simon knew nothing, nor had he any foreshadowings of the peril that was near.
Early in December Henry had attempted to win his way into Dover. The attempt had failed miserably; and the news was that he and his men were still lingering on the coast. No one thought of him as within ten leagues of London; the traitors in the city were alone wise as to his plans. Earl Simon remained in Southwark, debating the future with the barons who were with him, and with the Londoners who would hear of nothing but that the King should swallow the Great Charter, and that the Provisions of Oxford should hold. They had not forgotten Richard of Cornwall’s corn ships, and the way Henry had attempted to play the Jew at the expense of the starving poor.
It so happened that Aymery was in the saddle one December evening as the darkness came down over the land like a rolling fog. Rain had begun to fall, a fine drizzle that made the fading horizon in the west a dim grey streak. Infinite mournfulness breathed in the gust of a wet winter wind. Tired horses plodded past Aymery as he sat motionless by the roadside, the hood of his cloak turned over his helmet. A party had been out to bring in forage, and Aymery had had the handling of the escort, a few archers and men-at-arms.
The last tired horse had gone splashing by, and the creaking of the saddles and the breathing of the beasts were dropping into the darkness before Aymery turned to follow his men. He was about to push his horse to a trot when he heard the sound of a man running along the wet, wind-swept road. Aymery drew up across the road, and saw a figure come out of the darkness, head down, hands paddling the air.
The man seemed to see neither horse nor rider till he was almost into them. He stumbled, recovered himself, and drew back out of the possible reach of a possible sword.
“Montfort—Montfort?”
Aymery reassured him, and he staggered forward and leant against Aymery’s horse, panting out his news, for he had run two miles or more.
“Lording, there is an army on the march down yonder. I was carrying faggots from a wood, when I saw them riding out of the dusk. Their vanguard halted under the wood, and I hid myself, and listened, and then crept away and ran like a rabbit.”
He panted, pressing his ribs with his two hands, as though his heart was gorged with blood. Aymery bent down, and looked into the hind’s mud-stained face.
“Quick, good lad——”
“It was the van of the King’s host, lording, they are riding on Southwark out of the night.”
“How near are they?”
“The wood is a mile beyond the cross where the roads branch. They were resting their horses, the beasts had been hard ridden, and their bellies were all mud.”
Aymery straightened in the saddle, and sat motionless. The night gave no sound for the moment save the soughing of the wind through some poplars that grew near. Half a furlong away the darkness thickened into a black curtain, hiding the world, tantalising those who watched with the wraiths of a thousand chances.
Yet, as they waited there on the wet road, a confused sense of movement came to them from somewhere out of the darkness, like the sound of the sea galloping in the distance over a mile of midnight sand. Aymery swept round, pulled off his glove with his teeth, and threw it at the man’s feet.
“Look to yourself, my friend,” he said. “They are coming through the night yonder. Bring that glove to the Earl, and you shall have your due.”
Aymery clapped in the spurs, and went away at a gallop. He did not doubt that it was the King’s arms behind him, pouring upon Southwark to surprise De Montfort’s weak force there, and take him or slay him before the Londoners could gather to his aid.
As Aymery galloped through the night, the lights of Southwark and of the city beyond the river came to him in a blur through the mist of rain. He did not slacken even when he came to the outskirts of the place, but rode straight for the Earl’s lodging, shouting to those whom he passed in the street.
“Arm, arm,” was his cry as he galloped through. “The King’s men are on us.”
And so he brought the news to Simon the Earl.
De Montfort and his knights and gentlemen were at supper, but they left the wine cups unemptied, and made haste to arm. The Earl sent his son Simon to ride across the bridge and rouse the train-bands in the city. The narrow streets and alleys of Southwark were soon in a great uproar with the running to and fro of men, the tossing of torches, and all the tumult of a hurried call to arms. A bell began to clash somewhere up in the darkness. The narrow ways were full of movement, of an infinite confusion that struggled and chafed like waters meeting and beating against one another. Trumpets blared. Leaders sought their men, men their leaders. From beyond the river also bells began to peal, the city was bestirring itself, and humming like a hive of bees.
Aymery, rushing out from the Earl’s presence, ran against a man with a fiery tangle of bright-red hair. It was Waleran de Monceaux, that rebel of rebels, driven by Gaillard out of Sussex. He caught Aymery by the shoulder, and blessed God fiercely because the Sussex men were the first to show their shields.
“Brother,” he shouted, “I have thirty spears for a charge home. I heard you were here. Come. We shall have the van.”
They went out together into the street where some of the Earl’s men were already under arms. None the less there was a dire tangle everywhere, the place choked with disorder that promised well for the King’s men if they lost no time. Aymery and Waleran found their bunch of Sussex spears standing steady and stiff for the night’s need. They were soon joined by other knights and their men who gathered out of the wet gloom. De Montfort himself came out, and ordered his archers forward into the outskirts of the suburb, to scout and discover what was happening in the darkness yonder.
A shout rose suddenly, and went from mouth to mouth. Young Simon came out of the darkness with torches, riding his white horse, and a mob of half-armed men with him.
“Sire, treachery, the gates at the bridge are locked.”
Such in truth was the case, for the King had planned the trick, and those of the wealthier citizens who were in his pay had locked the gates and thrown the keys into the river.
Simon saw his imminent hazard, but his sword was out to hearten his men.
“Break down the gates.”
And then, standing in his stirrups:
“Sirs,” said he, “let the King’s men come to us. They will find it hot here, despite the rain.”
A number of archers came running back out of the night, shouting that masses of men were pouring along the dark streets at their heels. A blare of trumpets tore the darkness. The narrow main street began to roar with the rush of mounted men. The Earl’s trumpets gave tongue in answer. In an instant a black torrent poured forward as though a dam had broken, and fell with fury upon the flood that lapped from wall to wall.
A man has no time to remember what happens in such a fight when he is caught by a whirlwind of human fury, and driven this way and that. Horses reared, fell, and crushed their riders. The narrow street rang like a hundred smithies. Blows were given and taken in the darkness, men grappled together in the saddle, for there was no room often for the swing of a sword. Aymery found himself and his horse driven against the wall, and pinned there by the mass that filled the street. He struck out, with cries of “Montfort, Montfort,” and was struck at in turn by those who bawled for the King.
Aymery found himself being forced along the wall his horse, scared and maddened, backing along the street. The tide had turned in the King’s favour. The Earl’s men were being driven by sheer weight of numbers. The night had a black look for Earl Simon and his party.
Of what followed Aymery could have given no clear account, all that he knew was that he went on striking at those who struck at him, and that he remembered wondering that he had not been wounded or beaten out of the saddle. His brain seemed to become dulled by the din and clangour, and by the tumult in the darkness and the rain. A roar of voices rose suddenly, flowing from somewhere out of the night. “Montfort, Montfort!” A great rallying cry came up like the sound of the sea, for the Londoners had broken the gates, and were pouring over the bridge into Southwark to rescue the Earl.
For a while the fight stood still, and then slowly, and with a sense of infinite effort it began to roll towards the fields. New men seemed to come from nowhere, streaming up alleys and side streets to break in on the flanks of the King’s party. Aymery found himself with space to breathe; his sword arm ached as though he had been swinging a hatchet for an hour. Comrades came up on either side of him, they gathered and pushed on, shouting for Earl Simon, and fighting shoulder to shoulder, Aymery found the street opening suddenly upon a small square before a church. In one corner a torch had been thrust into an iron bracket on the wall of a house, and still burning brightly, despite the rain, it seemed to serve as a rallying point for those whose stomachs were not sick of the fight.
It was becoming a hole and corner business now, a question of group fighting against group, man against man. Each party had been tossed into so many angry embers, like a fire scattered by a kick of the foot. The Londoners were still streaming over the bridge. Their shouts of “Montfort, Montfort,” held the night. The surprise had failed, thanks to the hind who had run two miles in the mud.
Aymery was pushing his horse across the square, battered shield forward, right hand balancing his sword, when his eyes were drawn towards a skirmish that was going on where the torch burnt in the bracket on the wall. A big man in green surcoat, and mounted on a black horse was keeping some of the Londoners at bay. And behind the green knight, just under the torch, Aymery saw a knight in a blue surcoat on a grey horse, a contrast in colours that struck him as familiar. The blue knight was taking no part in the tussle. His comrade seemed to be defending him, backed up by a few men-at-arms whose harness gleamed in the light of the torch.
Aymery spurred forward, and came to blows with the man in green. Nor had he had much to boast of when a mob of Londoners came up at a run and broke into the thick of the scrimmage. Aymery found himself driven close to the knight in blue. He struck at him, but the other seemed to have lost his sword, for he did nothing but cover his head with his shield. Aymery caught the blue knight’s bridle, and urged both the horses out of the press. He had a glimpse of the man on the black horse trying to plunge through the Londoners towards him. But he was beaten back, and disappeared, still fighting, into the night.
Aymery got a grip of the blue knight’s belt. The man appeared to have little heart left in him, for he dropped his shield, and surrendered at discretion.
“Quarter, messire, quarter.”
The voice that came through the grid of the great battle helmet seemed more the voice of a boy.
Aymery kept a firm hold of the gentleman, and rode back with him into the main street. The grey horse went quietly as though thoroughly tired of the night’s adventure. Aymery had no trouble with either beast or man.
A great crowd had gathered at the bridge head. Earl Simon was there, guarded by an exultant and shouting mob of Londoners who were carrying him across the bridge into the city. The crowd was so great that Aymery had to halt with his prisoner, and bide his time. Torches had been lit and their glare and smoke filled the street where a thousand grotesque faces were shouting “Montfort, Montfort.”
Aymery felt a hand touch his arm, for he still had hold of the blue knight’s sword belt.
“Ah, messire, see what manner of prisoner you have taken.”
The blue knight had lifted the great helmet and let it fall with a clash upon the stones. Aymery saw masses of dark hair flowing, and a white face looking into his.
“Mother of God,” said he, “what have we here?”
“A woman, lording,” and she laughed a little, and then said again, more softly: “A woman.”
Aymery scanned her by the light of the torches, and it seemed to him that he had seen her face before. Her hair was dark as night, her skin the colour of a white rose, and she looked at him with eyes that seemed full of an amused yet watchful glitter.
For the moment Aymery thought of letting her go free, but the lady herself appeared to have no such ambition.
“I am in your hands, messire,” she said. “Keep me from the mud and the mob, and I will thank you.”
Aymery asked her name, being puzzled to know what to do with such a prisoner.
“My name?” and she laughed, and gave him a look that was meant to challenge a possible homage. “I dropped my name with my shield. Nor would you know it if I told it you.”
Aymery was asking himself what had best be done with this lady in man’s guise. To many men the answer would have been gallant and none too difficult. But Aymery coveted neither the responsibility nor the possible romance. Nor was he sorry when a happy chance intervened between him and the dilemma.
A number of knights came riding out of Southwark with Simon the Younger on his white horse at their head. And Simon who was an adventurous and hot headed gentleman with the eyes of a hawk when a woman was concerned, caught sight of Aymery and his prisoner, and swooped down instantly towards the lure.
“Hallo, my friend, who are you, and what have you here?”
Aymery showed his shield, but the Earl’s son recognised his face.
“Sir Aymery, out of Sussex! And what is this treasure, messire, that we have taken?”
At the sound of Aymery’s name the woman’s eyes had darted a look at him, like the momentary gleam of a knife hidden under a cloak. Then she moved nearer to young De Montfort, and was soon speaking on her own behalf.
He bowed gallantly to her when she had done.
“Since you offer us no name, madam,” he said. “Let us call you Isoult of the Black Hair. I am Simon, the earl’s son. Also, I am your servant, unless our friend here stands between us.”
Aymery renounced all prestige, not having Simon’s capacity for instant infatuations.
“It is no concern of mine, sire,” he said, with a bluntness that was hardly courteous to the lady.
A laugh hailed this frankness. De Montfort’s son was looking at Etoile.
“Will it please you to command my courtesy?” he asked.
Etoile smiled at him. He took her bridle, and they went riding together over London Bridge into London City. Nor did Simon guess that this was the first ride along a tortuous road that would lead him to bring death upon the great earl, his father.
CHAPTER XXI
Winter had come, and since Denise’s cell stood on the northern slope of Mountjoye Hill, it was bitter cold there, nor would the north wind be stopped by such things as a thorn hedge or a closed door. To Denise the cold was but part of the misery that was closing upon her, for people were hardier in those days, and less softened by the luxury of glass and carpets. But it was not the cold that kept her wakeful through the night, but the blank and unpitying face of the future that never departed from before her eyes. Denise knew the truth now, and soon the world might know it also.
The Abbey folk had sent her no winter gear, but that was Dom Silvius’s affair, perhaps due to his meanness, or his discontent with her, or to the feeling that a recluse whose prayers went unanswered needed to be chastened by wind and frost. It seemed very far from that day in May when the meadows were sheeted in gold, and the singing boys sang her into the Abbeyleuga. Denise would have had no winter clothes, had not a good woman who distrusted Dom Silvius, sent her a lamb’s-wool tunic, and a cloak lined with rabbit’s skin.
So the winter deepened, and Denise saw always that shame that was coming nearer day by day. She knew now how utterly she had failed, and the reason thereof seemed in herself. Life had thrust hypocrisy upon her insidiously and by stealth. She would have fled from it, but the wide world seemed cold and empty, nor was she free to follow her own will. Reginald the Abbot was her lord now, both in the law and in the spirit, he could have her taken if she fled, condemned, whipped, and turned forth with contumely in the eyes of all. Denise had her woman’s pride, a pride that shrank from the thought of a public scourging and of open shame.
Two weeks or more after Christmas, on a clear frosty morning, three women came to Denise’s cell, and one of these women was the smith’s wife, Bridget. They had loitered on the road awhile, talking volubly, priming one another for some enterprise. No one had come near Denise for a month or more, save the Abbey servant who left food at the cell, but never saw her face.
So the three women came to Denise’s cell, and stood before the closed door, smirking and making a mystery of the event. They had christened each other “Warts,” “Sterility,” and “Thorn-in-the-Thumb,” and their business was to win a glimpse of Denise.
Dame Bridget, or “Thorn-in-the-Thumb,” made a devout beginning. She was a big woman with a high colour, and a mouth that was generally noisy, a woman of coarse texture, and of gross outlines that showed Nature as a craftswoman at her worst.
Bridget had picked up some Latin words, and she began with these, as though such a prelude would impress Denise with their seriousness in coming.
“Sister,” she said with a snuffle, when she had come to the end of her Latinity. “Here are three poor women in need of a blessing. We pray you to come out to us, Holy Sister, and to touch us with your hands.”
Denise had no thought of treachery that morning, and she opened her door, and stood there on the threshold. The three women were kneeling humbly enough in the wet grass, their hoods drawn forward, their hands together as in prayer.
Bridget showed a thumb red and swollen about the pulp.
“There was a thorn twig in a faggot, Sister,” she said. “I laid my hand to the sticks, and the thorn went into my thumb. It has kept me awake o’ nights with the pain of it.”
Then Sterility had a hearing, and while Denise bent over her, for the woman chose to whisper, Thorn-in-the-Thumb nudged Warts with her elbow, and stared Denise over from head to foot.
Lastly, Warts displayed her imperfections, looking most meekly into Denise’s shadowy eyes. And when Denise had touched them all and given them her blessing, the three women departed, walking very circumspectly till they gained the road. Then Thorn-in-the-Thumb flung her arms about the necks of her neighbours, crumpled them to her, and laughed gross laughter that was not pleasant to hear. And they went up the hill together, gaggling like geese, blatantly exultant over the thing that they had discovered.
Very soon hardly a man or woman in the five boroughs of Battle had not heard what Bridget and her neighbours had to tell. Rumours had been rife of late, but this last cup was spiced with the palatable truth. The women spoke more loudly than the men, were more strenuous and vindictive, more self-righteous, more eager to have the hypocrite proclaimed. Mightily sore were some of the worthy folk who had gone on their knees for nothing before Denise’s cell. They were quick to cry out that they had been cheated, more especially those who had left an offering to bribe the Blessed Ones in Heaven. The insolence of this jade, setting herself up as a virgin and a saint! “Out with her,” was the common cry. As for Dom Silvius he was little better than a fool.
With all these hornets humming even in the midst of winter, some of the older burghers and the head men of the boroughs went secretly to speak with Dom Silvius, and to show him discreetly how matters stood. Such an open sore needed healing; it was an offence and an insult to St. Martin, and the saints. Old Oliver de Dengemare was their spokesman, a man with a wise eye and a sagacious nose. Dom Silvius kept an imperturbable countenance, and heard them out to the bitter end, though inwardly he was aflame with wrath and infinite vexation. “The jade, the impudent jade.” His brain beat out such imprecations while the old men talked.
No sooner had they gone than he crept off to whisper it all to Reginald the Abbot. Now Reginald was a man of easy nature, bland, kindly, one who chose a suave word rather than a sour one. Silvius came to him, cringing yet venomous, slaver dropping from his mouth as he stuttered and spat his wrath. He took the thing as infamous towards himself; the greed, the self-love, and the ambition in him were tugging at the leashes.
“Let them hound her out and spit upon her,” he said, driving the nails into the palms of his hands, the muscles straining in his pendulous throat. “Let them spit upon her.”
Abbot Reginald placed the sponge of his placidity over Dom Silvius’s mouth.
“Brother,” he cautioned him; “such things should not be spoken till the anger is out of one. A hot head at night calls for penitence in the morning.”
He saw very clearly how matters were with Silvius, that the monk’s zeal had turned sour, and sickened him; and that he was mad that all his astuteness should have taken, in the eyes of his little world, the motley of the fool.
“You are too hasty, my brother,” he said. “Does a man whose wife has lost her virtue, shout it from the house-tops? Come, my friend, let us consider.”
But Silvius would not be appeased. The fanatical cat had spread its claws, a beast more cruel than any creature out of the woods. Reginald of Brecon watched him, as a fat man who had dined well might watch the petulant tantrums of a child. He took to turning the ring upon his finger, a trick habitual with him when he was deep in thought.
“It is growing dark,” he said at last, glancing at the window.
Then he rose and stood awhile before the fire. Silvius had ceased to spit and to declaim.
“My cloak and hood, Brother Silvius. You will find them there in the recess.”
The monk obeyed his lord. When he returned with the cloak, Reginald held up two fingers, and spoke one word:—
“Peace.”
There was not the glimmer of a star in the sky when two dim figures climbed Mountjoye Hill. A north wind was blowing and whistled coldly into Reginald’s sleeves. Dom Silvius jerked from side to side, looking restlessly into the darkness as though his blood were still hot and bitter in him despite the cold. Reginald understood the savage impatience that possessed his monk, for he bade him wait at the gate in the hedge, and went on alone to the cell.
Silvius kept watch there, striding to and fro, blowing on his nails, and beating his arms against his body like a great black bird. He envied his Abbot the rights of an unbridled tongue, for Silvius would have been a libertine that night in the matter of godly invective and abuse. He could hear voices, the dull, half-suppressed voices of people who spoke earnestly, and yet with passion. Once he thought that something stirred in the hedge near him, for he was startled, and stood still to listen. A prowling fox might have taken fright, or a bird fluttered from its roosting place.
Meanwhile on the threshold of that dark cell stood Reginald the Abbot, shocked, unable to retain much store of anger. A shadowy something knelt there close to him. The very heart of Denise seemed under his feet.
“Lord, let me go,” was all that she could ask.
And again—
“Lord, let me go, away yonder, into the dark.”
Reginald looked down at her from the serene height of his abbacy.
“Daughter,” he said at last, with no sententiousness, “go, and God pity you. It is better that this should end. Yet, wait till the day comes. You would lose your way on a night such as this.”
“I will wait, lord,” she answered, utterly humble because of his kindness, and her own poignant shame.
When Abbot Reginald returned through the gate in the thorn hedge, Dom Silvius’s voice hissed at him out of the darkness, for the cold had sharpened a venomous tongue.
“The jade, has she confessed?”
Reginald was possessed by a sudden unchristian lust to smite Dom Silvius across the mouth.
“My son,” he said very quietly, “take care how you cast stones.”
And he was more cold to Silvius on the homeward way than the breath of the winter wind.
But Silvius, that dreamer of dreams, that most mundane monk, who thought more of the jewels crusting a reliquary than the Cross of Christ, did a vile and a mean thing that night. Denise, poor child, was to slip away, so Reginald said, at dawn; but Reginald did not tell Dom Silvius that he had left money on the stones whereon she knelt. And Silvius, still venomous because he deemed himself befooled, took pains to betray Denise’s secret going. And the method of the betrayal was the meanest trick of all.
When he had seen Abbot Reginald safe within the Abbey, he called two servants and went out with a basket of victuals to visit certain of the sick poor. That the hour was a strange one for such charity counted for nothing with Silvius whose head was full of the ferment of his spite. Many of the folk had gone to their beds, but some few he found still lingering about the covered embers on the hearth.
It was counted for holiness to Silvius that he should come on God’s errand at such an hour.
“Feed my sheep,” the Lord had said.
And Silvius fed certain of them that night with hypocritical humilities, shaking his head sadly, and dropping a few treacherous words like crumbs into mouths that hungered.
CHAPTER XXII
A red, wintry dawn was in the east when Denise stood ready for her flight from the Abbey lands, her rabbit-skin cloak about her, and the hood drawn over her head. She had knotted the money that Reginald had given her into a corner of her under tunic, and the food that she had saved from yesterday she carried wrapped in a clean cloth. Denise had thought of seeking Grimbald, but her heart had failed her at the thought of meeting the familiar faces of the people who had looked upon her as something superhumanly pure and wonderful. The passion that obsessed her for the moment was the passion to escape from the inquisitive eyes of those who knew her, and to slip away into the world where she would be nothing more than a mere woman.
A robin twittered on the thorn hedge as she left the cell and, crossing the grass, went out by the wicket gate. The land was white with hoar frost, each twig and blade beautiful to behold, and the arch of the east red with an angry dawn. The hills looked big and blue, and very sombre, and in the north the sky had an opaqueness as of coming snow.
The brittle silence of a frosty morning seemed unbroken as yet, and Denise, after looking half fearfully about her, came out from the shadow of the thorn hedge, and walked quickly in the direction of the road. She would be away and over the Abbey bounds before anyone knew in the town that she had gone. Reaching the road, she climbed down the path into it, for the road ran in a hollow there. A bramble had caught the latchet of her shoe and pulled it loose, and Denise bent down to refasten it, putting the cloth with the food on the bank beside her.
Now Dom Silvius’s treachery had betrayed her to the people, and Denise, as she fastened her shoe-latchet, was startled by a shrill, gaggling laugh that seemed to rise out of the ground close to her. The banks on either side of the road were covered with furze bushes, and a number of these bushes were suddenly endowed with the miraculous power of movement. They rose up from where they had grown, and came jigging down the steep banks into the road.
Moreover these same furze bushes burst into loud laughter, and began to crow with exultation.
“A miracle, a miracle!”
“St. Denise has worked a wonder, at last!”
“Holy virgin, see how the bushes dance!”
Denise stood still at the foot of the bank, and the furze bushes came jigging round her like mummers in a mask. Flapping skirts and shuffling feet gave a human undercurrent to the green swirl of the furze. Now and again she saw a red, triumphant face, or a pair of brown arms holding a bough, while the frolic went on with giggles and little screams of laughter. Then, at a given shout from one of them, these women of the winter dawn flung their furze boughs upon Denise, as the Sabines threw their shields upon Tarpeia.
The thorns were as nothing compared with that circle of coarse and jeering faces that stood revealed. Old hags with white hair, skinny arms, and flat bosoms; women in their prime, rough and buxom, with hard features and loud mouths; young girls, whose tongues were pert and insolent. Bridget, the smith’s wife, led this wolf pack, like a hungry and red-eyed dam.
Denise’s face was bleeding, but she did not flinch now that her pride had been driven against the pricks. She looked round at the women, holding her head high, although they had beaten her across the face. And for the moment the women hung back from her as she pushed the furze boughs aside, and made as though to pass on without answering a word.
Bridget, the smith’s wife, stood in her path. She flung up her head and laughed like a great raw-boned mare, and an echo came down from Mountjoye Hill like the answering neigh of a horse. On the ridge above, where the dawn light shone, were crowded the men who had come out to see their women bait Denise.
Bridget began the savage game with a word that brought the blood to Denise’s face. The women shrieked with delight. Taunts struck her on every side as they crowded close on her, gloating, screaming, their mouths full of cursing and derision. They began to shake their fists, and to stretch their claws towards her, and the smell of their bodies was in her nostrils.
Bridget swung forward, and spat in her face.
“She would work miracles, this jade, this wanton! Where is my boy, you minion? Answer me that, I say!”
“Where is your man, eh?”
“We know him, we know him! Let him show his face here!”
“Look at her, the pretty jade!”
“Spoil her beauty. Strip her naked.”
“Out with the harlot. Let her freeze.”
Warts, Sterility, and fifty more were howling about her, drunk with the very noise they made. For a moment Denise stood white-faced in the midst of them. Then she disappeared in a swirl of coarse and violent movement, like a deer that is dragged down and smothered beneath the brown bodies of the wolves.
The road that morning was a martyr’s way as the redness of the dawn waned and the sky became cold and grey. Mouths spat upon her, hands smote her, and clutched at her clothes. Buffeted at every step, jostled, and torn, she was brought to the boundary of the Abbeyleuga, and driven out thence into the world. The women even caught up stones and pelted her when they had let her go, screaming foul words, and laughing in loud derision.
Denise was as dazed and as exhausted as though she had been wrecked, and washed ashore half dead by some lucky wave. Her face was bruised and bleeding, her clothes in tatters, her tunic torn open so that her bosom showed. She drew her ragged clothes about her, and went unsteadily down the road, with the cries of the women still following her as she went. Denise’s pride made a last brave spreading of its wings. It carried her beyond the sound of those voices, though her feet dragged, and her knees gave under her, and a kind of blindness filled her brain.
Perhaps she struggled on for a mile or more before she turned aside, and lay down under some hazels beside the road. And as she lay there, dull-eyed, grey-faced, and still half dazed, the power to think came back like the sense of reviving pain. Horror of herself and of the world took hold of her by the throat. It was as though those women had spat upon her soul, and made her revolt from herself as from something unclean. Those mocking faces symbolised the mercies of her sister women. All those who knew the truth would scoff, and draw away their skirts. She was an outcast, a thing whose name might broider a lewd tale.
Denise was no ignorant child, but a grown woman, yet she was weak and in pain, and her very weakness made her anguish the more poignant. She lay there a long while under the hazels, not noticing the cold, nor the sodden soil, for her heart seemed colder than the frost. Life held its helpless, upturned palms to the unknown. What use was there in living? God had deserted her, and had suffered her innocence to be put to shame. She was too weary, too miserable even for bitterness or for rebellion. Inert despair had her, body and soul.
Presently a boy came along the road towards Battle, driving an ass laden with paniers full of bread. Close to the spot where Denise lay under the hazels, the ass was taken with the sulks, and stood obstinately still. The boy tugged at the bridle, shouted, thwacked the beast with his stick, but make her budge he could not. Denise sat up and watched him, this piece of byplay thrusting a wedge between her and the apathy of despair.
The boy was a sturdy youngster, with brown face, brown smock, and brown legs splashed with mud. He rubbed his nose with a brown hand, and catching sight of Denise, took her to be a beggar, and perhaps a bit of a witch.
“Hi, there,” he shouted, “give over frightening the beast.”
“It is none of my doing,” she said, surprised somehow at the sound of her own voice.
“She stopped here, none of your tricks, old lady,” said the boy.
Denise put back her hood, and the youngster stared.
“Lord,” said he, “you have been fighting, and you are not old, neither!”
His curiosity was curtailed by the curiosity of the ass, who took to kicking, sending sundry loaves rolling on the road.
“Hi, there, come and help.”
Denise rose up, and went towards the struggling pair. She took the bridle from the boy, and began to pull the donkey’s ears, to rub her poll, and talk to her as though she were a refractory child. The beast grew suddenly docile, and the bread was saved.
Denise helped the boy to pick up the loaves. He looked hard at her when they had refilled the paniers, and then offered one of the loaves to Denise.
“Take it,” he said almost roughly, yet with the brusqueness of a boy’s good-will.
“It will be missed.”
The boy gave a determined shake of the head.
“Father’s bread. The jade served him the same trick last week, kicked the loaves on to a dung heap. He can’t blame me.”
He thrust the loaf into Denise’s hand, gave her a friendly grin, and cut the ass viciously across the hind-quarters with his stick. The response on the beast’s part was a wild and hypocritical amble.
This simple adventure on the road heartened Denise in very wonderful fashion, even as the voice of a child may interpose between a man and murder. It was like a mouthful of wine in the mouth of one ready to faint upon a journey. Denise watched the boy disappear, hardly thinking that she had been saved from despair by the obstinacy of an ass. She had the loaf in her hand and the boy’s smile in remembrance, and the mocking voices of the morning seemed less shamefully persistent.
Denise broke and ate some of the bread, and finding a ditch near with a film of ice covering it, she broke the ice with her shoe, and soaking one corner of her tunic in the water, she washed the blood from her mouth and face. It was then that she found the money that Abbot Reginald had given her still knotted up in her clothes. And these two things, the bread and the money, comforted her with the thought that she was not utterly forgotten of God. Both blessings had come to her by chance, but when a soul is in the deeps it catches the straws that float to it, and believes them Heaven-sent.
Despite her wounds and her bruisings Denise walked five miles before noon. The passion to escape from familiar faces and to sink into the outer world, had revived in her. She skirted Robertsbridge and its Abbey, crossing the Rother stream by a footbridge that she found. On the hill beyond she met a pedlar travelling with his pack, and taking out a piece of money bought a rough brown smock from him, a needle and some thread. About noon she found some dry litter under the shelter of a bank of furze. She put on her brown smock, and mended her cloak, and then despite the January cold, such an utter weariness came upon her that she fell asleep.
When Denise awoke it was with a rush of misery into the mind, a misery so utter that she wished herself asleep again, even sleeping the sleep of death. She was so stiff with the cold and her rough handling that it hurt her to move, and the infinite forlornness of her waking made her shudder. Something soft touched her face, like the drifting petal of apple blossom out of the blue. A wind had risen and was whistling through the furze bushes, and buffeting them to and fro. The sky had grown very sullen. Snow was beginning to fall.
Denise dragged herself up and drew her cloak closer about her. She must find shelter for the night somewhere, unless she wished to tempt death in the snow. Yet she had gone but a short way along the road when a sudden spasm of pain seized her, pain such as she had never felt before.
Denise stood still, clenching her hands, her eyes full of a questioning dread. The spasm passed, and she went on again slowly, the flakes of snow drifting about her, the sky and the landscape a mournful blur. She had walked no more than a furlong when the same pain seized her, making her catch her breath and stand quivering till the spasm had passed. Nor was it the pain alone that filled her with a sense of infinite helplessness and dread. The birth of a new and terrible consciousness seemed to grip and paralyse her heart. She knew by instinct that which was upon her, a state that called up a new world of shame and tenderness and fear.
Denise went on again, a woman laden with the simple and primitive destiny of a woman. It so happened that she came to a wood beside the road, and at the edge of the wood under the bare branches of the trees she saw a lodge built of faggots, and roofed with furze and heather. The place seemed God-sent in her necessity, and her anguish of soul and body. Denise found it empty, save for a mass of dry bracken piled behind some faggots in one corner of the lodge. The place had a rough door built of boughs. Denise closed it, and hid herself in the far corner of the lodge, sinking deep into the bed of bracken. The pangs were upon her, and all the dolour and the foreboding that take hold of a woman’s heart.
It was bitter cold that night, and the snow came driving from the north, a ghost mist that wrapped the world in a garment of mystery. The wind roared in the trees whose bare boughs clapped together, creaking and chafing amid the roaring of the storm. It was a night when sheep would die of the cold, or be smothered in the snow drifts banked against the hedges.
The sky began to clear about dawn, patches of blue showing between ragged masses of grey cloud. The sun shone out fitfully at first, flashing upon a white world, upon a world of brilliant snow schemes and glittering arabesques, with the wood’s sweeps of black shadow across a waste of white.
The wind had dropped, and there was the silence of snow everywhere, not a voice, not a sound, save the occasional creaking of a rotten bough and the swish of its falling snow. The sun climbed higher, and the whiteness of the world became a pale and blinding glare.
Now, the silence of the wilderness was broken that morning by a slow and steady sound that grew on the still air. It was the muffled beat of hoofs upon the snow of the road that ran southwards along the ridge of the hill. Presently the snorting of the horse, jingle of metal and the creaking of leather were added to the plodding of the hoofs. A man’s voice rang out suddenly into a burst of song. The white world was glorious in the sunshine, marble and lapis lazuli, with flashes here and there of gold.
The muffled beat of hoofs ceased by the wood where stood the lodge built of faggots. The snow was virgin about it, and the man turned his horse towards the wood, swung out of the saddle, and began kicking the snow aside as though to give the beast a chance of cropping the grass. Taking wine and meat from a saddlebag, he brushed the snow from a log that lay outside the lodge, and sat down to make a meal.
And as he sat there in the sun he talked to his horse, and gave the beast some of the bread from his own breakfast. The horse nosed against him like a dog, its breath steaming up into the frosty air, its eyes the colour of sapphires seen against the snow. And there were no sounds save the man’s voice, the breathing of his horse, and the dripping from the boughs as the snow thawed in the sun.
In due course the man remounted, and rode off down the road with the morning sunlight upon his face. Cowering on the bracken in the lodge Denise lay dazed, and weary, hands and feet numb with the cold. She had prayed to God that the man might not enter the place, and find her there on her bed of bracken. He had been so near to her that she had been able to hear the sound of his breathing, and even the breaking of the crust of the bread.
Beside her on the bracken lay a white thing that neither moved nor uttered a cry. Denise lay and stared at it, half with dread and mute wonder, half with a passion of primeval tenderness that was too deep for tears. And as Aymery rode away from her into the morning, she kept her vigil beside that innocent thing that did not whimper and did not move. The snow and the secret silence thereof seemed part of her life that morning, and the eyes of the world were full of a questioning mist of tears.