CHAPTER XXIII
Aymery went riding southwards over the snow, a cloak of furs over his harness, and the leather flaps of his steel cap turned down to cover cheeks and ears. He rode alone, for though the gilt spurs were at his heels, his purse saw little of the colour of gold, and his horse and his arms were all that he had.
There was peace in the land that January, for men had put up their swords, and delivered their quarrel into the hands of the King of France. It was the month of the Mise of Amiens, when Louis, Saint and King, sat to judge between Henry of England and his people. Men trusted in that Holy Heart, that Flame of Sacred Chivalry, that had brought peace to France, and given God martyrs on Egyptian sands. But Louis was a King judging between a King and turbulent towns and still more turbulent barons. Nor was it strange, therefore, that a saint, from whose mouth should have sprouted an olive branch, hurled back over the sea a two-edged sword.
A truce had been called, and with the sheathing of his sword, Aymery had seized the chance and the time to ride southwards into Sussex. Goldspur manor house was a black ruin, but the manor folk were there, with Grimbald to see that an absent lord was not forgotten. No forfeiture had been proclaimed, and Aymery had saddled his horse Necessity, and ridden to see whether his villeins and cottars were honest men. Aymery had left no steward over them, but Grimbald was more to be trusted than any steward; no one would play him any tricks.
Aymery’s road ran a devious way that January morning, the road of a man who galloped ten miles out of his path for the glimpse of a woman’s face. And Aymery rode wilfully towards Battle, though Goldspur lay over and away beyond the white hills in the west.
About noon Aymery let his horse take his own pace up the hill from Watlingtun. The slope of Mountjoye seemed one sweep of virgin snow, and Aymery, looking for Denise’s cell, marked it out above the thicket of oaks where he had kept his vigil that summer night. When he came to the place where the path should turn aside from the road, he saw a muddy and much trampled track leading over the snow towards the cell with its hedge of thorns. It looked to Aymery as though the whole countryside had made a pilgrimage to Denise of the Hill. He followed the path in turn, giving Denise her glory with the sadness of a man who cherishes an impossible desire.
The ground about the gate in the thorn hedge had been trampled into a quagg of mud as though many people had passed to and fro that morning. Aymery dismounted, and threw his bridle over the gate post, numbering himself among those who had come for Denise’s blessing. But the sight he saw startled him not a little, for there was no benediction to be won there that morning.
The door of the cell stood open, and before it, in the middle of a space of trampled snow, two of the Abbey servants were heaping up straw and faggots as though for a fire. The trampling of Aymery’s horse had been deadened by the snow, the men had not heard it, and he stood at the gate, watching them and wondering what this meant. The two men went to and fro into Denise’s cell, carrying out the wooden bed, the straw, and the sheets thereof, her prayer stool, and cross, and other lesser things, for Silvius in his first ardour had seen her better housed than a mere recluse. The men piled everything upon the faggots, and then stood aside in silence as though waiting for someone’s coming.
Aymery tarried no longer, but marched out from the shadow of the thorn hedge, a voice crying in him: “Can it be that she is dead?” The two servants saw him, and for some strange reason began to handle their staves, while one of them went to the door of the cell, and spoke to someone within.
Dom Silvius and Aymery came face to face outside Denise’s cell that morning, for the monk had been within, watching the unclean things carried out for the burning. He came out with a lighted torch in his hand, ready with canonical curses, hot and hungry for the chance of scolding the whole world. But when Silvius saw Aymery, he seemed to grow cold of a sudden, and thin with a malicious carefulness.
For Silvius saw the hauberk and the gilt spurs, the long sword at the girdle, the shield slung across the back, the shoulder plates painted with a knight’s device, the golden claw of a hawk. And Silvius sprang to sinister conclusions with the intuition of a woman. Here, no doubt, was the woman’s paramour, some hot-headed gentleman who had ridden in to discover how things fared with Denise.
Silvius took no notice of the Knight of the Hawk’s Claw, but plunged his torch into the straw, and watched the flames spring up and seize the wood. The smoke rose straight up into the still air, turning to a pearly haze as the sunlight touched it. The monk stood there, with bowed head and folded arms, as though too busy with his own prayers to be troubled by any stranger. But prayer was very far from Silvius’s soul. His eyes were wide awake under their lowered lids.
Aymery came two steps nearer. Silvius raised his head and looked at him, and saw at a glance the face of a man who was not to be repulsed or fooled.
“Whom may you be seeking, my son?” he asked, watching Aymery out of the corners of his eyes.
The Knight of the Hawk’s Claw turned his head towards the cell. Silvius seemed to enjoy an inaudible chuckle.
“Perhaps you have come for a blessing, messire?”
As yet Aymery had not spoken a word, but Silvius read his thoughts by the puzzled frown and the alert eyes.
“Ah, my son,” he went on, beginning to sneer, “you are wondering what has become of our saint.”
Aymery looked from Silvius to the flames that were leaping through the wood.
“Has death been here?”
Silvius’s eyes were netted round with cynical wrinkles.
“Assuredly your saint is both dead and alive,” he said. “Some of you gentlemen have slain the saint in her. I will not ask you, my son, whether the guilt of the sacrilege is yours.”
His sly, sneering face made Aymery’s manhood grow hot in him. He was in no temper for sardonic subtleties. Silvius saw a look in his eyes that betrayed a lust to take someone by the throat. And Silvius kept the fire between him and the man of the sword, nodding to the two servants, and hinting without deceit that they should be ready with their staves.
“My son,” he said, licking his lips; “we are burning the unclean relics of an unclean woman. If you ask me for reasons, I send you to my lord, Reginald, at the Abbey. His word is law here. I am but a humble servant in God’s house.”
Aymery looked Silvius in the eyes, and then turned on his heel, with a face like ice. He mounted his horse, and went up Mountjoye Hill at a canter, choosing to gallop at the core of the truth rather than suffer Dom Silvius to lick his lips and sneer. Nor had horse and rider disappeared below the sky line before Silvius called the two servants to him, gave them their orders, and sent them away into the town. He himself tarried there awhile, warming his hands at the fire that consumed those relics of an unsaintly saint.
When Aymery came out from the presence of Reginald of Brecon that day his face had the frozen bleakness of a winter land. He walked stiffly, almost rigidly, with nostrils that twitched, and hungered for air. The Abbey servants fell back before him as he mounted his horse at the gate. Here was a man who was not to be meddled with. His face sobered them more than the face of a leper.
Aymery struck his horse with the spurs, and the beast leapt his own length, stood quivering a moment, and then went away at a sharp gallop as though he had the devil on his back. Aymery’s eyes looked straight before him, eyes that caught the white glare of an inward fury, and were blind to the outer world. The snow lay white upon the roofs of the little town. Smoke ascended tranquilly into a shimmer of sunlight.
Aymery was not to ride out of Battle town at his own pace; Dom Silvius had seen to that. At the sound of a horn a crowd of figures seemed to start from nowhere; men, women, and children came running together; the whole wasps’ nest was on the wing.
Aymery drew up sharply, for the crowd in front of him filled the street. He did not grasp the meaning of it at first, but stared round at the people as though he were but a chance actor in some chance scene. A stone thrown from the crowd carried a rude hint, striking him upon the shield that hung at his back. And with the throwing of the first stone the whole mob sent up a sudden roar of anger.
“Out, out, seducer!”
“Pelt the sacrilegious dog!”
“Here is Dame Denise’s man, neighbours.”
“Drag him off.”
“Roll him in the mud.”
The uproar and the fury of the fools might have dazed any man for the moment. The crowd came tossing about Aymery’s horse, keeping a coward’s distance, content as yet with stones, and filth, and curses. Thorn-in-the-Thumb and her women were there, obscene and violent, howling like cats, and urging the men on. Some of them cut coarse capers, leering up into the knight’s face.
Aymery sat still in the saddle for a moment, looking neither to right nor left. His lips were white and pressed hard together, his eyes full of that shallow glare that fills the eyes of an angry dog. The yelling and distorted faces began to close upon him. A stone thrown by a man near struck Aymery upon the mouth.
Blood showed, but with it a blaze of wrath so terrible and yet so silent, that hands which were uplifted did not fling their stones. Aymery’s sword was out. He struck his beast with the spurs, and rode straight into the thick of the crowd. And though he smote only with the flat of the blade, they tumbled over each other in their hurry to give him room, while those who were safe stood open-mouthed, staring like stupid sheep.
Aymery rode through them as he would have ridden through a cornfield, swinging his sword, and laughing, the terrible laughter of a man who has no pity. No sooner did the rabble see his back, than their courage came again, the courage of dogs that yap at a horse’s heels. They scampered after him, shouting, screaming, pelting him as they ran. Thorn-in-the-Thumb, with a bloody poll from the flat of Aymery’s sword, panted along with the very first, her apron full of filth that she had brought with her from her kitchen, and kept gloatingly until too late. But Aymery never turned his head, and leaving the slobbering pack behind, rode at a canter out of Battle town.
CHAPTER XXIV
One day early in March when dust and dead leaves were whirling everywhere, old Fulcon the baker, the meanest man—so it was said—in Reigate town, went to and fro along the passage beside his house, carrying in faggots that had been unloaded from a tumbril in the street. The carter had thrown the wood against the wall, knowing that Fulcon would not give him so much as a mug of water for helping to carry the faggots into the shed behind the bakehouse.
Fulcon went to and fro along the passage like a brown crab, a man whose back seemed built for burdens, and whose bowed legs and hairy chest gave promise of great strength. He carried the faggots two at a time, and neighbours who loitered to watch him at work saw nothing but the sheaves of wood crawling along upon a knotty pair of legs. The boys of Reigate, who hated the baker because he had good apple trees and used a stick vigorously in defending the fruit, called him “tortoise,” and “snail in the shell.” Sometimes a boy would make a dash and pretend to try the snatching of a loaf from the stone counter of the little shop. But Fulcon had a dog who was as surly and as wide awake as his master. Nor was it to be wondered at that dog Ban had a sour temper, since the number of stones that were surreptitiously thrown at him would have paved the path in old Fulcon’s garden.
The baker had come near the end of the load, and had disappeared up the passage, leaving the last two faggots lying on the footway. He came back, picking up the odd bits of stick that littered the stones. A bent body seemed such a habit with Fulcon that his eyes often saw nothing more than the two yards of mother earth before his feet. Hence he had already laid a hand to one of the remaining faggots before he saw the grey folds of a cloak spread out under his very nose.
Fulcon straightened up, and showed his natural attitude towards the world by closing a big brown fist. He saw a woman sitting upon one of the faggots, a woman in a grey cloak with the hood drawn over her head. The woman’s back was turned to him, and by the stoop of her shoulders she seemed very tired.
Fulcon took her for a beggar, and Fulcon hated beggars even more than boys.
“Get up,” said he.
And since she did not stir he repeated the command.
“Get up, there,” and he reached out to take her by the cloak.
The woman rose, and overtopped Fulcon by some five inches. She turned and looked at him with great brown eyes that seemed tired with the dust and the wind. The baker stared hard at her, catching the gleam of splendid hair drawn back under the grey hood. The woman’s face had a silence such as one sees on the face of a statue.
“The wood’s mine,” he said, grumbling into his beard, and pointing a very obvious finger.
The woman looked at him, and then at the shop.
“I want bread,” she answered.
Fulcon’s eyes retorted “pay for it.”
The woman had a leather bag in her hand. She felt in it, and brought out money. Fulcon’s frown relaxed instantly. He stooped under the wooden shutter propped up by its bar, picked up a loaf, and handed it to her.
To his astonishment she sat down again on the faggot, as though she had a right there now that she had bought the loaf. Fulcon opened his shrewd but rather sleepy eyes wider, and stared. The words “get up” were again on the tip of his tongue. But he smothered them, picked up the other faggot, and giving a warning whistle to the dog Ban who was lying in the shop, went away up the narrow passage.
When Fulcon returned, he stared still harder, for the dog Ban was sitting with his muzzle resting on the woman’s knee, and looking up steadily into her face. She was breaking the bread slowly, and giving the dog a crust from time to time. Fulcon might have reasoned with her over such extravagance, had he not been the creature of a strong affection with regard to the big brown dog, one of the two living things in the world to whom he grudged nothing.
The baker stood by, scratching his beard, something very much like a smile glimmering in his eyes. Then he gave a half audible chuckle as though the scene seemed peculiarly quaint.
The woman turned her head, but Fulcon’s face was as blank as a piece of brown sandstone. He looked indeed as though he had never uttered a sound in his life. Dog Ban lifted his head and stared at his master as though it was unusual for Fulcon to chuckle.
The woman asked a question.
“How far is it to Guildford?”
Fulcon jerked his head like a wooden doll worked by string.
“Guildford? It may be eighteen miles,” and he reconsidered the number carefully as though he were handing out loaves.
The woman laid a hand on the dog’s head.
“I am tired,” she said suddenly. “I want a lodging.”
“A lodging.”
Fulcon always echoed a neighbour’s sentences, a trick that suggested caution, and a desire to gain time for reflection.
“There are hostels in the town,” he said.
“No.”
“There are hostels in the town.”
“No,” and yet again she repeated the blunt monosyllable “no.”
Fulcon echoed the “no,” and stared hard at the opposite wall.
Ban opened his mouth suddenly, and laughed as a dog can laugh on occasions. It was as though the matter was so absurdly simple that he was tickled by the way these humans bungled it.
Fulcon caught the dog’s eye. Ban’s laughter had been silent, his master’s came with a human gurgle.
“You want a lodging?” and he approached the question as something wholly new and astonishing, a matter that had never been previously mentioned.
“I can pay.”
“You can pay.”
The woman put back her hood, and gave Fulcon a full view of her face. Perhaps he felt what Ban had felt, for there was something in the woman’s eyes that made both these surly dogs quite debonair.
“I should give you no trouble,” she said simply. “I have had trouble enough to teach me to be contented.”
Fulcon nodded.
“Trouble,” he agreed. “There are many things that bring trouble, more especially such a thing as a King.”
“My trouble began with the King,” she said.
“Ah, to be sure; his men took all my bread one day last year, and I had not so much as a farthing.”
His voice grumbled down in the bass notes, and Ban sympathised with a growl.
The woman felt in her bag.
“I can pay you,” she said, “a little. I can work, too, if you wish it.”
Fulcon narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and looked at Ban as though for advice. The dog wagged his tail. That wag of the tail decided it.
“Come up and see,” he said. “I have a little room under the roof.”
And all three went in together, Fulcon, the dog, and Denise.
Whether it was Ban’s friendship, or Fulcon’s complacency in turning a good penny by letting his attic, Denise tarried there in the baker’s house, glad to find a corner in the world where she could rest awhile in peace. Fulcon lived quite alone, though an old woman came in now and again to cook, clean, and sew. The house was of stone, and roofed also with flags of stone, because of sparks from the bakehouse furnace. The upper room where Denise lodged was reached by an outside stairway from the yard. There was a small garden and orchard shut in by the walls and gable ends of other houses. As for Fulcon he lived in his bakery behind the shop, he and Ban sleeping together in one corner like two brown dogs curled up in a heap. Often there was baking to be done at night, and then Fulcon dozed in the shop by day, the dog keeping an eye open for customers, boys, and thieves.
It is one of the facts of life that gruff and surly people are more to be trusted than those with burnished faces and ready tongues, and so it turned out with old Fulcon. For Denise found him steady and honest. The neighbours declared that Fulcon was a miser. True, he worked like a brown gnome, round-backed, laborious, and silent. No man baked bread better than Fulcon; nor had he ever sold short weight.
So Denise found herself tarrying day after day in the town under the chalk hills, where the beech woods clambered against the sky, and life seemed still and quiet. Though Earl Simon had taken Reigate the year before, no memory of violence and of bloodshed seemed to linger there, and the valley amid the hills waited peacefully for the spring.
Denise had come very near to death that year, and the heart in her still carried a deep and open wound. She had changed, too, in those few weeks. Her glorious hair was growing long again, and her eyes had a more miraculous sadness. She was thinner in face, yet plumper at the bosom. Some people might have discovered an indefinable air about her, a subtle, human something that was not to be seen on the face of a nun.
A great gulf had opened for Denise between the present and the past, and what her thoughts and emotions were, only a woman could understand. She had lost something of herself, and there was a void of tenderness and yearning in her that hungered to be filled. A chance touch of kindness could melt her almost to tears. She was very silent, and very gentle. Even the dog Ban was something to be loved and fondled, and in winning Ban she won old Fulcon, that brown gnome who toiled and hoarded, hoarded and toiled.
One day he called Denise from her upper room, and showed her the door that led into the garden. Within were herb beds, brown soil turned for planting vegetables, and a stretch of grass where the apple and pear trees grew.
“Grass turns white under a stone,” he said in his grumbling way. “You will see more of the sun here.”
And Denise was grateful to the old man, and she went down into the orchard of an evening, and heard the blackbirds sing.
Old Fulcon had taken a fancy to Denise. He began to look upon her as a house chattel that was familiar, and even as a possession to be treasured. She was silent and gentle, and Fulcon was silent and gentle under that gruff, ugly, and laborious surface. Denise paid him her money, and though Fulcon took it, he kept it apart from the hoard he had in a secret hole in the wall.
“Times are hard, dog Ban,” he would say sulkily. “Only a priest takes a child’s last pence.”
Ban would approve, knowing that his master was less mean than he seemed.
“Be sure, it is no common wench, dog Ban. Noble folk fall into the ditch, as well as beggars. She may be a great lady, who knows? No kitchen girl ever had such hands.”
So Denise tarried there, and old Fulcon seemed quite content that she should tarry, and even began to show less reticence and caution. Old men are often like children; they turn to some people, and run from others. Nor was it long before Denise discovered why the baker toiled and hoarded as he did.
Fulcon had an idol, an idol that fed upon the father’s gold, and that idol was a son. Denise heard of him as a big, black-eyed, tan-faced sworder who had run away to the wars before the down was on his chin. Fulcon’s boy had swaggered, fought, and shouldered his way up hill. He rode a great horse now, wore mail, and carried a long spear. He earned good pay in the service of those who hired such gentlemen, even had men under him, and was a great captain in his father’s eyes.
“God of me, child,” he would say, “the boy was a giant from the day his mother bore him! I can stand under his arm, so,” and he would show Denise how his head did not reach to his son’s shoulder.
“The handsome dog, he must have money,” and Fulcon chuckled and rubbed his hands, “there is not a finer man at his arms in the whole kingdom than Hervé. He has fought as champion often, and no man can stand up to him. Lord, child, and the way some of the ladies have shown him kindness, but that is not a matter for your ears. Hervé must have money, the handsome dog! A lad of such promise must live like the gentleman he may be.”
Then Fulcon waxed mysterious, and looked at Denise with cunning pride.
“I have not given him all my money, oh no, I am wiser than that, I bide my time. For though I have never dreamt it, my dear, I know that some day Hervé will win the spurs. Lesser men have fought their way to it. And then, child, the old baker of Reigate will come out with a store of gold. Arms, and rings, and rich clothes shall the lad have. He shall not be put to shame for lack of the proper gear.”
Denise was touched by the old man’s love for his son, and also by the trust he showed her in telling her such a thing. For to one who had been driven out into the world with shame and ignominy, such human faith is very dear. Denise might be touched by old Fulcon’s pride, but whether she believed Messire Hervé worthy of it was quite another matter. The fellow was probably a gallant rogue, with wit enough to possess himself of the old man’s gold. It seemed strange to her that Fulcon, who was so shrewd and grim, should be dazzled by gaudy trappings, a loud presence, and a handsome face.
Denise had at least found peace in the little town, a time of tranquillity that stood between her and despair. She had space there for quiet breathing, and no fear for the moment but the fear of a chance betrayal. She needed sleep and strength before the march into the future, that future that seemed as dim and formless as a strange and distant land. Her heart seemed doomed to lose the very memory of a most dear dream. If she thought of Aymery she thought of him as a man who had made her soul thrill in past years, and was dead. Her vows were broken, but what did that avail? The past was dead also, after what had happened.
One evening late in March, Fulcon came to her in the garden, and she could tell that he was troubled.
“The bloody sword is out again,” he said. “Bah, I thought they would let us have peace awhile. The accursed Frenchman has thrown poison into the pot.”
Denise was ignorant of much that had passed in the world around. She knew nothing of the Mise, and of the blight that had fallen on the Barons’ cause. Pope Urban, good man, upheld King Henry in the breaking of oaths and the casual selfishness of misrule. Time-servers and waverers were going over to the King, because of the award St. Louis had made. Yet Simon had carried his head high, and acted in all honour, he and the chief lords who were with him. They had surrendered Dover, and prepared to treat loyally with Henry about the Mise.
Now news had come into the town that the firebrands on either side were flaming in arms. Roger Mortimer had ravaged De Montfort’s estates on the Welsh marches. There had been skirmishes in the west country. The Earl of Derby had hoisted his banner against the King. Henry himself had issued writs calling his followers to arms on the last day of March. The peacemaking of Louis of France seemed likely to bring on a yet bitterer war.
Fulcon shook his head over it, and grumbled.
“The King pipes the tune, and poor John pays. There will be bloody work again. God give Earl Simon a heavy hand.”
And then, as is always the case, he discovered compensations.
“Hervé will have his chance,” he said; “how can a soldier show himself without a battle!”
Two days passed, and news came suddenly that Simon the Younger was near at hand, and likely to pass through Reigate on the way. The news set Fulcon all agog, for Hervé followed the Earl of Gloucester’s banner, and some said the earl was with young Simon, and Fulcon was as eager as any woman to see his lad. He went out into the town, leaving Denise and Ban to look to the loaves in the shop. And while Fulcon was away De Montfort’s son marched into Reigate with a following of knights and men-at-arms.
Denise saw the people running to and fro like ants in a nest that have been stirred up with a stick. A crowd began to gather, an anxious, whispering, restless crowd, uneasy as a wood under the first puffs of a threatening storm. For armed men in a town were too often the devil’s retainers, were they friends or foes.
The sound of shouting came from one of the gates, with the blare of trumpets.
“Simon is here!”
The news spread, and men who had wives and daughters, pushed them within doors, bidding them look through cracks in the shutters if they must look at all. A knight came riding by, carrying a black banner with a white cross thereon. A few stray dogs ran hither and thither, to be hooted, and pelted by the boys in the crowd. Then suddenly, with the thunder of hoofs along the street, came the clangour of young Simon’s company, their spears set close together like black masts in a haven.
Denise stood at the door of Fulcon’s shop, with Ban bristling and snarling beside her. A splendid knight on a white horse rode in the van. His helmet was off, and he laughed, and looked about him as he rode with a certain good-humoured vanity. Beside him, mounted on a black mare, Denise saw a woman in silks of blue and green, and a cloak of sables over her shoulders.
The way was narrow, and the crowd greatest just by the baker’s shop. Simon the Younger reined in his horse, holding his spear at arms length as a sign to those behind him to halt.
“Room, good people,” he said, gracious and debonair. “We are not here to trample on honest men’s toes.”
Denise’s eyes met the eyes of the woman who rode at young De Montfort’s side. And in that look the shame of the near past leapt up into Denise’s face, for the lady in the cloak of sables was the woman who had ridden with Gaillard and Peter of Savoy the day they dragged Aymery from her cell.
Etoile’s black eyes had flashed as they stared at Denise’s face. She also had not forgotten. And once again she looked down upon Denise, and mocked her with lifted chin, and laughing mouth.
The street had cleared, and Simon and Etoile went riding on together, with spear and shield following along the narrow street. Denise had drawn back into the shadow of the shop, her face still hot with Etoile’s sneer. Her shame seemed to have been flung at her like a torch out of the darkness. Denise felt as though it had scorched her flesh. And while she hid herself there, Aymery rode by among young Simon’s gentlemen, but Denise neither saw him, nor he her.
Soon Fulcon came back panting, having pushed his way through the crowd in the street. He blessed God and Denise when he saw his bread untouched.
“Five score loaves for Simon’s men,” he said gloating. “I had the order yonder up at the Cross. Simon is a lord who pays.”
Fulcon was very happy, but Denise went to her room above, sorrowful and sad at heart. The peace seemed to have gone suddenly from the place.
Aymery, who had passed so near to her for whom he would have pledged his spurs, served as knight of the guard that evening at De Montfort’s lodging. Young Simon and Dame Etoile were very merry together, drinking and laughing into each other’s eyes. Aymery distrusted the woman, and feared her power over the earl’s son. It always seemed to him that he had seen her face before that night in Southwark, but where, for the life of him, he could not remember.
And as he kept guard in Reigate town that night, he thought of Denise, and of that dolorous thing that had befallen her. The shame of it had not driven her out of Aymery’s heart. Little did he guess that he had been so near to her that day.
CHAPTER XXV
Simon the Younger went on his way, and Aymery with him, Aymery whose face had lost some of its youthfulness and caught in its stead the intensity of the life that stirred the passions of those about him. All who had kept troth with Earl Simon after the Mise were men whose hearts were in their cause, and who set their teeth the harder when the odds grew greater against them day by day. Earl Simon’s spirit seemed like light reflected from the faces of the stern, strong men who rallied to him. De Montfort had no use for time-servers, or the half-hearted.
“Let them go,” he would say; “we want no rotten timber in our house.”
When Prince Henry, Richard of Cornwall’s son, sought the earl’s leave not to bear arms against his father and his uncle, Simon bade him go, and return in arms.
“For,” said he with scorn, “I would rather have a bold enemy, than a cock that will crow on neither dunghill.”
Then Hugh de Bigot, and Henry de Percy left him, but Simon would not be daunted.
“I, and my sons will stand for England, and the Charter,” he said. “I will not go back from my purpose, though I sacrifice my blood, and the blood of my children.”
Such was Simon the Earl when fate seemed against him, and such were the men who gathered about him with grim and silent faces, and the determination to go through to the end. Ardour and high purpose were theirs those months. The Mise had purged the cause of slackness and mere self-seeking. The people of England were to read the King a lesson that was never to be forgotten by his masterful and more kingly son.
Some days after Simon the Younger had passed through Reigate, a party of the King’s men came riding into the town. They were very insolent and high-handed gentlemen who swore that Reigate was a nest of rebels because the townsmen had lodged Young Simon and his following, and given them food. None other than Gaillard commanded this company, Gaillard who was furious over the news that a spy had brought him, the news that Etoile had won young Simon as a lover. Gaillard spared neither tongue nor fist in Reigate. These fat pigs of English should be bled in return for the way De Montfort had trampled on Gascony.
Gaillard was never so happy as when he could tease and bully. He and his men, who were mostly mercenaries from over the sea, took possession of Reigate, and established themselves strongly there. They terrorised the place, doing much as their passions pleased, taking all they needed, and robbing even the churches. So many of them were drunk at night that had the townsmen showed some enterprise, they could have risen and rid themselves of the whole pack.
Old Fulcon had shut up his shop, and baked only such bread as he could serve out secretly to his neighbours. But Gaillard soon heard of Fulcon’s frowardness, and came riding down one morning to see such impudence properly chastened. His men beat in the shutterflap of the shop with their spear staves, and found Fulcon waiting sulkily within.
The baker had shut Ban up in an outhouse, knowing that the dog would show fight, and have a sword thrust through him for his pains. Gaillard’s men dragged Fulcon out into the street, and brought him beside the Gascon’s horse.
“Hullo, you rogue, how is it that you bake no bread?”
“Because I have no sticks,” said Fulcon surlily.
“We will give you the stick, dog, unless you send us thirty loaves daily.”
Fulcon shrugged his shoulders.
“I have no flour left,” he said, “and no fool will send flour into the town,” and he grinned from ear to ear.
Gaillard cursed him.
“What, you goat, you horned scullion, are we to be starved! I will see to it that you have flour and faggots. You shall bake us bread, you dog, or we will bake you in your own oven.”
Denise was in her room when Gaillard’s men broke into Fulcon’s shop. There was no window looking upon the street, and since Denise was no coward and wished to see what was happening to Fulcon, she opened the door and came out upon the stairway. As she stood there, two of Gaillard’s men caught sight of her, and began to call to her from the street.
“See there, the old dog has a pretty daughter.”
“Hallo, my dear, come down and be kissed.”
Gaillard himself turned his horse, and looked up at Denise. And Gaillard knew her, and she, him.
Denise would have fled in and closed the door, but she seemed unable to move, held there by Gaillard’s eyes. The man’s face had flushed at first, but he covered a moment’s sheepishness with a smile like the glitter of sunlight upon brass. Perhaps he saw how Denise shrank from him, and for a woman to shrink from him made Gaillard the more insolent.
“Sweet saint,” said he, laughing and looking up at her, “what do we here? Have we grown tired of the beech wood, and Gaffer Aymery, and the Sussex pigs?”
Denise closed her eyes, and stood holding the hand-rail of the stair. She heard Gaillard laugh, and the sound of his horse trampling the flints of the street. When she opened her eyes, he was still there below her. And the sight of the man filled her with such sickness and loathing that she turned her head away as she would have turned her head from some brutal deed.
“Courage, Sanctissima,” said he, “only ugly women have no friends. Master Flour and Faggots shall be treated gently for your sake. Speak for me in your prayers.”
And he called his men about him, and rode away up the street.
Denise went into her room, and barred the door, and sitting down on the bed, looked with blank eyes at the walls of the room. A sense of utter helplessness possessed her, so that she could neither pray nor think.
So great was her loathing of the man, so poignant her repulsion, that she fell into a fever of unrest that night, and could not sleep because of Gaillard. Denise knew how much pity to expect from a man of Gaillard’s nature; bolts and bars would not avail in the town if the Gascon’s whim sought her out. She felt driven out again into the world, to hide herself, to escape from the very thought of the touch of Gaillard’s hands.
By dawn Denise had made up her mind. She would slip out of the town, and throw herself once more into the unknown. Life had so little promise for her, nor was it in her heart to turn nun after what had passed. She was ready to work as a servant for the sake of a home.
Denise was not destined to leave Reigate town that day, for Fulcon came climbing up the stairs soon after dawn, and knocked softly at her door. He had been at work that night, perforce, baking bread for Gaillard’s men, but Fulcon had heard news, news that made him grunt exultingly as he laboured.
“Child,” he said, “come down into the garden. I have a word for you.”
Denise unbarred her door, and followed Fulcon down the stair. He saw that she was fully dressed, but he said nothing, for Fulcon made a habit of sleeping in his clothes.
When they had gained the garden the baker shook his fist at some invisible figure, but looked very sly and cheerful.
“The Gascon dog, the bully, the thief! They are coming with whips to whip him out of the town.”
He went close to Denise, and touched her on the bosom with a thick forefinger.
“Sweeting, I was afraid last night because of that hot-eyed wolf. But last night we had news, we English pigs. Tell me now, can you hear a bell ringing?”
Denise could not.
“No, child, it is Paul’s Bell in London City. They are up, the men of London, and have flung the Frenchman’s judgment back into his face. ‘King stands by King, and cobbler by cobbler. No Mise for us, but the sword of Earl Simon.’ Bold lads, let them shout that! London City has risen. Hear the wasps humming. They are on the wing everywhere, stinging fire into Richard the Roman’s manors.”
Denise had never seen the little brown man so excited before. His taciturnity had become voluble. Dog Ban, sympathetic cur, set up a militant barking.
“This pig of a Gascon knows nothing. We were sick of his wallowings, and we sent out our messengers. To-night the men of London will be here. The Gascon and his fools will be full of mead and wine. We shall open a gate. Then let these foreign dogs die in the gutter.”
So Denise said nothing to Fulcon of her intended flight, but chose to bide her time on the chance that Gaillard would be driven out of Reigate. She had found a refuge in the town, and she loved dog Ban, and trusted Fulcon. Where else could she find a surer shelter?
CHAPTER XXVI
Denise kept watch in her room that night, sitting at her window that overlooked the garden. She could hear old Fulcon moving restlessly to and fro below, opening the door of the shop from time to time, and going out into the street to listen. There was a full moon that night, and though the town gleamed white under the chalk hills, the narrow passage-ways and streets were in deep shadow.
About midnight a suggestion of secret stir and movement rose in the town. Denise heard footsteps go stealthily by, as of people creeping along under the shadow of the houses. Men stopped to whisper to one another, and once she heard the sound of a sword dropped on the cobbles. Fulcon had opened his shop door again, for she heard the creak of the hinges. Then silence once more smothered the town, save for an occasional flutter of sound, like the flicker of leaves on a still night in summer.
Half an hour had passed, and Denise had begun to think that nothing was to be done that night, when a burst of shouting rose in the very centre of the town. So loud and sudden was it, that all the dead might have risen with one great and exultant cry, a cry that set the moonlit night vibrating with the thrill of a coming storm.
Then a bell began to ring, quickly, volubly, with an angry clashing to and fro. Denise heard men go rushing by with a clatter of arms, laughter and loud oaths. Soon, the whole town was in an uproar, and old Fulcon, standing in the doorway of his shop, shouted and clapped his hands together.
“Tear them, good lads, tear them.”
The wave of war had broken over the town, and went splashing and plunging into every court and corner. Denise opened the door at the top of the outside stair, and stood listening to the roar of the fight, the wall of the next house throwing a black shadow across her and the stair. She could hear shouts and rallying cries, and a sullen under-chant that seemed made up of blows, curses, and the trampling of many feet. Confused and shadowy figures went tearing hither and thither, appearing and disappearing in the moonlight. A wounded and riderless horse galloped by, screaming with terror. Presently the glow of a fire coloured the sky with a blur of yellow light.
Denise was leaning against the jamb of the doorway when she saw a man come running down the street, a naked sword in his hand, his shield held up as though to hide his face. He stopped outside Fulcon’s shop, dropping his shield arm, and looking about him cautiously, yet thanks to the deep shadow he did not see Denise. She took him for Gaillard, and was about to shut and bar the door, when she heard Fulcon’s voice shrill and thin with an old man’s joy.
“Hervé, Hervé!”
The man had disappeared round the angle of the house, and Fulcon dropped his voice to a cautious whisper. The door creaked and closed. Fulcon and the soldier were together in the shop. Denise did not doubt that it was Hervé his son who had come with the Londoners, and such of De Montfort’s men who were with them that night.
Denise heard them talking together, the younger man’s voice loud and rather aggressive, Fulcon’s a mere gentle and deprecating grumble. The son seemed to be asking the father something, Fulcon to be putting Hervé off with reasons and excuses. Before long the younger man’s voice changed its tone. It began to plead and to persuade with an insinuating light-heartedness that Denise did not trust. Old Fulcon’s grumble became more persuadable. Denise heard a door opened, and then the sound of a man’s voice singing.
The singing ceased. For some moments silence held, to be broken by a sudden scuffling noise, and a voice, thick and choking, crying “Hervé, Hervé!” A dog’s growl joined in, fierce and threatening, to end in a piteous and wailing whimper. Something seemed to struggle to and fro with inarticulate anguish and horror. Then silence fell. Nothing moved in the room below.
Denise was caught by an impulse that took no account of self and of fear. She went down the stairway and into the street, only to find the door of the shop barred. Her hand was still on the latch when the door opened. The man Hervé came out, huddling something under his surcoat, his sword in the moonlight showing a shadowy smear. He stopped dead on the threshold, staring at Denise, and then pushed past her roughly, and fled up the street.
There was a light burning somewhere behind the shop, probably in the bakehouse where Fulcon and dog Ban lived and slept. Denise went in, wondering what she would find there, nor was she long in discovering Messire Hervé’s handiwork. A candle was burning in a sconce on the wall, and close to the great brick oven lay Fulcon, stretched upon his back, one arm covering his face as though to shut out the sight of something, or to break the force of a blow. Ban, in his death agony, had dragged himself to his master, and crouched there with his forepaws on the baker’s chest. They were dead, both of them, Fulcon and the dog. A black hole in the wall showed above the place where Fulcon had fallen, and the stone that had closed the hole lay close to the old man’s head. Fulcon had hidden his hoard there, the money that he had scraped together with infinite labour for the sake of Hervé his son. Denise could guess what had happened. Fulcon had not been willing to part with the whole sum, because of his dream that Hervé would need it when he came by knighthood. And the son had watched the father go to the hiding-place in the wall, and then had beaten him down, and taken all that he could find.
A great horror of the place seized on Denise, with the two dead things lying there, and the brutal violence of the deed making old Fulcon’s end seem pitiful and ugly. The horror of it drew her out into the night, as though to escape the sickly odour of freshly shed blood. Shuddering, she went up to her room, put on her cloak, and tied such money as she had left into a corner of her tunic. The grossness of the deed had shocked her, so that she fled away like a child from a haunted wood, forgetting such a thing as justice, and the fact that her tongue might drop a noose over Master Hervé’s head.
Whither she was going, or what her plans were, Denise did not consider for the moment. Blind panic carried her away from a thing that had filled her with pity, and yet with disgust. She seemed hardly conscious of the fact that fighting was still raging in the town. Houses were on fire not fifty yards away, but the scattering sparks and the glare above the house-tops seemed hardly to strike her senses. The burning houses threw up a flare to match the horror that possessed her; such surroundings seemed natural and to be expected after Hervé’s slaying and robbing of his father.
Denise found herself at last in an open space where many people were gathered, and torches threw up tawny light under the white face of the moon. Here was much shouting, much running to and fro, much uproar and exultation. Now and again a sword or axe flashed above the black mass of humanity. As Denise came out of the darkness a party of men went charging through, carrying ladders, hatchets, and iron bars. “Room, room,” they shouted, for they were bent on stopping the spread of the fire by pulling down some of the flimsy houses.
In the middle of the square sat a knight on horseback, a knot of torches about him, and a pennon fluttering faintly above the smoke. The motion of the crowd seemed towards the knight, as though he were Lord and King of the Play. Denise was caught in the crowd and carried slowly towards the knight on the horse.
He sat there bareheaded, calm and a little grim, the torchlight flickering on his face, and on the harness that glittered under his tawny surcoat. Men went to and fro carrying his commands, figures in red, blue, and green, going and coming through the crowd. He spoke so quietly that at a little distance no one heard his voice, but saw only the lips move in his stern and watchful face.
It was Aymery, lord of Goldspur, Knight of the Hawk’s Claw, who had the command of the Londoners who had rushed on Reigate. The crowd carried Denise close to him, within an arm’s length of the circle of torches. And with her nearness she seemed suddenly to awake with a great cry of the heart that did not reach her lips.
“Aymery, Aymery!”
Her utter loneliness in the midst of that crowd seemed to her symbolical of the past and of the future. She was just a child that moment, with the passionate and pathetic longing of a child, touched with the deeper instinct of the woman. And by chance Aymery looked straight at Denise, so that it seemed to her that he was looking at her, and at her alone. She did not realise that Aymery could see nothing but a moving mist of faces because of the torch flare and the smoke. His face was so grim and intense, and his eyes so hard, that Denise shrank back, believing that he had recognised her, and that he looked at her as a thing of shame. She hid her face from him with bitterness and humiliation, and crept away into the thick of the crowd.
Of all that happened afterwards that night in Reigate town Denise had but a confused memory. She remembered being hurried along by the crowd, with shouting and tumult in the dark alleyways and streets. She had a memory of being crushed against a group of panting and fiercely exultant men who had blood upon their hot hands and faces. One of them had thrown an arm round her and kissed her, laughing when she shuddered and broke away. Once a couple of heads went dancing by on the points of spears, heads that seemed to mock with dead, open mouths at the jeering crowd below. Men were still fighting in one corner of the town, for Gaillard had got the remnant of his followers together, and was struggling to break through. Denise, still carried onwards, saw a black mass like the mass of a town gate rising before her. She was pressed against a wall as the crowd opened to let a file of mounted men ride through. She saw Aymery in his surcoat of tawny gold go riding under the arch of the gate, shield forward, sword swinging, his men crowding after him like sheep through a gap. Then the rush of the people carried her through the town gate into the space outside the barriers. And when the dawn came she found herself a mile from Reigate town, sitting under a tree, with a cold wind driving grey clouds across an April sky.