CHAPTER XXX
A halt was called at noon, and Denise, who had walked for four long hours, felt that hopeless weariness that yearns only for some corner where the body may lie relaxed. Her feet were burning, and she and Marpasse had been trudging in the dust made by the horses, dust that had clogged the air, and made the eyes tingle. Denise was glad to throw herself on the grass beside Marpasse, who was much less weary, being tougher, and more used to the road.
Marpasse was very wide awake. She looked narrowly at Denise, and rolled to the side on one elbow so as to be nearer.
“We have our chance now, are you strong enough?”
Denise’s dull eyes brightened, and she moistened her lips with her tongue.
“If we only had water! What can we do—here, Marpasse, with the men all round us?”
Marpasse gave her the stone bottle of wine that Gaillard had sent them that morning.
“Drink,” she said in a loud voice, “nothing like wine on a dusty road. Heigh-ho, I shall soon be sleepy,” and she rolled on her back so that she touched Denise, and stretched her arms and yawned.
“Listen,” she said in a whisper, “there is that wood yonder, I have my plan,” and she went on speaking softly to Denise, and still stretching and yawning as though there was nothing hazardous to be considered.
It was plodding along an endless road, with aching feet, and gloom in her heart, that had made Denise’s courage droop for the moment. Above all it was the hopelessness that had tired her. Marpasse’s words were as warm and as heartening as strong wine. The spark fell on the tinder and red life began to run again through Denise’s being.
“I am strong enough, Marpasse.”
Marpasse seized her hand, and pretended to bite it, like a dog at play.
“Don’t look red and eager, my dear. Limp, as though you had worn your feet to the bone. Now, good St. George, bless all fools!”
Marpasse jumped up, and crossed the road to where the two men-at-arms who had charge of them were making a meal. She spoke to them jauntily, her hands on her hips, her brown face insolent and laughing, her eyes unabashed. The men laughed in turn, and nodded. Marpasse recrossed the road, held out a hand to Denise, and pulled her roughly to her feet. Marpasse put an arm about Denise, and Denise, prompted by her comrade, limped as she walked, and leant her weight upon Marpasse.
Fifty yards from the road was a patch of scrub that jutted out like a pointed beard from the broad chin of an oak wood. Marpasse and Denise went slowly towards the trees, thinking each moment that they would hear some voice calling them back roughly to the road. Marpasse felt Denise straining forward instinctively upon her arm. She was breathing rapidly like one in a fever.
They reached the scrub, and skirting it, came to the ditch that bounded the wood. Marpasse still kept her arm about Denise.
“Gently, sister, gently; it would be a shame to spoil everything by bolting like a hare. Be sure, our friends behind are watching us.”
Marpasse turned her head to look.
“Curses!” and the strain of the moment showed in her impatience, “one of the fools is strolling after us. We cannot go far with only our shadows for company. Over! No muddy shoes this time.”
They were across the ditch, and on the edge of the wood, Marpasse still holding Denise as they went in amid the trees. She kept looking back till the open land and the sky were shut out by the dense lattice work of the boughs. The men had not followed them across the ditch, and Marpasse blessed their luck when she saw that the underwood had been cut that winter so that it would be quicker running between the stubs. Only the dead leaves troubled Marpasse, rustling and crackling under their feet.
“Now for it, run, run!”
She let go of Denise, and they gathered up their skirts and started off, scudding between the tree boles, never stopping to look back. Denise did not feel her feet under her. The brown leaves, the coarse grass, and the wild flowers were like so much water over which she seemed to skim, yet not so swiftly as her fear fled. She was quicker than Marpasse, because her passion to escape burnt at a greater heat. Marpasse had torn her skirt on a stub and was panting when they came to the farther edge of the wood.
They paused a moment, and stood listening, and could hear the confused hum of the host like the humming of bees. A meadow lay before them, bounded by a second wood that towered up the steep slope of a hill. Against the blue a lark hung with quivering wings, and quivering song. As they stood listening a shout rose in the deeps of the wood behind them. Denise was off like a deer, her whole soul quivering like the wings of the lark overhead. Marpasse stayed a second to pull up a stocking that had slipped to her ankle, and then ran on after Denise across the meadow.
They were close to the outstanding trees of the second wood, when Denise looked back and saw that they were followed. The two men-at-arms who had had the guarding of them had been too shrewd to go beating through the trees on foot when they had begun to suspect Marpasse of playing a trick on them. They had mounted their horses, and ridden different ways so as to circle the wood and gain a view of the two vixens when they took to the open.
Marpasse cursed them for their pains.
“Another minute, and we should have been out of sight,” she said; “we may yet trick them in the wood.”
They kept together now, labouring uphill with faces that began to betray distress. Marpasse had a stitch in her side, her stockings were at her ankles, and her hair over her shoulders. They could hear the men shouting, but paid no heed to it, for if there were but thicker cover on the other side of the hill, they might take to it and escape.
As they topped the slope they heard the trampling of horses in the valley behind them. Marpasse looked eagerly to right and left, and an angry cry escaped her, for a wood of great forest trees dipped gently away from them, the trunks pillaring broad aisles that were carpeted with sleek and brilliant sward. A man could see through the wood as though looking along the aisles of a church, where children could do no more than play hide-and-seek round the piers and pillars.
“No luck for us! They can ride us down here almost as well as in a meadow.”
Denise caught Marpasse’s arm.
“The knife, Marpasse; give it me.”
Marpasse was panting, one hand at her side.
“No, no, not that, my dear!”
“I will not be taken alive, Marpasse. Give me the knife, and run. They will not trouble you when they find me here.”
Marpasse drew Denise behind the trunk of a great tree, for she had seen a helmet come up over the edge of the hill, to be followed by the tossing mane of a horse.
Marpasse took Denise in her arms.
“My sister,” and she was greatly moved, “take it not to heart. In a week, or a month, it may seem different.”
But Denise was in earnest as her white face showed.
“No, no, Marpasse, I cannot. Give me the knife.”
Marpasse fumbled for it, great passionate tears rushing to her eyes. Had she not once passed through the same pain, and shirked the crisis, only to become a stroller and a courtesan! Denise had a more sensitive surface, a deeper courage. Yet Marpasse’s heart cried out against the thing.
The two men were close upon them now, riding slowly and at some distance from one another so that the two women should not play hide and seek behind the trees. Marpasse turned her head away as she gave Denise the knife.
“My sister, am I wrong in this?”
Denise caught her, and kissed her on the mouth.
“Truest of friends, go, now. It will not be so hard to end it, for I am very tired.”
Marpasse broke away with a spasm of the throat. The thought seized her suddenly that by running she might draw the men away from Denise. Yet she had not gone three steps before her wet eyes saw something that made her start, and then stand like a deer at gaze.
What Marpasse saw was a knight on a black horse riding up furiously through the wood. He was bending low in the saddle behind his shield, with spear feutered, and the steel mass of his great helmet flashing in the sunlight that sifted through the trees. His horse seemed to gallop almost silently over the soft turf. Yet he came on like the wind, and with no doubtful intent.
Marpasse whipped round, and ran back to Denise.
“Not death yet,” she said, “nor the devil either, pray God.”
There was the thud of hoofs on the soft turf of the woodland rides, and the two women saw the man on the black horse go by at the gallop, bending low behind his shield. Marpasse stood out to watch him, her mouth wide open as though howling a blessing. She saw one of Gaillard’s men kicking his heels into his horse’s flanks as though to gather speed against the shock of that feutered spear. The knight on the black horse was on him before the fellow could gain much ground. Marpasse saw a spear break in the middle, and a body go twisting over the grass like a bird with an arrow through it, while the dead man’s horse went off at a canter.
Marpasse caught Denise by the hand, and drew her from behind the tree.
“Glory of God, my dear,” and her eyes glistened, but not with tears, “Lord, how I love a lusty fighter. Here is a man who can strike a blow. And here are we like damoiselles in a French romance, my dear. Save us, Sir Launcelot, or Sir Tristan of Lyonnesse, whatever your name may be! La, I could kiss you for being so lusty!”
The second of Gaillard’s men had ridden in to help his comrade. Swords were out, and sweeping in gyres of light under the boughs of the oak trees. But he of the black horse set about Gaillard’s man as though he were thrashing corn. There was only one sword at work so far as the issue was concerned.
Denise looked on with dull eyes, and feverish face. It was like a violent dream to her, those struggling figures, and the body lying there thrust through with the broken spear. Marpasse was dancing from foot to foot, her brown face flushed, her eyes flashing.
She threw up her arms, and shouted in triumph.
“He has it, he has it, in the throat. Oh, brave blow! Would I were a man, and that I had an arm like that!”
The man on the black horse had beaten Gaillard’s fellow out of the saddle. He slid down his horse’s belly, a dishevelled figure with limp arms and fallen sword. One foot had caught in the stirrup, and the horse took fright, and cantered off through the wood, dragging the body after it.
The knight watched the body go sliding over the grass, tossing its arms as though in grotesque terror. He turned his horse, and rode back slowly towards the two women, and they saw that he carried a hawk’s claw in gold upon a sable shield. His surcoat was a dull green, a colour that was not too crude and conspicuous for forest tracks. The great helmet, with its eye cleft in the shape of a cross, hid his face completely.
Marpasse, impetuous wench, ran forward and kissed the black muzzle of his horse.
“Lording, good luck to you,” and her blue eyes laughed in her brown face, “never were distressed damsels in greater need. King Arthur’s gentlemen were never more welcome.”
The man did not look at Marpasse, but at Denise. She was leaning against the tree trunk, her hair hanging about her shoulders like red light, her face a dead white by contrast. Her brown eyes had a feverish look, and she still held Marpasse’s knife in her right hand.
The man on the black horse waved Marpasse aside with his sword. And there was something about the silent, massive figure with its iron mask that made Marpasse move back.
“Go yonder, and watch,” he said, pointing towards the outskirts of the wood.
“But, lording——?”
“Go. Is my blood the blood of that dead thing yonder!”
And Marpasse, who had obeyed very few people in her life, obeyed him without a word.
When she had gone the man put his sword up into its scabbard, dismounted, and stood holding the bridle of his horse. Denise’s eyes were fixed upon the helmet with its shadowy cleft in the shape of a cross. The man saw her bosom rising and falling, and that her eyes were troubled. Marpasse’s knife was half hidden by the grey folds of her gown.
The man put both hands to the helmet, lifted it, and let it fall upon the grass. And it was Aymery whom Denise saw.
She looked at him with wide, eloquent, and frightened eyes, a rush of colour crimsoning her face, for Denise remembered the Aymery of Reigate Town, the stern-faced captain hounding Gaillard into the night. And all the shame and ignominy that she had suffered seemed to fall and break upon her head. She stood speechless, her eyes looking at him like the eyes of one who expects a blow.
“Denise!”
He held out his hands to her, but she covered her face, and leant against the trunk of the tree. Yet she did not weep or make any sound. It was a dry, frozen anguish with her that could neither move nor speak. Aymery watched her as a man might watch one in bitter pain, knowing not what to do to help or comfort.
“Denise!”
Perhaps the pity in his voice stung her. God, that it should have come to this, for she had read the truth upon his face. Denise raised her head, and their eyes met. Her mouth was quivering, but she looked at Aymery as though challenging the whole world in that one man. Perhaps Denise could not have told what made her do the thing she did. The fever of fatalism was in her blood, and Marpasse’s knife was in her hand. And Aymery, stupefied, watched the red stain start out against the grey cloth of her gown.
CHAPTER XXXI
Denise slipped slowly to her knees, still leaning the weight of her body against the trunk of the tree. The languor of death seemed upon her, but her eyes could still meet Aymery’s, brown eyes swimming with the death mist, and growing blind to the sunlight. The man’s shocked face, and his outstretched hands were the last things that she remembered.
“Lord, it is better so.”
Her head drooped, her hair falling about her face. The long lashes flickered over the eyes like the flickering light of a taper before it dies in the darkness. Aymery dropped on his knees beside her. He was awed, shaken to the deeps, a man who looked upon the face of death, and knew that the great silence was falling upon the mouth of the woman whom he had kissed in dreams.
“Denise.”
He took her into his arms, for there was no power to gainsay him, and death, dread lord, still watched and waited. They were heart to heart for the moment, though life was melting within the span of the man’s arms. Denise opened her eyes once, and smiled, but it was the ghost of a smile that Aymery had.
“Denise!”
His mouth was close to hers.
“Lord, it is the end; do not judge me hardly.”
“Denise, my desire, am I here to judge?”
“It was Gaillard’s doing,” she said, “and God deserted me. I am very tired, so tired. Now, I am falling asleep.”
She gave a great sigh, and let her head lie upon his shoulder, her skin growing more white under the clouding of her hair. Aymery felt her hands grow cold as he knelt there looking at her in a stupor of awe, and wrath, and rebellious wonder. He believed that Denise would open her eyes no more, that the eternal silence was falling upon her mouth. This was death indeed, death that found him inarticulate and helpless.
He let her lie there upon the grass with her head resting upon a mossy root of the tree, and turned to call Marpasse back through the wood. And Marpasse came running, to stare at the deed her knife had done, and then to fall on her knees with a kind of blubbering fierceness, that was combative in its grief. She laid her hand on Denise’s bosom, and bent over her till her mouth nearly touched the silent lips. But Denise still breathed, and Marpasse sat back on her heels and began to unlace Denise’s tunic.
Aymery was standing by, looking down at them as though stunned. His helplessness maddened Marpasse, and she turned and stung him.
“Fool, will you let her bleed to death?”
She had laid bare the wound in Denise’s bosom, a narrow mouth from which the red life was ebbing slowly.
“Fool! Have you such things as hands? For God’s love, something to staunch the flow!”
Her words were like cold water dashed into his face. Aymery ripped his surcoat, tore a great piece away, folded it, and gave the pad to Marpasse. She pressed it to the wound with one hand, and with the other beckoned Aymery to take her place.
“Shall we give in without a fight?” she said, “you are better with a sword than with a sponge, lording. I have some linen on me, though it might have come white out of the wash.”
She turned up her blue gown, and tore strips from the shift beneath.
“Blood stops blood, they say,” and she ran back between the trees to where the dead man lay with the spear through him. The stuff and her hands were red when she returned.
“Lift the pad, lording.”
He obeyed her, and she pressed some of the linen into the wound.
“A bandage, what shall we do for a bandage?”
Aymery tore his surcoat into strips, and knotting them together, he gave the end to Marpasse.
“Raise her, gently, gently, my man.”
While Aymery held Denise limp and still warm, with her head and her hair upon his hauberk, Marpasse wound and rewound the bandage about her body, drawing the swathings as tightly as she could.
When she had ended it, she put her mouth to Denise’s mouth, and felt the white throat with her fingers.
“Life yet,” she said.
Then she and Aymery looked into each other’s eyes.
“What next?”
That was what they asked each other.
Now Marpasse knew the country in those parts, having lived near at one time in the house of a lord’s verderer, and gone a-hawking, and a-hunting in the woods. When she and Denise had started on their flight from Gaillard and the King’s army, Marpasse had had a certain house of Sempringham nuns in her mind’s eye. It was a little convent hid in a valley, aloof from the world, and very peaceful. Marpasse told Aymery of the place. They could carry Denise there, a forlorn venture, for both felt that she would die upon the road.
“The Prioress is named Ursula,” said Marpasse, “and she is a good woman, though that may be worth little. They may know something of leech-craft.”
Aymery mounted his horse, and Marpasse lifted Denise, and gave her into the man’s arms.
“While the torch flickers there is light, lording,” she said; “God grant that she may not die on the way.”
They set off through the April woods, Aymery with Denise lying in his arms, Marpasse walking beside the horse, a Marpasse who was solemn and pensive, and unlike her ribald self. Aymery hardly glanced at the woman who walked beside the horse, for his whole soul was with Denise, Denise so white and silent, with the death shadows under her eyes. Her hair lay tossed in a shining mass over Aymery’s neck and shoulder, and he held her very gently as though afraid of stifling those feebly drawn breaths. Sometimes he spoke to his horse, and the beast went very softly as though understanding Denise’s need.
They came out of the wood and found themselves on the edge of a valley, a green trough threaded by a stream running between meadows. Marpasse stood looking about her for some familiar tree or field or the outline of a hill. They saw smoke rising in a blue column from a stone chimney behind a knoll of trees. Marpasse’s eyes brightened. They had stumbled on the very place that she sought.
“The luck is with us, lording,” she said, “I will come with you as far as the gate. But a devil’s child may not set foot on so godly and proper a threshold.”
She spoke a little scornfully, and Aymery looked down at Marpasse as though he had hardly noticed her before. She had been a mere something that had moved, and exclaimed, and acted. Of a sudden he seemed to touch the humanism and the woman in her.
He bent over Denise, and then looked again at Marpasse.
“She is yet alive. How did you two come together?”
Marpasse had not discovered yet why Denise had used the knife, though Aymery had saved her from Gaillard’s men. But Marpasse had her suspicions.
“We met on the road, lording, where we wastrels drift. She was not one of us. No. She told me her whole story. That was last night outside Guildford Town.”
Aymery’s eyes were on the priory beneath them amid its meadows. He kept silence awhile, and when he spoke he did not look at Marpasse.
“Part of the tale I know,” he said, “and God forgive me, I had an innocent share in it.”
His eyes were on Denise’s face again, and he smiled as a man smiles with bitter tenderness at death.
“Tell me what you know.”
Marpasse plodded along, staring at the grass. And presently she had told Aymery all that Denise had told her, and told it with the blunt pathos of a rough woman telling the truth.
They were nearing the convent now with its grey walls and trees, its barns and outhouses with their dark hoods of thatch. Aymery’s face was grim and thoughtful. He touched Denise’s hair with his lips, and Marpasse saw the kiss and, being a woman, she understood.
“The devil snatched at her lording,” she said, “but God knows that she was not the devil’s, either in heart or in body.”
Aymery rode on with bowed head. He was thinking of Gaillard, and how he would follow that man to the end of the world, and kill him for the death he had brought upon Denise.
They came to the convent, and Marpasse sat down on a rough bench outside the gate. The portress was waiting there, a very old woman with a dry, wrinkled face, a harsh voice, and grey hairs on her chin. She screwed up her eyes at the knight, and at the burden that he carried in his arms. Aymery was blunt and speedy with her, a man not to be gainsaid.
“Peace to you,” he said, “soul and body are hurt here. Go and tell your Prioress that we are in need.”
He rode into the court, though a most sensitive etiquette might have forbidden an armed man to ride into such a place. The portress went her way with a hobbling excitement that was very worldly. Presently Ursula the Prioress came out, and two nuns with her and since Aymery held out Denise to the women they could not let him drop her upon the stones.
CHAPTER XXXII
Ursula the Prioress was a prim woman, a woman with a long, thin face, and a small mouth. She had no knowledge of life, but being very devout and religious, her devotion and her religiosity made her conceive infallibility within herself.
Ursula had seen nothing more in Denise than a young woman with gorgeous hair, a deathly face, and blood upon her bosom, and Ursula’s nostrils had caught a rank flavour of godlessness from the affair. The woman had stabbed herself or been stabbed. She was probably nothing more than a common courtesan, for Ursula had a vague knowledge that the sisterhood of Rahab still existed. And like many religious women, Ursula was very sure of her own cleanliness, and very suspicious of the cleanliness of others.
The woman could not be left to die, there was her “state of sin” to be remembered; yet Ursula was conscious of great graciousness in suffering Denise to be carried within her doors. Then there was the knight to be dealt with, and the Prioress who knew nothing of men, minced before Aymery with prim haughtiness, folding her hands over her lean body, giving him to understand that it was no concern of hers to please him. Aymery, in the deeps and on the heights in one and the same hour, and stricken to the inmost humanism of his soul, had no eyes for Ursula’s prinnickings and prancings. He was in the throes of a tragedy, a strong and impassioned man whose thoughts and desires moved with the headlong naturalness of a stream in flood.
Ursula, half eager to be rid of the man, and yet equally curious, and prying, received him, under a hinted protest, in her Prioress’ parlour. To be sure, she had a couple of nuns outside the door, but some of her prejudicial tartness vanished when she heard the name of Simon the Earl. Even the pinpoint of the Prioress’ womanliness caught the gleam of Aymery’s intensity that burnt at a white heat. She showed herself old-maidishly ready to hear the truth about Denise, since a knight trusted by Earl Simon could not be wholly a dissolute rogue.
Aymery made a mistake that day, a mistake that many a generous and impassioned man has made. Here was a devout woman, a mother of souls, and Aymery took her for what her religion should have made her. Denise, poor child, with the flicker of life still in her, was to be laid to rest in Ursula’s lap. No woman could withhold pity in such a case, and Aymery told Ursula some part of Denise’s tale, not seeing that he was throwing a rose into a pot of sour wine.
The Prioress’ starched figure looked lean and stiff. She was interested, but, dear St. Agnes!—greatly shocked. Aymery’s words fell on an ass’s hide like blows on an empty drum. The drum resounded, made some godly stir, but held nothing more than air.
Aymery had money in his purse. It was not much, but Ursula was a woman whose skin had the colour of gold. She took the money, and his promises of a bequest should the people’s cause prosper, thinking it easily earned by burying a lost woman and putting up prayers for her soul. Ursula would have prayed religiously. She was perfectly sincere in her own corner of the world.
“God give rest to all sinners,” she said sententiously, “we will do what we can for the girl. It is a pity that she should not have been shrived.”
Aymery’s face would have made Marpasse weep. It had no meaning for Madame Ursula.
“I would see her, before I go,” he said.
And his heart added:
“Perhaps for the last time.”
Ursula’s sympathy was purely perfunctory. They had carried Denise into the little infirmary, and laid her upon a bed. She still breathed, and two of the nuns who had some knowledge of leech-craft, had unwound the swathings, but feared to touch the pad that Marpasse had forced into the wound. They had poured oil and a decoction of astringent herbs thereon, wiped the blood-stains from the bosom, and swathed Denise in clean linen. Then they had given her into the hands of the saints, and sat down to watch, whispering to each other across the bed.
The slant of the late sunshine came into the room when Aymery entered at the trail of Ursula’s gown. The sunlight struck upon the bed where Denise lay white as a lily with the glory of her hair shining like molten gold. And to Aymery it seemed that she smiled sadly like one dreaming the end of some sad dream.
Ursula’s starched wimple creaked in the still room. She stood looking down from a pinnacle of righteousness; the two nuns rose and went to the window, taking care to see all that passed.
Their bodies shut off the sunlight from Denise’s face, and threw it into shadow. Aymery was standing beside the bed. The two nuns glanced at one another, and were ready to titter when he knelt down in his battle harness as though praying, or taking some vow.
Before he rose he touched one of Denise’s hands, and it was as cold as snow when he laid it against his lips. Ursula made a sharp sound in her throat. Such happenings were not discreet before women who were celibates.
Aymery rose and, looking at none of them, marched to the door.
“If she lives,” he would have said, “be kind to her until I can return.”
But death seemed to hover so close above Denise that he went out in silence, putting all human hope aside.
Ursula followed him, debonair by reason of her good birth, and superficially courteous after the habit of such a gentlewoman. Would Aymery take wine and meat? Aymery had the heart for neither, but he remembered Marpasse. Ursula had his wallet filled for him, and he took leave of her, finding little to say to show his gratitude. The old portress had watered his horse, and given the beast a few handfuls of corn.
It was growing dusk when Aymery rode out of the gate, and found Marpasse still sitting there on the bench. The figure looked lonely, with a dejected droop of the shoulders, and a hanging of the head. Marpasse’s worldliness was down in the dust that evening.
She got up from the bench and made Aymery a reverence. A spirit of bitter mockery possessed her, for the day’s tragedy had hurt Marpasse more than she would confess.
Aymery reined in. He said nothing concerning Denise, but held out the wallet that the nuns had filled for him.
“There is food there. You must be hungry.”
Marpasse’s eyes flashed up at him, and dropped into a hard and sidelong stare. She took the wallet, and stood biting her lower lip.
“How are things, yonder?” she blurted.
Aymery’s fingers twisted themselves into his horse’s mane.
“Still, a little breathing. They have put her to bed.”
Marpasse nodded.
“I have no great hope——”
“The devil will make sure of that,” said Marpasse; “he loves a nunnery,” and she grimaced.
Aymery walked his horse along the track, but Marpasse did not follow him. She stood there morosely, biting her lip, and holding Aymery’s wallet in her hands. He glanced back, and finding that she had not moved, he reined in again and waited.
Marpasse came on slowly, one hand in the wallet, her eyes on the grass. When she had rejoined Aymery she stopped and stood unsolicitous and silent. The man appeared to be considering something. Yet he saw that the woman’s face was hard and gloomy in the twilight.
“What are your plans?” he asked suddenly.
Marpasse stared.
“A ditch has often served me well enough, lording. We strollers count for little.”
She laughed, fished a loaf out of the wallet, and broke off a crust.
“Do not trouble your head about me, lording,” she said, “go your way. One pull at the bottle, and you shall have your wallet back.”
She took out the flask, drank, and replaced it in the leather bag.
“Good-night to you, lording. We have our own ways to go. Mine is a common track, and I know the tread of my own shoes.”
Aymery still held his horse in hand. He had something to say to Marpasse, and the words did not come to him easily. The woman was more human than Ursula, and his heart went out to her because of Denise. But before he had spoken twenty words, Marpasse broke in with a rough and bitter laugh.
“Lording,” said she, “you cannot make silk out of sackcloth, however much you try. Go your way, I am safe enough on the road. I have a bit of bread here, and I shall sleep soundly under a bush. And to-morrow and the next day, I shall be, just what I have been these five years.”
Aymery’s eyes were still troubled on her behalf. Marpasse shook her hair, and shrugged her shoulders.
“The mule must carry its load, and be given the stick if it kicks, or turns aside. Bah, I know what I am! Denise, there, that was a piece of gold to be picked up out of the dust. Go your way, lording, and do not waste your words. I should only laugh in your face to-morrow, and call you a fool.”
She sat down in the grass and began to eat her bread, ignoring the man on the horse, as though that were the surest way of answering him. There was nothing for Aymery to do but to go, and leave Marpasse to her own road.
“God’s speed, lording,” she said as he turned his horse.
“God’s speed to you, sister.”
“Ah, that would be too slow for me, sir!” and her laughter rang out with forced audacity.
So the night came, and these two solitary ones took up the strands of their several lives, strands that had been tangled by the martyrdom of Denise. Earl Simon’s trumpets called Aymery into the east, whither the King’s host went marching with dust and din. No sword could stay in the scabbard those days, and Aymery had pledged his to Earl Simon, who needed every sword.
Marpasse had watched Aymery ride away into the gathering darkness. She sat there in the grass, sullen, brooding, yet touched by what he had said.
“Bah!” said she, “what would be the use? Brave heart, go your way, and God bless you, for being brave, and honest. Wake up, fool! What, thick in the throat, and ready to blubber like a sot in his cups! Marpasse, my dear, you are a slut and a fool! This is what comes of letting your heart run away with your heels. You will be back to-morrow on the old devil-may-care road.”
But for all her self-scorn—Marpasse could not conjure her own emotion. Her heart hurt her and was troubled, nor could she sleep that night, though she huddled close under the forlorn remnant of a haystack that she found in a meadow. Marpasse felt alone, utterly alone in the world, and conscious of the raw night and the darkness. Who would have cared, she thought, if she had used her knife as Denise had used it? Strangers would have kicked her into a hole, and covered her with sods; that would have been the end.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Rochester city had been stormed on the vigil of Good Friday, but De Warenne still held the castle, and two great Sussex lords, William de Braose of Bramber, and John Fitzallan of Arundel were with him. They knew that the King was on the march; nor was Earl Simon to remain much longer before the walls, for Henry forced him to raise the siege by threatening London with his host. It was Waleran de Monceaux who brought the news of the King’s march, and Aymery, who rode into Rochester but a day behind his brother-in-arms, found De Montfort preparing for a retreat. Their spears were rolling on London when the next dawn came up behind the great tower of the castle, for London was the heart of England that year, and a sudden stab from the King’s sword might have let the life-blood out of the cause.
Earl Simon and the Barons’ men marched through Kent, and pushed in between the King’s host and the city. The Londoners rang their bells, and came shouting over the bridge to bring the Great Earl in. The burghers had been busy since the rejection of King Louis’ award. They had imprisoned some of the King’s creatures on whom they had been able to lay their hands, and sacked and devastated the royalist lands in Surrey and Kent. The week before Palm Sunday the Jewry had been stormed, its inmates massacred, and great treasure taken. London had pledged itself in blood, and De Montfort tarried there, waiting for men to gather to him from the four quarters of the land.
While the roads smoked with these marchings and counter-marchings, and while spears shone on the hill-tops, and steel trickled through the green, Denise cheated death in that quiet valley amid the Surrey hills. Marpasse’s knife had turned between the ribs, missed the heart by the breadth of a finger nail, and let Denise’s blood flow, but not her life. Marpasse’s rough sense had saved her, Marpasse who had saved the body, while Aymery had been busy with the soul. And yet to the nuns Denise’s return out of the valley of the shadows had seemed nothing short of a miracle. Ursula, true to her belief, had seized the first glimmer of consciousness and sent for the priest who served the convent as confessor. But Denise had put the good man off, pleading that she would not die, and that she was too weak to tell him so long a tale.
The first few days Denise lay in her bed, very white and very silent, taking the wine and food they brought her, and speaking hardly a word. She was like one half awakened from sleep, able to feel and think, but with the languor of sleep still on her. She felt that it was good to lie there in peace, aloof from the world, with the quiet figures gliding in and out, and the sunlight moving in a golden beam with the floor of the little room for a dial. The ringing of the convent bells came to her, and the singing of the nuns in the chapel. Denise lay very still through the long hours in a haze of dreamy thought.
How much did she remember? Enough to inspire her with a new desire to live, enough to make her realise how mad had been the impulse that had set Marpasse’s knife a-flashing. They seemed so far away, and yet so near and intimate, those happenings in the April woodland. In moments of deep passion the human heart seizes on what is vital and utterly true, even as those who are dying sometimes seem to see beyond the bounds of the material earth. So Denise remembered that which a woman’s heart would choose to cherish. It had been no mere golden mist of pity glazing the cold truth. She had lain in Aymery’s arms, arms that had held her with something stronger than compassion.
Thus as Denise lay there abed, a slow, sweet faith revived within her, a belief in things that had seemed dry and dead. Her woman’s pride had been in the dust, and she had given up hope, save the hope of hiding in some far place. It might have been that Aymery’s arms had closed an inward wound, and that the strength of his manhood had given her new life.
What had the “afterwards” been? What had happened after she had lost consciousness, and what had become of Aymery and Marpasse. She longed to ask the nuns these things, and yet a sensitive pride tied her tongue. The women were kind to her, and yet, as Denise’s consciousness became more clear, she could not but feel that the eyes that looked at her were inquisitive and watchful. Now and again came a note of pitying tolerance that jarred the rhythm of her more sacred thoughts; and as the woman in her grew more wakeful she became aware of the shadows that stole across her mind.
On the third day the nuns unswathed her body, soaked the clotted pad away, and looked at the wound. It was healing miraculously with nothing but a blush of redness about its lips. There had been no fever, no inward bleeding. Denise could sit up while they reswathed her in clean linen.
“There is cause for thankfulness here,” said the elder of the two nuns who had the nursing of her; “you will have many prayers to say, and many candles to burn to Our Lady and the Queen Helena, our Saint.”
She spoke with brisk patronage, but Denise took it for the spirit of motherliness in the woman.
“I owe you also a debt,” she said, looking up into the nun’s face.
The sister licked her lips as she smoothed the linen about Denise’s breast.
“The man and the horse are also to be remembered,” she said, a little tartly, “you have much to be thankful for; even I can tell you that.”
There was a sharpness in her voice, and a certain insinuating and inquisitive look on her face that made Denise colour. The woman was watching her out of the corners of her eyes, as though she were quite ready to listen if she could persuade Denise to talk. Minds that are cooped up in sexless isolation are often afflicted with morbid imaginings, and an unhealthy curiosity with regard to the more human world. The monastic folk were prone to a disease that they called “accidia.” The life was very dull, very narrow, and led to introspection. What wonder that a woman should sometimes hanker to dip her spoon into the world’s pot, and smell the stew, though she was not suffered to taste it.
Denise was thankful, and at peace, but she had no desire to open her heart like a French tale for these women to pore over. The nun won no confession from her, and therefore thought the worse of Denise’s soul. People who were silent had much to conceal, and the religious sometimes prefer a vivid and garrulous sinner to one who cherishes a reserve of pride.
The two nuns were but mead and water when compared with their Prioress, who was sharp and biting wine. The miraculous swiftness with which Denise had been healed flattered St. Helena, and the piety of her convent. Ursula the Prioress was an earnest woman, cold, bigoted, well satisfied with her own spirit of inspiration. She began to see in Denise a brand to be snatched from the eternal fire, a soul to be humbled and chastened, and purified of its sin.
On the fifth day of Denise’s sojourn there, one of the nuns bent over her, and told her in an impressive whisper that the Prioress was coming to sit beside her bed.
“Be very meek with her, my dear,” said the nun, “and if she speaks sharply to you, remember that it is for the good of your soul.”
So Ursula came, white wimple about yellow face, severe, admonitory, stooping very stiffly towards the level of this mere woman. She sat down on the stool beside Denise’s bed, and began at once to catechise her as she would have catechised a forward child.
Denise went scarlet at the first question. It was flashed upon her without delicacy that Ursula knew her secret, and that either Aymery or Marpasse had told her something of what they knew. And Denise’s pride was not so frail and weak that she could suffer Ursula to take her heart and handle it.
“Madame,” she said, “I have much to thank you for. Yet I would ask you not to speak of what is past. Being wise in the matter, you will know what my thoughts must be.”
Ursula was not to be repulsed in such easy fashion, for she knew a part of Denise’s tale, and had decided in her own mind that Aymery had treated the subject with too much chivalry. Compassion had softened the harsher outlines, and Ursula had no doubt that Denise was less innocent than she may have pretended.
“My daughter,” said she, “for the good of your soul, I cannot let such things pass unheeded.”
Denise lay motionless, staring at the timbers of the roof. Ursula talked on.
“Our Mother in Heaven knows that we are frail creatures, and that sin is in the world, but it is the hiding of sin that brings us into perdition. It is meet for your penitence that I should speak to you of these infirmities. There is no shame so great that it may not be retrieved. But you must own your sin, my daughter, and humble yourself before Heaven.”
Denise’s hands moved restlessly over the coverlet.
“I have confessed it,” she said, “though it was not of my own seeking. God himself cannot condemn that as a lie.”
Ursula’s face grew more austere and forbidding. She detected hardness and obstinacy in Denise, and overlooked that sensitive pride that may seem reticent and cold.
“You speak too boastfully,” she said. “It may be that God wills it that I should bring you to humbleness and a sense of shame.”
“It is the truth, that I have suffered,” said Denise.
“Not yet perhaps, have you suffered sufficiently, for the proper chastening of the spirit. Think, girl, of God’s great goodness, and the compassion of Our Mother, and St. Helena, in snatching you from death, and the flames, you—one who had fallen, a broken vessel by the roadside, the companion of low women——”
Again Denise’s face flashed scarlet, but this time there was anger in the colour.
“Madame,” she said, “hard words do not bring us into Heaven. I have never been what you would have me pretend to be. And the woman, Marpasse, stood by me, and was my friend. She has a good heart, and for me, that covers a multitude of sins.”
Ursula, cold fool, was instantly affronted.
“What!” and she seemed to smack her lips with unction, “you, who have worn the scarlet, speak thus insolently to me! It is plain that you have no sense of shame. Hard words indeed are what you need, young woman, the bread of bitterness and the waters of affliction. Pity for your soul moves me to speak the truth.”
The flush had faded from Denise’s face. She lay there very pale and still, as though suffering Ursula’s harsh words to pass over her like the wind.
“How is it, madame,” she said at last, “that you believe so much that is bad of me?”
Ursula had her answer ready, the answer such a woman was destined to produce.
“Earl Simon’s knight warned me, as was but right and honest.”
“Aymery!”
“Sir Aymery, would be more fitting. It was he who besought me to take you in, knowing your misery, and the madness that sin must create in the mind. Pray to God that he may be blessed for snatching you from the devil, and for bringing you here, where, Heaven being willing, we will humble and chasten you.”
Denise lay there as though Ursula had taken Marpasse’s knife and stricken her, this time to the heart. She had nothing to say to the Prioress. The woman’s hard morality had broken and bruised her re-born pride and hope.
Ursula rose, and stood beside the bed.
“Let the knowledge of sin and of humiliation sink into your heart,” she said.
And never did woman speak truer or more brutal words.
When Ursula had gone, Denise lay in a kind of stupor, mute, wondering, like one who has been wounded and knows not why. All her dreams were in the dust. Ursula, the iconoclast, had broken the frail images of tenderness, mystery, and compassion. Aymery had said this of her? Denise had no strength for the moment to believe it otherwise.
And so she lay there, humiliated indeed, very lonely, and without hope. There was no bitterness in her at first, for the shock that had destroyed her vision of a new world, had left her weak and weary. She thought of Aymery with pitiful yearning and wounded wonder, and with the wish that he had suffered her to die. Marpasse alone might have comforted Denise in that hour of her defeat.