CHAPTER XXXIV
Denise soon found that the frost of Ursula’s displeasure had fallen on her, and that she was to be humiliated and chilled into a proper state of penitence. The temper of the nuns changed to her; they came and went without speaking, their impassive faces making her feel like a child that is in disgrace. It was Ursula’s wish that Denise should be mortified in soul and body. Her food and drink were water and bread, and lest the devil of comfort should remain to tempt her to be obstinate, they took the straw and sheets from the bed, and let her lie upon the boards.
Moral frost at such a season was like a severe night in the late spring. Denise’s need was to lie in the sun, and to be smiled upon by kind eyes. It was the warm humanism of life that she needed, sympathy, and a clasp of the hand. The utter injustice of the humiliation that they thrust upon her began to awake in her a spirit of revolt. Had she not suffered because of her innocence, and borne what these women had never had to bear?
Why should she fall at Ursula’s feet, and pretend to a penitence that she did not feel? And Aymery, too, was she to believe that he had spoken as Ursula had said? If that was the truth, and why should Ursula lie, she, Denise, would pray that she should never be driven to look upon his face again.
Yet her bodily strength increased despite her spiritual unhappiness. The wound in the breast had healed, and she had been able to leave her bed, and move slowly round the room, steadying herself against the wall. And as her strength increased the instinct of revolt grew in her till she began to understand the mocking spirit of Marpasse. To be reviled, humiliated, made to crawl in the dust, to regain a little grudging respect by cringing to her sister women, and by pretending to emotions that she did not feel! These good souls seemed set upon making the re-ascent to cleanliness hard and unlovely. And Denise, like Marpasse, felt a passionate impatience carrying her away.
Meanwhile Ursula, magnanimous lady, had taken pains to spread Denise’s story through the convent, and the two nuns who had nursed her had been women enough to know that Denise had borne a child. Ursula had issued her commands; the contumacious devil was to be driven out of Denise; she was to be humbled, and taught to pray for penitence and grace. The nuns who served Denise now opened their mouths once more, and became oracles whose inspiration had been caught from Ursula’s lips.
One would enter with the water-jar, set it under the window, and retreat without so much as glancing at Denise. She would pause at the door, and let fall some pious platitude that might act like yeast upon the perverse one’s apathy.
“Flames of fire shall subdue those who are stubborn in sin.”
“While the vile flesh lives, the soul is in peril. Mortify the body therefore, that the soul may be saved.”
“A proud heart means death. Let your pride be trampled under your feet.”
“Live, repent, and sin no more.”
Such exhortations spaced out Denise’s day, but her obstinacy and her bitterness of heart increased till she was nauseated by their piety, and filled with a gradual scorn. Twice Ursula visited her, to depart with the impatience of one whose words were wasted. Had Ursula suffered but once in life, it might have been so humanly simple for her to understand Denise. On the contrary, she found the victim less ductile than at first. Nearly three weeks had passed, and Ursula decided that the woman was well in body, but utterly diseased in heart. The Prioress began to bethink herself of sharper measures. Ursula believed that she had the devil in arms against her, and that the battle was for Denise’s soul.
It was the night of May-day, the day of green boughs and garlands, and Denise had stood at her window and watched the sun go down, thinking of the May a year ago, and of her cell in the beech wood above Goldspur manor. The sun had set about an hour when Denise heard footsteps in the gallery, and saw the light of a lamp shining under the door. Ursula came in to the dusk of the room, shielding the lamp from the draught with the hollow of her hand. Her austere face was hard and white, and from one wrist hung a scourge set with burs of wire.
Ursula had brought two of her strongest nuns with her. She set the lamp on a sconce, and was as abrupt and practical as any pedagogue. She bade the women close the door, and commanded Denise to strip and stand naked for a scourging.
“Since words will not move the evil spirit in you,” she said, “we must try sharper measures.”
Denise put her back against the wall.
“Have a care how you touch me. I am not a dog to be whipped.”
Ursula told the two nuns to take her by force, and to strip her of her clothes. But Denise was no longer the patient saint bowing her head before her destiny. She did what Marpasse would have done in such a storm, and taking the water-jar that stood by her, held Ursula and the nuns at bay.
“Off!” she said, “I have some pride left in me. I have eaten your bread, but I will not bear your blows.”
She was so tall and fierce, and untamable, that Ursula was the more convinced that Denise had a devil in her, and a devil that was not to be treated with disrespect. She called the nuns off, not relishing an unseemly scuffle, and having some reverence for a stone water-pot that was not to be softened by formulæ. It would be easier to catch Denise asleep, tie her wrists, and scourge her till she showed some penitence.
“Woman,” she said, “the evil spirit is very strong in you. But God and my Saint helping me, I will subdue it in due season.”
But Ursula, whose piety was given to stumbling rather ridiculously over the hem of her own gown, had no second chance of scourging the devil out of Denise. For Denise had suffered St. Helena’s hospitality sufficiently, and she made her escape that night after losing herself in dark passage-ways and listening at doors which she hardly dared to open. She made her way into the court at last, and found the old portress sleeping in her cell beside the gate. The key hung on a nail behind the door, and Denise, who had brought a lighted taper that she had found burning in the chapel, took the key and let herself out into the night.
Denise had made her escape not long before dawn, choosing the time when she knew that the nuns would be in their cells between the chapel services. She waited for the grey dusk of the coming day, sitting under an oak tree on the hill above the convent. And when the birds awoke and set the woodlands thrilling, Denise sat counting the last of the money Abbot Reginald had thrown down at her that winter night, and which Marpasse had sewn up for her in her tunic. Denise thought of Marpasse as she broke the threads and counted out the money into her lap, for Marpasse seemed the one human thing in the wide world that morning.
Life stirred everywhere when Denise started on her way with half a loaf, some beggarly coins, and her old clothes for worldly gear. Brown things darted and rustled in the underwood and grass. A herd of deer went by in the dimness of the dawn, and melted like magic shapes into the woodland as the great globe of fire came topping the eastern hills. The light fell on a dewy world, a world of well-woven tapestry dyed with diverse and rich colours. And Denise saw bluebells in the woods, and thought again of Marpasse and her blue gown. Marpasse would understand. She tried not to think of Aymery that morning.
Denise struck a track that came from nowhere, and led nowhere so far as she was concerned. She went on aimlessly till noon, meeting a few peasant folk who took her for a pilgrim or a beggar. And by noon her body that had lain so many days in bed, cried loudly for a truce under the May sun, and Denise, finding a pool by the roadside, knelt down there and drank water from her palms. The sun had dried the grass, and lying at full length she was soon asleep, with the brown bread held in one white hand.
The bank hid Denise from anyone who passed along the road, and a knight on a black horse came by as she slept. The sound of his horse’s hoofs woke Denise. She raised herself upon one elbow, looked over the bank to see who passed, and then sank down again out of sight. The clatter of hoofs died in the distance, but Denise lay there and stared at the clouds in the sky. It was Aymery who had ridden past to hear from Ursula of Denise’s life or death. But Denise let him go, hardening her heart against the thought of any man’s pity. She would not be beholden to Aymery after the words that Ursula had spoken.
So the Knight of the Hawk’s Claw came to the convent that day in May, hardening himself against all possible hope, and prepared to hear nothing but the tale of Denise’s death. Ursula received him in her parlour, Ursula who had set her final condemnation upon Denise because of the perversity and ingratitude she had shown in escaping like a thief in the night. And Ursula cursed Denise before Aymery’s face, pouring out her indignation against the woman, as though Aymery would sympathise with her over Denise’s “contumacy and corruption.”
Ursula had no eyes to see the change that had come over the face of the man before her. She was so busy with her denunciations that she did not mark the wrath rising like a cloud on the horizon. Aymery’s silence may have deceived her, for he heard her to the end.
He looked hard at Ursula, and the gleam in his eyes would have made a less confident woman wince.
“So you thought that she needed scourging!”
Ursula was very dense that day, refusing to see what a tangle she was weaving.
“The scourge is an excellent weapon, messire,” she babbled, “my own back has borne it often, and to the betterment of my soul. But this girl had no gratitude, and no sense of shame. She was obstinately blind, and would not see. I sought to move her by forcing your compassion upon her, and showing her that it was your desire that she should mend her life.”
Aymery looked at Ursula as though tempted to strangle the consequential voice in that thin, austere throat.
“You told her that, madame!”
“I held her shame before her eyes, for the tale of her innocence was not to be believed. Her whole character contradicted it.”
“And she has fled from you.”
“With ingratitude, and cunning.”
“Before God, I do not blame her.”
He stood motionless a moment, looking down on Ursula with such fierce contempt, that, like many stupid people, she wondered how the offence had risen. Her eyes dilated when Aymery drew his sword. Her mouth opened to call the nuns who waited in the passage, but his laugh reassured her, the laugh that a man bestows on a thing beneath his strength.
“Madame,” he said, “you have nothing to fear from me but the truth. You see this sword of mine”—and he held the hilt towards her, grasping it by the blade.
Ursula stared at him as a timid gentlewoman might stare at a rat.
“That hilt is in the form of a cross, madame; I would beg you to look at it. You may have heard that the Cross has some significance for Christians.”
Ursula began to recover her dignity. It was borne in upon her suddenly that this man had stern eyes, and an ironical, mocking mouth. And Ursula began to dislike those eyes of his.
“Your words are beyond me, messire,” and her normal frostiness struggled to pervade the atmosphere.
Aymery looked at her as a man might look at something that was very repulsive and very ugly.
“Madame,” he said quietly, “if you have slain a soul, God forgive you; there are so many fools in the world, and so many of them are godly. There was no sin in Denise that called for the sponge full of vinegar, the scourge, and the spear.”
Ursula opened her mouth, but no sound came. Aymery put up his sword, and turned towards the door.
“I would rather have left her,” he said, “in the hands of the woman you have called an harlot. Nor need your zeal have put lies into my mouth. Suffer me, madame, to recommend you a saint. St. Magdalene might give you the religion that you lack.”
And he went out from her, leaving Ursula speechless, and amazed at his insolence.
Yet Aymery’s wrath was a greater and nobler wrath than Ursula’s as he mounted his horse and rode out into the world, that world for which Christ had bled upon the cross. Bitterly plain to him was Denise’s spirit of revolt, and her passionate discontent with Ursula’s morality. What was more, this woman had put her taunts and her homilies into his mouth, and made him harangue and edify Denise! Aymery cursed Ursula for a meddlesome, cold, and self-righteous fool. He would rather have left Denise in Marpasse’s hands, for Marpasse had a heart, and no belief in her own great godliness.
And Denise, what would befall her now that they had driven her like an outcast into the world? He was gloomy and troubled because of her, feeling that she had been wounded the more deeply than she had ever been wounded by Marpasse’s knife. He remembered too how Denise had sought death in the woods that day. The impulse now might be more powerful, seeing that she had suffered more, and had no friend.
Ride after her into the blind chance of the unknown he could not yet, for Aymery was pledged to Earl Simon and his brethren-in-arms. The Barons’ host had gathered at London; they were on the eve of marching southwards into Sussex, for the King was threatening the Cinque Port towns which were loyal to Earl Simon. Aymery had seized these two days to ride and discover the truth about Denise. His knighthood was pledged to the man who had knighted him, nor could he break the pledge to chase a wandering shadow.
CHAPTER XXXV
Marpasse of the blue gown had fallen in with old friends on the way to Tonbridge, where the King had taken the castle of Gilbert de Clare, and these same friends, ragamuffins all of them, were following the glittering chaos of the King’s host on the road to the sea. There would be plunder to be had if St. Nicholas would only persuade King Henry to take and sack the Cinque Port towns; and all the beggars, cut-throats and strollers in the kingdom rolled in the wash of the King’s host, terribly joyful over the happenings that might give them bones to pick.
The passing of fifty thousand armed men, to say nothing of the baggage rabble, was no blessing to the country folk whom it concerned. Lords, knights, men-at-arms, bowmen, scullions, horse-boys, and harlots went pouring southwards in the May sunshine, ready to thieve whatever came to hand. King Paunch ruled the multitude, for the host ate up the land, and called like a hungry rookery “more, more!” And since a hungry mob is an ill-tempered one when once its patience has leaked out of its tired toes, the King’s followers began to grow very rough and cruel before they had marched five leagues. Hunger does not stand on ceremony, and such brutal things were done that the country folk took to the woods and swore death to any straggler. Bludgeon, and axe, and bow took toll of the King’s host, and many a rowdy was caught and left grinning at the heavens, with his stiff toes in the air.
Now Marpasse and her friends were as hungry as the rest, and coming as they did, like fowls late for feeding time, their genius for theft was developed by necessity. Yet it is not so easy to steal when everything eatable has been stolen, and when a crossbow bolt may come burring from behind a wood-stack. None the less, Marpasse and her company were in luck not ten miles from Tonbridge Town. They saw a sow feeding on the edge of a beech wood close to the road. There was much pannage in the neighbourhood, and Marpasse and her comrades tucked up their skirts, and went a-hunting, and were blessed with the sight of the black backs of a whole drove of swine.
Great and grotesque was the joy that hounded and hunted through the beech wood, a mob of men-at-arms, beggars, boys, and women trampling the bluebells and the brown and crackling bracken. They shouted, laughed, and cursed as they rounded up the swine, and chased them hither and thither amid the trees. God Pan and his minions went tumbling over tree roots after the black beasts that bolted, and squealed, and flickered like grotesque shadows under the boughs of the beeches.
Marpasse, her skirts tucked up, and her knife flashing, shouted and ran with the lustiest till the sweat rolled into her eyes. As she stood to get her breath, a fat sow came labouring by with a young pig close to her haunches. Chasing them came a long, loose-limbed boy, his hair over his face, his mouth a-gape, his thin legs bounding, striding, and ripping through the bracken. He came up with the chase close to Marpasse, and threw himself on the young porker as a leopard might leap upon a deer. Brown boy and black hog rolled in a tangle into a clump of rotting bracken, and Marpasse, holding her sides, laughed at the tussle, and then ran on after the sow.
The sow, grunting and labouring, led Marpasse away from the rout, and back towards the road. Marpasse, intent on bringing the dame to book for supper, ran on till she came suddenly into a glade with a slant of sunshine pouring through it, and the open land and the road showing at one end thereof. Marpasse followed the sow no farther, for she had stumbled on another adventure that showed more importunity.
Marpasse saw a woman in grey leaning against the trunk of a tree. Not ten paces from her stood an old black boar, with the broken shaft of a spear protruding from one shoulder, and a broad trickle of blood running down his left fore-leg into the grass. The beast tottered as he stood, swinging his head from side to side, his little eyes malevolent, his wiry tail twisting with savage spite.
Marpasse gave a whistle, and looked like one who has run against a ghost. She saw the boar make a dash at Denise, Denise, who was playing hide-and-seek for her life with him round the tree. The beast missed her, and came to earth, only to struggle up, lurch round, and charge once more.
Marpasse clutched her knife, and made a dash for the tree. The boar had missed his blow again, and stood, resting, still dangerous despite the spear head in his side. Marpasse gained the tree with its roots clawing the soil. She gasped out a few words to Denise like a breathless swimmer joining a comrade on a rock in the thick of a boiling sea.
“May marvels never cease! You, child, you, as I shall live to kill pigs! Lord, now, keep an eye on this limb of a black satan!”
She peered round the tree trunk, and pushed Denise round it as the boar charged again, white tusks showing, snout bloody, his little eyes like two live coals. He swerved and missed Marpasse, but she was on him before he could recover and turn. The knife went home where six inches of steel might reach the heart, and Marpasse, springing aside to escape the mad side slash of the tusks, saw that the gentleman had thecoup de grâce. He rolled over, struggled up again on his belly, scraped the earth with his fore trotters, and then wallowed amid the beech leaves. Marpasse sat down at the foot of the tree, panting and laughing, her brown face red and healthy. She threw the knife aside, caught Denise by the skirt, and pulled her down lovingly into her lap.
“God alive,” she gasped, “what a girl it is! Am I always to be rescuing you from Gascons, and from pigs?”
Marpasse was quite joyous. She kissed Denise on the mouth, and then held her away from her, and looked at her with blue eyes that shone.
“Heart of mine, is it you in the flesh, my dear? Why, we left you for dead, Sir Aymery and I! And mightily gloomy he was too, poor lording. To think of it, that I should fall on you in the middle of a wood, while I was chasing an old sow!”
Though she was very voluble, Marpasse’s eyes were scanning Denise as one looks at a friend after a long sickness. Marpasse’s eyes were very quick. She could have told the number of wrinkles on Denise’s face, had there been any. But Marpasse saw something there much more sinister than wrinkles.
“Well, sister,” said she, “here is indeed a miracle. But I am not so strong as the lord on the black horse, so please to sit on the grass and let me get my breath. Now for the story. How did St. Helena and all the saints heal you, and how do you come to be here?”
Denise slipped aside from Marpasse, and sat down at the foot of the tree. It was a hard, brooding look about her eyes that had struck Marpasse. Things had not gone with pious facility. Marpasse could tell that by Denise’s silence, and by the half-sullen expression of her face.
“Your knife turned between my ribs, Marpasse,” she said, “I was a fool to bungle so easy a stroke; I had only to lie still, eat and sleep.”
Marpasse clapped her hands.
“This is gratitude, and I swaddled you up like a baby! How is it that you are not still lying abed, and eating and sleeping? You look thin, eh, and what does Sir Black Horse know about it all? Lord, but what a lot of running away you have done in your life! So you fell out with the pious folk, was that it? I could never abide the smell of a nun.”
She pinched Denise’s cheek, watching her narrowly, for Marpasse had learnt to use her wits, and the philosophy that she had learnt upon the road.
“Well, my dear, what happened?”
“I ran away.”
“What a soldier you would make! Madame Ursula was too good a woman. They are all too good for us, my dear; that is where the mischief comes, they tread on us, and expect us to be meek and grateful.”
Marpasse grew serious and intent. She looked steadily at Denise, and then reached out and caught her hands.
“No more jesting,” she said, “look in my face, sister. I have learnt to read a face.”
She held both Denise’s hands, and drew her a little towards her. For a moment they were silent. Then Marpasse pressed Denise’s hands, sighed, and allowed herself a bluff round oath.
“Curse them,” she said, “curse their godliness. So you told them the whole tale.”
Denise hung her head.
“Messire Aymery told Ursula.”
“The fool! Too much in love to be wise, I warrant. Come now, my dear, love is great of heart, but love is blind, and love talks when it should shut its mouth. Show me the way out of the wood.”
She drew Denise close to her, so that her head was on her shoulder. Yet for the moment Denise seemed cold and mute. Marpasse kissed her on the mouth, and the one woman’s lips unsealed the other’s soul. Before long Marpasse had drawn the whole tale from her, and Marpasse looked fierce over it, and yet more fierce when Denise betrayed the bitterness that had poisoned her heart.
“God in Heaven, child,” she broke in suddenly, “do you know what you are saying?”
“I know what you are, Marpasse. They were ready to whip me; I had no pity.”
Marpasse set her teeth.
“This life, the devil pity you! For me, yes, but you! I have a brazen face, a conscience like leather, and talons that can tear. But you! Bah, you would kill yourself in a month.”
She thrust Denise away from her, as though thrusting her from some influence that was dangerous and to be feared. Denise did not resist her, but sat hanging her head, mute and obstinate, her eyes sweeping up now and again to the face of the woman beside her.
“I am weary of it all,” she said, “they made the soul sick and bitter in me.”
Marpasse sat with her chin on her fists, her forehead one great frown.
“Ssh, and you thought of me, and the road! Am I such a damned witch as that!”
“You do not curse, and preach.”
Marpasse turned on her with sudden, fierce sincerity.
“Yes, I do not preach, because I am down in the ditch, but I know what the mud is like, and I do not want you with me. Bah, let me think. What shall I tell you, that you had better be as dead as the black boar there, before you take to the road.”
Marpasse hugged her knees with her arms, staring straight before her, and working her teeth against her lower lip. Denise kept silence, hanging her head, and flying in the face of her own bitterness like a bird that dashes itself against a window at night.
Marpasse awoke suddenly from her musings, and caught Denise by the hood of her cloak. She twisted her hand into the grey cloth, held Denise at arm’s length, and threw one word straight into her face.
Denise’s eyes flashed. She reddened from throat to forehead, while Marpasse watched her as a physician might watch the workings of some violent drug. Presently the brown eyes faltered, and grew clouded with the infinite consciousness of self. Marpasse burst into a loud, harsh laugh. The next moment she had her arms about Denise.
“Soft fool, the word stings, eh? You are innocent enough; it is all temper, and anger and discontent. Your conscience answered to the sting. I throw your own word in your face, and you redden like an Agnes. No, no, you are not made to be one of us, thank God!”
Denise felt this big woman’s brown arms tightly about her. A great spasm of emotion had gathered in Marpasse’s throat. She held Denise with a straining, inarticulate tenderness, as a mother might hold a child.
“Heart of mine,” said she, “God forgive me for throwing that word in your face. It was the slap of a wet cloth on the cheek of one about to faint. Look up, sister, listen to me, by the Holy Blood, I have the truth to tell.”
Marpasse was trembling with the passion in her.
“Take my knife again, Denise, before that! Do I not know, stroller and slut that I am! No, no, not that, not the dregs of other folks’ cups, not the shame and the sneers, and the curses thrown back in defiance. Why should these good folk drive us down to hell, why should their fat faces make cowards of us? There, I have been the coward, take the truth from me, and be warned, heart of mine. Better death, I say, before the ditch, for it is death in a ditch that we wretches come to. Brave it out, sister, and for God’s love keep your heart from bitterness, and from poisoning its own good blood.”
She still held Denise close to her.
“What did the woman St. Aguecheek say? Bah, all lies, I tell you. Such cow-eyed women lie for the sake of piety. The man say that of you? I know better. Come, Denise, listen to me; I know a man when I have looked him in the eyes.”
She turned Denise’s face to hers and kissed her.
“That was a clean kiss,” she said, “and by its cleanness I’ll swear that beldam Ursula lied. What of Messire Aymery? A man, child, a rock man with an arm that can smite. Grace be with me, but he would have given you his own heart to mend your broken one. I spoke with him, and I know.”
Denise lay at rest in Marpasse’s lap.
“Why should Ursula have lied?” she asked.
“Why do dogs eat grass, and vomit? What! I know the woman, eyes that see the point of a pin and miss the moon, and a tongue like a clacker in a cherry tree. Love is lord of all, my dear, and what does that beldam know of love? Messire Aymery had his heart in his mouth that night. I judge that he let the old crow peck at it, and she took the pieces and poisoned them, and pushed them into your mouth. Go to now! Have a little faith.”
She looked into Denise’s eyes and saw a change in them. A more dewy and credulous April had followed a dry and stormy March. Marpasse’s hand had stopped the former wound. She was healing the wound now in Denise’s soul.
“God grant that you are right, Marpasse.”
“Better, my dear, better. Lie in my arms and think them a man’s, and that man as honest as ever loved a woman. May I die in a ditch if I am mistaken! And now, what’s to do, as the sluggard says when all the rest have been three hours a-mowing.”
Denise slipped out of Marpasse’s lap, and sat down close to her, but not so close that their bodies touched. This act of hers seemed to betray that she had come by her stronger self again. Marpasse’s scolding had set her upon her feet.
“I shall stay with you,” she said simply.
Marpasse opened her mouth wide, a black circle of mute expostulation.
Denise looked in her eyes.
“Why not both of us?” she asked.
Marpasse’s mouth still stood open as though to scoff at her own redemption. Denise closed it with her own.
“There is a clean kiss,” she said, “let us keep it for each other.”
And Marpasse caught her to her, and was a long while silent.
Whatever these two women may have said to one another, the fact was proven that Marpasse did not rejoin her band of vagabonds that night, for she and Denise sat on under the tree, and counted up the money that they could boast between them. They were like a couple of girls talking over some new dress, their heads close together, and their hearts lighter than they had been for many a day. But Marpasse had her whims. She would not mix her money with Denise’s, but kept it apart with a sort of scorn, handling it gingerly as though the coins were hot.
Moreover Marpasse had a practical nature, and an attitude towards the ways and means of life that betokened that they were the accursed riddles that gods put to men each inevitable day. In truth Marpasse’s life had been one long riddle, and she had grown sick of seeking to solve it, and had put the enigma out of her mind.
“Heart of mine,” said she, “we are very much on a dust heap, so far as I can gather. My mouth was made to eat and drink! I cannot turn beast like the king did and eat grass. I have a little bread here in my bag,” and she brought out the small sack that she carried slung to her girdle under her cloak.
Denise was drinking in new hope.
“We have the money,” she said, “we can buy food, and I have enough for to-night.”
“Innocent, there is not a loaf to be bought for miles round. The King’s paunch would have made short work of the very trees, only they are too tough. And a word in your ear, treasure your money as though it were your blood. For when a woman is starving, and her pocket is empty, the devil comes in with a grin, and offers to pay for a meal.”
“How can we get more money?”
Marpasse grimaced.
“We must go as mendicants,” she said. “I will thieve an old cloak, and cover up my colour. At all events, here is our Lord the Pig. We will make some use of him. If you are dainty, go and sit on the far side of the tree.”
Marpasse turned butcher that night, nor was it the first time that she had used a knife on a carcase, for people who live by their wits go poaching at times, even after the King’s deer. Marpasse had no intimate knowledge of The Charter, or the Forest Laws, save that she had known men who had been caught, and mutilated. Being strong and skilful she had a good skinful of meat beside her before the dusk came down. Then she cut a hazel stake, slung the skin with the meat on it, and going down to a stream that crossed the road, washed the boar’s blood from her hands and arms, and came back clean and smiling.
“Silver John will soon be up,” she said, nodding towards the east; “if he would only drop us a few coins the colour of his face, I should feel the happiest beggar in the kingdom. Come along with you. We will tramp a little farther from my gossips. If you fell in with them you might not like their tongues.”
Denise and Marpasse set out together, keeping a little distance from the road, and walking under the shadows of the trees. Soon the moon came up, and made the May woods magical, and full of a mystery that was clean and pure. Nightingales sang in the thickets, and the scent of the dew on the grass and dead leaves came with the perfume of wild flowers out of the dusk.
Marpasse was in a happy mood despite a day’s tramp, and the adventure with the boar.
“I have a feeling in me,” she said, “that Silver John looks at us kindly out of the sky. Throw us a penny, good Lord Moon, or some hair out of your silver beard. Hear how the birds are singing. They shall sing a merry jingle into our pockets.”
Denise walked beside Marpasse with a smile of peace and of human nearness stealing upon her heart. And the Moon who looked down on the world must have been as wise as the breadth of his solemn face. “Strange,” he may have thought, “here are a saint and a stroller hand in hand, comforting one another, and making the night mellow!” But they were both women who had suffered as only women suffer, and the wise Moon may have understood life, and sped them on with a glimmer of good luck.
Marpasse’s sense of a blessing that was to be, saw its fulfilment as in the magic of an Eastern tale. They had walked a mile or more, and were looking about them for shelter for the night, when Marpasse stood still to listen, with one hand at her ear.
“Ssh,” said she, “what’s in the wind?”
It was the sound of a bell that she and Denise heard, a faint melancholy ripple like the sound of falling water in the stillness of the night. Sometimes it ceased and then broke out again, coming no nearer, nor dwindling into the distance.
“A chapel bell?”
Marpasse shook her head.
“No, nor a cow bell either. Poor soul, I know the sound of it. That bell has a voice if ever a bell had.”
She listened awhile, and then touched Denise’s arm.
“It comes from yonder, there, by that black clump of yews. A leper’s bell, or I have never been a sinner.”
They went towards the thicket of yews that stood there as though a black cloud covered the face of the moon. The sound of the bell grew more importunate and human. Marpasse whispered to Denise.
“It is the death toll,” she said, “I have heard such a sound before at night. The poor souls do not like to die alone in the dark. And those who hear the bell sometimes take pity.”
Stretched at the foot of the yew tree with the black plumes curving overhead, Marpasse and Denise found an old man whose face was as white as the cloak he wore. A hand was rocking to and fro ringing the leper bell, whose melancholy sound seemed to die away with the moonlight into the midnight of the yews.
Marpasse bent over him, she had seen too much of the rougher aspects of life to be greatly afraid of a leper.
“Hallo, father,” she said, “here is company for you, you can stop your ringing.”
The man’s arm fell like a snapped bough, and the bell came to the earth with a dull, metallic rattle. The skull face, unmasked now that the end was near, betrayed that the bell carrier had been starved by the famine that the King’s host had left behind them in those parts. He was blind and deaf with the death fog, nor did he know that Marpasse was near him till she spoke.
“Good soul, have pity.”
He turned his blind face towards Marpasse.
“I am going yonder out of the world, and it is bad to be alone when the evil spirits are abroad, and to hear no prayer spoken. I rang my bell, good soul, for St. Chrysostom, he of the golden mouth, promised me that I should not die alone in the dark.”
Marpasse sat down beside him, and beckoned Denise to her.
“Rest in peace, brother. What would comfort you?”
The man lay very still, with a face like ivory. He scarcely seemed to breathe.
“A Pater Noster,” he said presently, “I cannot come by a prayer, for the words run to and fro in my head like rabbits in a warren.”
Marpasse looked at Denise.
“Here is a Sister who knows all the prayers,” she said.
“Ah, there is the smell of good meat a-cooking in a prayer. I saw the Host through a leper squint not a month ago. Pray, good souls, and I will ask the Lord Christ to shrive me.”
Denise knelt in the grass, with Marpasse huddled close to her, and spoke prayers for the leper’s lips, and found comfort and sweetness for her own soul in the praying. Presently the man held up a shaking hand, and made the sign of the Cross in the air.
“Good souls,” he asked them, speaking as though he had a bone in his throat, “unfasten my girdle from about my body.”
Marpasse’s hands answered his desire. The girdle had a leather pouch fastened to it, and the pouch was heavy. Marpasse gave it into his hands, and he laid it against his mouth, and then held it towards Denise.
“I would rather you had it, Sister, than some begging friar. There is money in it, the alms of five years, and God bless the charitable. Take it, good souls. Dead men want no gold, though you will have candles burnt, and prayers put up for Peter the Leper.”
He felt for his bell and they heard a great sigh come out of his body like the sound of a spirit soaring away on invisible wings. The bell gave a last spasmodic tinkle that was muffled and smothered by the grass. Then all was still, save for a light breeze that stirred the black boughs of the yews.
Denise knelt there awhile in prayer. Marpasse had gone aside and had cut down a yew bough with her knife, and was shaping the end thereof into the shape of a narrow spade. She began to turn the sods up clear of the roots of the trees, and Denise came and watched her, holding the dead man’s girdle in her hands.
It took Marpasse till midnight to scratch a shallow grave. They laid the leper in it, with his bell in his hand, and his staff beside him, and covered him with sods and boughs.
Then Marpasse and Denise lay down under a tree and slept in each other’s arms. They did not look into the pouch that night, for the nearness of death and the infinite pathos thereof possessed them.
And when Denise opened the pouch next morning, a rattle of silver came tumbling out, with here and there a piece of gold that shone like the yellow flower of the silverweed in the midst of its dusty foliage. Marpasse’s blue eyes stared hard at the money. Both she and Denise were silent for a minute.
“Poor soul! We will put up prayers for him.”
Marpasse hugged her bosom.
“God see to it,” she said. “The tide turned when the old man’s ship put out over the dark sea.”
CHAPTER XXXVI
The King and his lords marched southwards through Sussex, boasting themselves lords of the land, and very much doubting whether Earl Simon would dare to follow them, and meet them in the open field. At Flimwell the King put to death certain of the country folk who had surprised and slain some of his people in the woods. Already many of the rough troops in Henry’s service had begun to grumble at the emptiness of the land through which they marched, for they had had but little pillaging to keep them in a good humour, no great cellars to drain dry, no towns to trifle with. The King, being a generous man where other folks’ coffers were concerned, as he had proved in the Sicilian farce, turned royal pimp and purveyor to his army. The Abbey of Robertsbridge lay in their path, and Henry let his men loose to plunder the place, and despoiled the monks still further by making them pay heavy ransom for their lives.
The news of the sacking of Robertsbridge came to Abbot Reginald five miles away at Battle, and though he may have rejoiced over the humbling of a rival, he was warned by his brother Abbot’s flaying, and made haste to appear loyal. The Cistercians of Robertsbridge had been shrewd and greedy neighbours, and had snatched manors and land that might have fallen to the children of St. Benedict. Grants in Pett, Guestling, Icklesham, Playden, and Iden, and also lands in Snargate, Worth, Combden, Sedlescombe, and Ewhurst, showed that there had been cause for jealousy between the two. Reginald of Brecon may have had some thought of a possible transference of land from the Cistercians to his own “house.” To show his loyalty he called out his tenants, and marched out in state as a war lord to meet the King, carrying presents with him, and wearing a mild and pliant manner. Riding back beside the King he spoke sadly of the poverty of St. Martin, and how the Pope’s perquisitions and pilferings had emptied his treasure-chest. The King should have had it, had he not pledged much of the Abbey plate to the Jews, but his sweet lord was wholly welcome to such food and drink as could be got together.
Abbot Reginald’s presents were perilously mean, and were not to be bulked out by pompous language. Even then, his discretion might not have miscarried but for the over anxious zeal of that cunning fox, Dom Silvius. The almoner had bleated a “gaudeamus” over the humbling of the Cistercian upstarts at Robertsbridge. He had sought an audience of Abbot Reginald before the monks met in the chapter house, and had put forward the plan that his superior actually accepted. It might be possible to follow the middle path, pay little, and make some profits, and at least escape from being robbed. Silvius took upon himself the secret burying of the Abbey treasure, and Silvius’s zeal for St. Martin was so notorious that none of the brethren quarrelled with his energy.
Battle that night was like a garden smothered in locusts, so thick was the swarm of armed men, servants, vagabonds, mules and horses. Henry, Prince Edward, the King of the Romans, and the great lords were lodged in the Abbey, and dined in state in the abbot’s hall. Swarthy, swaggering men were everywhere, crowding and jostling, poking their noses into every corner of the five boroughs, kissing the women, and taking the food and drink that the monks and burghers surrendered to them for the blessing of peace and piety. Troops crowded the gardens, the orchards, and the Abbot’s park. And though some measure of order reigned, the atmosphere was surcharged with thunder, Reginald and his people feeling themselves like Roman provincials at the mercy of a host of Huns.
In the thick of all this sultriness Dom Silvius must needs discover that some of the reliquaries had been left in the Abbey church. Silvius soon had the sacristan by the girdle, protesting fervently that the reliquaries must be saved from possible sacrilege, and buried with the rest of the Abbey treasure. Silvius played the part of a mad miser and busybody that night. He had spades brought, and sneaked out into the darkness with the sacristan and two of the younger brothers at his heels.
It so happened that Dom Silvius spoilt the whole plot by being over anxious for the property of St. Martin. Some of Comyn’s Scotch soldiers, slinking about for anything to thieve, caught the monks burying the reliquaries in a piece of garden ground beyond the greatgarde-robe. The Scotchmen were quick to scent a trick, collared Silvius and his comrades, brought torches and tools, and set to work on their own authority. Not only did they discover two of the reliquaries that had been buried, but struck their spades on the whole of the Abbey treasure that had been hidden in a pit. Scotchmen, monks, treasure, torches, and all went in a whirl to the great hall where the King was dining. And Abbot Reginald hid his face in a flagon when he saw Silvius dragged in, spitting like a furious cat.
The King’s eyes were not pleasant to behold. He had the “merry-thought” of a chicken in his hand, and was scraping the flesh from it with a silver knife. He looked attentively at the treasure that Comyn’s men tumbled on the floor below the dais. Then he broke the “merry-thought” in two, and folding the pieces in his fist, bade Reginald choose his lot.
Reginald of Brecon pulled out the shorter of the two. The King laughed, a dry cackle that was ominous.
“The shorter the bone, the shorter the shrift, gentlemen,” he said. “We will take care of this treasure for you, my lord Abbot. As for the cellars, storehouses, burgher tenements, and all such belongings, we make a night’s gift of them to those who thirst and hunger.”
There was loud laughter, and a babel of voices. The flushed gentry at the table shouted “God strengthen the King.” One monk alone was mad enough to throw himself between St. Martin and the pleasantry of the royal spite, and that monk was Dom Silvius.
He broke loose, and rushed with furious and stuttering face to the high table, brandishing his cross, fanatical as any Egyptian hermit out of the desert.
“Spoiler of the houses of God!”
The bacon was following the fat into the fire. Abbot Reginald, good man, lost patience, and threw his platter in Silvius’s face.
Silvius, with a gobbet of gravy on his nose, looked comic enough, but still burnt like a Telemachus.
“God shall revenge sacrilege! Let the curse of St. Martin——”
Someone from behind took him by the collar, and twisted a fist into the folds till Silvius was in danger of being choked.
The King lay back in his chair and laughed.
“Take the prophet away, and let him be washed,” he said. “By the heart of King Richard, I have no use to-night for an Elijah!”
In this way it came about that Dom Silvius took a ride on the back of an ass, with his feet lashed under the beast’s belly, and a dirty pot forced down over his ears. The mob pelted Silvius with stones and offal till he was a mere image covered with blood and dirt. Comyn’s Scots had the privilege of bringing the martyrdom to an end. They took Silvius from the back of the ass, and carrying him into the place where the treasure had been buried, pitched him into thegarde-robedrain, and so left him.
Silvius’s blundering had, however, a grimmer significance, for it brought upon the Abbey and the town that straggled about it the same fate that had befallen the despised Cistercians. The King had given the place over to plunder, and it was at the mercy of the rough soldiery who were doubly insolent with the fumes of mead and wine. The folk of the borough of Battle might well have cursed Silvius and the Abbey treasure, for the devil was let loose among them that May night.
Nor did the darkness hide the violence and the horror, for the very furniture was thrown out into the street and piled up amid the faggots to help the bonfires that lit the sport of war. Women and children fled like frightened birds into the darkness, and were thrice blessed if they were not caught, and held. The gaudy queans who had followed the army played King of the Castle on the high altar of the church, pulling each other down by the skirts, shouting, and tumbling over one another on the steps. Drunken men burst in the door of the bell tower, and set all the bells clanging in huge discords. Others caught the monks, and made them race naked round the cloisters, whipping them with their girdles to make them nimble.
Gaillard and some of his fellows had come by a cask of wine, and Gaillard had Black Isoult, Marpasse’s comrade, under his arm, and was well content with the lady. They needed a house for a night’s revel, and chose one in the main street, a stone house that joined a forge. Gaillard’s men broke down the door, while their captain held a torch, and Isoult sat on the wine cask, laughing.
When the door gave way they were met in the dark entry by a virago with a hatchet, none other than Bridget, the smith’s wife, who had stormed against Denise. The men fell back from her, but Isoult showed herself more valiant, and quite a match for the lady.
“Make way, Gammer Goodbody,” she said, “make way for the red gown.”
Bridget answered her with an oath, and a word that was too familiar to Isoult’s ears.
The little woman’s black eyes sparkled with spite.
“Here is a respectable slut,” she said, “who has not learnt to kiss the foot of a lady.”
And she cut Bridget across the forearm with her knife, so that the smith’s wife dropped her hatchet.
Gaillard sent his men in, and they overpowered the woman. But Isoult would not let them harm her. Her own spirit of wickedness was equal to taming the big shrew.
She made them cut off Bridget’s hair, dress her in some of her man’s clothes, tie a lamb’s skin under her chin, and truss her with her hands fastened to her ankles. Then while she drank wine with Gaillard and made merry, seated on a bench, her red gown the colour of freshly shed blood, she had Bridget rolled across the floor and propped up near her like a sick duck. Isoult made a mock of the smith’s wife that night because of the thing she had called her, asking her where her marriage lines were, and why her man had not come home. Sometimes she threw the dregs from her ale horn into Bridget’s face, and called her a she-goat and a rabbit. Bridget still had the courage to curse back again, though her tongue was less clever than Isoult’s. But when Isoult took a burning stick from the fire, and began to singe Dame Bridget’s stockings, the woman took to screaming, and pleaded for pity.
So Dom Silvius let the devil loose in Battle, and the memory of that night lingered for many a long day.
As for Isoult’s comrade Marpasse, she and Denise had come to Grinstead amid the woods, and were lodged in the house of a woman who fed swine and kept a wayside inn. At Grinstead they heard the news that Earl Simon and the Barons’ host had left London with fifteen thousand burghers to swell their ranks, and were on the march to deal with the King. The army would pass not far from Grinstead, so said the woman of the inn, and Marpasse and Denise took counsel together and put their plans in order.
“Love carries the sword,” said Marpasse, and laughed and kissed Denise.
“I can never look him in the face again.”
“Bah, grey goose! There will be wounds to be healed. A woman’s hands are useful when the trumpets are hoarse and tired.”