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The Forest Lovers

by Maurice Hewlett · English · Gutenberg #8934 · 540,714 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Forest Lovers

Author: Maurice Hewlett


        
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #8934]
                Most recently updated: August 22, 2014

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8934

Credits: Produced by Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOREST LOVERS ***




Produced by Distributed Proofreaders









THE FOREST LOVERS

A ROMANCE


BY

MAURICE HEWLETT




TO

MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD

WITH

THE AUTHOR'S HOMAGE




CONTENTS

CHAPTERS

  I.      PROSPER LE GAI RIDES OUT
  II.     MORGRAUNT, AND A DEAD KNIGHT
  III.    HOLY THORN AND HOLY CHURCH
  IV.     DOM GALORS
  V.      LA DESIROUS
  VI.     THE VIRGIN MARRIAGE
  VII.    GALORS ABJURES
  VIII.   THE SALLY AT DAWN
  IX.     THE BLOOD-CHASE AND THE LOVE CHASE
  X.      FOREST ALMS
  XI.     SANCTUARY
  XII.    BROKEN SANCTUARY
  XIII.   HIGH MARCH, AND A GREAT LADY
  XIV.    A RECORDER
  XV.     THREE AT TORTSENTIER
  XVI.    BOY AND GIRL
  XVII.   ROY
  XVIII.  BOY'S LOVE
  XIX.    LADY'S LOVE
  XX.     HOW PROSPER HELD A REVIEW
  XXI.    HOW THE NARRATIVE SMACKS AGAIN OF THE SOIL
  XXII    GALORS CONQUAESTOR
  XXIII.  FALVE THE CHARCOAL-BURNER
  XXIV.   SECRET THINGS AT HAUTERIVE
  XXV.    THE ROAD TO GOLTRES
  XXVI.   GUESS-WORK AT GOLTRES
  XXVII.  GALORS RIDES HUNTING
  XXVIII. MERCY WITH THE BEASTS.
  XXIX.   WANMEETING CRIES, 'HA! SAINT JAMES!'
  XXX.    THE CHAINED VIRGIN OF SAINT THORN
  XXXI.   'ENTRA PER ME'
  XXXII   'BIDE THE TIME'
  XXXIII. SALOMON IS DRIVEN HOME
  XXXIV.  LA DESIRÉE
  XXXV.   FOREST LOVE
  XXXVI.  THE LADY PIETOSA DE BRÉAUTÉ




THE FOREST LOVERS


CHAPTER I

PROSPER LE GAI RIDES OUT


My story will take you into times and spaces alike rude and uncivil.
Blood will be spilt, virgins suffer distresses; the horn will sound
through woodland glades; dogs, wolves, deer, and men, Beauty and the
Beasts, will tumble each other, seeking life or death with their proper
tools. There should be mad work, not devoid of entertainment. When you
read the word _Explicit_, if you have laboured so far, you will know
something of Morgraunt Forest and the Countess Isabel; the Abbot of
Holy Thorn will have postured and schemed (with you behind the arras);
you will have wandered with Isoult and will know why she was called La
Desirous, with Prosper le Gai, and will understand how a man may fall
in love with his own wife. Finally, of Galors and his affairs, of the
great difference there may be between a Christian and the brutes, of
love and hate, grudging and open humour, faith and works, cloisters and
thoughts uncloistered--all in the green wood--you will know as much as
I do if you have cared to follow the argument. I hope you will not ask
me what it all means, or what the moral of it is. I rank myself with
the historian in this business of tale-telling, and consider that my
sole affair is to hunt the argument dispassionately. Your romancer must
be neither a lover of his heroine nor (as the fashion now sets) of his
chief rascal. He must affect a genial height, that of a jigger of
strings; and his attitude should be that of the Pulpiteer:--Heaven help
you, gentlemen, but I know what is best for you! Leave everything to me.

It is related of Prosper le Gai, that when his brother Malise, Baron of
Starning and Parrox, showed him the door of their father's house, and
showed it with a meaning not to be mistaken, he stuck a sprig of green
holly in his cap. He put on his armour; his horse and sword also he
took: he was for the wilds. Baron Jocelyn's soul, the priests reported,
was with God; his body lay indubitably under a black effigy in Starning
Church. Baron Malise was lord of the fee, with a twisted face for
Prosper whenever they met in the hall: had there been scores no deeper
this was enough. Prosper was a youth to whom life was a very pretty
thing; he could not afford to have tarnish on the glass; he must have
pleasant looks about him and a sweet air, or at least scope for the
making of them. Baron Malise blew like a miasma and cramped him like a
church-pew: then Adventure beaconed from far off, and his heart leapt
to greet the light. He left at dawn, and alone. Roy, his page, had
begged as hard as he dared for pillion or a donkey. He was his master's
only friend, but Prosper's temper needed no props. "Roy," said he,
"what I do I will do alone, nor will I imperil any man's bread. The
bread of my brother Malise may be a trifle over-salt to my taste, but
to you it is better than none at all. Season your tongue, Roy, enure
it. Drink water, dry your eyes, and forget me not."

He kissed him twice and went his way without any more farewells than
the boy's snivelling. He never looked behind at Starning demesne, where
he had been born and bred and might have followed his father to church,
nor sideways at the broad oaks, nor over to the well-tilled fields on
either side his road; but rather pricked forward at a nimble pace which
tuned to the running of his blood. The blood of a lad sings sharpest in
the early morning; the air tingles, the light thrills, all the great
day is to come. This lad therefore rode with a song towards the West,
following his own shadow, down the deep Starning lanes, through the
woods and pastures of Parrox, over the grassy spaces of the Downs,
topping the larks in thought, and shining beam for beam against the
new-risen sun. The time of his going-out was September of the harvest:
a fresh wet air was abroad. He looked at the thin blue of the sky, he
saw dew and gossamer lie heavy on the hedge-rows. All his heart
laughed. Prosper was merry.

Whither he should go, what find, how fare, he knew not at all.
Morgraunt was before him, and of Morgraunt all the country spoke in a
whisper. It as far, it was deep, it was dark as night, haunted with the
waving of perpetual woods; it lay between the mountains and the sea, a
mystery as inviolate as either. In it outlaws, men desperate and
hungry, ran wild. It was a den of thieves as well as of wolves. Men,
young men too, had ridden in, high-hearted, proud of their trappings,
horses, curls, and what not; none had ever seen them come out. They
might be roaming there yet, grown old with roaming, and gaunt with the
everlasting struggle to kill before they were killed: who could tell?
Or they might have struck upon the vein of savage life; they might go
roaring and loving and robbing with the beasts--why not? Morgraunt had
swallowed them up; who could guess to what wild uses she turned her
thralls? That was a place, pardieu! Prosper, very certain that at
twenty-three it is a great thing to be hale and astride a horse, felt
also that to grow old without having given Morgraunt a chance of
killing you young would be an insipid performance. "As soon be a
priest!" he would cry, "or, by the Rood, one of those flat-polled monks
kept there by the Countess Isabel." Morgraunt then for Prosper, and the
West; beyond that--"One thing at a time," thought he, for he was a wise
youth in his way, and held to the legend round his arms. Seeing that
south of him he could now smell the sea, and beyond him lay Morgraunt,
he would look no further till Morgraunt lay below him appeased or
subjugate.

A tall and lean youth was Prosper le Gai, fair-haired and sanguine,
square-built and square-chinned. He smiled at you; you saw two capital
rows of white teeth, two humorous blue eyes; you would think, what a
sweet-tempered lad! So in the main he was; but you would find out that
he could be dangerous, and that (curiously) the more dangerous he was,
the sweeter his temper seemed to be. If you crossed him once, he would
stare; twice, he would laugh; three times, you would swear he was your
humble servant; but before you could cross him again he would have
knocked you down. The next moment he would give you a hand up, and
apologize; after that, so far as he was concerned, you might count him
your friend for life. The fact is, that he was one of those men who,
like kings, require a nominal fealty before they can love you with a
whole heart: it is a mere nothing. But somebody, they think, must lead.
Prosper always felt so desperately sure it must be he. That was apt to
lend a frenzy to his stroke and a cool survey to his eye (as being able
to take so much for granted), which made him a good friend and a nasty
enemy.

It also made him, as you will have occasion to see, a born fighter. He
went, indeed, through those years of his life on tiptoe, as it were,
for a fight. He had a light and springing carriage of the head, enough
to set his forelock nodding; his eye roved like a sea-bird's; his lips
often parted company, for his breath was eager. He had a trick of
laughing to himself softly as he went about his business; or else he
sang, as he was now singing. These qualities, little habits,
affectations, whatever you choose to call them, sound immaterial, but
they really point to the one thing that made him remarkable--the
curious blend of opposites in him. He blent benevolence with savagery,
reflectiveness with activity. He could think best when thought and act
might jump together, laugh most quietly when the din of swords and
horses drowned the voice, love his neighbour most sincerely when about
to cut his throat. The smell of blood, the sight of wounds, or the
flicker of blades, made him drunk; but he was one of those who grow
steady in their cups. You might count upon him at a pinch. Lastly, he
was no fool, and was disposed to credit other people with a balance of
wit.

He disliked frippery, yet withal made a brave show in the sun. His
plain black mail was covered with a surcoat of white and green linen;
over this a narrow baldrick of red bore in gold stitches his device of
a hooded falcon, and his legend on a scroll, many times repeated and
intercrossed--_I bide my time_. In his helmet were three red feathers,
on his shield the blazon of his house of Gai--_On a field sable, a
fesse dancettée or_, with a mullet for difference. He carried no spear;
for a man of his light build the sword was the arm. Thus then, within
and without, was Messire Prosper le Gai, youngest son of old Baron
Jocelyn, deceased, riding into the heart of the noon, pleased with
himself and the world, light-minded, singing of the movement and the
road.

Labourers stayed their reaping to listen to him; but there was nothing
for them. He sang of adventure. Girls leaned at cottage doorways to
watch him down the way. There was nothing for them either, for all he
sang of love.

  "She who now hath my heart
  is so in every part;" etc., etc.

The words came tripping as a learnt lesson; but he had never loved a
girl, and fancied he never would. Women? Petticoats! For him there was
more than one adventure in life. Rather, my lady's chamber was the last
place in which he would have looked for adventure.

On the second day of his journey--in a country barren and stony, yet
with a hint of the leafy wildernesses to come in the ridges spiked with
pines, the cropping of heather here and there, and the ever-increasing
solitude of his way--he was set upon by four foot-pads, who thought to
beat the life out of his body as easily as boys that of a dog. He asked
nothing better than that they should begin; and he asked so civilly
that they very soon did. The fancy of glorious youth transformed them
into knights-at-arms, and their ashen cudgels into blades. The only
pity was that the end came so soon.

His sword dug its first sod, and might have carved four cowards instead
of one; but he was no vampire, so thereafter laid about him with the
flat of the tool. The three survivors claimed quarter. "Quarter, you
rogues!" cried he. "Kindly lend me one of your staves for the purpose."
He gave them a drubbing as one horsed his brother in turn, and dropped
them, a chapfallen trio, beside their dead. "Now," said he, "take that
languid gentleman with you, and be so good for the rest of your journey
as to imitate his indifference to strangers. Thus you will have a
prosperous passage. Good day to you."

He slept on the scene of his exploit, rose early, rode fast, and by
noon was plainly in the selvage of the great woods. The country was
split into bleak ravines, a pell-mell of rocks and boulders, and a
sturdy crop of black pines between them. An overgrowth of brambles and
briony ran riot over all. Prosper rode up a dry river-bed, keeping
steadily west, so far as it would serve him; found himself quagged ere
a dozen painful miles, floundered out as best he might, and by evening
was making good pace over a rolling bit of moorland through which ran a
sandy road. It was the highway from Wanmouth to Market Basing and the
north, if he had known. Ahead of him a solitary wayfarer, a brown bunch
of a friar, from whose hood rose a thin neck and a shag of black hair
round his tonsure--like storm-clouds gathering about a full
moon--struck manfully forward on a pair of bare feet.

"God be with you, brother gentleman," cried the friar, turning a
crab-apple face upwards.

"And with you, my brother, who carry your slippers," Prosper replied.

"Eh, eh, brother! They go softer than steel for a gouty toe."

"Poor gout, Master Friar, I hope, for Saint Francis' peace of mind."

"My gentleman," said the friar, "let me tell you the truth. I am a poor
devil out of Lucca, built for matrimony and the chimney corner, as
Grandfather Adam was before me. Brother Bonaccord of Outremer they call
me in religion, but ill-accord I am in temper, by reason of the air of
this accursed land, and a most tempestuous blood of my own. For why! I
go to the Dominicans of Wanmouth, supplicating that I am new landed,
and have no convent to my name and establishment in the Church. They
take me in. Ha! they do that. Look now. 'A sop of bread and wine,' I
cry, 'for the love of God.' It is a Catholic food, very comfortable for
the stomach. Ha! they give me beer. Beer? Wet death! I am by now as
gouty as a cardinal, and my eye is inflamed. I think of the
Lucchese--those shafts of joy miscalled women--when I should be
thinking of my profession. I am ready as ever to admit two vows, but
Saint Paul himself cannot reconcile me to the third. Beer, my friend,
beer."

"You will do well enough, friar, if you are going the forest road. You
will find no Lucchesan ladies thereabouts."

"I am none so sure, gentleman. There were tales told at the Wanmouth
hostel. Do you know anything of a very holy place in these parts, the
Abbey of Saint Giles of the Thorn? Black monks, my brother; black as
your stallion."

"I think they are white monks," said Prosper, "Bernardines."

"I spoke of the colour of their deeds, young sir," answered Brother
Bonaccord.

"I know as little of them as of any monks in Christendom, friar,"
Prosper said. "But I have seen the Abbot and spoken with him. Richard
Dieudonné is his name, well friended by the Countess."

"He is well friended by many ladies, some of account, and some of none
at all, by what I hear," said the friar, rather dryly for such a
twinkling spirit.

"Ah, with ladies," Prosper put in, "you have me again; for I know less
of them than of monks, save that both have petticoats. Your pardon,
brother."

"Not a bit, not a bit, brother again," replied the friar. "I admit the
hindrance; and could tell you of the advantages if I had the mind. But
as to the ladies, suffer me to predict that you will know more of them
before you have done."

"I think not," said Prosper. Brother Bonaccord began to laugh.

"They will give you no peace yet awhile," said he. "And let me tell you
this, from a man who knows what he is talking about, that if you think
to escape them by neglecting them, you are going the devil's way to
work. If you wish them to let you alone, speak them fair, drop easily
to your knee, be a hand-kisser, a cushion-disposer, a goer on your
toes. They will think you a lover and shrug you away. Never do a woman
a service as if to oblige her; do it as if to oblige yourself. Then she
will believe you her slave. Then you are safe. That is your game,
brother."

"You have studied ladies, friar?"

"Ah, ah! I have indeed. They are a wondrous fair book. I know no other.
Why should I?"

"Oh, why indeed?" Prosper assented. "For my part, I find other studies
more engrossing."

With such talk they went until they reached a little wood, and then
disposed of themselves for the night. When Prosper woke next morning
the good man had gone. He had left a written message to the effect
that, petticoats or none, he had stolen a march on steel, and might be
looked for at Malbank.

"I wonder how much stuff for his mind that student of ladies will win
at Malbank," laughed Prosper to himself, little knowing, indeed.




CHAPTER II

MORGRAUNT, AND A DEAD KNIGHT


Leaving the high road on his right hand, Prosper struck over the heath
towards a solemn beech-wood, which he took to be the very threshold of
Morgraunt. As a fact it was no more than an outstretched finger of its
hand, by name Cadnam Thicket. He skirted this place, seeking an entry,
but found nothing to suit him for an hour or more. Then at last he came
to a gap in the sandy bank, and saw that a little mossy ride ran
straight in among the trees. He put his horse at the gap, and was soon
cantering happily through the wood. Thus he came short upon an
adventure. The path ran ahead of him in a tapering vista, but just
where it should meet in a point it broadened out suddenly so as to make
a double bay. The light fell splashing upon this cleared space, and he
saw what he saw.

This was a tall lady, richly dressed in some gauzy purple stuff,
dragging a dead man by the heels, and making a very bad business of it.
She was dainty to view, her hands and arms shone like white marble; but
apart from all this it was clear to Prosper that she lacked the mere
strength for the office she had proposed herself. The dead man was not
very tall, but he was too tall for the lady. The roughness of the
ground, the resistance of the underwood, the incapacity of the
performers, made the procession unseemly.

Prosper, forgetting Brother Bonaccord, quickened his horse to a gallop,
and was soon up with the toiling lady. She stopped when she heard him
coming, stood up to wait for him, quick-breathing and a little flushed,
and never took her eyes off him.

It was clearly a time for discretion: so much she signalled from her
brown eyes, which were watchful, but by no means timid. He remembered
afterwards that they had been apt to fall easily into set stares, and
thus to give her a bold look which seemed to invite you to be bold
also. But though he could not see this now, and though he had no taste
for women, it was certain she was handsome in a profuse way. She had a
broad full bust; her skin, dazzling white at the neck, ran into golden
russet before it reached the burnt splendour of her cheeks; her mouth,
rather long and curved up at the corners, had lips rich and crimson; of
which, however, the upper was short to a fault, and so curled back as
to give her, a pettish or fretful look. Her dark hair, which was
plentiful and drawn low over her ears into a heavy knot at the nape of
her neck, was dressed within a fine gold net. Her arms were bare to the
elbow, large and snowy white; from her fingers gems and gold flashed at
him. Prosper, who knew nothing whatever about it, judged her midway
between thirty and forty. Such was the lady; the man he had no chance
of overlooking, for the other had dropped her handkerchief upon his
face before she left him. "Sir," she now said, in a smooth and
distinguishable voice, when Prosper had saluted her, "you may do me a
great service if you will, which is to carry this dead man to his grave
in the wood."

"By the faith I have," Prosper replied, "I will help you all I can. But
when we have buried him you shall tell me how he came by his death, and
how it is that his grave is waiting for him."

"I can tell you that at once," she said quickly; "I have but just dug
it with a mattock I was so lucky as to find by a stopped earth on the
bank yonder. The rest I will gladly acquaint you with by and by. But
first let us be rid of him."

Prosper dismounted and went to take up his burden. First of all,
however, he deliberately removed the handkerchief and looked it in the
face. The dead man lay stiff and staring, with open eyes and a wry
mouth. Hands and face were livid, a light froth had gathered on his
lips. He looked to have suffered horribly--as much in mind as body: the
agony must have bitten deep into him for the final peace of death never
to have come. Now Prosper knew very little of death as yet, save that
he had an idea that he himself would never come to endure it; but he
knew enough to be sure that neither battle nor honour had had any part
here. The man had been well-dressed in brown and tawny velvet, was
probably handsome in a sharp, foreign sort. There was a ring upon his
finger, a torn badge upon his left breast, with traces of a device in
white threads which could not be well made out. Puzzling over it,
Prosper thought to read three white forms on it--water-bougets,
perhaps, or billets--he could not be sure. The whole affair seemed to
him to hold some shameful secret behind: he thought of poison, or the
just visitation of God; but then he thought of the handsome lady, and
was ashamed to see that such a conclusion must involve her in the mess.
Pitying, since he could not judge, he lifted the body in his arms and
followed the lady's lead through the brushwood. At the end of some two
hundred yards or more of battling with the boughs, she stopped, and
pointed to a pit, with a mattock lying on the heaped earth close by.
"There is the grave," she said.

"The grave is a shallow grave," said Prosper.

"It is deeper than he was," quoth the lady. There was a ring in this
rather ugly to hear, as all scorn is out of tune with a dead presence.
You might as well be contemptuous of a baby. But Prosper was no fool,
to think at the wrong time. He laid the body down in the grave, and
busied himself to compose it into some semblance of the rest there
should be in that bed at least. This was hard to be done, since it was
as stiff as a board, and took time. The lady grew impatient, fidgeted
about, walked up and down, could not stand for a moment: but she said
nothing. At last Prosper stood up by the side of the grave, having done
his best.

"I am no priest," says he, "God knows; but I cannot put a man's body
into the earth without in some sort commending his soul. I must do what
I can, and you must pardon an indifferent advocate, as God will."

"If you are advised by me," said the lady, "you will leave that affair
where it is. The man was worthless."

"We cannot measure his worth, madam: we have no tools for that. The
utmost we can do is to bury part of him, and pray for the other part."

"You speak as a priest whom I had thought a soldier," said she with
some asperity. "If you are what you now seem, I will remind you of a
saying which should be familiar--Let the dead bury their dead."

"As I live by bread," Prosper cried out, "I will commend this man's
soul whither it is going."

"Then I will not listen to you, sir," she answered in a pale fume. "I
cannot listen to you."

Prosper grew extremely polite. "Madam, there is surely no need," he
said. "If you cannot you will not. Moreover, I should in any case
address myself elsewhere."

He had folded the dead man's arms over his breast, and shut his eyes.
He had wiped his lips. The thing seemed more at peace. So he crossed
himself and began, _In nomine patris_, etc., and then recited the
_Paternoster_. This almost exhausted his stock, though it did not
satisfy his aspirations. His words burst from him. "O thou pitiful
dead!" he cried out, "go thou where Pity is, in the hope some morsels
may be justly thine. Rest thou there, who wast not restful in thine
end, and quitted not willingly thy tenement; rest thou there till thou
art called. And when thou art called to give an account of thyself and
thine own works, may that which men owe thee be remembered with that
which thou dost owe! _Per Christum dominum_," etc.

He bowed his head, crossed himself very piously; then stood still,
smiling gently upon the man he knew nothing of, save that he had been
young and had lost his race. He did not see the lady; she was, however,
near by, not looking at the man at the grave, but first at Prosper and
then at the ground. Her fingers were twisting and tangling together,
and her bosom, restless as the sea, rose and fell fitfully. She was
pale, save at the lips; like Prosper she smiled, but the smile was
stiff. Prosper set to work with the shovel and soon filled up the
grave. Then he turned to the lady.

"And now, madam, we will talk a little, if you please." He had a cool
and level voice; yet it came upon her as if it could have but one
answer.

She looked at him for some seconds without reply. For his part, Prosper
had kept his eyes fixed equally on her; hers fell first.

She coloured a little as she said-"Very willingly. You have done me a
service for which I am very much in your debt. You shall command me as
you will, and find me ready to recompense you with what I have." She
stopped as if to judge the weight of her words, then went on slowly--"I
know not, indeed, how could I deny you anything."

Prosper could have seen, if he would, the quickened play of her breath.

"Let us go into the open," said he, "and find my horse. Then you shall
tell me whence you are, and whither I may speed you, and how
safeliest--with other things proper to be known."

They went together. "My lord," said she then, "my lodging is far from
here and ill to come by. Nevertheless, I know of a hermitage hard at
hand where we could rest a little, and thereafter we could find the way
to my house. Will you come with me thither?"

"Whither?" asked Prosper.

"Ah, the hermitage, or wheresoever you will."

Prosper looked steadily at her.

"Tell me the name and condition of the dead man," said he.

"Ranulf de Genlis, a knight of Brittany."

"The badge on his breast was of our blazonry," said Prosper, half to
himself, "and he looked to have been of this side the Southern Sea."

"Do you doubt my word, Sir Knight?"

"Madam, I do not question it. Will you tell, me how he came by his
death?"

"I was hunting very early in the morning with my esquires and ladies,
and by ill-hap lost them and my way. After many wanderings in search of
either, I encountered this man now dead, and inquired news of him. He
held me some time in talk, delayed me with sham diligence, and at last
and, suddenly professed an ardent love for me. I was frightened, for I
was alone in the wood with him, in a glade not far from here. And it
seemed that I had reason, since from words he went on to force and
clamour and violence. I had almost succumbed--I know not how to hint at
the fate which threatened me, or guess how long I could have struggled
against it. He had closed with me, he held me in a vice; then all at
once he loosed hold of me and shuddered. Some seizure or sudden stroke
of judgment overtook him, I suppose, so that he fell and lay writhing,
with a foam on his lips, as you saw. You may judge," she added, after
waiting for some comment from Prosper, which did not come, "you may
judge whether this is a pleasant tale for me to tell, and whether I
should tell it willingly to any man. For what one attempted against me
another might also try--and not fail."

She stopped and glanced at her companion. The manner in each of them
was changed; the lady was not the scornful beauty she had seemed, while
Prosper's youth was dry within him. She seemed a suppliant, he a judge,
deliberate. Such a story from such an one would have set him on fire an
hour ago; but now his words came sharply from him, whistling like a
shrill wind.

"The grave was dug overnight," was what he said.

The lady started and paled. Then she drew a deep breath, and said--"Do
you again doubt my word, sir?"

"I do not question it," he replied as before. It is a fact that he had
noticed the turned earth by the pit. There was gossamer upon it, but
that said little. Rabbits had been there also, and that said everything.

The lady said nothing more, and in silence they went on until they
reached a fork in the path. Prosper stopped here. One path led north,
the other west.

"Here is my road," said he, pointing to the west.

"The hermitage is close by, my lord," urged the lady in a low voice. "I
pray my lord to rest him there."

"That I cannot do," says he.

She affected indignation. "Is it then in the honour of a knight to
desert a lonely lady? I am learning strange doctrine, strange chivalry!
Farewell, sir. You are young. Maybe you will learn with years that when
a lady stoops to beg it is more courtly to forestall her."

Prosper stood leaning on his shield. "The knight's honour," he said,
"is in divers holds--in his lady's, in God's, and in the king's. These
three fly not always the same flag, but two at least of them should be
in pact."

"Ah," said she slyly, "ah, Sir Discreet, I see that you have the lady
first."

Prosper grew graver. "I said 'his lady,'" he repeated.

"And could not I, for such service as yours, be your lady, fair sir?"
she asked in a very low and troubled voice. "At least I am
here--alone--in the wood--and at your mercy."

Prosper looked straight in front of him, grave, working his mouth.
Those who knew him would have gone by the set of his chin. He may have
been thinking of Brother Bonaccord's prediction, or of the not very
veiled provocation of the lady's remarkable candour. There grew to be a
rather bleak look in his face, something blenched his blue eyes. He
turned sharply upon the woman, and his voice was like a frost.

"Having slain one man this day," he said, "I should recommend you to be
wary how you tread with another."

She stared open-mouthed at him for a full minute and a half. Then,
seeing he never winked or budged, she grew frightened and piteous,
threw her arms up, turned, and fled up the north path, squealing like a
wounded rabbit.

Prosper clapped-to his spurs and made after her with his teeth grinding
together. Very soon, however, he pulled up short. "The man is dead. Let
her go for this present. And I am not quite sure. I will bide my time."

That was the motto of the Gais--"I bide my time." He was, nevertheless,
perfectly sure in his private mind; but then he was always perfectly
sure, and recognized that it was a weakness of his. So the woman went
her way, and he his for that turn...

Riding forward carelessly, with a loose rein, he slept that night in
the woods. Next day he rode fast and long without meeting a living
soul, and so came at last into Morgraunt Forest, where the trees shut
out the light of the day, and very few birds sing. He entered the east
purlieus in the evening of his fifth day from Starning, and slept in a
rocky valley. Tall black trees stood all round him, the vanguards of
the forest host.




CHAPTER III

HOLY THORN AND HOLY CHURCH


In South Morgraunt stands Holy Thorn, more properly the Abbey of Saint
Giles of Holy Thorn, a broad and fair foundation, one of the two set up
in the forest by the Countess Isabel, Dowager of March and Bellesme,
Countess of Hauterive and Lady of Morgraunt in her own right. Where the
Wan river makes a great loop, running east for three miles, and west
again for as many before it drives its final surge towards the Southern
Sea, there stands Holy Thorn, Church and Convent, watching over the red
roofs of Malbank hamlet huddled together across the flood. Here are
green water-meadows and good corn-lands, the abbey demesne; here also
are the strips of tillage which the tenants hold; here the sluices
which head up the river for the Abbey mills, make thunderous music all
day long. Over this cleared space and over some leagues of the virgin
forest, the Abbot of Saint Thorn has sac and soc, tholl and theam,
catch-a-thief-in, catch-a-thief-out, as well as other sovereign
prerogatives, all of which he owes to the regret and remorse of the
Countess Isabel over the death of her first husband and only lover,
Fulk de Bréauté. Further north, in Mid-Morgraunt, is Gracedieu, her
other foundation--equally endowed, but holding white nuns instead of
white monks.

Now it so happened that as Prosper le Gai entered the purlieus of
Morgraunt, the Countess Isabel sat in the Abbey parlour of Saint Thorn,
knitting her fine brows over a business of the Abbot's, no less than
the granting of a new charter of pit and gallows, pillory and tumbril
to him and his house over the villeins of Malbank, and the whole fee
and soke. The death of these unfortunates, or the manner of it, was of
little moment; but the Countess, having much power, was jealous how she
lent it. She sat now, therefore, in the Abbot's great chair, and before
her stood the Abbot himself, holding in his hands the charter fairly
written out on parchment, with the twisted silk of three colours ready
to receive her seal. It was exactly this which she was not very ready
to give, for though she knew nothing of his villeins, she knew much of
the Abbot, and was of many minds concerning him. There was yet time;
their colloquy was in secret; but now she tapped with her foot upon the
stool, and the Abbot watched her narrowly. He was a tall and personable
man, famous for his smile, stout and smooth, his skin soft as a
woman's, his robe, his ring, his cross and mere slippers all in accord.

At length, says he, "Madam, for the love of the Saints, but chiefly for
Mary's love; to the glory of God and of Saint Giles of Holy Thorn; to
the ease of his monks and the honour of the Church, I beseech your
Ladyship this small boon."

The clear-cold eyes of the Countess Isabel looked long at him before
she said--"Do I then show love to the Saints and give God honour, Lord
Abbot, by helping you swing your villeins? Pit and gallows, pillory and
tumbril! You go too far."

"Dear lady," said he, "I go no further, if I have them, than my Sisters
of Gracedieu. That hedged community of Christ's brides hath all these
commodities and more, even the paramount privilege of Sanctuary, which
is an appanage of the very highest in the Holy Fold. And I must
consider it as scarcely decent, as (by the Mass) not seemly at all,
that your Holy Thorn, this sainted sprig of your planting, should lack
the power to prick. Our people, madam, do indeed expect it. It is not
much. Nay!"--for he saw his Lady frown and heard her toe-taps
again--"indeed, it is not much. A little pit for your female thief to
swim at large, for your witch and bringer-in of hell's ordinances; a
decent gallows a-top for your proper male rascal; a pillory for your
tenderer blossom of sin while he qualify for an airy crown, or find
space for repentance and the fruits of true contrition; lastly, a
persuasive tumbril, a close lover for your incorrigible wanton
girls--homely chastisement such as a father Abbot may bestow, and yet
wear a comely face, and yet be loved by those he chasteneth. Madam, is
this too much for so great a charge as ours? We of Holy Thorn nurture
the good seed with scant fortune, being ridden down by evil livers,
deer-stealers, notorious persons, scandalous persons. A little pit,
therefore! a little limber gallows!"

But the Countess mused with her hand to her chin, by no means
persuaded. She was still a young woman, and a very lonely one; her
great prerogatives (which she took seriously) tired her to death, but
the need of exercising them through other people was worst of all. Now
she said doubtfully, "I have no reason in especial to trust you, Abbot."

The Abbot, who knew better than she how true this was, bit his lip and
remained silent. He was a very comely man and leaned much to
persuasion, particularly with women. He was always his own audience:
the check, therefore, amounted to exposure, almost put him to open
shame. The Countess went on to ask, who in particular of his villeins
he had dread of, who was turbulent, who a deer-stealer, who notorious
as a witch or wise woman, who wanton and a scandalous liver? And here
the Abbot was apt with his names. There was Red Sweyn, half an outlaw
already, and by far too handy with his hunting-knife; there was
Pinwell, as merry a little rogue as ever spoiled for a cord. There were
Rogerson and Cutlaw; there was Tom Sibby, the procuress. Mald also, a
withered malignant old wife, who had once blighted a year's increase by
her dealing with the devil. Here was stuff for gallows, pit and
pillory, all dropping-ripe for the trick. For tumbril, he went on
(watching his adversary like a cat), "who so proper as black-haired
Isoult, witch, and daughter of a witch, called by men Isoult la
Desirous--and a gaunt, half-starved, loose-legged baggage she is," he
went on; "reputed of vile conversation for all the slimness of her
years--witch, and a witch's brat."

He looked sideways at the great lady as he spoke of this creature, and
saw that all was going exactly as he would wish it. He had not been the
Countess' confessor for nothing, nor had he learnt in vain the story of
her secret marriage with Fulk de Bréauté, and of the murder of this
youth on Spurnt Heath one blowy Bartlemy Eve. And for this reason he
had dared to bring the name of Isoult into his catalogue of rogues,
that he knew his woman, and all woman-kind; how they hate most in their
neighbours that which they are tenderest of in themselves. Let there be
no mistake here. The Countess had been no luxurious liver, though a
most unhappy one. The truth is that, beautiful woman as she still was,
she had been a yet more beautiful girl, Countess of Hauterive in her
own right, and as such betrothed to the great Earl Roger of March and
Bellesme. Earl Roger, who was more than double her age, went out to
fight; she stayed at home, in the nursery or near it, and Fulk de
Bréauté came to make eyes. These he made with such efficacy that Isabel
lost her heart first and her head afterwards, wedded Fulk in secret,
bore him a child, and was the indirect means of his stabbing by the
Earl's men as he was riding through the dark over Spurnt Heath. The
child was given to the Abbot's keeping (whence it promptly and
conveniently vanished), the Countess was married to the Earl; then the
Earl died. Whereupon she, still young, childless so far as she could
learn, and possessed of so much, founded her twin abbeys in Morgraunt
to secure peace for the soul of Fulk and her own conscience. This will
suffice to prove that the Abbot had some grounds for his manoeuvring.
The breaking of her troth to the Earl she held to make her an
adulteress; the stabbing of Fulk by the Earl to prove her a murderess.
There was neither mercy nor discernment in these reproaches. She
believed herself a wanton when she had been but a lover. For no sin,
therefore, had she so little charity as for that which the Abbot had
imputed to his candidate for the tumbril. Isoult la Desirous it was who
won the charter, as the Abbot had intended she should, to serve his end
and secure her own according to his liking.

For the charter was sealed and seisin delivered in the presence of Dom
Galors, almoner of the Abbey, of Master Porges, seneschal of High
March, and of one or two mesne lords of those parts. Then the Countess
went to bed; and at this time Prosper le Gai was also lying in the
fringes of Morgraunt, asleep on his shield with his red cloak over him,
having learned from a hind whom he met on the hill that at Malbank
Saint Thorn he would find hospitality, and that his course must lie in
such and such a direction.




CHAPTER IV

DOM GALORS


Next day, as soon as the Countess had departed for High March, the
Abbot Richard called Dom Galors, his almoner, into the parlour and
treated him in a very friendly manner, making him sit down in his
presence, and putting fruit and wine before him. This Galors, who I
think merits some scrutiny, was a bullet-headed, low-browed fellow, too
burly for his monkish frock (which gave him the look of a big boy in a
pinafore), with the jowl of a master-butcher, and a sullen slack mouth.
His look at you, when he raised his eyes from the ground, had the hint
of brutality--as if he were naming a price--which women mistake for
mastery, and adore. But he very rarely crossed eyes with any one; and
with the Abbot he had gained a reputation for astuteness by seldom
opening his lips and never shutting his ears. He was therefore a most
valuable book of reference, which told nothing except to his owner.
With all this he was a great rider and loved hunting. His _Sursum
Corda_ was like a view-holloa, and when he said, _Ite missa est_, you
would have sworn he was crying a stag's death instead of his Saviour's.
In matters of gallantry his reputation was risky: it was certain that
he had more than a monk, and suspected that he had less than a
gentleman should have. The women of Malbank asseverated that venison
was not his only game. That may or may not have been. The man loved
power, and may have warred against women for lack of something more
difficult of assault. He was hardly the man to squander himself at the
bidding of mere appetite; he was certainly no glutton for anything but
office. Still, he was not one to deny himself the flutter of the caught
bird in the hand. He had, like most men who make themselves monks by
calculation, a keen eye for a girl's shape, carriage, turn of the head,
and other allies of the game she loves and always loses: such things
tickled his fancy when they came over his path; he stooped to take
them, and let them dangle for remembrances, as you string a coin on
your chain to remind you at need of a fortunate voyage. At this
particular moment he was tempted, for instance, to catch and let
dangle. The chance light of some shy eye had touched and then eluded
him. I believe he loved the chase more than the quarry. He knew he must
go a-hunting from that moment in which the light began to play
will-o'-the-wisp; for action was his meat and dominion what he
breathed. If you wanted to make Galors dangerous you had to set him on
a vanishing trail. The girl had been a fool to run, but how was she to
know that?

To him now spoke the Abbot Richard after this fashion. "Galors," he
said, "I will speak to you now as to my very self, for if you are not
myself you may be where I sit some day. A young monk who is almoner
already may go far, especially when he is young in religion, but in
years ripe. If you prove to be my other self, you shall go as far as
myself can push you, Galors. Rest assured that the road need not stop
at a mitred abbey. In the hope, then, that you may go further, and I
with you, it is time that I speak my full mind. We have our charter, as
you have seen--and at what cost of sweat and urgency, who can tell so
surely as I? But there, we have it: a great weapon, a lever whereby we
may raise Holy Thorn to a height undreamed of by the abbots of this
realm, and our two selves (perched on the top of Holy Thorn) yet
higher. Yet this charter, gotten for God's greater glory (as He knoweth
who readeth hearts!), may not work its appointed way without an
application which poor and frail men might scarcely dare for any less
object. There is abroad, Galors, dear brother, a most malignant viper,
lurking, as I may say, in the very bosom of Holy Church; warmed there,
nesting there, yet fouling the nest, and grinding her tooth that she
may strike at the heart of us, and shiver what hath been so long
a-building up. Of that viper you, Galors, are the chosen
instrument--you and the charter--to draw the tooth."

The Abbot spoke in a low voice, and was breathless; it was not hard to
see that he was uncommonly in earnest. Galors turned over in his mind
all possible plots against an Abbey's peaceful being--tale-bearing to
the Archbishop, a petition for a Papal Legate, a foreshore trouble, a
riot among the fishermen of Wanmouth, some encroachment by the ragged
brethren of Francis and Dominic--and dismissed them all as not serious
enough to lose breath about.

"Who is your viper, father?" was what he said.

"It is the girl Isoult of Matt-o'-the-Moor; Isoult whom they call La
Desirous," replied his spiritual father. The heart of Galors gave a hot
jump; he knew the girl well enough--too well for her, not well enough
yet for himself. It was precisely to win the woeful beauty of her that
he had set his snares and unleashed his dogs. Did the Abbot know
anything? Impossible; his reference forbad the fear. Was the girl
something more than a dark woodland elf, a fairy, haggard and
dishevelled, whose white shape shining through rags had made his blood
stir? The mask of his face safeguarded him through this maze of
surmise; nothing out of the depths of him was ever let to ruffle that
dead surface. He commanded his voice to ask, How should he find such a
girl? "For," said he, "in Malbank girls and boys swarm like dies on a
sunny wall." The deceit implied was gross, yet the Abbot took it in his
haste.

"Thus you shall know her, Galors," he said. "A slim girl, somewhat
under the common size of the country, and overburdened with a curtain
of black hair; and a sullen, brooding girl who says little, and that
nakedly and askance; and in a pale face two grey eyes a-burning."

All this Galors knew better than his Abbot. Now he asked, "But what is
her offence, father? For even with power of life and member the law of
the land has force, that neither man nor maid, witch nor devil, may be
put lightly away."

For this "put away" the Abbot thanked him with a look, and added, that
she was suspected of witchcraft, seeing Mald her mother was a notorious
witch, and the wench herself the byword and scorn of all the
country-side. Sorcery, therefore, or incontinence--"whichever you
will," said he. "Any stick will do to beat a dog with."

Galors had much to say, but said nothing. There was something behind
all this, he was sure, knowing his man by heart. He judged the Abbot to
be bursting with news, and watched him pace the parlour now struggling
with it. Sure enough the murder was out before he had taken a dozen
turns. "Now, Galors," he said, in a new and short vein, "listen to me.
I intend to do what I should have done fourteen years ago, when I held
this girl in my two hands. I let slip my chance, and blame myself for
it; but having slipt it indeed, it was gone until this charter of ours
brought it back fresh. You know how we stand here, you and I and the
Convent-all of us at the disposition of her ladyship. A great lady, my
friend, and a young one, childless, it is said, without heir of her
own. Morgraunt may go to the Crown or Holy Thorn and Gracedieu may
divide it."

"She may marry again," put in Galors.

"She is twice a widow," the Abbot snapped him up, and gave his first
shock. "She is twice a widow, once against her will. She will never
marry again."

"Then, my father," said Galors, "we should be safe as against the
Crown, which the Countess probably loves as little as the rest of her
kind."

"The Countess Isabel," said the Abbot, speaking like an oracle, "is not
childless."

Galors understood.

"Do not misunderstand me in this, Brother Galors," said the Abbot. "We
will do the girl no unnecessary harm. We will slip her out of the
country if we can get any one to take her. Put it she shall be married
or hanged." Galors again thought that he understood. The Abbot went on.
"There shall be no burning, though that were deserved; not even
tumbril, though that were little harm to so hot a piece. There shall
be, indeed, that which the Countess believes to have been already-a
sally at dawn and a flitting. There will then be no harm done. The
tithing will be free of a sucking witch, and the heart of our
benefactress turned from the child of her sin (for such it was to break
troth to the earl, and sin she deems it) to the child of her spiritual
adoption, to wit, our Holy Thorn." He added "You are in my obedience,
Galors. I love you much, and will see to your advancement. You have a
great future. But, my brother, remember this. Between a woman's heart
and her conscience there can be no fight. There is, rather, a triumph,
wherein the most glorious of the' victor's spoils is that same
conscience, shackled and haled behind the car. That you should know,
and on that you must act. Remember you are fighting for Saint Giles of
Holy Thorn, and be speedy while the new tool still burns in your hand."

So with his blessing he dismissed Dom Galors for the day.




CHAPTER V

LA DESIROUS


Prosper le Gai--all Morgraunt before him--rose from his bed before the
Countess had turned in hers; and long before the Abbot could get alone
with Dom Galors he was sighing for his breakfast. He had, indeed, seen
the dawn come in, caught the first shiver of the trees, the first
tentative chirp of the birds, watched the slow filling of the shadowy
pools and creeks with the grey tide of light. From brake to brake he
struggled, out of the shade into the dark, thence into what seemed a
broad lake of daylight. He met no living thing; or ever the sun kissed
the tree-tops he was hungry. He was well within Morgraunt now, though
only, as it might be, upon the hem of its green robe; the adventurous
place opened slowly to him like some great epic whose majesty and force
dawns upon you by degrees not to be marked. It was still twilight in
the place where he was when he heard the battling of birds' wings, the
screaming of one bird's grief, and the angry purr of another, or of
others. He peered through the bush as the sound swelled. Presently he
saw a white bird come fluttering with a dropt wing, two hen-harriers in
close pursuit. They were over her, upon her, there was a wrangle of
wings--brown and white--even while he watched; then the white got clear
again, and he could see that she bled in the breast. The sound of her
screaming, which was to him like a girl crying, moved him strangely. He
jumped from his saddle, ran to the entangled birds and cuffed the two
hawks off; but seeing that they came on again, hunger-bold no doubt, he
strangled them and freed the white pigeon. He took her up in his hands
to look at her; she was too far gone for fear; she bled freely, but he
judged she would recover. So she did, after he had washed out the
wound; sufficiently at least to hop and flutter into covert. Prosper
took to his horse and journey with her voice still ringing in his head.

In another hour's travel he reached a clearing in the wood, hedged all
about with yew-trees and holm oaks very old; and in the midst of it saw
a little stone altar with the figure of a woman upon it. He was not too
hungry to be curious, so he dismounted and went to examine. The saint
was Saint Lucy the Martyr, he saw; the altar, hoary as it was with
lichen and green moss, had a slab upon it well-polished, with crosses
let into the four corners and into the middle of the stone; there were
sockets for tapers, and marks of grease new and thick. Before he
approached it a hind and her calf had been cropping the grass between
the cracks of the altar-steps; all else was very still, yet had a
feeling of habitancy and familiar use.

His instinct when he saw an altar being to say his prayers, he knelt
down then and there, facing the image, yet a little remote from it. A
very soft tread behind him broke in upon his exercises; some one was
coming, whence or how he did not then know. The comer was a young girl
clothed in a white woollen garment, which was bound about her waist
with a green cord; she was bareheaded; on her feet were thick sandals,
bound also with thongs of green. Prosper watched her spread a white
cloth upon the altar-slab, and set a Mass-book upon a stand; he saw her
go and return with two lighted tapers for the sockets, he saw a silver
crucifix shine between them. The girl, when all this business was done,
stepped backwards down the steps, and stood at the foot of the altar
with hands clasped upon her bosom and head bent lowly. "By the Saints,"
thought Prosper, "Morgraunt is a holy place, it seems. There is to be a
Mass."

So it was. An old priest came out of the thicket in a vestment of
yellow and gold thread, bearing in his hands the Sacrament under a
green silk veil. The girl knelt down as he passed up the steps; he
began his Mass, but in so low a voice that it hardly touched the forest
peace.

Rabbits came creeping out of bush and bracken, a wood-dove began her
moan, two or three deer stood up. Then Prosper thought--"If the beasts
come to prayers, it behoves me as a Christian man to hear Mass also.
Moreover, it were fitting that adventure should begin in that manner,
to be undertaken in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." He went forward
accordingly, flush with the girl, and knelt down by her. When it was
the time of Communion, both drew nearer and received Christ's body.
Prosper, for his part, did not forget the soul of the dead man, De
Genlis or another, whose body he had buried in Cadnam Wood, but
commended it to God together with the sacrifice of the altar. The woman
came into his mind. "No, by God," thought he; "she is the devil, or of
him; I will never pray for her," which was Prosper all over.

Mass done, he remembered that he had the honour to be uncommonly
hungry. The priest had gone back into the wood, the girl was removing
the altar furniture, and seemed unconscious of his presence; but
Prosper could not afford that.

"My young gentlewoman," he said with a bow, "you will see before you,
if you turn your head, a very hungry man."

"Are you hungry, sir?" she said, looking and smiling at him, "then in
three minutes you shall be filled." Whereupon she went away with her
load, and quickly returned with another more to Prosper's mind. She
gave him bread and hot milk in a great bowl, she gave him a dishful of
wild raspberries, and waited on him herself in the prettiest manner.
Without word said she watered his horse for him; and all the while she
talked to him, but of nothing in the world but the birds and beasts,
the falling of the leaf, and the thousand little haps and chances of
her quiet life. Prosper suited his conversation to her book. He told
her of the white bird's rescue, and she opened her blue eyes in wonder.

"Why, I dreamed of it last night," she said very solemnly.

"You dreamed of it, Alice?" he echoed. She was called, she had told
him, Alice of the Hermitage.

"Yes, yes. A white bird and two hen-harriers. Ah, and there was more.
You have not yet done all. You have not yet begun!" She was full of the
thing.

"By my faith, I have wrung the necks of the pair of them," said
Prosper. "I know not how they can expect more of me than that."

"Listen," said Alice of the Hermitage, "the bird will be again chased,
again wounded. Morgraunt is full of hawks. You will see her again. My
dream was very precise. You will see her again; but this time the chase
will be long, and achievement only at the peril of your own honour. But
it seems that you shall win in the end what you have thought to have
won already, and the wound in the breast will be staunched."

"Hum," said Prosper. "Now you shall tell me what I ought to do, how I
ought to begin. For you know the saw--'The sooner begun, the sooner
done.'"

"Oh, sir,". cries she, "you shall ride forward in the name of God,
remembering your manhood and the vows you made when you took up your
arms." She blushed as she spoke, kindling with her thoughts.

"I will do that," said Prosper, kindled in his turn. And so he left
her, and travelled all day towards Malbank Saint Thorn. He lay at night
in the open wood, not far, as he judged, from Spurnt Heath, upon whose
westernmost border ran Wan; there, or near by, he looked to find the
Abbey.

He spent the night at least better than did Dom Galors, whose thoughts
turned equally to Spurnt Heath. That strenuous man had taken the
Abbot's counsel to bed with him, a restless partner. An inordinate
partner also it proved to be, not content to keep the monk awake.
Turning every traffic of his mind to its own advantage, it shook out
the bright pinions of adventure over the dim corridors of Holy Thorn,
and with every pulse of the ordering bell came a reiteration of its
urgency. All night long, through all the task work of the next morning,
the thought was with him--"By means of this woman I may be free. Free!"
he cried. "I may be set up on high through her. Lord of this land and
patron of Holy Thorn; a maker and unmaker of abbots to whom now I must
bow my knees. Is it nothing to be master of a lovely wife? Ha, is it
nothing to rule a broad fee? A small thing to have abbots kiss my
hands? Lord of the earth! is this not worth a broken vow, which in any
case I have broken before? Oh, Isoult la Desirous, if I desired you
before when you went torn and shamefaced through the mire, what shall I
say to you going in silk, in a litter, with a crown, Isoult la
Desirée!" He called her name over and over, Isoult la Desirée, la
Moult-Desirée, and felt his head spinning.

Matins, Lauds, and Prime, he endured this obsession. The day's round
was filled with the amazing image of a crowned, hollow-eyed, tattered
little drab, the mock and wonder of throngs of witnesses, appreciable
only by himself as a pearl of priceless value. The heiress of
Morgraunt, the young Countess of Hauterive, La Desirous, La Desirée.
Desirable she had been before, but dealing no smarter scald than could
be drowned in the well of love which for him she might have been for an
hour. But now his burn glowed; the Abbot had blown it red. Ambition was
alight; he was the brazier. It danced in him like a leaping flame.
Certainly Prosper slept better on his side of Spurnt Heath.

At dusk the monk could bear himself and his burden of knowledge no
longer. He went to look for Isoult on the heath in a known haunt of
hers. He found her without trouble, sitting below the Abbot's new
gallows. She was a girl, childishly formed, thin as a haggard-hawk,
with a white resentful face, and a pair of startled eyes which, really
grey, had a look of black as the pupil swam over the iris. The rags
which served her for raiment covered her but ill; her legs were bare,
she was without head-covering; all about her face her black hair fell
in shrouds. She sat quite still where she was, with her elbows on her
knees, and chin between her two hands, gazing before her over the
heath. Above her head two thieves, first-fruits of the famous charter,
creaked as they swung in their chains. If Isoult saw Galors coming, she
made no effort to escape him; when her eyes met his her brooding stare
held its spell.

The monk drew near, stood before her, and said--"Isoult la Desirous,
you shall come with me into the quarry, for I have much to say to you."

"Let it be said here," she replied, without moving. But he
answered--"Nay, you shall come with me into the quarry."

"I am dead tired. Can you not let me be, Dom Galors?"

"I have what will freshen you, Isoult. Come with me."

"If I must, I must."

Then he led her away, and she went tamely enough to the quarry.

There he took her by both her hands, and so held her, waiting till she
should be forced to look up at him. When at last, sick and sullen, she
raised her eyes, he could hardly contain himself. But he did.

"What were you doing by the Abbot's new gallows, Isoult?"

"I would rather be there now than here. The company is more to my
liking."

"You may be near enough by to-morrow, if what I have learned be true."

The girl's eyes grew larger and darker. "Are they going to hang me?"
she asked.

"Are you not a witch?"

"It is said."

"Your mother Mald is a witch--eh?"

"Yes, she is a witch."

"And are not you? You know Deerleap--eh?"

"It is said that I do."

"And you know what must be done to witches."

"They will hang me, Dom Galors! Will they hang me by Cutlaw and
Rogerson?"

"There is room for you there."

"What can they prove?"

"Pshaw! Is proof needed? Are you not a baggage?"

"I know not."

"A wanton?"

"Ah, you should know that!"

"If it depended upon me, Isoult, I could save you. But the Abbot means
to make an example and set a terror up before the evil-doers in this
walk of Morgraunt. What am I before the Abbot, or what is my love for
you to be brought to his ears? It is doom more certain still, my dear."

"Then I shall be hanged."

"Listen to me now, Isoult. Listen close. No, leave your hands where
they are; they are safer there than elsewhere. So leave them and listen
close. No soul in Malbank but myself and the Lord Abbot knows of what I
have told you now. Me he told this morning. Judge if that was good news
for your lover's ear!"

Isoult shivered and hung her head. Galors went on--"At the risk of
everything a monk should fear, and of everything, by God, that such a
monk as I am should care to win, I contended with my spiritual father.
Spare me the particulars; I got some shrewd knocks over it, but I did
win this much. You are to be hanged to-morrow, Isoult, or noosed in
another way. A ring is to play a part. You shall be bride of the tree
or a man's bride. I won this, and left the Abbot chuckling, for much as
he knows he has not guessed that the goose-girl, the tossed-out
kitchen-girl, the scarecrow haunter of the heath, should be sought in
marriage. But I knew more than he; and now," he said, stooping over the
bent girl,--"and now, Isoult la Desirous, come with me!"

He tried to draw her towards him, but she trembled in his hands so much
that he had to give over. He began his arguments again, reasoned,
entreated, threatened, cajoled; he could not contain himself now, being
so near fruition. The spell of the forest was upon him. "Let Love be
the master," he said, "for there is no gainsaying him, nor can cloister
walls bar his way; but his flamy wings top even these. Ah, Isoult!" he
cried out in his passion; "ah, Isoult la Desirée, come, lest I die of
love and you of the tree."

The girl, who feared him much more than the death he had declared, was
white now and desperate. But she still held him off with her stiffened
arms and face averted. She tried to cheapen herself. "I am Matt's bad
daughter, I am Matt's bad daughter! All the tithing holds me in scorn.
Never speak of love to such as I am, Galors." And when he tried to pull
her she made herself rigid as a rod, and would not go.

So love made the man mad, and spread and possessed him. Contest goaded
Galors: action was his meat and dominion what he breathed; by resisting
she had made the end more sure. By her imprisoned wrists he drew her
in, and when she was so close that her head was almost upon his breast,
he breathed over her. "A mitred abbey have I trampled down for your
love; yes, and to be bishop of a see. Therefore you must come."

She fell to whining and entreaty, white to the lips and dry with fear.
All that she could say was, "I am bad. I am bad, but not so bad! Never
ruin me, Dom Galors." Then it was that she heard the voice of Prosper
singing afar off on the heath. Prosper sang--

      "What if my metal
Be proved as high as a hawk's in good fettle!
      Then you shall see
      The world my fee, And the hearts of men for my Seigniory."

And the girl thought to herself, "Help cometh!" and changed the voice
of her grief and the beating of her heart. By this the guile a woman
has always by her tongue had play: she could talk more gently to her
gaoler, and beg a little time--a short hour or so--to plan and arrange
their affairs. He thought her won and grew very tender; he kissed her
hands many times, called her his dear heart, became, in a word, the
clumsy gallant he claimed to be. All this too she endured: she began to
gabble at random, sprightly as a minion, with all the shifts of a girl
in a strait place ready at command. Her fear was double now: she must
learn the trend of the singer and his horse, and prevent Galors from
hearing either. This much she did. The sound came steadily on. She
heard the horse's hoofs strike on a flint outside the quarry, she heard
Prosper, singing softly to himself. Her time had come. She sprang at
arm's-length from Galors and called out, "Help, for charity!" with all
her might.

Prosper started, drew his sword, and headed his horse for the quarry.
In the mouth of it he reined up to look about him. He was sure of his
direction, but not of his way, "Help is here!" he cried with his sword
on high and red plumes nodding. Air and the light of the sun seemed to
follow him, as if he had cut a slit in a shroud and let in the day.
Then it was that Isoult found strength to shake free from her enemy, to
run to Prosper, to clasp his knee, to babble broken words, entreaties
for salvation, and to stoop to his foot and kiss it.

"What is all this about, my child?" asked Prosper wondering.

"Oh" cried the girl, "my lord! the monk seeks to do me a wrong, and a
shame greater than all!"

Prosper looked deeper into the quarry. There he saw Galors, the white
monk, who stood fixed, biting his nails keenly there. Then he laughed,
saying, "I cannot fight a monk," and sheathed his sword. He did not
love monks, none of his house did. He had seen the new gallows, could
measure the build of the fellow in the quarry; and though he could not
plumb the girl's soul through her misty eyes, he could read her shaking
lips and clinging hands; he could see, and be shocked to see, how young
she was to be acquainted with grief, and with sin how likely familiar.
The hint of the thing revolted him; he dared not leave her there.

"See here, child," said he, "I will set you before me, and we will ride
together for a while. Perhaps the evening chills will temper the monk;
but if not, I am to lodge at his abbey this night, and may prepare that
for him which will cool him. Will you come up to me?"

The ghost of a smile hovered over her white drawn face for a minute. "I
will go where you will take me, my lord," said she.

"Come up with you then," he replied. He stooped there and then, took
her below the arms, and lightly swung her into the saddle before him.
There she sat, modern fashion, with his sword arm for her stay. "I
should like to read that hulk a lesson," said her protector wistfully,
"but I doubt he will have it before night. Oh, let him hang!" So he
turned and rode out of the quarry on to the heath.

Galors stood a long time in the place where they left him, drawing
blood from his bitten fingers. Darkness gathered fast with a storm of
wind and rain. Nevertheless he stayed on; and night came down to find
him still there.




CHAPTER VI

THE VIRGIN MARRIAGE


He had to talk, and as the girl gave him no help, Prosper found himself
asking questions and puzzling out the answers he got, trying to make
them fit with the facts. He was amazed that one so delicately formed
should go barefooted and bareheaded, clad in torn rags. To all his
questions she replied in a voice low and tremulous, and very
simply--that is to say, to such of them as she would answer at all. To
many--to all which touched upon Galors and his business with her in the
quarry--she was as dumb as a fish. Prosper was as patient as you could
expect.

He asked her who she was, and how called. She told him--"I am
Matt-of-the-Moors child, and men call me Isoult la Desirous."

"That is a strange name," said he. "How came you by such a name as
that?"

"Sir," said Isoult, "I have never had any other; and I suppose that I
have it because I am unhappy, and not at peace with those who seek me."

"Who seeks you, Isoult?"

To that she gave no reply. So Prosper went on.

"If many sought you, child," he said, "you were rightly called Isoult
la Desirée, but if you, on the other hand, sought something or
somebody, then you were Isoult la Desirous. Is it not so?"

"My lord," said Isoult, "the last is my name."

"Then it must be that you too seek something. What is it that you seek,
that all the tithing knows of it?"

But she hung her head and had nothing to say. He went on to speak of
Galors, to her visible disease. When he asked what the monk wanted with
her, he felt her tremble on his arm. She began to cry, suddenly turned
her face into his shoulder, and kept it there while her sobs shook
through her.

"Well, child," said he, "dry your tears, and turn your face to such
light as there is, being well assured of this, that whatever he asked
of you he did not get, and that he will ask no more."

"I fear him, I fear him," she said very low--and again, "I fear him, I
fear him."

"Drat the monk," said Prosper, laughing, "is he to cut me out of a
compliment?"

Whereupon she turned a very woebegone and tearful face up to his. He
looked smilingly down; a sudden wave of half-humbrous pity for a thing
so frail and amazed swam about him; before he knew he had kissed her
cheek. This set her blushing a little; but she seemed to take heart,
smiled rather pitifully, and turned again with a sigh, like a baby's
for sleep.

The night gathered apace with a chill wind; some fine rain began to
fall, then heavy drops. Gradually the wind increased, and the rain with
it. "Now we shall have it," said Prosper, sniffing for the storm. He
covered Isoult with his cloak, folded it about her as best he could,
and tucked it in; she lay in his arms snug enough, and slept while he
urged his horse over the stubbed heath. The water hissed and ran over
the baked earth; where had been dry channels, rents and scars, full of
dust, were now singing torrents and broad pools fetlock deep. Prosper
let his good beast go his own gait, which was a sober trot, and ever
and again as he heard the ripple of running water and the swirl and
suck of the eddies in it, he judged that he must soon or late touch the
Wan river, whereon stood the Abbey and his bed. What to do with the
girl when he got there? That puzzled him. "A well-ordered abbey," he
thought, "has no place for a girl, and one ill-ordered has too many. In
the first case, therefore, Holy Thorn would leave her at the gate, and
in the second, that is where I myself would let her stay. So it seems
that she must needs have a wet skin." He felt carefully about the
sleeping child; the cloak kept her dry and warm as a toast. She was
sound asleep. "Good Lord!" cried Prosper, "it's a pity to disturb this
baby of mine. Saracen and I had better souse. Moreover, I make no
nearer, by all that appears, to river Wan or Holy Thorn. Come up,
horse; keep us moving."

The stream he had followed he now had lost. It was pitchy dark, with a
most villainous storm of rain and wind. Saracen caught the infection of
his master's doubts; he stopped short, and bowed his head to snuff the
ground. Prosper laughed at the plight they were both in, and looked
about him, considering what he should do. Very far off he could see a
feeble light flickering; it was the only speck of brightness within his
vision, and he judged it too steady for a fen-flame. Lodging of some
sort should be there, for where there is a candle there is a
candlestick. This was not firelight. To it he turned his tired beast,
and found that he had been well advised. He was before a mud-walled
hovel; there through the horn he saw the candle-flame. He drew his
sword and beat upon the door. For answer the light was blown swiftly
out, and the darkness swam about him like ink.

"Scared folk!" he laughed to himself, hammering at the door with a will.

Then Isoult stirred on his arm and awoke with a little whimper, half
dreaming still, and not knowing where she was. She sat up in the saddle
dazed with sleep.

"The night is wild," said Prosper, "and I have found us the shadow of a
shade, but as yet we lack the substance." Then he set-to, pounding at
the door again, and crying to those within to open for the sake of all
the saints he could remember.

Isoult freed herself from the cloak, and slid down from her seat in the
saddle. Putting her face close to the door she whistled a low note. The
candle was re-lit, many bolts were withdrawn; finally the door opened a
little way, and an old man put his head through the chink, staring out
into the dark.

"God's life, you little rip," said the anxious rogue, "you gave us a
turn!"

Isoult spoke eagerly and fast, but too low for Prosper to hear what she
said. The man was in no mind to open further, and the more he speered
at the horseman the less he seemed to like it. Nevertheless, after a
time the girl was let into the hut, and the door slammed and bolted as
before. Between the shocks of the storm Prosper could now hear a
confusion of voices--Isoult's, low, even, clear and quick; the grating
comments of the old rogue who kept the door, and another voice that
trembled and wailed as if passion struggled with the age in it, to see
which should be master. Once he thought to catch a fourth--a brisk
man's voice, with laughter and some sort of authority in it, which
seemed familiar; but he could not be sure about this. In the main three
persons held the debate.

After a long wrangle it seemed that the women were to have their way.
Again the door-bolts were drawn, again the door opened by the old man,
and this time opened wide. With bows lower than the occasion demanded,
Prosper was invited to be pleased to enter. He saw to his horse first,
and made what provision he could for him in an outhouse. Then he
stooped his head and entered the cottage.

He came directly into a bare room, which was, you may say, crouched
under a pent of turves and ling, and stank very vilely. The floor was
of beaten clay, like the walls; for furniture it had a table and bench.
Sooty cobwebs dripped from the joists, and great spiders ran nimbly
over them; there were no beds, but on a heap of rotting skins in one
corner two rats were busy, and in another were some dry leaves and
bracken. There was no chimney either, though there was a peat fire
smouldering in what you must call the hearth. The place was dense with
the fog of it; it was some time, therefore, before Prosper could leave
blinking and fit his eyes to see the occupants of his lodging....
Isoult, he saw, stood in the middle of the room leaning on the table
with both her hands; her bead was hanging, and her hair veiled all her
face. Near her, also standing, was the old man--a sturdy knowing old
villain, with a world of cunning and mischief in his pair of pig's
eyes. His scanty hair, his beard, were white; his eyebrows were white
and altogether monstrous. He blinked at Prosper, but said nothing. The
third was a woman, infinitely old as it seemed, crouched over the fired
peats with her back to the room. She never looked up at all, but
muttered and sighed vainly to herself and warmed her hands. Lastly, in
a round-backed chair, cross-legged, twirling his thumbs, twinkling with
comfortable repletion, sat Prosper's friend of the road, Brother
Bonaccord of Lucca.

"God save you, gentleman," he chirped. "I see we have the same taste in
lodgings. None of your Holy Thorns for us--hey? But a shakedown under a
snug thatch, with a tap of red wine such as I have not had out of my
own country. What a port for what a night--hey?"

Prosper nodded back a greeting as he looked from one to another of
these ill-assorted hosts of his, and whenever he chanced on the
motionless girl he felt that he could not understand it. Look at her!
how sweet and delicate she was, how small and well-set her head, her
feet and hands how fine, her shape how tender. "How should a lily
spring in so foul a bed?" thought he to himself. Morgraunt had already
taught him an odd thing or two; no doubt it was Morgraunt's way.

The old man set bread and onions on the table, with some sour red wine
in a jug. "Sit and eat, my lord, while you may," he said.

So Prosper and Isoult sat upon the bench and made the most of it, and
he, being a cheerful soul, talked and joked with Brother Bonaccord.
Isoult never raised her eyes once, nor spoke a word; as for the numbed
old soul by the fire; she kept her back resolutely on the room,
muttered her charms and despair, and warmed her dry hands as before.

When they had eaten what they could there came a change. The friar
ceased talking; the old man faced Prosper with a queer look. "Sir, have
you well-eaten and drunken?" he asked.

Prosper thanked him; he had done excellently.

"Well, now," said the man, "as I have heard, after the bride-feast
comes the bridal. Will your worship rest with the bride brought home?"

Prosper got up in an awkward pause. He looked at the man as if he were
possessed of the devil. Then he laughed, saying, "Are you merry, old
rogue?"

"Nay, sir," said the ancient, "it is no jest. If she mate not this
night--and it's marriage for choice with this holy man--come sunrise
she'll be hanged on the Abbot's new gallows. For, she is suspected of
witchcraft and many abominations."

"Is she your daughter, you dog, and do you speak thus of your
daughter?" cried Prosper in a fury.

"Sir," said the man, "who would own himself father to a witch?
Nevertheless she is my daughter indeed."

"What is the meaning of all this? Would you have me marry a witch, old
fool?" Prosper shouted at him. The man shrugged.

"Nay, sir, but I said it was marriage for choice--seeing the friar was
to hand. We know their way, to marry as soon as look at you. But it's
as you will, so you get a title to her, to take her out of the country."

Prosper turned to look at Isoult. He saw her standing before the board,
her head hung and her two hands clasped together. Her breathing was
troubled--that also he saw. "God's grace!" thought he to himself, "is
she so fair without and within so rotten? Who has been ill-ordering the
world to this pass?" He watched her thoughtfully for some time; then he
turned to her father.

"See now, old scamp," he said, "I have sworn an oath to high God to
succour the weak, to right wrong, and to serve ladies. Nine times under
the moon I sware it, watching my arms before the cross on Starning
Waste. Judge you, therefore, whether I intend to keep it or not. As for
your daughter, she can tell you whether some part of it I have not kept
even now. But understand me, that I do not marry on compulsion or where
love is not. For that were a sin done toward God, and me, and a maid."

The old rascal blinked his eyes, jerking his head many times at the
shameful girl. Then he said, "Love is there fast and sure. She is all
for loving. They call her Isoult la Desirous, you must know."

"Yes," said Prosper, "I do know it, for she has told me so already.'

"And to-morrow she will desire no more, since she will be hanged," said
Matt-o'-the-Moor.

Prosper started and flushed, and--

"That is a true gospel, brother," put in the friar. "The Abbot means to
air his gallows at her expense; but there is worse than a gallows to
it. What did I tell you of the Black Monks when you called 'em White?
There is a coal-black among them who'll have her if the gallows have
her not. It is Galors or gallows, fast and sure."

Prosper rubbed his chin, looked at the friar, looked at Matt, looked at
Isoult. She neither lifted her head nor eyes, though the others had met
him sturdily enough. She stood like a saint on a church porch; he
thought her a desperate Magdalen.

"Isoult, come here," said he. She came as obediently as you please, and
stood before him; but she would not look up until he said again,
"Isoult, look me in the face." Then she did as she was told, and her
eyes were unwinking and very wide open, full of dark. She parted her
lips and sighed a little, shivering somewhat. It seemed to him as if
she had been with the dead already and seen their kingdom. Prosper
said, "Isoult is this true that thou wilt be hanged to-morrow?"

"Yes, lord," said Isoult in a whisper.

"Or worse?"

"Yes, lord," she said again, quivering.

"Save only thy lot be a marriage this night?"

"Yes, lord," she said a third time. So he asked,

"Art thou verily what this old man thy father hath testified against
thee--a witch, a worker of iniquity and black things, and of
abominations with the devil?"

Isoult said in a very still voice--"Men say that I am all this, my
lord."

But Prosper with a cry called out, "Isoult, Isoult, now tell me the
truth. Dost thou deserve this death?"

She sighed, and smiled rather pitifully as she said--

"I cannot tell, lord; but I desire it."

"Dost thou desire death, child?" cried he, "and is this why thou art
called La Desirous?"

"I desire to be what I am not, my lord, and to have that which I have
never had," she answered, and her lip trembled.

"And what is that which you are not, Isoult?"

She answered him "Clean."

"And what is that which you have never had, my child?"

"Peace," said Isoult, and wept bitterly.

Then Prosper crossed himself very devoutly, and covered his face while
he prayed to his saint. When he had done he said, "Cease crying,
Isoult, and tell me the truth, by God and His Christ, and Saint Mary,
and by the face of the sky. Art thou such a one as I would wed if love
were to grow between me and thee, or art thou other?"

She ceased her crying at this and looked him full in the face, deadly
pale. "What is the truth to you concerning me?" she said.

He answered her, "The truth is everything, for without it nothing can
have good beginning or good ending."

This made her meek again and her eyes misty. She held out a hand to
him, saying, "Come into the night, and I will tell my lord."

He took it. Hand-in-hand they went out of the cottage, and hand-in-hand
stood together alone under the sky. It was still black and heavy
weather, but without rain. Isoult dropped his hand and stood before
him. She shut her arms over her breast so that her two wrists crossed
at her throat. Looking full at him from under her brows she said--

"By God and His Christ, and Saint Mary, and by the face of the sky, I
will tell you the truth, lord. If the witch's wax be not as abominable
as the witch, or the vessel not foul that hath held a foul liquor, then
thou couldst never point scorn at me."

"Speak openly to me, my child," said Prosper, "and fear nothing."

So she said, "I will speak openly. I am no witch, albeit I have seen
witchcraft and the revelry of witches on Deerleap. And though I have
seen evil also I am a maiden, my lord, and such as you would have your
own sister to be before she were wed."

But Prosper put her from him at an arm's-length. He was not yet
satisfied.

"What was thy meaning then," he asked, "to say that thou wouldst be
that which thou wert not?" He could not bring himself to use the word
which she had used; but she used it again.

"Ah, clean!" she said with a weary gesture. "Lord, how shall I be clean
in this place? Or how shall I be clean when all say that I am unclean,
and so use towards me?" She began to cry again, quite silently. Prosper
could hear the drips fall from her cheeks to her breast, but no other
sound. She began to moan in her trouble--"Ah, no, no, no!" she
whispered, "I would not wed with thee, I dare not wed with thee."

"Why not?" said Prosper.

"I dare not, I dare not!" she answered through her teeth, and he felt
her trembling under his hand. He thought before he spoke again. Then he
said--

"I have vowed a vow to my saint that I will save you, soul and body;
and if it can be done only by a wedding, then we will be married, you
and I, Isoult. But if by battle I can serve your case as well, and rid
the suspicion and save your neck, why, I will do battle."

"Nay, lord," said the girl, "I must be hanged, for so the Lord Abbot
has decreed." And then she told him all that Galors had given her to
understand when he had her in the quarry.

Prosper heard her to the end: it was clear that she spoke as she
believed.

"Well, child," said he, "I see that all this is likely enough, though
for the life of me I cannot bottom it. But how then," he cried, after a
little more thinking, "shall I let you be hanged, and your neck so fine
and smooth!"

"Lord," she said, "let be for that; for since I was born I have heard
of my low condition, and if my neck be slim 'tis the sooner broke. Let
me go then, but only grant me this grace, to stand beside me at the
tree and not leave me till I am dead. For there may be a worse thing
than death preparing for me." Again she cried out at her own thoughts
"Ah, no, no, no, I dare not let thee wed me!" He heard the wringing of
her hands, and guessed her beside herself.

He stood, therefore, reasoning it all out something after this fashion.
"Look now, Prosper," thought he, "this child says truer than she knows.
It is an ill thing to be hanged, but a worse to deserve a hanging, and
worst of all for her, it seems, to escape a hanging. And it is good to
find death sweet when he comes (since come he must), but better to
prove life also a pleasant thing. And life is here urgent, though in
fetters, in this child's breast; but death is not yet here. Yet if I
leave her she gains death, or life (which is worse), and if I take her
with me it can only be one way. What then! a man can lay down his life
in many ways, giving it for the life that needeth, whether by jumping a
red grave or by means slower but not less sure. And if by any deed of
mine I pluck this child out of the mire, put clear light into her eyes
(which now are all dark), and set the flush on her grey cheeks which
she was assuredly designed to carry there; and if she breathe sweet air
and grow in the grace of God and sight of men--why then I have done
well, however else I do."

He thought no more, but took the girl's hand again in both of his.
"Well, Isoult," he said cheerfully, "thou shalt not be hanged yet
awhile, nor shall that worse thing befall thee. I will wed thee as soon
as I may. At cock-crow we two will seek a priest."

"Lord," she said, "a priest is here in this place."

"Why, yes! Brother Bonaccord. Well," said Prosper, "let us go in."

But Isoult was troubled afresh, and put her hand against his chest to
stay him; breathing very short.

"Lord," she said, "thou wilt wed me to save my soul from hell and my
body from hanging; but thou hast no love for me in thy heart, as I know
very well."

Here was a bother indeed. The girl was fair enough in her peaked elfin
way; but the fact was that he did not love her--nor anybody. He had
nothing to say therefore. She waited a little, and then, with her voice
sunk to a low murmur, she said--

"We two will never come together except in love. Shall it not be so?"

Prosper bowed, saying--

"It shall be so."

The girl knelt suddenly down and kissed his foot. Then she rose and
stood near him.

"Let us go in," she said.

Looking up, they saw the field of heaven strewn thick with stars, the
clouds driven off, the wind dropt. And then they went into the hovel
hand-in-hand, as they had gone out.

As soon as he saw them come in together the old man fell to chuckling
and rubbing his hands.

"Wife Mald, wife Mald, look up!" cried he; "there will be a wedding
this night. See, they are hand-fasted already."

Mald the witch rose up from the hearth at last and faced the betrothed.
She was terrible to view in her witless old age; her face drawn into
furrows and dull as lead, her bleared eyes empty of sight or
conscience, and her thin hair scattered before them. It was despair,
not sorrow, that Prosper read on such a face. Now she peered upon the
hand-locked couple, now she parted the hair from her eyes, now slowly
pointed a finger at them. Her hand shook with palsy, but she raised it
up to bless them. To Prosper she said--

"Thou who art as pitiful as death, shalt have thy reward. And it shall
be more than thou knowest."

To the girl she gave no promises, but with her crutch hobbled over the
floor to where she stood. She put her hand into her daughter's bosom
and felt there; she seemed contented, for she said to her very
earnestly--

"Keep thou what thou hast there till the hour of thy greatest peril.
Then it shall not fail thee to whomsoever thou shalt show it."

Then she withdrew her hand and crawled back to crouch over the ashes of
the fire; nor did she open her lips again that night, nor take any part
or lot in what followed.

"Call the priest, old man," said Prosper, "for the night is spending,
and to-morrow we should be up before the sun."

The old thief went to a little door and opened it, whispering,

"Come, father;" and there came out Brother Bonaccord of Lucca, very
solemn, vested in a frayed vestment.

"Young sir," he said, wagging a portentous finger, "you are of the
simple folk our good Father Francis loved. No harm should come of this.
And I pray our Lady that I never may play a worse trick on a maid than
this which I shall play now."

"We have no ring," said Prosper to all this prelude.

"Content you, my master," replied Matt-o'-the-Moor; "here is what you
need."

And he gave him a silver ring made of three thin wires curiously
knotted in an endless plait.

"The ring will serve the purpose," Prosper said. "Now, brother, at your
disposition."

Brother Bonaccord had no book, but seemed none the worse for that. He
took the ring, blessed it, gave it to Prosper, and saw that he put it
in its proper place; he said all the words, blessed the kneeling
couple, and gave them a brisk little homily, which I spare the reader.
There they were wedded.

Matt-o'-the-Moor at the end of the ceremony gave Prosper a nudge in the
ribs. He pointed to a heap of leaves and litter.

"The marriage-bed," he said waggishly, and blew out the light.

Isoult lay down on the bed; Prosper took off his body-armour and lay
beside her, and his naked sword lay between them.




CHAPTER VII

GALORS ABJURES


Dom Galors knew a woman in East Morgraunt whose name was Maulfry. She
lived in Tortsentier, a lonely tower hidden deep in the woods, and had
an unwholesome reputation. She was held to be a courtesan. Many
gentlemen adventurous in the forest, it was said, had found
dishonourable ease and shameful death at her hands. She would make them
great cheer at first with hunting parties, dancing in the grass-rides,
and love everywhere: so much had been seen, the rest was surmise. It
was supposed that, being tired, or changing for caprice, she had them
drugged, rifled them at leisure, slew them one way or another, and set
her nets for the next newcomer. This, I say, was surmise, and so it
remained. Tortsentier was hard to come at, Morgraunt wide, death as
easy as lying. Men in it had other uses for their eyes than to spy at
their neighbours, and found their weapons too often needed in their own
quarrels to spare them for others. To see a man once did not set you
looking for him to come again. You might wander for a month in
Morgraunt before you got out. True, the odds were against your doing
either; but whose business was that?

Galors probably knew the truth of it, for he was very often at
Tortsentier. He knew, for instance, of Maulfry's taste for armour. The
place was full of it, and had a frieze of shields, which Maulfry
herself polished every day, as brave with blazonry as on the day they
first went out before their masters. Maulfry was very fond of heraldry.
It was a great delight of hers to go through her collection with such a
man as Galors, who thoroughly understood the science, conning over the
quarterings, the legends, the badges and differences, and capping each
with its appropriate story, its little touch of romance, its personal
reference to each owner in turn. There was no harm in all this, and for
Galors' part he would be able to testify that there was no luxurious
company there when he came, and no dark hints of violence, treachery,
or mischief for the most suspicious eye to catch at. Tortsentier was
not so far from the Abbey liberties that one might not fetch at it in a
six hours' ride, provided one knew the road. Galors was a great rider
and knew the road by heart. He was a frequent visitor of Maulfry's,
therefore, and would have seen what there was to see. If the cavillers
had known that it would have quieted many a whisper over the fire. They
might have been told, further, that Maulfry and he were very old
friends, and from a time long before his entry into religion at Holy
Thorn. If there had been love between them, it had left no scar. Love
with Galors was a pastime: he might make a woman his mistress, but he
could never allow her to be his master. And whatever there had been in
this sort, any love now left in Maulfry for the monk was largely
tempered with respect. They were excellent friends.

It was to Tortsentier and to Maulfry that Dom Galors rode through the
rain when he had finished biting his nails in the quarry. Very late
that night he knocked at her door. Maulfry, who slept by day, opened at
once, and when she saw who it was made him very welcome. She sent her
page up with dry clothes, heaped logs on the fire, and set a table
against his return, with venison, and white bread, and sweet wine.
Galors, who was ravenous by now, needed no pressing: he sat down and
ate without speaking, nor did she urge him for a message or for news,
but kept her place by the fire, smiling into it until he had done. She
was a tall, dark woman, very handsome and finely shaped, having the
neck, arms, and bosom of Juno, or of that lady whom Nicholas the Pisan
sculptor fashioned on her model to be Queen of Heaven and Earth. And
Maulfry suffered no one to be in doubt as to the abundance and glory of
her treasure.

When Galors was well fed she beckoned him with a nod to his place on
the settle. He came and sat by the side of her, blinking into the fire
for some minutes without a word.

"Well, friend," said Maulfry at last, "and what do you want with your
servant at such an hour? For though I am not unused to have guests, it
is seldom that you are of the party in these days."

Galors, who never made prefaces, told her everything, except the real
rank and condition of Isoult. As to that, he said that the lady in
question was undoubtedly an heiress, as she was undeniably a beauty,
but he was careful to make it plain that her inheritance, and not her
person, tempted him. This I believe to have been the truth by now. He
then related what had passed in the quarry, and what he intended to do
next. He added--

"Whether I succeed or not--and as to that much depends upon you--I am
resolved to abjure my frock and my vows, and to aim henceforward for a
temporal crown."

"I think the frock is all that need concern you," said Maulfry.

"You are right, pretty lady," he replied "and that shall concern me no
more. You shall furnish me with a suit of mail out of your store, with
a shield, a good spear and a sword. I have already a horse, which I owe
to the vicarious bounty of the Lord Abbot, exercised through me, his
right-hand man. This then will be all I shall ask of you on my account,
so far as I can see at present. With what I know to back them they may
win me an earldom and a pretty partner. At least they will enable me to
pay Master Red-Feather my little score."

The pupils of Maulfry's eyes narrowed to a pair of pin points.

"What is this?" she said quickly. "Red feathers? A surcoat white and
green? A gold baldrick? Did he bear a _fesse dancettée_ upon his
shield, a hooded falcon for his crest?" Her questions chimed with her
panting.

"By baldrick and shield I know him for a Gai of Starning," said Galors.
"So much is certain, but which of them in particular I cannot tell
certainly. There were half-a-dozen at one time. Not Malise, I think. He
is too thin-lipped for such work as that. He can do sums in his head,
is a ready reckoner. This lad was quick enough to act, but not quick
enough to refrain from acting. Malise would not have acted. He can see
too far ahead. Nor is it Osric. He would have made speeches and let
vapours. This lad was quiet."

"Quiet as God," said Maulfry with a stare.

"But," Galors went on, "you need not think for him, who or what he was.
I shall meet him to-morrow, and if things go as they should you shall
see me again very soon. You shall come to a wedding. A wedding in
Tortsentier will not be amiss, dame. Moreover, it will be new. If I
fail--well, then also you shall see me, and serve me other ways. Will
you do this?"

Maulfry frowned a little as she thought. Then she laughed.

"You know very well I will do more for you than this. And how much will
you do for me, Galors?"

"Ask and see," said Galors.

"I too may have accounts to settle."

"You will find me a good bailiff, Maulfry. Punctual at the audit."

Maulfry laughed again as she looked up at her armour. Galors' look
followed hers.

"Choose, Galors," she said; "choose, my champion. Choose, Sir Galors de
Born!"

Galors took a long and deliberate survey.

"I will go in black," said he, "and for the rest, since I am no man of
race, the coat is indifferent to me." So he began to read and comment
upon his texts. "_Je tiendray_--why, so I shall, but it savours of
forecast, brags a little."

"None the worse for my knight," said Maulfry.

"No, no," he laughed, "but let me get something of which to brag first.
Hum. _Dieu m'en garde_--we will leave God out of the reckoning, I
think. _Designando_--I will do more than point out, by the Rood!
_Jesus, Amor, Ma Dame_--I know none of these. _Entra per me_--Oh brave,
brave! 'Tis your latest, dame?"

Maulfry's eyes grew hard and bright. "Choose it, choose, my Galors!"
she cried. "And if with that you beat down the red feather, and blind
the hooded hawk, you will serve me more than you dream. Oh, choose,
choose!"

"_Entra per me_ pleases me, I confess. But what are the arms? Wickets?"

"Three white wicket-gates on a sable field. It was the coat of Salomon
de Montguichet."

"Salomon?" said Galors all in a whisper. "Never Salomon? Do you not
remember?"

Maulfry laughed. "I should remember, I think. But there is no monopoly.
What we choose others can choose. The name is free to the world, and a
great name."

Galors, visibly uneasy; thought hard about it. Then he swore. "And I go
for great deeds, by Heaven! Give it me, Dame. I will have it. _Entra
per me_! And shut the wickets when I am in!"

He kissed Maulfry then and there, and they went to bed.




CHAPTER VIII

THE SALLY AT DAWN


On the morning after his strange wedding Prosper rose up early, quite
himself. He left Isoult asleep in the bed, but could see neither old
man, old woman, nor friar; so far as he could tell, he and his wife
were alone in the cottage. Now he must think what to do. He admitted
freely enough to himself that he had not been in a condition for this
overnight; the girl's mood had exalted him; he had acted, and rightly
acted (he was clear about this); now he must think what to do. The
first duty was plain: he went out into the air and bathed in a pool; he
took a quick run and set his blood galloping; then he groomed and fed
his horse; put on his armour, and said his prayers. In the course of
this last exercise he again remembered his wife, on whose account he
had determined to make up his mind. He rose from his knees at once and
walked about the heath, thinking it out.

"It is clear enough," he said to himself, "that neither my wife nor I
desired marriage. We are not of the same condition; we have not--I
speak for myself and by implication for her also--we have not those
desires which draw men and women towards each other. Love, no doubt, is
a strange and terrible thing: it may lead a man to the writing of
verses and a most fatiguing search for words, but it will not allow him
to be happy in anything except its own satisfaction; and in that it
seems absurd to be happy. Marriage is in the same plight: it may be a
good or a bad thing; without love it is a ridiculous thing.
Nevertheless my wife and I are of agreement in this, that we think
marriage better than being hanged. I do not understand the
alternatives, but I accept them, and am married. My wife will not be
hanged. For the rest, I shall take her to Gracedieu. The devout ladies
there will no doubt make a nun of her; she will be out of harm's way,
and all will be well."

He said another prayer, and rose up much comforted. And then as he got
up Isoult came out of the cottage.

She ran towards him quickly, knelt down before he could prevent her,
took his hand and kissed it. She was very shy of him, and when he
raised her up and kissed her forehead, suffered the caress with lowered
eyes and a face all rosy. Prosper found her very different from the
tattered bride of over-night. She had changed her rags for a cotton
gown of dark blue, her clouds of hair were now drawn back over her ears
into a knot and covered with a silk hood of Indian work. On her feet,
then bare, he now saw sandals, round her waist a leather belt with a
thin dagger attached to it in a silver sheath. She looked very timidly,
even humbly up at him whenever he spoke to her--with the long
faithfulness of a dog shining in her big eyes: but she looked like a
girl who was to be respected, and even Prosper could not but perceive
what a dark beauty she was. Pale she was, no doubt, except when she
blushed; but this she did as freely as hill-side clouds in March.

"Where is your wedding-ring, my child?" he asked her, when he had
noticed that it was not where he had put it.

"Lord, it is here," said she, blushing again. She drew from her neck a
fine gold chain whereon were the ring and another trinket which beamed
like glass.

"Is that where you would have it, Isoult?"

"Yes, lord," she answered. "For this present it must be there."

"As you will," said Prosper. "Let us break our fast and make ready, for
we must be on our journey before we see the sun." Isoult went into the
cottage as Brother Bonaccord came out with good-morning all over his
puckered face.

Isoult brought bread and goats'-milk cheese, and they broke their fast
sitting on the threshold, while the sun slowly rose behind the house
and lit up the ground before them--a broken moorland with
heather-clumps islanded in pools of black water. The white forest mist
hid every distance and the air was shrewdly cold; but Prosper and the
friar gossiped cheerfully as they munched.

"We friars," said Brother Bonaccord, "have been accused of a foible for
wedding-rings. I grant you I had rather marry a healthy couple than
leave them aching, and that the sooner there's a christening the better
I am pleased. Another soul for Christ to save; another point against
the devil, thinks I! I have heard priests say otherwise: they will
christen if they must, and marry if it is not too late; but they would
sooner bury you any day. Go to! They live in the world (which I vow is
an excellent place), and eat and drink of it; yet they shut their eyes,
pretending all the time that they are not there, but rather in skyey
mansions. If this is not a fit and proper place for us men, why did God
Almighty take six days a-thinking before He bid it out of the cooking
pot? For a gift to the devil? Not He! 'Stop bubbling, you rogue,' says
He; 'out of the pot with you and on to the platter, that these
gentlemen and ladies of mine may cease sucking their fingers and dip in
the dish!' Pooh! Look at your mother Mary and your little brother
Gesulino. There was a wedding for you, there was a sacring! Beloved
sons are ye all, young men; full of grace are ye, young women! God be
good, who told me to couple ye and keep the game a-going! Take my
blessing, brother, and the sleek and tidy maid you have gotten to wife;
I must be on the road. I am for Hauterive out of the hanging Abbot's
country. He'll be itching about that new gallows of his, thinking how I
should look up there."

He kissed them both very heartily and trudged out into the mist, waving
his hand.

"There goes a good soul," said Prosper. "Give me something to drink,
child, I beseech you."

Isoult brought a great bowl of milk and gave it into his hands,
afterwards (though he never saw her) she drank of it from the place
where he had put his lips. Then it was time for them also to take the
road. Isoult went away again, and returned leading Prosper's horse and
shield; she brought an ass for herself to ride on. Curtseying to him
she asked--

"Is my lord ready?"

"Ready for anything in life, my child," said he as he took her up and
put her on the ass. Then he mounted his horse. They set off at once
over the heath, striking north. None watched them go.

The sky was now without cloud. White all about, it swam into clear blue
overhead. A light breeze, brisk and fresh, blew the land clear, only
little patches of the morning mist hung torn and ragged about the
furze-bushes. The forest was still densely veiled, but the sun was up,
the larks afloat; the rains of over-night crisped and sparkled on the
grass: there was promise of great weather. Presently with its slant
roofs shining, its gilded spires and cross, Prosper saw on his left the
great Abbey of Holy Thorn. He saw the river with a boat's sail, the
village of Malbank Saint Thorn on the further bank and the cloud of
thin blue smoke over it; far across the heath came the roar of the
weirs. Behind it and on all sides began to rise before him the dark
rampart of trees--Morgraunt.

Prosper's heart grew merry within him at the sight of all this
freshness, the splendour of the morning. He was disposed to be well
contented with everything, even with Isoult, upon whom he looked down
once or twice, to see her pacing gently beside him, a guarded and
graceful possession. "Well, friend," he said to himself, "you have a
proper-seeming wife, it appears, of whom it would be well to know
something."

He began to question her, and this time she told him everything he
asked her, except why she was called Isoult la Desirous. As to this,
she persisted that she could not tell him. He took it good-temperedly,
with a shrug.

"I see something mysterious in all this, child," said he, "and am not
fond of mysteries. But I married thee to draw thee from the hangman and
not thy secrets from thee. Keep thy counsel therefore."

She hung her head.

To all other questions she was as open as he could wish. From her
earliest childhood, he learned, she had known servitude, and been
familiar with scorn and reproach. She had been swineherd, goose-girl,
scare-crow, laundress, scullery-wench, and what not, as her mother
could win for her. She could never better herself, because of the taint
of witchcraft and all the unholiness it brought upon her. As laundress
and scullery-maid she had been at the Abbey; that had been her happiest
time but for one circumstance, of which she told him later. Of her
father she spoke little, save that he had often beaten her; of her
mother more tenderly--it seemed they loved each other--but with an air
of constraint. Her parents were undoubtedly in ill-savour throughout
the tithing; her father, a rogue who would cut a throat as easily as a
purse, her mother, a wise woman patently in league with the devil. But
she said that, although she could not tell the reason of it, the Abbot
had protected them from judgment many a time--whether it was her father
for breaking the forest-law, deer-stealing, wood-cutting, or keeping
running dogs; or her mother from the hatred and suspicion of the
Malbank people, on account of her sorceries and enchantments. More
especially did the Abbot take notice of her, and, while he never
hesitated to expose her to every infamous reproach or report, and
(apparently) to take a delight in them, yet guarded her from the direct
consequences as if she had been sacred. This her parents knew very
well, and never scrupled to turn to their advantage. For when hard put
to it they would bring her forward between them, set her before the
Abbot, and say, "For the sake of the child, my lord, let us go." Which
the Abbot always did.

Cried Prosper here, "What did he want, this fatherly Abbot?"

"My lord," said Isoult, "he sought to have me put away."

"Well, child," Prosper chuckled, "he has got his wish."

"He wished it long ago, lord," she said; "before I was marriageable."

"And it was not to thy taste?"

"No, lord."

"It was not of that then that thou wert La Desirous?"

"No, lord," said Isoult in a low voice.

"So I thought," was Prosper's comment to himself. "The friar was out."

She went on to tell him of her service with the Abbey as laundry-maid,
then as scullery-girl; then she spoke of Galors. She told him how this
monk had seen her by chance in the Abbey kitchen; how he sought to get
too well acquainted with her; how she had fled the service and refused
to go back. Nevertheless, and in spite of that, she had had no peace
because of him. He chanced upon her again when she was among the crowd
at the Alms Gate waiting for the dole, had kept her to the end, and
spoken with her then and there, telling her all his desire, opening all
his wicked heart. She fled from him again for the time; but every day
she must needs go up for the dole, so every day she saw him and endured
his importunities. This had lasted up to the very day she saw Prosper:
at that time he had nearly prevailed upon her by his own frenzy and her
terror of the Abbot's, threat. She never doubted the truth of what he
told her, for the Abbot's privy mind had been declared to much the same
purpose to Mald her mother.

"But this privy mind of his," said Prosper, "must have swung wide from
its first leaning, which seems to have been to preserve thee. Could he
not have ruined thee without a charter? An Abbot and a cook-maid! Could
he not have ruined thee without a rope?"

"My lord," she replied, "I think he was merciful. I was to be hanged by
his desire; but there was worse with Galors."

"Ah, I had forgotten him," Prosper said.

She had spoken all this in a low voice through which ran a trembling,
as when a great string on a harp is touched and thrills all the music.
Prosper thought she would have said more if she dared. Although she
spoke great scorn of herself and hid nothing, yet he knew without
asking that she had been truthful when she told him she was pure. He
looked at her again and made assurance double; yet he wondered how it
could be.

"Tell me, Isoult," he said presently, "when thou sawest me come into
the quarry, didst thou know that I should take thee away?"

"Yes, lord," said she, "when I saw your face I knew it."

"What of my face, child? Hadst thou seen me before that day?"

She did not answer this.

"It is likely enough," he went on. "For in my father's day we often
rode, I and my brothers, with him in the Abbey fees, hawking or hunting
the deer. And if thou wert gooseherd or shepherdess thou mightest
easily have seen us."

Isoult said, "My lord, if I had seen thee twenty times before or none,
I had trusted thee when I saw thy face."

"How so, child?" asked he.

For answer to this she looked quickly up at him for a moment, and then
hung her head, blushing. He had had time to see that dog's look of
trust again in her eyes.

"My wife takes kindly to me!" he thought. "Let us hope she will find
Gracedieu even more to her mind."

They rode on, being now very near the actual forest. Prosper began
again with his questions.

"What enmity," he said, "the Abbot had for thee, Isoult, or what
lurking pity, or what grain of doubt, I cannot understand. It seems
that he wished thy ruin most devoutly, but that being a Christian and a
man of honour he sought to compass it in a Christian and gentlemanly
way. Might not marriage have appeared to him the appointed means? And
should I not tell him that thou art ruined according to his
aspirations?"

"Lord," said she, "he will know it."

"Saints and angels!" Prosper cried, "who will tell him? Not Brother
Bonaccord, who loves no monks."

"Nay, lord, but my mother will tell him for the ruin of Galors, who
hates her and is hated again. Moreover, there are many in Malbank who
will find it out soon enough."

"How is that, child?"

"Lord, many of them sought to have me."

"I can well believe it," said Prosper; and after a pause he said
again--"I would like to meet this Galors of thine out of his frock. He
looked a long-armed, burly rogue; it seemed that there might be some
fighting in him. Further, some chastisement of him, if it could
conveniently be done, would seem to be my duty, since he has touched at
thy honour, which is now mine. I should certainly like to meet him
unfrocked."

"Lord,"' answered the girl, "that will come soon enough. I pray that
thine arm be strong, for he is very fierce, and a terrible man in
Malbank, more often armed than in his robe."

"He must be an indifferent monk," Prosper said; "God seems not well
served in such a man's life. Holy Church would be holier without him."

"He is a great hunter, my lord," said Isoult.

"It would certainly seem so," said Prosper grimly. "Where should I find
him likeliest?"

"Lord, look for him in Martle Brush."

"Ah! And where is that?"

"Lord, it is here by," said Isoult.

Prosper looked about him sharply. He found that they had left the
heath, and were riding down a smooth grassy place into a deep valley.
The decline was dotted with young oak-trees, sparse at the top but
thickening in clusters and ranks lower down. Between the stems, but at
some distance, he could see a herd of deer feeding on the rank grass by
a brook at the bottom. Beyond the brook again the wood grew still
thicker with holly trees and yews interspersed with the oaks: the land
he could see rose more abruptly on that side, and was densely wooded to
the top of another ridge as high as that which he and Isoult descended.
The ridge itself was impenetrably dark with a forest gloom which never
left it at this season of the year. As he studied the place, Martle
Brush as he supposed it to be, he saw a hart in the herd stop feeding
and lift his head to snuff the air, then with his antlers thrown back,
trot off along the brook, and all the herd behind him. This set him
thinking; he knew the deer had not winded him. The breeze set from them
rather, over the valley, from the north-east. He said nothing to his
companion, but kept his eyes open as they began to descend deeper into
the gorge. Presently he saw three or four crows which had been wheeling
over the tops of the trees come and settle on a dead oak by the
brook-side. Still there was no sign of a man. Again he glanced down at
Isoult; this time she too was alert, with a little flush in her cheeks,
but no words on her lips to break the silence they kept. So they
descended the steep place, picking their way as best they could among
the loose rocks and boulders, with eyes painfully at gaze, yet with no
reward, until they reached a place where the track went narrowly
between great rooted rocks with holly trees thick on either side.
Immediately before them was the brook, shallow and fordable, with muddy
banks; the track ran on across it and steeply up the opposite ridge.
Midway of this Prosper now saw a knight fully armed in black (but with
a white plume to his helmet), sitting a great black horse, his spear
erect and his shield before him. He could even make out the cognizance
upon it--three white wicket-gates argent on a field sable--but not the
motto. The shield set him thinking where he could have seen it before,
for he knew it perfectly well. Then suddenly Isoult said, "Lord, this
is Galors the Monk."

"Ho, ho!" said Prosper, "is this Galors? I like him better than I did."

"Lord," she asked in a tremble, "what wilt thou do?"

"Do!" he cried; "are there so many things to do? You are not afraid,
child?"

"No, lord, I am not afraid," she replied, and looked down at her belt.

"Now, Isoult," said Prosper, "you are to stay here on your beast while
I go down and clear the road."

She obeyed him at once, and sat very still looking at Galors and at
Prosper, who rode forward to the level ground by the ford. There he
stopped to see what the other man would be at. Galors played the
impenetrable part which had served him so well with the Abbot Richard,
in other words, did nothing but sit where he was with his spear erect,
like a bronze figure on a bridge. Impassivity had always been the
strength of Galors; women had bruised themselves against it: but
Prosper had little to do with women's ways.

"Sir, why do you bar my passage?" he sang out, irrepressibly cheerful
at present. Galors never answered him a word. Prosper divined him at
this; he was to climb the hill, and so be at the double disadvantage of
having no spear and of being below him that had one. "The pale rascal
means to make this a game of skittles," he thought to himself. "We
shall see, my man. In the mean time I wish I knew your shield." So
saying he forded the brook, stayed, called out again, "Whose shield is
that, Galors?" and again got no reply. "Black dog!" cried he in a rage,
"take your vantage and expect no more." Whereupon he set his horse at
the hill and rode up with his shield before him.

The black knight feutred his spear, clapped spurs to his horse's
flanks, and bore down the hill. He rode magnificently: horse and man
had the impetus of a charging bull, and it looked ill for the man
below. But Prosper had learned a trick from his father, which he in
turn had had at Acre from the Moslems in one of the intervals of the
business there. In those days men fought like heroes, but between
whiles remembered that they were gentlemen and good fellows pitted
against others equally happy in these respects.

The consequence was that many a throat was cut by many a hand which the
day before had poured out wine for its delight, and nobody was any the
worse. The infidels loved Mahomet, but they loved a horse too, and
Baron Jocelyn was not the man to forget a lesson in riding. So soon,
therefore, as Galors was upon him, Prosper slid his left foot from the
stirrup and slipt round his horse almost to the belly, clinging with
his shield arm to the bow of the saddle. The spear struck his shield at
a tangent and glanced off. It was a bad miss for Galors, since horse
and man drove down the incline and were floundering in the brook before
they could stay. Prosper whipped round to see Galors mired, was close
on his quarter and had cut through the shank of the spear, close to the
guard, in a trice.

"Fight equal, my friend, and you will fight more at ease in the long
run," was all he said. Galors let fly an oath at him, furious. He drew
his great sword and cut at him with all his force; Prosper parried and
let out at his shoulder. He got in between the armour plates; first
blow went to him. This did not improve Galors' temper or mend his
fighting. There was a sharp rally in the brook, some shrewd knocks
passed. The lighter man and horse had all the advantage; Galors never
reached his enemy fairly. He set himself to draw Prosper out of the
slush of mud and water, and once on firmer ground went more warily to
work. Then a chance blow from Prosper struck his horse on the crest and
went deep. The beast stumbled and fell with his rider upon him both lay
still.

"A broken neck," thought Prosper, cursing his luck. Galors never moved.
"What an impassive rogue it is!" Prosper cried, with all his anger
clean gone from him. He dismounted and went to where his man lay, threw
his sword on the grass beside him, and proceeded to unlace Galors's
hauberk. Galors sprang up and sent Prosper flying; he set his heel on
the sword blade and broke it short. Then he turned his own upon the
unarmed man. "By God, the man is for a murder!" Prosper grew white with
a cold rage: he was on his feet, the flame of his anger licked up his
poverty: Galors had little chance. Prosper made a quick rush and drove
at the monk with his shield arm, using the shield like an axe; he broke
down his guard, got at close quarters, dropt his shield and caught
Galors under the arms. They swayed and rocked together like
storm-driven trees, Prosper transported with his new-lighted rage,
Galors struggling to justify his treachery by its only excuse. Below
his armpits he felt Prosper's grip upon him; he was encumbered with
shield and sword, both useless--the sword, in fact, sawing the air.
Then they fell together, Prosper above; and that was the end of the
bout. Prosper slipped out his poniard and drove it in between the
joints of the gorget. Then he got up, breathing hard, and looked at his
enemy as he lay jerking on the grass, and at the bright stream coming
from his neck.

"The price of treachery is heavy," said he. "I ought to kill him. And
there are villainies behind that to be reckoned with, to say nothing of
all the villainies to do when that hole shall be stuffed. The
shield--ah, the shield! No, monk, on second thoughts, I will not kill
you yet. It would be dealing as you dealt, it would prevent our meeting
again; it would cut me off all chance of learning the history of your
arms. White wicket-gates! Where, under heaven's eye, have I been
brought up against three white wicket-gates? Ha! there is a motto too."
_Entra per me_, he read, and was no wiser. "This man and I will meet
again," he said. "Meantime I will remember _Entra per me_." He raised
his voice to call to Isoult--"Come, child; the way is clear enough."

She came over the brook at once, alighted on the further side, and came
creeping up to her husband to kneel before him as once before that
morning; but he put his hand on her shoulder to stay her. "Come," he
said, smiling, "no more ceremony between you and me, my dear. Rather
let us get forward out of the reach of hue-and-cry. For when the
foresters find him that will be the next move in the game." To Galors
he turned with a "By your leave, my friend," and took his sword; then
having put Isoult upon her donkey and mounted his own beast, he led the
way up the ridge wondering where they had best turn to avoid
hue-and-cry. Isoult, who guessed his thoughts, told him of the minster
at Gracedieu.

Sanctuary attached to the Church, she said, as all the woodlanders knew.

"Excellent indeed," Prosper cried; "that jumps with what I had
determined on before. Moreover, I suppose that Gracedieu is outside the
Malbank fee?"

"Yes, lord, it is far beyond that."

"And how far is it to Gracedieu?"

"It is the journey of two days and nights, my lord."

"Well," said he, "then those nights we must sleep in the forest. How
will that suit you, child?"

"Ah, my lord," breathed the girl, "I have very often slept there."

"And what shall we do for food, Isoult?"

"I will provide for that, my lord."




CHAPTER IX

THE BLOOD-CHASE AND THE LOVE-CHASE


It was by this time high noon, hot and still. Having climbed the ridge,
they found themselves at the edge of a dense beech-wood, to which there
appeared no end. From their vantage-ground they could see that the land
sloped very gradually away into the distance; upon it the giant trees
stood like pillars of a church, whose floor was brown with the waste
and litter of a hundred years. Long alleys of shade stretched out on
all sides of them into the dark unknown of Mid-Morgraunt; there seemed
either no way or countless ways before them, and one as good as the
other. They rested themselves in sheer bewilderment, ate of the bread
and apples which Isoult had brought with her; then Prosper found out
how tired he was.

"Wife," said he, "if all the devils in Christendom were after me it
would not keep me awake. I must sleep for half-an-hour."

"Sleep, sleep, my lord; I will take the watch," said Isoult, longing to
serve him.

He unlaced his helm and body-armour without more ado, and laid his head
in the girl's lap. She had very cool and soft hands, and now she put
one of them upon his forehead for a solace, peering down nervously to
see how he would take such daring from his servant. What she saw
comforted her not a little, indeed she thought herself like to die of
joy. He wondered again that such delicate little hands should have been
reared on Spurnt Heath, and endured the service of the lowest; it was a
half-comical content that made him send her a smiling acknowledgment;
but she took it for a friendly message between them, and though the
laughter in his eyes brought a mist over hers she was content. Prosper
dropped asleep. Through the soft veil of her happiness she watched him
patiently and still as a mouse. She was serving him at last; she could
dare look tenderly at him when he was asleep--and she did. Something of
the mother, something of the manumitted slave, something of the dumb
creature brought up against a crisis which only speech can make
tolerable,--something of these three lay in her wet eyes; she wanted
ineffably more, but she was happy (she thought). She was not apt to
look further than this, that she was in love, and suffered to serve her
master. The dull torment of her life past, the doubts or despair which
might beset and perplex her life to come, were all blurred and stilled
by this boon of service, as a rosy mist makes beautiful the space of
time between a day of storms and a dripping night. When the roaring of
the wind dies down and the sun rays out in a clear pool of heaven, men
have ease and forget their buffetings; they walk abroad to bathe their
vexed souls in the evening calms. So now Isoult la Desirous, with no
soul to speak of, bathed her quickened instincts. She felt at peace
with a world which had used her but ill so long as she was in touch
with all that was noble in it. This glorious youth, this almost god,
suffered her to touch his brow, to look at him, to throne his head, to
adore him. Oh, wonderful! And as tears are never far from a girl's
eyes, and never slow to answer the messages of her heart, so hers
flowed freely and quietly as from a brimming well; nor did she check
them or wish them away, but let them fall where they would until they
encroached upon the privileged hand. _Lèse majesté!_ She threw her head
back and shook them from her; she was more guarded how she did after
that.

Then she heard something over the valley below which gave her
heart-beats a new tune. A great ado down there, horses, dogs, voices of
men shouting for more. She guessed in a moment that the foresters had
come upon the body of Galors, knew that hue-and-cry was now only a
question of hours, and all her joys at an end. She took her hand from
Prosper's forehead, and he awoke then and there, and smiled up at her.

"Lord," said she, "it is time for us to be going, for they have found
Dom Galors; and at the Abbey they have many slot-hounds."

"Good, my child," he answered. "I am ready for anything in the world.
Let us go."

He got up instantly and armed himself; they mounted their animals and
plunged into the great shade of the beeches. All the steering they
could do now was by such hints of the sun as they could glean here and
there. Prosper by himself would have been fogged in a mile, but Isoult
had not lived her fifteen years of wild life for nothing: she had the
fox's instinct for an earth, and the hare's for doubling on a trail.
The woods spoke to her as they spoke to each other, as they spoke to
the beasts, or the beasts among themselves. What indeed was this poor
little doubtful wretch but one of those, with a stray itching to be
more? Soul or none, she had an instinct which Prosper discovered and
learned to trust. For the rest of the day she tacitly led the
knight-at-arms in the way he should go.

But with all her help they made a slow pace. The forest grew more and
more dense; there seemed no opening, no prospect of an opening. She
knew what must be in store for them if the Abbot had uncoupled his
bloodhounds, so she strained every nerve in her young body, listened to
every murmur or swish of the trees, every one of the innumerable,
inexplicable noises a great wood gives forth. She suffered, indeed,
intensely; yet Prosper never knew it. He played upon her, quite
unconsciously, by wondering over the difficulties of the road, the
slowness of their going, the probable speed of the Abbot's dogs and
foresters, and so on. Her meekness and cheerful diligence delighted
him. The nuns of Gracedieu, he promised himself, should know what a
likely novice he was bringing them. He should miss her, _pardieu_!
after two or three days' companionship. So they struggled on.

Towards the time of dusk, which was very soon in that gloomy solitude,
Isoult heard in the far distance the baying of the dogs, and began to
tremble, knowing too well what all that meant. Yet she said nothing.
Prosper rode on, singing softly to himself as his custom was, his head
carried high, his light and alert look taking in every dark ambush as a
thing to be conquered--very lordly to look upon. The girl, who had
never seen his like, adored him, thought him a god; the fact was, she
had no other. Therefore, as one does not lightly warn the blessed gods,
she rode silent but quaking by his side, with her ears still on the
strain for the coming danger, and all her mind set on the fear that
Prosper would find out. Above all she heard a sound which shocked her
more, her own heart knocking at her side.

Then at last Prosper reined up, listening too. "Hush!" he said, "what
is that?"

This was a new sound, more hasty and murmurous than any girl's heart,
and much more dreadful than the music of the still distant hounds; it
was very near, a rushing and pattering sound, as of countless beasts
running. Isoult knew it.

"Wolves!" she said; "let be, there is no harm from them save in the
winter."

As she spoke a grey bitch-wolf came trotting through the trees, swiftly
but in pain, and breathing very short. She was covered with slaver and
red foam, her tongue lolled out at the side of her mouth long and
loose, she let blood freely from a wound in the throat, and one of her
ears was torn and bleeding. She looked neither to right nor left, did
not stay to smell at the scent of the horse; all her pains were spent
to keep running. She broke now and again into a rickety canter, but for
the most part trotted straight forward, with many a stumble and missed
step, all picked up with indescribable feverish diligence; and as she
went her blood flowed, and her panting kept pace with her padding feet.
So she came and so went, hunted by what followed close upon her; the
murmur of the host, the host itself--dogs and bitches in a pack, making
great pace. They came on at a gallop, a sea of wolves that surged
restlessly, yet were one rolling tide. Here and there a grinning head
cast up suddenly out of the press seemed like the broken crest of some
hastier wave impatient with his fellows; so they snarled, jostled, and
snapped at each other. Then one, playing choragus, would break into a
howl, and there would be a long anthem of howls until the forest rang
with the terror; but the haste, the panting and the padding of feet
were the most dreadful, because incessant; the thrust head would be
whelmed, the sharp voice drowned in howls; the grey tide and the
lapping of it never stopped.

The fugitives watched this chase, in which they might have read a
parable of their own affair, sweep past them like a bad dream. In the
dead hush that followed they heard what was a good deal more
significant for them, the baying of the dogs.

"What now?" said Prosper to himself, "there are the dogs. If I make
haste they can make it better; if I stay, how on earth shall I keep my
convoy out of their teeth?"

It was too late to wonder; even at that moment Isoult gasped and caught
at his arm, leaning from her saddle to cling to him as she had done
once before. But this was a danger not to be shamed away by a man
armed. He followed her look, and saw the first dog come on with his
nose to the ground. A thought struck him. "Wait," he said.

Sure enough, the great dog hit on the line of the wolves and got the
blood in his nostrils. He was puzzled, his tail went like a flag in a
gale as he nosed it out.

Prosper watched him keenly, it was touch-and-go, but never troubled his
breath. "Take your choice, friend," he said. The dog beat to and fro
for some long minutes. He could not deny himself--he followed the
wolves.

"That love-chase is like to be our salvation," said Prosper. "Wait now.
Here are some more of the Abbot's friends." It was as good as a play to
him--a hunter; but to Isoult, the wild little outcast, it was deadly
work. Like all her class, she held dogs in more fear than their
masters. You may cajole a man; to a dog the very attempt at it is a
damning proof against you.

As Prosper had predicted, the dogs, coming on by twos and threes, got
entangled in the cross-trail. They hesitated over it, circled about it
as the first had done, and like him they followed the hotter and
fresher scent. One, however, in a mighty hurry, ran clean through it,
and singled out his own again. They saw him coming; in his time he saw
them. He stopped, threw up his head, and bayed a succession of deep
bell-notes at them, enough to wake the dead.

"I must deal with this beast," Prosper said. "Leave me to manage him,
and stay you here." He dismounted, ungirt his sword, which he gave to
Isoult to hold, then began to run through the wood as if he was afraid.
This brought the dog on furiously; in fifty yards he was up with his
quarry. Prosper went on running; the dog chose his time, and sprang for
his throat. Prosper, who had been waiting for this, ducked at the same
minute; his dagger was in his hand. He struck upwards at the dog as he
rose, and ripped his belly open. "That was your last jump, my friend,"
quoth he, "but I hope there are no more of you. It is a game that not
always answers."

It was while he was away upon this errand that Isoult thought she saw a
tall woman in a black cloak half-hidden behind a tree. The woman, she
could have sworn, stood there in the dusk looking fixedly at her; it
was too dark to distinguish anything but the white disk of a face and
the black mass she made in her cloak, yet there was that about her,
some rigid aspect of attention, which frightened the girl. She turned
her head for a moment to see Prosper homing, and when she looked again
into the trees there was certainly no woman. She thought she must have
fancied it all, and dismissed the thought without saying anything to
Prosper.

They took up their journey again, safe from dogs for the time. The
music had died away in the distance; they knew that if the wolf-pack
were caught there would be work enough for more hounds than the Abbey
could furnish. Then it grew dark, and Isoult weary and heavy with
sleep. She swayed in her saddle.

"Ah," said Prosper, "we will stay here. You shall sleep while I keep
watch."

"It is very still, my lord. Wilt thou not let me watch for a little?"
she asked.

Prosper laughed. "There are many things a man's wife can do for him, my
dear," he said, "but she cannot fight dogs or men. And she cannot sleep
with one eye open Eat what you have, and then shut your pair of eyes.
You are not afraid for me?"

Isoult looked at him quickly. Then she said--"My lord is--," and
stopped confused.

"What is thy lord, my girl?" asked he.

"He is good to his servant," she whispered in her low thrilled voice.

They ate what bread was left, and drank a little water. Before all was
finished Isoult was nodding. Prosper bestirred himself to do the best
he could for her; he collected a heap of dried leaves, laid his cloak
upon them, and picked up Isoult to lay her upon the cloak. His arms
about her woke her up. Scarce knowing what she did, dreaming possibly
of her mother, she put up her face towards his; but if Prosper noticed
it, no errant mercy from him sent her to bed comforted. He put her
down, covered her about with the cloak, and patted her shoulder with an
easy--"Good-night, my lass." This was cold cheer to the poor girl, who
had to be content with his ministry of the cloak. It was too dark to
tell if he was looking at her as he stooped; and ah, heavens! why
should he look at her? The dark closed round his form, stiffly erect,
sitting on the root of the great tree which made a tent for them both,
and then it claimed her soul. She lost her trouble in sleep; he kept
the watch all night.




CHAPTER X

FOREST ALMS


Towards the grey of the morning, seeing that the whole forest was at
peace, with no sign of dogs or men all that night, and now even a rest
from the far howling of the wolves, Prosper's head dropt to his breast.
In a few seconds he slept profoundly. Isoult awoke and saw that he
slept: she lay watching him, longing but not daring. When she saw that
he looked blue and pinched about the cheekbones, that his cheeks were
yellow where they should be red, and grey where they had been white,
she knew he was cold; and her humbleness was not proof against this
justification of her desires. She crept out of her snug nest, crawled
towards her lord and felt his hands; they were ice. "Asleep he is
mine," she thought. She picked up the cloak, then crept again towards
him, seated herself behind and a little above him, threw the cloak over
both and snuggled it well in. She put her arms about him and drew him
close to her bosom. His head fell back at her gentle constraint; so he
lay like a child at the breast. The mother in her was wild and
throbbing. Stooped over him she pored into his face. A divine pity, a
divine sense of the power of life over death, of waking over sleep,
drew her lower and nearer. She kissed his face--the lids of his eyes,
his forehead and cheeks. Like an unwatched bird she foraged at will,
like a hardy sailor touched at every port but one. His mouth was too
much his own, too firm; it kept too much of his sovereignty absolute.
Otherwise she was free to roam; and she roamed, very much to his
material advantage, since the love that made her rosy to the
finger-tips, in time warmed him also. He slept long in her arms.

She began to be very hungry.

"He too will be hungry when he wakes," she thought; "what shall I do?
We have nothing to eat." She looked down wistfully at his head where it
lay pillowed. "What would I not give him of mine?" The thought flooded
her. But what could she do?

She heard the pattering of dry leaves, the crackle of dry twigs snapt,
and looking up, saw a herd of deer feeding in a glade not very far off.

Idly as she watched them, it came home to her that there were hinds
among them with calves. One she noticed in particular feed a little
apart, having two calves near her which had just begun to nibble a
little grass. Vaguely wondering still over her plight, she pictured her
days of shepherding in the downs where food had often failed her, and
the ewes perforce mothered another lamb. That hind's udder was full of
milk: a sudden thought ran like wine through her blood. She slid from
Prosper, got up very softly, took her cup, and went towards the
browsing deer. The hind looked up (like all the herd) but did not start
nor run. A brief gaze satisfied it that here was no enemy, neither a
stranger to the forest walks; it fell-to again, and suffered Isoult to
come quite close, even to lay her hand upon its neck. Then she stood
for a while stroking the red hind, while all the herd watched her. She
knelt before the beast, clasping both arms about its neck; she fondled
it with her face, as if asking the boon she would have. Some message
passed between them, some assurance, for she let go of the hind's neck
and crawled on hands and knees towards the udder. The deer never moved,
though it turned its head to watch her. She took the teat in her mouth,
sucked and drew milk. The herd stood all about her motionless; the hind
nuzzled her as if she had been one of its own calves; so she was filled.

Next she had to fill her cup. This was much more difficult. The hind
must be soothed and fondled again, there must be no shock on either
side. She started the flow with her mouth; then she knelt against the
animal with her head pressed to its side, took the teat in her hand and
succeeded. She filled the cup with Prosper's breakfast. She got up,
kissed the hind between the eyes, stroked its neck many times, and went
tiptoe back to her lord and master. She found him still sound asleep,
so sat quietly watching him till he should wake, with the cup held
against her heart to keep it warm.

Broad daylight and a chance beam of sun through the trees woke him at
last. It would be about seven o'clock. He stretched portentously, and
sat up to look about him; so he encountered her tender eyes before she
had been able to subdue their light.

"Good-morning, Isoult," said he. "Have I been long asleep?"

"A few hours only, lord."

"I am hungry. I must eat something."

"Lord, I have milk for thee."

He took the cup she tendered, looking at her.

"Drink first, my child," he said.

"Lord, I have drunk already."

He drained the cup without further ado.

"Good milk," he said when he had done. He took these things, you see,
very much as they came.

His next act was to kneel face to the sun and begin his prayers.
Something made him stop; he turned him to his wife.

"Hast thou said thy prayers, Isoult?"

"No, lord," said she, reddening.

"Come then and pray with me. It is a good custom."

She obeyed him so far as to kneel down by his side. He began again. She
had nothing to say, so he stopped again.

"Dost thou forget thy prayers since thou art a wife, Isoult?"

"Lord, I know none," said she with a shameful face.

"Thou art not a Christian then?"

"If a Christian prays, my lord, I am not a Christian."

"But thou hast been baptized?"

"Yes, lord."

"How knowest thou?"

"The Lord Abbot once reproached me before my parents that I had
disgraced Holy Baptism; and my father beat me soundly for it, saying
that of all his afflictions that was the hardest to bear. This he did
in the presence of the Lord Abbot himself. Therefore I know that I have
been beaten for the sake of my baptism."

Prosper was satisfied.

"It is enough, Isoult. Thou art certainly a Christian. Nevertheless,
such an one should pray (and women as well as men), even though it may
very well be that he knows not what he is saying. Prayer is a great
mystery, look you. Yet this I know, that it is also a great comfort.
For remember that if a Christian prays--knowing or not knowing the
meaning of the act and the upshot of it--he is very sure it is
acceptable to Saint Mary, and through her to God Almighty Himself. So
much so, indeed, that he is emboldened thereafter to add certain
impertinences and urgent desires of his own, which Saint Mary is good
enough to hear, and by her intercession as often as not to win to be
accepted. Some add a word or two to their saint or guardian, others
invoke all the saints in a body; but it is idle to do one or any of
these things without you have prayed first. So you must by all means
learn to pray. Sit down by me here and I will teach you."

She sat as close to him as she dared on the trunk of the beech, while
he taught her to say after him, _"Pater noster qui es in coelis"_, and
_"Ave Maria gratia plena."_ In this way they spent a full hour or more,
going over and over the Latin words till she was as perfect as he. In
the stress of the task, which interested Prosper vastly, their hands
met more than once; finally Prosper's settled down over hers and held
it. In time he caught the other. Isoult's heart beat wildly; she had
never been so happy. When she had all the words pat they knelt down and
prayed together, with the best results.

"Now, child," said Prosper, "you may add what you choose of your own
accord; and be sure that our Lady will hear you. It is a great merit to
be sure of this. The greater the Christian the surer he is. I also will
make my petition. You have no patron?"

"No, lord, I have never heard of such an one."

"I recommend you to Saint Isidore. His name is the nearest to yours
that I can remember. For the rest, he is very strong. Ask, then, what
you will now, my child, and doubt nothing."

Isoult bent her head and shut her eyes for the great essay. What could
she say? What did she want? She was kneeling by Prosper's side, his
hand held hers a happy prisoner.

"Mary, let him take me! Saint Isidore, let him take me--all, all, all!"
This was what she panted to Heaven.

Prosper prayed, "My Lady, I beseech thee a good ending to this
adventure which I have undertaken lightly, it may be, but with an
honest heart. Grant also a good and honourable end to myself, and to
this my wife, who is a Christian without knowing it, and by the help of
thy servants at Gracedieu shall be a better. _Per Christum dominum_,
etc."

Then he crossed himself, and taught Isoult to do the same, and the
great value of the exercise.

"Now, child," he said, "I have done thee a better turn in teaching thee
to pray and sign thyself meekly and devoutly than ever I did by wedding
thee in the cottage. Thy soul, my dear, thy soul is worth a hundred
times thy pretty person. Saint Bernard, I understand, says, 'My son,
think of the worms when thou art disposed to cherish thyself in a
looking-glass.' It is to go far. Saint Bernard was a monk, and it is a
monk's way to think of nastiness; but he was right in the main. Your
soul is the chief part of you. Now to finish: when we are at Gracedieu
thou shalt confess and go to Mass. Then thou wilt be as good a
Christian as I am."

"Lord, is that all I must do?" she asked meekly.

Prosper grew grave. He put his hand on the girl's shoulder, as he said--

"Deal justly, live cleanly, breathe sweet breath. Praise God in thy
heart when He is kind, bow thy head and knees when He is angry; look
for Him to be near thee at all times. Do this, and beyond it trust thy
heart."

"Lord, I will do it."

"Thou art a good child, Isoult. I am pleased with thee," he said, and
kissed her. She turned her face lest he should see that she was crying.
Soon afterwards they set off towards Gracedieu.

The day, the night, the next morning found them on the journey. They
had to travel slowly, could indeed have made better pace on foot; for
Mid-Morgraunt is a tangle of brush and undergrowth, and the swamps
(which are many and of unknown depth) have all to be circled.

There seemed, however, to be no further pursuit; they could go at their
ease, for they met nobody. On the other hand, they met with no food
more solid than milk. There were deer in plenty. Isoult was able to
feed herself and her husband, and keep both from exhaustion, without
suspicion from him or much cost to herself. The second time of doing
it, it is true, she went tremblingly to work, and was like to bungle
it. What one may do on the flood one may easily miss on the ebb;
moreover, it was night-time, she was tired, and not sure of herself.
Nevertheless, she was fed, and Prosper was fed. Next morning she was as
cool as you choose, singled out her hind as she walked into the herd,
went on all fours and sucked like a calf. She grew nice, indeed. The
beast she tried first had rough milk; this would do for her well
enough, but my lord must have of the best. She chose another with great
care, played milk-maid to her, and drew Prosper full measure.

He, her sovereign, took every event with equal mind, and placidly,
whether it was a wedding, a fight, or a miraculous fountain of milk. If
she had drawn his food from herself he would not have questioned her;
if it had been her last ounce of life he would not have thanked her the
more. You cannot blame him for this. To begin with, he knew nothing of
her or her doings when he was asleep or on the watch. And a young man
is a prodigal always, of another's goods besides his own, while a young
woman is his banker, never so rich as when he overdraws. Deprived of
him by her own act, his wife in name, she was his servant in reality.
His servant and, just now, his sumpter-beast. Very wistfully she served
him, but very diligently, only asking that he should neither thank nor
blame her. It very seldom occurred to him to do either; but so sure as
he threw a "good child" at her, she had a lump in her throat and
smarting eyes. True, she had her little rewards, to be enjoyed when he
could not guess that her heart was all in a flutter, or see that her
cheeks were wet. Night and morning they said their _Pater Noster_ and
_Ave Maria_, out of which (although she understood them as little as he
did) she did not fail to suck the comfort he had promised her. She
learned also to speak familiarly to Saint Isidore and Madonna. This
served her in good stead later in her career. Meantime, night and
morning they knelt side by side, their arms touched, sometimes their
hands strayed and joined company. Then hers ended by resting where they
were, as in a warm nest. Pray what more could a girl ask of the
Christian faith?

By sunset of the second day passed in this fashion they were before the
great west front of Gracedieu Minster, knocking at the Mercy Door. It
opened. They were safe for the present, and Prosper felt his horizon
enlarged.




CHAPTER XI

SANCTUARY


After Vespers that day Prosper demanded an audience of the Lady Abbess,
and had it. He found her a handsome, venerable old lady, at peace with
all the world and, so far as that comported with her religion, a woman
of it. She had held high rank in it by right of birth; she knew what it
could do, and what not do, of good and evil. Now that she was old
enough to call its denizens her children, she folded her hands and
played grandmother. Naturally, therefore, she knew Prosper by name; for
that, as much as his frank looks, she made him welcome. She did not ask
it, but he could see that she expected to be enlightened upon the
subject of Isoult--doubtful company for a knight; so having made up his
mind how much he could afford to tell her, he did not waste time in
preliminaries.

"Madam," said he, after the first greetings of good company, "a knight
adventuring in this forest cannot see very far before his face, and may
make error worse by what he does to solve error. If by mischance such a
thing should befall him, he must not faint, but persist until he has
loosed not only the knot he has tied himself, but that as well which he
has made more inexorable."

The Lady Abbess bowed very graciously, waiting for him to be done with
phrases. Prosper went on--

"I found this damsel in the hands of a knave, who offered her a choice
of death or dishonour. I took her into my own, and so far have spared
her either. The rascal who had her now lies with a split gullet many
leagues from here, in such a condition that he will trouble her no more
I hope. Add to this, that I have questioned her, and find her honest,
meek, and a Christian. She is, as you, will see for yourself, very
good-looking: it was near to be her undoing. I cannot tell you, nor
will you ask me, first, her name (for I am not certain of it), second,
the name of her enemy (for that would involve a great company whereof
he is a most unworthy member), nor third, what means I employed to
insure immunity for her body, and honour for my own as well as hers;
for this would involve us all. In time I shall certainly achieve the
adventure thus thrust upon me, but for the present my intention is for
High March Castle, and the Countess of Hauterive, who was a friend of
my father's, and is, as I know, one of yours. If you will permit it I
will leave Isoult with you. She will serve you well and faithfully in a
hundred ways; she is very handy and quick, a good girl, anxious to be a
better. If you can make a nun of her, well and good: by that means the
adventure will achieve itself. I leave you to judge, however; but if
you cannot help me there, let her stay with you for a year. After that
I will fetch her and achieve the adventure otherwise."

The Abbess smiled at the young man's judicial airs, which very ill
concealed the elevation of his mind. She only said that she would
gladly help him in the honourable task he had set himself, and doubted
not but that the girl would prove a good and useful servant to the
convent. But she added--

"It is easy to see, sir, that as a Christian your part is of the Church
militant. I would remind you that a nun is not made in a year."

"I mentioned a year because it was a long time, and for the sake of an
example of what I had designed," said Prosper calmly. "However, if it
takes longer, and you think well of it, I shall not complain."

"And what does the girl say?" the Abbess inquired. "For some sort of
vocation is necessary for the religious life, you must understand."

"I have not yet spoken to Isoult about it," he replied. "She will do
what I tell her. She is a very good girl."

"I think I should speak to her myself," said the Abbess, not without
decision.

"So you shall," Prosper agreed; "but it will be better that I prepare
her. If you will allow me I will do so at once, as I should leave early
to-morrow."

"There goes a young man who should climb high," said the Lady Abbess,
as her guest paid his respects.

Prosper went into the cloister, and found Isoult sitting with the
mistress of the novices and her girls who were at work there. She
looked tired and constrained, but lit up when he came in, firing a
girl's signals in her cheeks. As for her eyes, the moment Prosper
appeared they never wavered from him.

He excused himself to the nun, saying that he had business with Isoult,
which by leave of the Abbess he might transact in the guest chamber.
One of the novices conducted him; Isoult followed meekly.

Once alone with her, Prosper sat down by the fire and told Isoult to
fetch a stool and sit by him. She did as she was bid, sat at his knee,
folded her hands in her lap, and waited for him to begin, looking
thoughtfully into the fire. Prosper laid a hand upon her shoulder.

"Isoult," he said, "We have got our sanctuary, as you see, and for all
that appears need neither have sought nor claimed it. We have had no
pursuit worthy the name. It is evident to me that they have calculated
the deserts of Master Galors at Malbank, and put it at our figure.
Nevertheless, I am glad to be at Gracedieu, for I had decided upon it
before ever we met and drubbed that monk. When I saved you from being
hanged I saved your body; now I shall think of your soul's health,
which (the Church tells us) is far more precious. For it would seem
that a man can do without a body, but by no means without a soul. Now,
I have married you, Isoult, and by that act saved your body; but I have
not as yet done any more, for though I have heard many things of
marriage, I never heard that it was good for the soul. Moreover, for
marriage to be tolerable, I suppose love is necessary,"--Isoult
started,--"and that we certainly know nothing about it." Isoult
shivered very slightly, so slightly that Prosper did not notice it. "I
have thought a great deal about you, my child," he continued, "since I
married you, and something also of myself, my destinies, and duties as
a knight and good Christian. I have decided to go at once to High
March, where I shall find the Countess Isabel. She, being an old friend
of my family's, will no doubt take me into her service. I shall fight
for her of course, I shall win honour and renown, very likely a fief.
With that behind me I shall go to Starning and trounce my brother
Malise, baron or no baron. I shall bring him to his knees in a cold
sweat, and then I shall say--`Get up, you ass, and learn not to meddle
again with a gentleman, and son of a gentleman.'

"In addition to that business I have a certain matter to inquire into
concerning a lady whom I met in the purlieus of this forest, and a dead
man she had with her. I do not like the looks of that case. Certainly I
must inquire into it, and do what pertains. There may be other things
needing my direction, but if there are I have forgotten them for the
moment.

"You will think that in all this I have also forgotten you, child. Far
from it. Listen now. You cannot of course go to High March. You would
not be happy there, nor am I in a position to make you happy. No, no;
you shall stay here with the good nuns, and be useful to them, and
happy with them. You shall learn to serve God, so that in time you may
become a nun yourself. You know my thoughts about monks, that I do not
like them. But nuns are quite otherwise. Our Lord Jesus was served by
two women, of whom Mary was assuredly a nun, and Martha a religious
woman equally, probably of the begging order--a sister of Saint Clare,
or of the order of Mount Carmel. The point is, I believe, still in
doubt. So you see that you have excellent examples before you to
persevere. When I have put my affairs in train at High March I will
come and see you; and as you are my wife, if any trouble should come
about you, any sickness, or threatening from without, or any private
grief, send me word, and I will never fail you. Moreover, have no
doubts of my fidelity: I am a gentleman, Isoult, as you know. And
indeed such pranks are not to my taste."

He stopped talking, but not patting the girl's shoulder. It was almost
more than she could endure. At first her blank and sheer dismay had
been almost comical; she had looked at him as if he was mad, or talking
gibberish. The even flow of his reasoning went on, and with it a high
satisfaction in all his plans patent even to her cloudy intellect;
gradually thus the truth dawned upon her, and as he continued she lost
the sense of his spoken thoughts in the mad cross-tides of her own
unuttered. Now her crying instinct was for rescue at all costs, at any
hazard. Prayers, entreaties, cravings for reprieve thronged unvoiced
and not to be voiced through every fibre of her body. Could he not
spare her? Could he not? If she could turn suddenly upon him, clasp his
knees, worm herself between his arms, put her face--wet, shaking,
tremulous, but ah, Lord! how full of love--near to his! If she could!
She could not; shame froze her, choked not speech only but act; she was
dumb through and through--a dumb animal.

"Well, Isoult, what do you say?" he asked in his cheerful voice. He
could hardly hear her answer, it came so low.

"I will do thy pleasure, lord," she murmured.

He stooped and kissed her forehead, not noticing how she shook.

"Good child," he said, "good child! I am more than satisfied with you,
and hope that I may have proved as pleasant a traveller as I have found
you to be. My salute must be for good-night and farewell, Isoult, for
to-morrow morning I shall be gone before you have turned your side in
bed. That is where you should be now, my dear. Your head is very hot--a
sign that you are tired. Forget not what I have said to you in
anything; forget not to trust me. They will show you your bed.
Good-bye, Isoult."

She muttered something inaudible with her lips, and went out without
looking at him again. Every bone in her body ached so cruelly that she
could hardly drag herself along. She could neither think nor cry out;
what strength she had went towards carrying this new load, which, while
it paralyzed, for the present numbed her as well. The mistress of the
novices was shocked to see her white drawn face, heavily-blacked eyes,
and to hear a dead voice come dully from such pretty lips.

"My dear heart," said the good woman, "you are tired to death. Come
with me to the still-room; I will give you a cordial." The liquor at
least sent some blood to her face and lips, with whose help she was
able to find her bed. For that night she had for bedfellow a fat nun,
who snored and moaned in her sleep, was fretful at the least stir, and
effectually prevented her companion from snoring, in turn, if she had
been afflicted with that disease. Isoult stirred little enough: being
worn out with grief entirely new to her, to say nothing of her fatigue
of travel, she lay like a log and (what she had never done before)
dreamed horribly. Very early, before light, she was awake and face to
face with her anguish again. She lay in a waking stupor, fatally
sensible, but incapable of responsible action. She had to hear
Prosper's voice in the courtyard sharply inquiring of the way, his
words to his horse, all his clinking preparations; she heard his
high-sung "Heaven be with you; pray for me," and the diminishing chorus
of Saracen's hoofs on the road. She trembled so much during this
torment that she feared to shake the bed. Very weakness at last took
pity on her; she swooned asleep again, this time dreamless. The fat nun
getting up for Prime, also took enough pity upon her to let her he. So
it was that Prosper left Gracedieu.




CHAPTER XII

BROKEN SANCTUARY


Through the days of rain and falling leaves, when all the forest was
sodden with mist; through the dark days of winter, hushed with snow,
she stayed with the nuns, serving them meekly in whatever tasks they
set her. She was once more milk-maid and cowherd, laundress again,
still-room maid for a season, and in time (being risen so high)
tire-woman to the Lady Abbess herself. Short of profession you can get
no nearer the choir than that. It was not by her tongue that she won so
much favour--indeed she hardly spoke at all; as for pleasantness she
never showed more than the ghost of a smile. "I am in bondage," she
said to herself, "in a strange house, and no one knows what treasure I
hide in my bosom." There she kept her wedding-ring. But if she was
subdued, she was undeniably useful, and there are worse things in a
servant than to go staidly about her work with collected looks and
sober feet, to have no adventurous traffic with the men-servants about
the granges or farms, never to see nor hear what it would be
inconvenient to know--in a word, to mind her business. In time
therefore--and that not a long one as times go--her featness and
patience, added to her beauty (for it was not long before the gentler
life or the richer possession made her very handsome), won her the
regard of everybody in the house.

The Abbess, as I have told you already, took her into high favour
before Christmas was over--actually by Epiphany she could suffer no
other to dress her or be about her person.

She loved pretty maids, she said, when they were good. Isoult was both,
so the Abbess loved her. The two got to know each other, to take each
other's measure--to their reciprocal advantage. Isoult was very guarded
how she did; what she said was always impersonal, what she heard never
went further. The Abbess was pleased. She would often commend her, take
her by the chin, turn up her face and kiss her. A frequent strain of
her talk was openly against Prosper's ideas: the Abbess thought Prosper
a ridiculous youth.

"Child," she would say--and Isoult thrilled at the familiar word
(Prosper's!)--"Child, you are too good-looking to be a nun. In due
season we must find you a husband. Your knight seemed aghast at the
thought that salvation could be that way. Some fine morning the young
gentleman will sing a very different note. Meantime he is wide of the
mark. For our blessed Lord loveth not as men love (who love as they are
made), nor would He have them who are on the earth and of it do
otherwise than seek the fairest that it hath to give them. Far from
that, but He will draw eye to eye and lip to lip, so both be pure,
saying, 'Be fruitful, and plenish the earth.' But to those not so
favoured as you are He saith, 'Come, thou shalt be bride of Heaven, and
lie down in the rose-garden of the Lamb.' So each loves in her degree,
and according to the measure of her being; and it is very well that
this should be so, in order that the garners of Paradise may one day be
full."

This sort of talk, by no means strange on the old lady's part,
sometimes tempted Isoult to tell her story--that she was a wife
already. No doubt she would have done it had not a thought forborne
her. Prosper did not love her; their relations were not marital--so
much she knew as well as anybody. She would never confess her love for
him, even to Prosper himself; she could not bring herself to own that
she loved and was unloved. She thought that was a disgrace, one that
would flood her with shame and Prosper with her, as her husband though
only in name. She thought that she would rather die than utter this
secret of hers; she believed indeed that she soon would die. That was
why she never told the Abbess, and again why she made no effort nor had
any temptation to run away and find him out. It seemed to her that her
mere appearance before him would be a confession of deep shame.

But she never ceased for an hour to think of him, poor miserable. In
bed she would lie for whole watches awake, calling his name over and
over again in a whisper. Her ring grew to be a familiar, Prosper's
genius. She would take it from her bosom and hold it to her lips,
whisper broken words to it, as if she were in her husband's arms. With
the same fancy she would try to make it understand how she loved him.
That is a thing very few girls so much as know, and still fewer can
utter even to their own hearts; and so it proved with her. She was as
mute and shamefaced before the ring as before the master of the ring.
So she would sigh, put it back in its nest, and hide her face in the
pillow to cool her cheeks. At last in tears she would fall asleep. So
the days dragged.

In February, when the light drew out, when there was a smell of wet
woods in the air, when birds sang again in the brakes, and here and
there the bushes facing south budded, matters grew worse for her. She
began to be very heavy, her nightly vigils began to tell. She could not
work so well, she lagged in her movements, fell into stares and woke
with starts, blundered occasionally. She had never been a fanciful
girl, having no nurture for such flowering; but now her visions began
to be distorted. Her love became her thorn, her side one deep wound.
More and more of the night was consumed in watchings; she cried easily
and often (for any reason or no reason), and she was apt to fall faint.
So February came and went in storms, and March brought open weather,
warm winds, a carpet of flowers to the woods. This enervated, and so
aggravated her malady: the girl began to droop and lose her good looks.
In turn the Abbess, who was really fond of her, became alarmed. She
thought she was ill, and made a great pet of her. She got no better.

She was allowed her liberty to go wherever she pleased. In her trouble
she used to run into the woods, with a sort of blind sense that
physical distress would act counter to her sick soul. She would run as
fast as she could: her tears flew behind her like rain. Over and over
to herself she whispered Prosper's name as she ran--"Prosper! Prosper
le Gai! Prosper! Prosper, my lord!" and so on, just as if she were mad.
It was in the course of these distracted pranks that she discovered and
fell in love with a young pine tree, slim and straight. She thought
that it (like the ring) held the spirit of Prosper, and adored him
under its bark. She cut a heart in it with his name set in the midst
and her own beneath. Ceremony thereafter became her relief and all she
cared about. She did mystic rites before her tree (in which the ring
played a part), forgetting herself for the time. She would draw out her
ring and look at it, then kiss it. Then it must be lifted up to the
length of its chain as she had seen the priest elevate the Host at
Mass; she genuflected and fell prone in mute adoration, crying all the
time with tears streaming down her face. She was at this time like to
dissolve in tears! Without fail the mysteries ended with the _Pater
Noster_, the _Ave_, a certain Litany which the nuns had taught her, and
some gasping words of urgency to the Virgin and Saint Isidore. Love was
scourging her slender body at this time truly, and with well-pickled
rods.

On a certain day of mid-March,--it would be about the twelfth,--as she
was at these exercises about the mystic tree, a tall lady in Lincoln
green and silver furs came out of a thicket and saw Isoult, though
Isoult saw not her. She stood smiling, watching the poor devotee; then,
choosing her time, came quietly behind her, saw the heart and read the
names. This made her smile all the more, and think a little. Then she
touched Isoult on the shoulder with the effect of bringing her from
heaven to dull earth in a trice. By some instinct--she was made of
instincts, quick as a bird--the girl concealed her ring before she
turned.

"Why are you crying, child?" said this smiling lady.

"Oh ma'am!" cried the girl, half crazy and beside herself with her
troubles--"Oh, ma'am! let me tell you a little!"

She told her more than a little: she told her in fact everything--in a
torrent of words and tears--except the one thing that might have helped
her. She did not say that she was married, though short of that she
gulped the shame of loving unloved.

"Poor child!" said the lady when she had heard the sobbed confession,
"you are indeed in love. And Prosper le Gai is your lover? And you are
Isoult la Desirous? So these notches declare at least: they are yours,
I suppose?"

"Yes, indeed, ma'am," said Isoult; "but he is not my lover. He is my
master."

"Oh, of course, of course, child," the lady laughed--"they are always
the master. If we are the mistress we are lucky. And do you love him so
much, Isoult?"

"Yes, ma'am," said she.

"Silly girl, silly girl! How much do you love him now?"

"I could not tell you, ma'am."

"Could you tell him then?"

"Ah, no, no!"

"But you have told him, silly?"

"No, ma'am, indeed."

"It needs few words, you must know."

"They are more than I can dare, ma'am."

"It can be done without words at all. Come here, Isoult. Listen."

She whispered in her ear.

Isoult grew very grave. Her eyes were wide at this minute, all black,
and not a shred of colour was left in her face.

"Ah, never!" she cried.

Maulfry laughed heartily.

"You are the dearest little goose in the world!" she cried. "Come and
kiss me at once."

Isoult did as she was told. Maulfry did not let her go again.

"Now," she went on, with her arms round the girl's waist and her arch
face very near, "now you are to know, Isoult, that I am a wonderful
lady. I am friends with half the knights in the kingdom; I have armour
of my own, shields and banneroles, and halberts and swords, enough to
frighten the Countess Isabel out of her three shires. I could scare the
Abbot Richard and the Abbess Mechtild by the lift of a little finger.
Oh, I know what I am saying! It so happens that your Prosper is a great
friend of mine. I am very fond of him, and of course I must needs be
interested in what you tell me. Well now--come with me and find him.
Will you? I dare say he is not very far off."

Isoult stared at her without speaking. Doubt, wonder, longing, prayer,
quavered in her eyes as each held the throne for a time.

"He told me to stay at Gracedieu," she faltered. It seemed to her that
she was maiming her own dream.

"He tells me differently then," said Maulfry, smiling easily; "I
suppose even a lover may change his mind."

"Oh! Oh! you have seen him?

"Certainly I have seen him."

"And he says--"

"What do you think he says? Might it not be, Come and find me?"

"He is--ah, he is ill?"

"He is well."

"In danger?"

"I know of none."

"I am to leave Gracedieu and come with you, ma'am?"

"Yes. Are you afraid?"

For answer Isoult fell flat down and kissed Maulfry's silver hem.

"I will follow you to death!" she cried.

Maulfry shivered, then arched her brows.

"It will not be so bad as all that," she said. "Come then, we will find
the horses."

Isoult looked down confusedly at her grey frock.

"You little jay bird, who's to see you here among the trees? Come with
me, I'll set you strutting like a peacock before I've done with you,"
said Maulfry, in her mocking, good-humoured way.

They went together. Maulfry had hold of Isoult by the hand. Presently
they came to an open glade where there were two horses held by a
mounted groom. As soon as he saw them coming the groom got off, helped
Isoult first, then his mistress. They rode away at a quick trot down
the slope; the horses seemed to know the way.

Maulfry was in high spirits. She played a thousand tricks, and
enveigled from the brooding girl her most darling thoughts. Before they
had made their day's journey she had learnt all that she wanted to
know, or rather what she knew already. It confirmed what Galors had
told her: she believed his story. For her part Isoult, having once made
the plunge, gave her heart its way, bathed it openly in love, and was
not ashamed. To talk of Prosper more freely than she had ever dared
even to herself, to talk of loving him, of her hopes of winning him!
She seemed a winged creature as she flew through the hours of a forest
day. It pleased her, too, to think that she was being discreet in
saying nothing of her marriage. If Prosper had not thought fit to
reveal it to his accomplished friend she must keep the secret by all
means--his and hers. Instead of clouding her hopeful visions this gave
them an evening touch of mystery. It elevated her by making her an
accomplice. He and she were banded together against this all-wise lady.
No doubt she would learn it in time--in his time; and then Isoult
dreamed (and blushed as she dreamed) of another part, wherein she would
snuggle herself into his arm and whisper, "Have I not been wise?" Then
she would be kissed, and the lady would laugh to learn how she had been
outwitted by a young girl. Ah, what dreams! Isoult's wings took her a
far flight when once she had spread them to the sun.

Journeying thus they reached a road by nightfall, and a little House of
Access. To go direct to Tortsentier they should have passed this house
on the left-hand, for the tower was south-east from Gracedieu. But
there was a reason for the circuit, as for every other twist of
Maulfry's; the true path would have brought them too nearly upon that
by which Prosper and Isoult had come seeking sanctuary. Instead they
struck due east, and hit the main road which runs from High March to
Market Basing; then by going south for another day they would win
Tortsentier. Isoult, of course, as a born woodlander would know the
whereabouts of Maulfry's dwelling from any side but the north. She was
of South Morgraunt, and therefore knew nothing of the north or middle
forest. All this Maulfry had calculated. At the House of Access the
girl was actually a day's journey nearer Prosper than she had been at
the convent, but she knew nothing of it. Consequently her night's rest
refreshed her, waking dreams stayed the night, and left traces of their
rosy flames in her cheeks next morning. Maulfry, waking first, looked
at her as she lay pillowing her cheek on her arm, with her wild hair
spread behind her like a dark cloud. Maulfry, I say, looked at her.

"You are a little beauty, my dear," she thought to herself. "Countess
or bastard, you are a little beauty. And there is countess in your
blood somewhere, I'll take an oath. Hands and feet, neck and head, tell
the story. There was love and a young countess and a hot-brained
troubadour went to the making of you, my little lady. A ditch-full of
witches could not bring such tokens to a villein. Galors, my dear
friend, if I owed nothing to Master le Gai, I doubt if I should help
you to this. 'Tis too much, my friend, with an earldom. She needs no
crown, pardieu!"

She knew her own crown had toppled, and grew a little bleak as she
thought of it. There was no earldom for her to fall back upon. She
looked older when off her guard. But she had determined to be loyal to
the one friend she had ever had. The worst woman in the world can do
that much. Therefore, when Isoult woke up she found herself made much
of. The sun of her day-dreaming rose again and shone full upon her. By
the end of the day they had reached Tortsentier. Isoult was fast in a
prison that had no look of a prison, where Galors was mending his
throat in an upper chamber.

Maulfry came and sat on the foot of his bed. Galors, strapped and
bandaged till he looked like a mewed owl in a bush, turned his chalk
face to her with inquiry shooting out of his eyes. He had grown a spiky
black beard, from which he plucked hairs all day, thinking and scheming.

"Well," was all he said.

Maulfry nodded. "The story is true. She has the feet and hands. She is
a little beauty. You have only to shut the hole in your neck."

Galors swore. "Let God judge whether that damned acrobat shall pay for
his writhing! But the other shall be my first business. So she is
here--you have seen her? What do you think of her?"

"I have told you."

The man's appetite grew as it fed upon Maulfry's praise of his taste.

"Ah--ah! Dame, I'm a man of taste--eh?"

Maulfry said nothing. Galors changed the note.

"How shall I thank you, my dear one?" he asked her.

"Ah," said she, "I shall need what you can spare before long."

Then she left him.




CHAPTER XIII

HIGH MARCH, AND A GREAT LADY


In the weeping grey of an autumn morning, but in great spirits of his
own, Prosper left Gracedieu for High March. The satisfaction of having
braved the worst of an adventure was fairly his; to have made good
disposition of what threatened to fetter him by shutting off any
possible road from his advance; and to have done this (so far as he
could see) without in any sense withdrawing from Isoult the advantages
she could expect--this was tunable matter, which set him singing before
the larks were off the ground. He felt like a man who has earned his
pleasure; and pleasure, as he understood it, he meant to have. The zest
for it sparkled in his quick eyes as he rode briskly through the
devious forest ways. Had Galors or any other dark-entry man met him now
and chanced a combat, he would have bad it with a will, but he would
have got off with a rough tumble and sting or two from the flat of the
sword. The youth was too pleased with himself for killing or slicing.

However, there was nobody to fight. North Morgraunt was pretty
constantly patrolled by the Countess's riders at this time. A few grimy
colliers; some chair-turners amid their huts and white chips on the
edge of a hidden hamlet; drovers with forest ponies going for Waisford
or Market Basing; the hospitality and interminable devotions of a
hermit by a mossy crucifix on Two Manors Waste; one night alone in a
ruined chapel on the top of a down:--of such were the encounters and
events of his journey. He was no Don Quixote to make desperadoes or
feats of endurance out of such gear; on the contrary, he persistently
enjoyed himself. Sour beer wetted his lips dry with talking; leaves
made a capital bed; the hermit, in the intervals of his prayers,
remembered his own fighting days in the Markstake, and knew what was
done to make Maximilian the Second safely king. Everything was as it
should be.

On the third day he fell in with a troop of horse, whose spears carried
the red saltire of the house of Forz on their banneroles. Since they
were bound as he was for the Castle, he rode in their company, and in
due course saw before him on a height among dark pines the towers of
High March, with the flag of the Lady Paramount afloat on the breeze.
It was on a dusty afternoon of October and in a whirl of flying leaves,
that he rode up to the great gate of the outer bailey, and blew a blast
on the horn which hung there, that they might let down the bridge.

When the Countess Isabel heard who and of what condition her visitor
was she made him very welcome. The Forz and the Gais were of the same
country and of nearly the same degree in it. She had been a Forz before
she married, and she counted herself so still, for the earldom of
Hauterive was hers in her own right; and though she was Earl Roger's
widow (and thus a double Countess Dowager) she could not but remember
it. So she did Prosper every honour of hospitality: she sent some of
her ladies to disarm him and lead him to the bath; she sent him soft
clothing to do on when he was ready for it; in a word, put him at his
ease. When he came into the hall it was the same thing she got up from
her chair of estate and walked down to meet him, while all the company
made a lane for the pair of them. Prosper would have knelt to kiss her
hand had she let him, but instead she gave it frankly into his own.

"You are the son of my father's friend, Sir Prosper," she said, "and
shall never kneel to me."

"My lady," said he, "I shall try to deserve your gracious welcome. My
father, rest his soul, is dead, as you may have heard."

"Alas, yes," the Countess replied, "I know it, and grieve for you and
your brothers. Of my Lord Malise I have also heard something."

"Nothing good, I'll swear," interjected Prosper to himself.

The Countess went on--

"Well, Sir Prosper, you stand as I stand, alone in the world. It would
seem we had need of each other."

Prosper bowed, feeling the need of nobody for his part. Remember he was
three-and-twenty to the Countess's thirty-five; and she ten years a
widow. She did not notice his silence, but went on, glowing with her
thoughts.

"We should be brother and sister for the sake of our two fathers," she
said with a gentle blush.

"I never felt to want a sister till now," cried Master Prosper, making
another bow. So it was understood between them that theirs was to be a
nearer relationship than host and guest.

The Countess Isabel--or to give her her due, Isabel, Countess of
Hauterive, Countess Dowager of March and Bellesme, Lady of
Morgraunt--was still a beautiful woman, tall, rather slim, pale, and of
a thoughtful cast of the face. She had a very noble forehead, level,
broad, and white; her eyes beneath arched brows were grey--cold grey,
not so full nor so dark as Isoult's, nor so blue in the whites, but
keener. They were apt to take a chill tinge when she was rather
Countess of Hauterive than that Isabel de Forz who had loved and lost
Fulk de Bréauté. She never forgot him, and for his sake wore nothing
but silk of black and white; but she did not forget herself either;
within walls you never saw her without a thin gold circlet on her head.
Even at Mass she, would have no other covering. She said it was enough
for the Countess of Hauterive, whom Saint Paul probably had not in his
mind when he wrote his epistle. Her hair was a glory, shining and very
abundant, but brown not black. Isoult, you will perceive, was a warmer,
tenderer copy of her mother, owing something to Fulk. Isoult, moreover,
had not been born a countess. Both were inaccessible, the daughter from
the timidity of a wild thing, the mother from the rarity of her air.
Being what she was, twice a widow, bereft of her only child, and
burdened with cares which she was much too proud to give over, she
never had fair judgment she was considered hard where she was merely
lonely. Her greatness made her remote, and her only comforter the worst
in the world--herself. Her lips drooped a little at the corners; this
gave her a wistful look at times. At other times she looked almost
cruel, because of a trick she had of going with them pressed together.
As a matter of fact she was shy as well as proud, and fed on her own
sorrows from lack of the power to declare them abroad. It was very
seldom she took a liking for any stranger; doubtful if Prosper's
lineage had won her to open to him as she had done. His face was more
answerable; that blunt candour of his, the inquiring blue eyes, the
eager throw-back of the head as he walked, above all the friendly smile
he had for a world where everything and everybody seemed new and
delightful and specially designed for his entertainment--this was what
unlocked the Countess's darkened treasury of thought.

Once loosed she never drew back. Brother and sister they were to be.
She made him hand her in to supper; he must sit at her right hand; her
own cup-bearer should fill his wine-cup, her own Sewer taste all his
meats. At the end of supper she sent for a great cup filled with wine;
it needed both her hands. She held it up before she drank to him,
saying, "Let there be love and amity between me and thee." The terms of
this aspiration astonished him; he accepted honours easily, for he was
used to observances at Starning; but to be thee'd and thou'd by this
lady! As he stood there laughing and blushing like a boy she made him
drink from the cup to the same wish and in the same terms. When once
your frozen soul opens to the thaw all the sluices are away, truly.
Prosper went to bed that night very well content with his reception. He
saw his schemes ripening fast on such a sunny wall as this. His head
was rather full, and of more than the fumes of wine; consequently in
saying his prayers he did not remember Isoult at all. Yet hers had been
sped out of Gracedieu Minster long before, and to the same gods. Only
she had had Saint Isidore in addition; and she had had Prosper. Hers
probably went nearer the mark. Until you have made a beloved of your
saint or a saint of your beloved--it matters not greatly which--you
will get little comfort out of your prayers.

It was, however, heedlessness rather than design which brought it
about, that as the days at High March succeeded each other Prosper did
not tell the Countess either of his adventure or of his summary method
of achieving it. Design was there: he did not see his way to involving
the Abbot, who was, he knew, a dependant of his hostess, and yet could
not begin the story elsewhere than at the beginning. Something, too,
kept the misfortunes of his wife from his tongue--an honourable
something, not his own pride of race. But he, in fact, forgot her. The
days were very pleasant. He hunted the hare, the deer, the wolf, the
bear. He hunted what he liked best of all to hunt, the man; and he got
the honour which only comes from successful hunting in that sort-the
devout admiration of those he led. So soon as it was found out where
his tastes and capacities lay he had as much of this work as he chose.
High March was on the northern borders of the Countess's country; not
far off was the Markstake, stormy, debatable land, plashy with blood.
There were raids, there were hornings and burnings, lifting of cattle
and ravishment of women, to be prevented or paid for. Prosper saw
service. The High March men had never had a leader quite like him-so
young, so light and fierce, so merry in fight. Isoult might eat her
heart out with love; Prosper had the love of his riders, for by this
they were his to a man.

There were other influences at work, more subtle and every bit as
rapacious. There were the long hours in the hall by the leaping light
of the fire and the torches, feasts to be eaten, songs to sing, dances,
revels, and such like. Prosper was a cheerful, very sociable youth. He
had the manners of his father and the light-hearted impertinence of a
hundred ancestors, all rulers of men and women. He made love to no one,
and laughed at what he got of it for nothing--which was plenty. There
were shaded hours in the Countess's chamber, where the songs were
softer and the pauses of the songs softer still; morning hours in the
grassy alleys between the yew hedges; hours in the south walk in an air
thick with the languors of warm earth and garden flowers; intimate
rides in the pine wood; the wild freedom of hawking in the open downs;
the grass paths; Yule; the music, the hopes of youth, the sweet
familiarity, the shared books, the timid encroachments and gentle
restraints, half-entreaties, half-denials:--no young man can resist
these things unless he thinks of them suspectingly (as Prosper never
did), and no woman wishes to resist them. If Prosper found a sister,
Isabel began to find more than a brother. She grew younger as he grew
older. They were more than likely to meet half way.




CHAPTER XIV

A RECORDER


In these delicate times of crisis Isoult found an advocate, a recorder,
if you will be ruled by me. It was none too soon, for the brother and
sister of High March had reached that pretty stage of intimacy when
long silences are an embarrassment, and embarrassments compact equally
of pleasure and pain. As far as the lady was concerned the pleasure
predominated; the pain was reduced to sweet confusion, the air made
tremulous with promise. I do not say that for Prosper the relationship
did more than put him at his ease--but that is a good deal. Say the
Countess was a fire and High March an armchair. Prosper had settled
himself to stretch his legs and drowse. Poor Isoult was the wailing
wind in the chimney--a sound which could but add to his comfortable
well-being. It needs more than a whimper to tempt a man to be cold in
your company. The recorder was timely.

Prosper and his Countess were hawking in the fields beyond the forest,
and the sport had been bad. They had, in fact, their birds jessed and
hooded and were turning for home, when Prosper saw some fields away a
white bird--gull he thought--flying low. He sprang his tercel-gentle;
the same moment the Countess saw the quarry and flew hers. Both hawks
found at first cast; the white bird flew towards the falconers,
circling the field in which they stood, with its enemies glancing about
it. It gradually closed in, circling still round them and round, till
at last it was so near and so low as almost to be in reach of Prosper's
hand. He saw that it was not a gull, but a pigeon, and started on a
reminiscence. Just then one of the towering falcons stooped and
engaged. There was a wild scurry of wings; then the other bird dropt.
The Countess cheered the hawks: Prosper saw only the white bird with a
wound in her breast. Then as the quarry began to scream he remembered
everything, and to the dismay of the lady leapt off his horse, ran to
the struggling birds, and cuffed them off with all his might. He
succeeded. The wounded bird fluttered, half flying, half hopping,
across the grass, finally rose painfully into the air and soared out of
sight. Meantime Prosper, breathless and red in the face, had hooded and
bound the hawks. He brought hers back to the Countess without a word.

"My dear Prosper," said she, "you will forgive me for asking if you are
mad?"

"I must seem so," he replied. "But I suppose every one has his tender
part which some shaft will reach. Mine is reached when two hawks wound
a white bird in the crop."

He spoke shortly, and still breathed faster than his wont. The Countess
was piqued.

"It seems to me, I confess, inconvenient in a falconer that he should
be nice as to the colour of his quarry. There must be some reason for
this. I will forgive you for making a bad day's sport worse if you will
tell me your story."

Prosper was troubled. He connected his story with Isoult, though he
could hardly say why. He had merely seen a white bird before his
marriage; yet without that sequel the story could have no point. He did
not wish to speak of his marriage, if for no other reason than that it
was much too late to speak of it. The other reasons remained as valid
as ever; but he was bound to confess the superior cogency of this
present one. Meanwhile the Countess clamoured.

"The story, Prosper, the story!" she cried. "I must and will have the
story. I am very sure it is romantic; you are growing red. Oh, it is
certainly romantic; I shall never rest without the story."

Prosper in desperation remembered a hawking mishap of his boyhood, and
clutched at it.

"This is my story," he said. "When I was a boy with my brothers our
father used to take us with him hawking on Marbery Down. There is a
famous heronry in the valley below it whence you may be sure of a kill;
but on the Down itself are great flocks of sheep tended by shepherds
who come from all parts of the country round about and lie out by their
fires. One day--just such a windy morning as this--my father, my
brother Osric, and I were out with our birds, and did indifferently
well, so far as I can remember. I had new falcon with me--a haggard of
the rock which I had mewed and manned myself. It was the first time I
had tried her on the Down, and she began by giving trouble; then did
better, but finally gave more trouble than at first, as you shall hear.
Towards noon I found myself separate from our company on a great ridge
of the Down where it slopes steeply to the forest, as you know it does
in one place. The flocks were out feeding on the slopes below me, and
their herds--three or four boys and girls--were lying together by a
patch of gorse, but one of them stood up after a while and shaded her
eyes to look over the forest. Then I saw a lonely bird making way for
the heronry. I remember it plainly; in the sun it looked shining white.
I flew my haggard out of the hood at her, sure of a kill. She raked off
at a great pace, as this one did just now; but in mid air she checked
suddenly, heeled over, beat up against the wind, stooped and fell
headlong at the shepherds. I could not tell what had happened; it was
as if the girl had been shot. But, by the Saviour of mankind, this is
the truth: I saw the girl who was standing throw her arms up, I heard
her scream; the others scattered. Then I saw the battling sails of my
falcon. She was on the girl. I spurred my pony and went down the hill
headlong to the music of the girl's screaming. Never before or since
have I seen a peregrine engage at such a quarry as that. She had her
with beak and claws below the left pap. She had ripped up her clothes
and drawn blood, sure enough. The poor child, who looked very starved,
was as white as death: I cannot think she had any blood to spare. As
for her screaming, I have not forgotten it yet--in fact, the bird we
struck to-day reminded me of it and made me act as I did. To cut down
my story, I pulled the hawk off and strangled it, gave the girl what
money I had, said what I could to quiet her, and left her to be patched
up by her friends. She was more frightened than hurt, I fancy. As I
told you, I was a boy at the time; but these things stay by you. It is
a fact at least that I am queasy on the subject of white birds. Before
I came to High March, indeed it was almost my first day in Morgraunt, I
saw and rescued a white bird from two hen-harriers; and now I have been
troubled by another. I seem beset by white birds!"

"It is fortunate you have other hues to choose from," said the Countess
with a smile, "or otherwise you would be no falconer. But your story is
very strange. Have you ever consulted about it?"

"I have said very little about it," Prosper replied, remembering as he
spoke the forest Mass which he had heard, and that he had discoursed
upon this adventure with Alice of the Hermitage.

"The hawk pecked at the girl's heart," said the lady.

"It did not get so far as that, Countess."

"You speak prose, my friend."

"I am no troubadour, but speak what I know."

"The heart means nothing to you, Prosper!"

"The heart? Dear lady, I assure you the girl was not hurt. She is a
young woman by now, probably wife to a clown and mother of
half-a-dozen."

"Prosper, you disappoint me. Let us ride on. I am sick of these
shivering grey fields."

The Countess was vexed, for the life of him he could not tell why. He
made peace at last, but she would not tell him the cause of her
morning's irritation.

That was not the only reminder he had that day--in fact, it was but the
first. In the evening came another.

He was in the Countess's chamber after supper. She was embroidering a
banner, and he had been singing to her as she worked. After his music
the Countess took the lute from him, saying that she would sing. And so
she did, but in a voice so low and constrained that it seemed more to
comfort herself than any other.

Prosper sat by the table idly turning over a roll of blazonry--the
coats of all the knights and gentlemen who had ever been in the service
of High March. It was a roll carefully kept by the pursuivant, very
fine work. He saw that his own was already tricked in its place, and
recognized many more familiar faces. Suddenly he gave a start, and sat
up stiff as a bar. He looked no further, but at the end of the
Countess's song said abruptly--

"Tell me, Countess, whose are these arms?"

She looked at the coat--sable, three wicket-gates argent. "There is a
story about that," she said.

"I beg you to tell it to me," said Prosper; "story for story."

"That is only fair," she laughed, having quite recovered her easy
manner with him. "Come and sit by the fire, and you shall hear it. The
arms," she began, "are those which were assumed by a young knight after
a very bold exploit in my service. He came to me as Salomon de Born,
and I think he was but eighteen--a mere boy."

Prosper, from the heights of his three-and-twenty years, nodded
benignly.

"So much so," said the Countess, "that I fear I must have wounded his
vanity by laughing away what he asked of me. This was no less than to
lead a troop of my men against Renny of Coldscaur, an enemy and
slanderer of mine, but none the less as great a lord as he was rascal.
However, he begged so persistently that I gave in, finding other things
about him--a mystery of his birth and upbringing, a steadfastness also
and gravity far beyond his years--which drew me to put him to the proof
of what he dared. He went, therefore, with a company of light horse,
some fifty men. He was away eight weeks, and then came back--with but
six men, it is true; but youth is prodigal of life, knowing so little
of it."

"Life is given us to spend," quoth Prosper here.

"He came back with six men. But he brought the tongue of Blaise Renny
in a silver cup, and three wicket-gates, which took two men apiece to
carry."

"He had saved just enough men. That was wise of him, and like the king
his namesake," Prosper said, approving of Salomon.

"It was what he said himself", pursued the Countess, "that it was a
fortunate circumstance."

"And how did he win his adventure, and what had the wicket-gates to do
with the business?"

"You shall hear. It seems that Coldscaur, which is in North Marvilion
beyond the Middle Shires, stands on a fretted scarp. It is strongly
defended by art as well as nature, for there are three ravines about it
with a stepped path through each up to the Castle. These were defended
about midway of each by a wicket-gate and a couple of towers. The
gorges are so narrow that there is barely room for a man and horse to
get through; the gates of course correspond."

"Fine defences," said Prosper.

"Very. Well, Salomon de Born with my fifty men seized and occupied a
village at the foot of the scarp one night. In the morning there were
his defences thrown up man-high, and my standard on the church tower.
Renny was furious, and despatched a stronger force than he could afford
to re-take the village. Salomon, counting upon this, had left two men
in it to be killed; with the rest he scaled the scaur and waited in
hiding to see what force Renny took out. He knew to a nicety the
strength of the garrison, saw what there was to see, made his
calculations, and thought he would venture it. He got over the rock, he
and his men, by some means; came down the gorges from the top, secured
the defences, and posted a couple of men at each wicket. With the rest
he surprised the Castle. I believe, indeed, that all the men in it were
killed as well as most of mine. Yet for three or four hours Coldscaur
was in my hands."

"It should have been yours now," said Prosper, "with fifty of your men
once in it."

"My friend, I didn't need Coldscaur. I have castles enough. But it was
necessary to punish Renny."

"And that was done?"

"It was done. Salomon posted his men in the towers by the wicket-gates,
and waited for Renny to return from the village. Luckily for him it
grew dusk, but not dark, before he could be certain by which gorge
Renny himself was coming in. When he had made sure of this he took all
three wickets off their hinges, and sent six men to carry them home to
High March. With the rest he waited for Renny. Finally he saw him
riding up the stepped way, and, as his custom was, far ahead of his
troop. You must know that these people are besotted with pride; the
state they kept (and still keep, I suppose) was more than royal. No one
must ride, walk, or stand within a dozen yards of Renny of 

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