As soon as might be, Montjoy would go that pilgrimage to Canterbury.
Had it been true, that frightful story, were Mark and Westforest
treacherous, Silver Cross down in the mire, evened and more than evened
with Hugh across the river, he would have gone not to Canterbury only,
but to Rome, to Palestine! Only there, in Gethsemane garden--
He sat, a slight, dark man with a worn, handsome face, beneath a cedar
in his castle garden. This was lord’s corner. A castle, God wot, is a
public place! But just here was retirement, appropriated long since and
possessed for long. Wall and ivy and cedar row, and hardly a narrow
window to overlook! Montjoy once had been quick for company, but now
for long he sighed toward solitariness. Solitariness that still should
be splendour!
Silver Cross--Silver Cross--Silver Cross! The splendour must run
through it, bathing the tomb of Isabel, bathing the life-above-death
of Isabel! Bathing also Silver Cross, church and abbey, the old form,
antique, fair, one’s Lady, old yet young through the centuries!
The soul. How to keep the soul in joy? If not in joy, at least in
humble peace.
Montjoy saw himself a grey palmer, state and place laid down. His
daughter wedded come Martinmas to Effingham--another year and her son
born--then he might go and have word with his own suzerain. Palmer--the
road, the shrines, the houses of the religious; quiet, quiet,
unobstructed room for dreams of God.
The sky was lead, the light greenish, the air hot and still. He would
be glad when the storm burst and the land was drenched. Afterward it
would smile once more. He thought, “The Flood is needed again, so
wicked is the earth! Oh, my God, am I of the family of Noah? Do I build
with gopher wood the Ark that saves? Do I enter Christ? Doth He enter
me?”
The cedars clung dark, they darkened the day yet more. Montjoy looked
into a cell at Westforest and saw there Richard Englefield. Surely he
is mad, though he lies so still, with his face buried in his arms!
_Brother Richard._
Montjoy looked into the prison under the castle hill and saw Morgen Fay.
_Not for five years have I touched her, O Christ!_
The prison closed. The sky hung so still and hung so heavy! Lightning
and thunder would be welcome, rising wind and splash of rain. Friday
would be welcome. The bramble burned, the hindering, evil bramble,
harmful to the sheep, vexful to the shepherd--“O Christ, is there
hardness? But the field must be cleared of bramble. Aye, it is worse
than bramble. Mandrake and hemlock and helebore, and the children are
endangered!”
Montjoy saw Holy Well and the great picture, and that fine, fine
reliquary of pure gold that rejoicing--Satan afar and all the mind in
health--Brother Richard had wrought for the Rose, Montjoy bringing the
gold. Yesterday Montjoy had gone to Silver Cross and to Holy Well.
There had been pilgrims a hundred, and they kneeled, praying and
singing. The day was fair as this was foul, and had bubbled and laughed
that crystal well, sunlight into sunlight! They had cups of silver and
of horn and of tree and of clay, and one by one they drank while the
singing rose around. He, Montjoy, had seen a cripple fling away his
crutch and stand and run, and a palsied man grow firm. “Who healeth
them? Thou, thou, who truly didst appear to Brother Richard!”
Even now, in this oppressive day, under this dull sky, Montjoy felt
again that exaltation. He looked around him and up to the lowering
heaven. “Little, weak castle--murky roof of ignorance--yet is there
clear power!”
The rain began to fall.
In the night-time, waking, he found horror with him, something cold,
something forlorn and suspicious. It deepened. He left his great
bed and Montjoy’s wife sleeping, put thick gown around him and went
noiseless into the oratory opening from the great chamber, cold in the
beams of a moon growing old. No peace! At the turn of the night, when
afar he heard cock crow and his dogs bark, he determined that he would
go that morning to confession to Father Edmund at Saint Ethelred’s.
That was the sternest, the most dedicated, the most single of eye and
will! To him he would confess everything that he would if he could save
from her death the harlot and witch.
Morning came and all the castle took up busy and talkative life.
Montjoy rode to Saint Ethelred’s. Father Edmund? Oh, aye! he would hear
him, and Father Edmund thought. “Time that lords give over slothful and
unwise confessors! Father Ambrosius hath forever done him hurt.”
Montjoy was long upon his knees. He accepted heavy penance, took shrift
humbly, came forth from Saint Ethelred’s with a colourless face like a
gem.
Riding back to the castle, when he came to prison street he turned his
black horse and rode slowly by the dark prison. He had told Father
Edmund all his thoughts and in the bale was the thought, “I will visit
her there in that dungeon before Friday. Is not that Christian, O
God, if my deepest heart that is now thine seems to bid me to go?”
But Father Edmund had been greatly stern. “Satan wrestleth for thy
deepest heart! Hear me now! It is forbidden! Go not to, speak not to
that All-Evil! If thou dost she will draw thee with her into hell!
Thou thinkest, ‘Once I was familiarly with her’, and cowardice and
heartlessness now only to think and never to say, ‘God have mercy upon
thee, poor soul!’ Son, son, that is devil’s bait! He will come and
stand and ask thee, ‘Is it knightly?’ It is his wile, to clothe himself
in light! As for the witch, she lacks not soul counsel! Since she was
taken, each day have I preached to her. I will hold the cross before
her chained to stake. She shall see it, lifted high, till flame takes
eyes. But thou, my son, I lay it upon thee, leaving here, to ride by
the prison, and to say as thou ridest. ‘Sin, I will no longer sin with
thee, nor come into thy company!’ Say it!”
“Sin, I will no longer sin with thee, nor come into thy company.”
“So! And son, thou wilt come with thy squires and thy men on Friday to
town cross.”
So Montjoy rode by the prison.
It was dark in there, fetid and dark, and Morgen Fay the sinner had
little to think of but her sins. She could not blink them that they
were many.
Her sins and death, and after that the Judgment. Death and Judgment and
for her Hell, or at the best the direst corner of dire Purgatory and
the longest stay. Ages there, while souls of thieves and murderers left
her one by one and went upward, and never a word for the one who must
stay. At the best, the very best, and perhaps even that gleam had no
reality! Not Purgatory, but everlasting Hell.