With the air of one who shakes off all ultimate responsibility with a
shrug of the shoulders, she followed Fulk through the gate in the
palisade.
“Oh, my good bachelor,” she said to herself, “you are likely to have
your throat cut because of this, and someone will thrust a torch into
yonder thatch. The dice cannot serve both players at one throw.”
The White Lodge loomed up over them, its long front frowning with black
beams. The shaggy eaves threw a band of dense shadow, and the upper
storey overhung the lower, being carried out on oak brackets and great
carved corner posts. A path of rough stones sunk in the ground led to
the porch, with the oak door studded with iron nails and hung on
hand-wrought strap-hinges. There were beds of herbs, a grass plot, and a
few rose bushes in front of the house; also a sundial set on a stone
pillar.
Fulk knocked loudly with the pommel of his short sword. He and Isoult
stood together in the gloom of the porch, so close that they could have
touched each other; yet neither spoke, but listened to the sound of each
other’s breathing. A tacit sense of antagonism possessed them. The man
mistrusted the woman; the woman thought the man an obstinate fool.
They heard someone stirring within. There was an iron grille in the
door, and the little shutter that closed it was shot back. A man’s voice
bellowed a challenge as though he were bawling at a disobedient hound:
“Who’s there?”
The voice seemed to make a draught in the porch, and the high wooden
palisade echoed it back.
“Open to us, John.”
The bars were withdrawn, and the door opened.
“A catch, master, surely!”
“Nothing to boast of. Get a light.”
The fellow made way for them, and went to light a torch at the embers
that still glowed on the round hearth in the centre of the hall. He
yawned hugely and scratched his head, the torch, as it flared up,
throwing on the wall a large and shadowy travesty of a round head and a
jogging elbow. Fulk rebarred the door, and the woman Isoult went to warm
herself before the glowing ashes.
The forester turned, yawning in her face; but astonishment proved
stronger than the incipient yawn.
“Strike me bloody—a woman!”
He held the torch high, and put his face near to hers. His breath, and
the sodden hardness of his eyes told her that he was too fond of the
mead horn.
“Hey, you hen-harrier! Master, it be a woman.”
Fulk turned on him fiercely.
“Kennel up, you fool of a sot! Put the torch in a bracket. Now, go and
fetch us a jug of cider and some bread and honey. Hurry!”
The man blinked and went off yawning, but Fulk called him back before he
reached the door leading towards the kitchen quarters.
“Dame Ferrers is abed?”
“These three hours, master.”
“Good. Bring the cider, bread and honey, and then go and set up the
truckle bed in the store-room, and get clean straw.”
They were left alone together. Fulk pointed her to a stool by the fire.
“My mother and her wench are abed. They shall look to you to-morrow.”
She nodded, and said nothing, but stole a glance at him from under her
hood. The smoky flare of the solitary torch was even more baffling than
the moonlight, and Fulk was standing, half turned to the light, and
examining the two halves of the bow he had taken from her, his face
hard, inscrutable, and murky.
“This bow was not made in these parts.”
“It may tell you more than I can.”
John the forester returned with a jug of cider, and bread and honey on a
hollywood platter. Fulk bade him set the food and drink before Isoult.
The fellow, none too sober, stumbled against the hearth curb, and spilt
half the cider.
Fulk struck him across the shoulders with half of the broken bow.
“Sot! Vanish—get out of my sight!”
When the man had gone he turned to Isoult, frowning:
“A man who cannot rule his body is no better than a beast. Eat.”
She took bread, and spread the honey with her girdle knife, nothing but
the point of her chin showing under the shadow of her hood.
“Lording,” she said, “you are very masterful. Do you rule your men as
you rule your dogs?”
“It serves. A cur is a villein; a hound a gentleman.”
She took the jug and drank.
“So! We are all dogs, if not of the same litter. And some of us are
hated. What do the people sing now:
“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Where was then the gentleman?”
He looked down at her, as from a height.
“A fool’s ditty. Will you ask me to prove that a hart royal is no better
than a rooting hog? A scullion’s forbears were scullions: that’s the
sense of’t.”
She held out the loaf to him.
“Will you not eat?”
“I eat but twice a day.”
“Proud, even over a platter. Oh, my good bachelor, you will not be
long-lived!”
When she had eaten, Fulk took a rushlight, lit it at the torch, and
stood waiting. Isoult rose and followed him to the door of the
store-room that opened out of a passage leading from the hall. He gave
her the rushlight, and their fingers touched.
“Cold hand, Messire Fulk, hot heart.”
He said nothing, but waited for her to enter, and then locked the door
after her and took the key.
Fulk slept in the hall that night on a deer-skin spread upon a bed of
bracken, and so little had the feminine temper of the adventure stirred
him that he slept till five of the clock, when he was wakened by John
the forester opening the shutters.
“A touch of frost, master, but a fine morning. Peter of the Purlieus has
been watching the Pippinford rides. He was to meet me at Stonegate two
hours after sunrise.”
Fulk was still sleepy.
“Yes, get along. Take a couple of hounds and your quarterstaff, and blow
three notes if you see aught that is strange.”
The forester started out, and Fulk dozed off again till he woke to the
sound of someone singing. For the moment he had almost forgotten the
woman in yonder, and to judge by her matins she was in a mood with the
birds.
He sat up just as the solar door opened, and a grey figure appeared at
the top of the wooden stairway leading down into the hall. The figure
had paused, as though listening, its eyes fixed upon Fulk seated on the
deer-skin where the morning sunlight poured in upon the floor.
“Fulk!”
“Mother!”
Margaret Ferrers came down slowly into the hall. She was clad all in
grey, her head wrapped in a starched white wimple, a cold figure with
cold eyes. Her face was as passionless as the face of one lying dead in
a shroud, nostrils and lips thin and compressed, the skin bloodless and
opaque. This woman had the air of having left her soul behind her
somewhere in the past, but this morning her eyes were alert and
mistrustful, her face as sharp and pinched as on a bitter winter
morning. Isoult was still singing, and with such abandonment that the
words could be heard in the hall:
“I put me on a new shift the morning I was wed.
My gown it was of cloth of gold, my hose of Flemish red.”
Margaret Ferrers asked no questions. She stood, waiting, like the ghost
in the tale forbidden by pride to speak until spoken to. Fulk sprang up,
the impetuous youth in him missing the look in his mother’s eyes.
“Listen to the caged bird singing. I caught it last night under the
Witch Cross yews.”
“A woman?”
“Stalking a hart by moonlight, with a bow in her hand. I locked her in
the store-room for the night.”
Margaret Ferrers still considered him with her mistrustful eyes.
“A woman!”
“Who calls herself Isoult of the Rose. Jade or lady, she goes before the
verderers at the next swainmote. We shall have to lodge her here.”
His mother was wondering whether she should believe him. They came to
all men, these adventures, and yet he carried it off like a boy who had
brought home a snared rabbit.
“Who is she? Whence does she come?”
“I know no more than Father Adam. Some gay dame, perhaps, tired of her
bower, and come adventuring. She tried to fool me.”
Margaret Ferrers listened to the singing voice.
“Some light wench,” she thought; but to her son she said, “Give me the
key, Fulk. I may find out more than a man could.”
He gave her the key without demur, and leaving her to visit Isoult of
the Rose, he passed out into the courtyard and washed in the great stone
trough under the pump.
Dame Margaret approached the matter with all the uncharitableness of a
woman who once in her life had stood in bitter need of the world’s
charity. Her face seemed to grow thinner and sharper from the moment
that she set eyes upon Isoult. The claws of a woman’s jealous instinct
tore all fripperies aside, and laid bare the sinful body that good women
imagine they see under richly coloured clothes.
Isoult was no less instantly upon her guard. She looked slantwise at
Dame Margaret, holding her head high, and seeing in the grey and
blighting figure mistrust, arrogance, and scorn.
“The day’s blessing on you, madame.”
Isoult chose to speak in the French tongue, mincingly yet railingly,
with a gleam far back in her dark eyes. She spoke Breton French, and
spoke it fluently, and with a little mischievous lilt that had the
sparkle of fine wine. This solemn flapping heron was to be stooped at
and struck with the talons, for Margaret Ferrers’ eyes had thrown out
the one word that is unforgivable and not to be forgotten.
“I am in love with this fair chamber. It is good to smell the spicery,
and the herbs, and the salted meat. Madame, it is through no wish of
mine that messire, your son, has inflicted me upon you. But he was so
obstinate in holding what he had taken!”
Margaret Ferrers looked her up and down with glances that slashed the
gay clothes to ribbons. She had nothing pleasant to say to Isoult, and
being the woman she was she said all that was unpleasant.
“Let us understand each other. Some of us go in our proper colours. My
house is not an intake, though it must serve as a jail. Have you
anything you wish to say?”
Isoult’s eyes glittered.
“Madame, nothing, save that grey twilight follows a red sunset. Let us
not waste words on each other. I am not what you believe; you may not
have been what you seem.”
She saw the elder woman’s face redden, her nostrils dilate, her mouth
grow pinched and thin.
“Enough. I will leave you to my kitchen wench. She will bring you your
food, and you can vent your sauciness on her; she will know how to
answer properly to suit the colour of your gown.”
The dame tried to outstare Isoult, but her eyelids flickered, nor did
the flush die out of her face till she had relocked the door upon this
strolling jade.
In the hall she found Fulk throwing some brushwood on the hot ashes of
the night’s fire. An instant flash of Margaret Ferrers’ eyes showed her
jealous, doubting temper. She strove to become mistress of herself
again—the cold woman whose heart had chastened itself through many
years of dread and suspense and perilous pride.
Fulk looked round sharply, challenging her:
“Well, mother?”
She made an effort to put the heat of malice out of her mouth, and in
the main she succeeded.
“I have little that needs saying. Trust a woman to see through a woman.
We must feed the jade till the swainmote meets.”
“Who is she?”
“I neither know nor care.”
“Whence has she come?”
“I did not ask her. Such wenches come from nowhere and go nowhere, till
the Father of Lies takes his own.”
The son looked thoughtful.
“You are no wiser than when you went in?”
“Yes, wiser; wise enough.”
He seemed to consider the matter as though all the authority were his.
“Give me the key, mother. I must read this rebus.”
Her face softened. Some instinct made her afraid, and yet urged her to
dissemble her fear, for she was loath to let her son go into Isoult’s
chamber.
“Do not vex your head about the jade, Fulk. I will see to it.”
He said quietly:
“Mother, the key.”
Her eyelids flickered as she looked at him with a troubled recognition
of something that challenged her inmost conscience, for she saw, more
suddenly than ever before, a likeness both in body and mind that was
princely and almost terrible. His yea and nay were serenely imperious;
he soared at a royal height and stooped to take his desire.
Margaret Ferrers gave him the key and stood stiff and mute, listening to
his footsteps as he went along the passage leading to Isoult’s room.
The place had a narrow window that was barred with iron, but the morning
sun poured in through it, and Isoult herself stood in the sunlight. She
had let down her hair, and was combing it with an ivory comb.
Fulk paused in the doorway like a man who has stumbled on a milk-white
hind couched in a secret thicket. Nor was the woman blind. She had
thrown her green cloak and her sky-blue cote-hardie on a stool, the
cote-hardie all embroidered with silver suns and stars, with green
tippets at the elbows and buttons of blue enamel down the front. Fulk
found her in her shift and kirtle, the latter of holly green, fitting
close to the figure, and showing off the curves of hip and bosom. She
wore a girdle of red leather with a gypsire hanging from it. Her shoes
were of red leather, her hose of grass-green silk.
Fulk paused by the door, a little dazzled by the blackness of the
woman’s hair, the whiteness of her throat, and all the rich colours of
her garments. A strange hunting dress, and a strange huntress! Moreover,
there was a world of raillery and laughter deep in her eyes. She had
seemed pale by moonlight, but this morning her lips were very red and
she was a creature of colour, of white curves, and of haunting health.
“Good-day to you, Messire Fulk.”
She looked at him steadily, provokingly, and went on combing her hair.
And standing there, one hand on the door-post, he essayed to catechise
her, only to be met with a kind of railing silence. It was a new notion
to him that a woman should set out to treat him as though he were a
clown and a fool.
“Take your chance or lose it. I am in no temper to be kept like a hawk
on a perch.”
She ran the comb through her hair deliberately and at her leisure.
“If I had anything to say, Messire Fulk, I should have said it long ago.
One thing: do not send your mother to me; we shall quarrel, and I have a
devil’s tongue. Now, I will not hinder you——”
She turned her back and appeared busied with gathering up her hair ready
for the silver net.
“You have nothing to say?”
She gave him one glance over her shoulder.
“No, Messire Fulk, nothing.”
He went out with a stiff face, conscious that he had fared no better
than his mother.