About sunset Fulk went up to Standard Hill and looked out over the
forest. Spread below him, with all the great oaks burgeoning into
bronze, was a shimmering sea of gold meeting a sky of amber, and from it
rose the singing of a thousand birds. About the group of firs on
Standard Hill the slanting sunlight struck upon the young green growth
of the heather, and made it shine like the dust of emeralds scattered
broadcast over the earth. The yews of Nutley hung like a thundercloud
across a band of scarlet, and the distant hills were all soft greys and
purples. The western sky was like the mysterious eyes of a woman flushed
with love.
Fulk could see nothing stirring on the heathlands, and he turned back to
the White Lodge in the valley. The day had passed quietly, and he judged
that the wagon had reached Lewes town in safety, and that on the morrow
Peter of Pippinford and his men would be back at the White Lodge. A
frail smoke spiral went up from the louvre of the hall, and the whole
valley was very still save for the singing of the birds in the oak woods
on either side of the meadow. The grassland itself was a sheet of gold,
and the old thorns by the great ditch were white with flower, and
wondrous fragrant.
Fulk passed just within the porch to watch an owl gliding along the edge
of the wood; but it so happened that he saw more than an owl. A man in a
brown smock came cautiously from behind the trunk of an oak, and stood
looking towards the White Lodge, shading his eyes with his hand.
Fulk, motionless in the shadowy porch, called softly to the forester
whom he had left on guard in the hall.
“John, bring me my bow.”
No one answered him, and he gave an impatient jerk of the head.
“Fool, are you there?”
There was a long silence—a silence that seemed to hint at a suppressed
chuckle. Fulk turned and went in, searched the hall, the kitchen
quarters, the store-room and upper chambers, but found no John. The
fellow had sneaked off, and fled into the forest.
Fulk took his bow and a couple of arrows from the table and passed out
again into the porch. The man in brown had disappeared from the edge of
the oak wood, and in his place stood a figure in a grey frock and hood,
the figure of a grey friar, still as a stone figure in a niche over a
church door.
Fulk fingered his chin.
“So you are there, my friend. God’s mercy, but I have been bidden to
wait for you, and I will wait with a naked sword. Let us see whether any
ditch-mender will dare to put a foot over this threshold.”
Passing swiftly from place to place, he closed and fastened every door
and shutter, but left the porch door open. Brown dusk was falling, and
the rafters of the hall were lost in gloom. Fulk kicked up the fire,
threw on half a faggot and some logs, and the flare of the flames as
they blazed up were reflected in his eyes. A ringed coat and an open
basinet hung on a peg above the dais, with a plain black shield and a
sword in a blue scabbard. Fulk stood listening a moment before taking
down the hauberk. He slipped it on, donned the basinet, and began to
fasten the laces to the rings of the chain gorget.
The fire had blazed up brightly, and, taking the shield and sword, Fulk
drew a stool near to the hearth and sat down to watch and wait. He
unsheathed the sword and laid it across his knees. There was no sound
that he could hear other than the crackling of the burning wood or the
scattering of sparks as a log fell. He saw a rat come out of a hole in
the wainscoting and go gliding along the wall.
His eyes were fated to serve him sooner than his ears, for he had left
the heavy oak door wide open, and in the dark streak between the hinge
post and the edge of the door he saw something that glistened. It was
the white of a man’s eye peering through the crack, and looking straight
at him as he sat beside the fire.
Fulk’s muscles tightened.
“Hallo, my friend! I see you.”
His voice was sharp and ringing as the stroke of a dagger upon steel.
The glistening eye melted back into the shadows, and he heard whispering
voices and a scuffling of feet. There were some twenty men in the
courtyard, bunched together like hounds who have come to the mouth of a
bear’s cave.
One figure took another by the scruff of the neck and thrust it forward,
and persuaded it towards the porch at the point of a sword. Fulk heard a
man snarl like a dog. Then a mop head came furtively round the edge of
the door, red eyes blinking anxiously, as though ready to dodge a blow.
The head jerked back again, and Fulk heard the murmur of voices grow
louder. One voice topped the others, and the rest grew silent.
“Leave it to me, sirs; I know how to handle a vicious colt.”
Fulk took the measure of the man who stalked insolently into the hall.
It was the figure of a strapping bully, swaggering, tawdry, dramatic,
clad in a scarlet cote-hardie covered with tarnished embroidery,
hauberk, and basinet very rusty, and the blade of his sword, which he
carried naked upon his shoulder, jagged like a saw. The red points of
his forked beard stuck out like tusks, for he had a habit of throwing
his head well back, and looking at people with an aggressive and staring
insolence.
Fulk scanned him from head to heel; his nostrils dilating a little, his
mouth twitching with scorn. He bided there silently like a hound of the
blood waiting to hear a strange cur snarl at him.
Guy the Stallion gave him a swaggering salute with his sword.
“Master Fulk Ferrers, greeting. I have twenty men at my back, and none
of us love John of Gaunt and his creatures. I charge you to throw down
that sword of yours, and stand up like a good lad.”
Fulk’s stare was like the thrust of a spear. The doorway was full of
hairy faces, of brown smocks and fists that held flails, scythe-blades
on poles, clubs, bows, bill-hooks—a boor’s armoury.
Fulk showed them an ironical courtesy, a storm sign in a young man of
his temper.
“Sir Hacksword, I am much beholden to you. That blade of yours looks as
though it had seen wonderful adventures. Step in, knights and gentles
all; the honour is mine to be visited by so fair a company.”
His scorn struck them like a north wind, and made the swashbuckler’s
forked beard thrust itself out more fiercely.
“This sword was hammering the French when you were a mere toddler. Have
a care lest I come to use the flat of it.”
Fulk rose up and walked over towards the man in red, keeping his eyes on
Guy the Stallion’s eyes, and holding his sword on his shoulder.
“Out—out, you dogs!”
He pointed with his sword towards the crowd of boors in the doorway.
“Out!”
“By cock, you young ruffler, I can take blows better than words.”
He had his blow, a flat buffet across the face given slantwise with a
lightning sweep of the sword-blade. He staggered, jerking up his arms,
his nostrils reddening with blood. There was a crowding in of the
smocked figures through the doorway, but Guy the Stallion bellowed them
back.
“All hell shall stir for this! Let no man meddle.”
He sprang towards Fulk with huge and flamboyant sweeps of the sword.
“Guard, you adder; I’ll teach you sword-play.”
And so the fight began.
Fulk had drawn back into a corner of the hall where he could hold the
ground before him without being taken on the flanks. Guy the Stallion
came at him with a swaggering rage, and for the moment the boors held
back to watch the tussle, such a smiting together of swords not being
seen on every day of the week.
Fulk was as calm as a frosty morning, his face looking serenely through
all the whirl and pother of the swashbuckler’s blows. Roger Ferrers had
been a great man at his weapons, and Fulk had swung a sword with Roger
before he was four feet high. He let this swaggerer slash as he pleased,
guarding himself and smiling into the Stallion’s eyes.
“Strike, my friend, strike harder. You would do better with a bulrush.”
Of a sudden his whole front changed. His chin rose higher, his lips and
nostrils grew thin, and his eyes ceased smiling. Blows leapt at Guy like
flames, licking him on every side and driving him back. The fight ended
with his stumbling and shooting forward under Fulk’s sword, where he lay
like a red beetle, very flat and still.
The men of the door set up a howl of rage, for this tawdry and
swaggering bird had made them believe in his crowing. They came pushing
in, bunched together, scythe-blades and bills poking forward, lusting to
smite, yet afraid of that uncompromising sword. Fulk stood with head
thrown back, nostrils dilated, eyes mocking them with a flare of scorn.
“Come, my lords and nobles, come nearer.”
His fierce pride of birth, and his lean valour, awed them, though they
cursed him and handled their weapons.
“Fetch in the chopping-block, Harry.”
“We’ll have his head off before cock-crow.”
“Knock the whelp’s legs from under him with a pole.”
They edged forward in a half circle, encouraging each other, and
pointing to the swashbuckler who still lay flat on his face. And since
all their eyes were towards Fulk of the Forest, they did not see Isoult
of the Rose and Father Merlin standing in the doorway.
It was Isoult’s voice that whipped the boors back. They parted and let
her through, since she carried a knife, and stabbed at those who
faltered.
“Out, fools, out of the way.”
Her voice might have been the sound of the Last Trump so far as Guy the
Stallion was concerned, for he picked himself up, drew a sleeve across
his face, and attempted an unsteady swagger. A crack in his rusty
basinet showed where Fulk’s sword had bitten him.
“Isoult, the cub is mine for the taking. He tricked me the once——”
He flourished his sword towards Fulk, but Isoult’s eyes swept him aside.
“Fool, go and wash the blood out of your boasting beard.”
“S’death! I’ll set hell loose!”
“Poor jay, you pecked at a falcon and got smitten. Stand away. I have no
patience to listen to your frothing.”
He slunk aside with furious red eyes, while Father Merlin waited in the
background, showing his teeth and smoothing his chin.
Isoult passed on towards Fulk, and these two stood confronting each
other, the man with the point of his sword resting on the floor and his
hands crossed on the pommel. No one but Fulk saw Isoult’s face, or the
cry of “Hail, fellow falcon!” in her eyes.
“Master Fulk Ferrers, I charge you, surrender that sword of yours.”
He stared at her mistrustfully, head up, lips set.
“Dame Isoult, I thought you were at Lewes.”
“Ah, my friend, I met comrades by the way. Have no fear, Dame Margaret
is safe in Lewes town. We let the baggage pass, but tied up your men.
And now, since we are too many for you, it is your turn to surrender.”
His pride stiffened itself.
“Let them take me—if they dare.”
There was the length of the hall between these two and the rest, but
Isoult went closer to him, dropping her voice to a whisper:
“Fulk, listen to me. These wretches have tasted blood; your men are
dead; we could not help it. You might kill the first three, but the rest
would drag you down like dogs, and I’ll not suffer it. You cannot fight,
because I, Isoult, stand in the way.”
His eyes searched hers.
“You! You are with these vermin?”
“I am, and I am not. But I shall stand between you so that you cannot
use your sword nor these Jacks their clubs and bills. The grey friar is
merciful. You surrender as my prisoner.”
He looked at the floor, frowning and biting his lower lip.
“Come, Messire Fulk”—and her voice had a strange new challenge in
it—“come; we change parts for awhile, you and I. And I will not bear to
see these bullocks trampling you underfoot, for no man’s valour can
overcome twenty men. I have my pride, and pride knows its own kith and
kin.”
He raised his eyes suddenly to hers.
“So be it. But when I am swordless——”
“Think you that Father Merlin and I cannot rule these fools?”
“Isoult, you puzzle me.”
She held up a hand.
“No questions. Surrender to me—to Isoult of the Rose. I vow that your
sword shall be in safe keeping.”