In the forest there was an old stone quarry, and in the wall thereof
some hermit of long ago had cut himself a little chamber; but the hermit
had died in the time of the Barons’ war, and the quarry was full of
briers and brambles, broom and bracken. A tall beech wood shut it on
every side, so that the place was like a pit into which sunlight fell
only at noon and when the sun was high in summer.
In the doorway of this hermit’s cell Fulk of the Forest sat on a truss
of dead bracken, and stared moodily at the beech trees. His hands and
feet were free enough, but the sides of the quarry went up like a castle
wall, and Guy the Stallion and twenty men lay night and day among the
bushes that half closed the entry. At night a large fire was lit, and he
could hear those who kept guard laughing and singing, and telling lewd
tales.
This royal falcon, mewed up and fed upon dainties, was in no mood to be
patient. He thought of the “fence” month that was so near, of the deer
harried and hunted by boors and thieves, of the hinds, big with fawn,
driven hither and thither. The personal part of the adventure balked his
wit; he could read no meaning into it, nothing perhaps save the whim of
a woman. As for Isoult, he felt no gratitude towards her, but brooded
like a Samson shorn of his hair. He was tempted to believe that she had
used her woman’s wiles to steal his sword away; that she was playing off
a jest on him, and that some day soon he would catch its meaning.
As he stared at the young beech leaves spreading in bright green glooms
above the mouse-coloured trunks, he saw a figure appear in one of the
woodland aisles, a figure that was all green and blue. He knew Isoult
instantly by the way she walked, and the nearer she came the keener grew
his anger against her. If she had but left well alone he would have
driven the boors like sheep out of the White Lodge. He had been a fool
to let her trick him and take away his sword.
Guy’s men started up and louted to her, and Fulk saw her wave them back
into the beech wood. As she entered the quarry he saw that she had his
sword buckled to her under her green cloak, the leather belt clasping
the sky-blue cloth of her cote-hardie She picked her way at her leisure
through the brambles, looking at Fulk with eyes that were full of
baffling lights and shadows.
Just without the cell’s mouth a broom bush was in bloom, its yellow
spikes very brilliant against the green of the young beech leaves. There
was a rough stone seat at the entry under the broom bush, and Isoult sat
herself down there within a bow’s length of the man on the bracken.
Fulk kept his eyes from her, and stared at the beech wood as though no
woman with black hair and red lips sat there under the yellow broom.
“Messire Fulk, am I to laugh or to weep?”
He seemed in no mind to answer her, and his shut mouth and haughty
nostrils made her smile to herself with an air of intimate and
adventurous mystery.
“I am to snivel then, and ask your pardon because I saved you from
having your neck put on a chopping-block? And men are said to be
grateful!”
He answered her, without turning his head.
“This is a fool’s business. I can make nothing of it, save that I was a
fool to give up my sword.”
“You think that?”
“I have said so.”
“Then I made you act like a fool?”
“So it seems. For the rest, I can see no sense in anything. And if it is
a jest it is the dullest one I ever heard of.”
She regarded him with intent and curious eyes, and, unbuckling the
sword, laid it across her knees.
“See, here lies your sword. Stretch out your hand and take it, and I’ll
neither stir nor cry out.”
For the first time since she had come to sit under the yellow broom Fulk
looked straight into her face.
“More tricks!”
“Fulk of the Forest, I play fair. Take your sword and rush out against
these fellows yonder. But, before your hawk’s pride flies in the face of
Fate, listen.”
He did not move, but kept his eyes on hers.
“Well?”
“I offer you this sword of yours to prove that you do not know the
temper of Isoult. Take the sword, play the madman if it pleases you; but
I warn you it will make you look the greater fool. Those fellows yonder
have had their orders, and each man has his bow. I have heard the orders
that were given them, to keep clear, and shoot you through those long
legs of yours so that you could neither run nor fight.”
She took the sword by the scabbard and held the hilt towards him.
“Choose.”
He shrugged contemptuously.
“A fool’s business. I can make nothing of it, save that these hedgers
and ditchers and horse-thieves are the lords of the forest. Why am I so
marked a stag?”
“Because you are—what you are.”
“More words.”
She laid the sword on her knees, and bent towards him, pointing with one
forefinger.
“Listen to me, Fulk Ferrers. Have you been on a wild hill in the thick
of a thunderstorm, when the sky is like the lid of a black hell and the
lightning stabs the earth here, there, and everywhere? Have you not felt
like a hare in the grass, a little thing of no account, a wisp of straw
in the wind? But perhaps Messire Fulk Ferrers is too stiffnecked and
proud to listen while the doom vault cracks over his head!”
Her eyes were intensely black for the moment, her face the face of a
witch. Fulk sat rigid, as though he listened to the sound of elf’s horns
in the forest.
“True; I have felt it,” he said.
Her hand dropped to her knee.
“Messire Fulk, you and I are but children on the edge of a strange,
storm-swept country. We cannot help ourselves; we are but little people
stumbling over the heather. You ask for the why and the wherefore, but
it is not for me to answer the riddle for you. What am I but a storm
bird blown by wild winds from over the sea? I tell you there is great
wrath and dread and violence afoot. You are here because the chance has
seized on you as a red shrike seizes a beetle for its larder.”
Her face was a new world to him, intense and white, the red lips
uttering words that made him think of the moan of a wind through winter
trees, or the clang of swords in a charge of horsemen upon some sunset
heath. His manhood bridled, and reared like a startled horse. This voice
of hers had reached some primitive instinct in him. His mistrust passed
of a sudden and gave place to wonder.
“Strange words!”
Her eyes flashed out at him.
“You may go one way—I another. Someone will speak more plainly before
many days have gone. Watch—consider. I know not how you may regard
it—as a light adventure, a glorious treason. Do not mistrust me. I
charge you, do not mistrust me!”
He gave her a quick, ironical smile.
“There is the beech wood yonder, and out of it will come a dragon, and I
shall have no sword!”
“No sword could help you.”
His stare was long and shrewd.
“It may be that Isoult of the Rose will ride on the dragon’s back!”
“If so, I shall be the master,” she said, looking at his hands.
Betimes she left him, and whither she went he knew not, save that she
passed away into the beech wood, carrying his sword.
The next morning she came again, and her mood was full of laughter and
of the joy of living. She had broken off a white may bough and carried
it on her shoulder, and as she came through the woods Fulk heard her
singing.
He would not suffer himself to believe that he had looked for her
coming, or that her red mouth and her mysterious eyes had any message to
move him. Yet that his manhood should leap in him when he saw her among
the beech trees in her green cloak and blue cote-hardie, and with the
white may bough over her shoulder, was a challenge to his pride. She
brought some of the exultant rush of the year with her in the way she
walked and the way she carried her head.
“I have come five miles.”
Life was at high noon in her, with a glow of the eyes and face. Fulk
took some of the dry bracken and spread it upon the stone bench, and the
casual haughtiness of the deed was a part of the morning’s comedy.
“I tell you, Fulk of the Forest, it is good to live. Run through the
names of all the wines—malmsey, ypocrasse, basturde, clove, pyment,
muscabell. They are nothing to the wind and the sun on the heath.”
Her mood itself was a cup of Spanish wine, and Fulk took a draught of it
into his blood.
“Whence have you come?”
“That would be telling! Lying awake under the stars in Gascony and
listening to the aspens chattering! Messire Fulk, change with me; take
my body and give me yours.”
“What, to lie in a hermit’s cell, and with that braggart for
doorkeeper!”
“No, no; to take my arms and mount my horse on a May morning and gallop
after adventures. To fight and break spears, and drink with my comrade
in arms; to make love to women! Oh! the brave world, the valour and fun,
the cry of the trumpets, the snow and the winter sunsets! The wind on
the heath has blown itself into my blood!”
Fulk looked at her curiously. She was like no woman of his
imaginings—no soft, sleek, sly thing to be kissed for a month and then
left to her needle and her prayer desk.
“If I changed with you,” he said, “I promise you that you would love the
forest and the red deer, and the heath in bloom, and the laugh of the
woodpecker, and the smell of the fern.”
“Ah, I promise you. The rich earth, and the red sap of our life. The
great woods, the rivers that go down to the sea, the armed hosts in
their battle harness, the strength and the valour, the galloping horses,
the scorn of treachery, the eyes that look straight.”
He nodded towards the mouth of the quarry.
“There are eyes over yonder that look round corners and through bushes.
The red beard is watching us, his head all swaddled up so that he looks
like an old woman in a wimple.”
“That fool! He must have his tongue and his nose in everything! I can
play with such bumblebees.”
She stood up and called the swashbuckler.
“Guy, hallo there—friend Guy!”
The Stallion came out from behind a holly bush, carrying his sword on
his shoulder, the red twists of his beard ferocious as ever.
“Bring me Blanche’s lute. I saw her over yonder as I came through the
wood; and for my touching of her strings she can boast of Isoult as her
comrade.”
Guy saluted Isoult with his sword, and disappeared into the beech wood,
where Blanche was sitting in a shelter of boughs under a tree, mending a
hole in her hose, one bare foot thrust out, her hair bundled up anyhow
in a torn net. Her lute lay in a red bag beside her, but as to lending
it to Isoult that was another matter. Guy had but to grab at the thing
for her to scratch at his face and start screaming like a jay.
Isoult laughed.
“Between them they will break the strings, yet I shall get the lute.”
The squabble was soon over, Big Blanche’s voice oozing away into a
futile whimpering that was smothered by the big oaths and blasphemies of
her man. She had wriggled away and was cowering against the tree trunk
in order to escape from a foot that was none too delicate in the use of
its big toe.
“You sing, you big slug! You have a voice like the bung-hole of a
barrel!”
He marched off, and coming to Isoult, presented the lute to her with a
fine obeisance, his sword cocked over his shoulder. One red eye looked
slantwise at Fulk of the Forest.
“Madame Isoult, sing, and we shall forget to be hungry.”
“Or to quarrel—or boast!”
She took the lute to her bosom, and struck the strings, waiting for Guy
the Stallion to take himself off.
“What shall I sing, good comrade?”
“Just what comes to the bird’s throat.”
And so she sang to him of Ipomedon, and Gingamor, and the Romaunt of the
Rose, and of strange forests and haunted meres, and of the banners of
kings red as the sunset. Fulk’s heart went out to her because of her
singing, and all his mistrust of her melted like wax.
When she had ended he looked long at her as though trying to fathom her
soul.
“Isoult, who and what are you? For some day I needs must know.”
“Good comrade, I am but a bird from over the sea, and yet I have no ring
on my foot.”
“I marvel——”
“That I should sing?”
“No. That you should fly with these jays and stormcocks.”
She glanced at him slantwise under black lashes.
“Why should I tell you what no man in the land knows?”
“Why, indeed?” he echoed her.
“We are two riddles, you and I,” she said, “to be guessed, some time or
never. But whether we shall guess each other, God and our need may
show.”
Meanwhile, Guy the Stallion lay flat on his belly behind a bush, gnawing
grass, and watching them with hungry eyes. The beast in him desired
Isoult and hated the man beside her. And from a little distance Big
Blanche watched her man, her round, white face sullen, and glum, and
jealous.