Fulk sat in the doorway of the hermit’s cell and watched the dusk come
down—the slow, subtle dusk of a still May evening. The beech wood had
been full of the singing of birds, and on the top of a holly near the
quarry’s mouth a thrush had poured out all its joy and desire, its
grey-brown breast turned towards the sunset. The beech foliage had
changed from vivid green to amethyst, the trunks from grey to black,
while orange, amber, and saffron were flung abroad across an exultant
west. Now, later still, the woods rose in soft, rounded blackness
against a deep blue sky, with the crescent of the moon clear as polished
steel.
Fulk sat there brooding, his face growing grey in the dusk. The smoke of
a fire rose beyond the mouth of the quarry—a grey, sinuous pillar that
swayed slightly from side to side or thrust out a ghostly arm when some
breath of wind played upon it. Now and again a voice growled sulkily,
but since the birds had ceased their singing the silence had become
immense, irrefutable, supreme.
Presently there was a crackling of brushwood. The pillar of smoke
swelled to a cloud of draughty vapour; dead wood had been thrown on the
fire, and the flames licked through it and rose as crimson and yellow
tongues against the blackness of the beech wood. A sense of restlessness
seemed to come from nowhere and to show itself in the wavering lights
and shadows that played under the boughs of the beeches. Fulk saw a
solitary figure outlined against the fire, thrusting a pole under the
burning brushwood, and looking, with the jagged comb of its hood, like a
sinister black devil.
Something moved in the mouth of the quarry, a patch of greyness that
disassociated itself from the vague gloom of the brambles and furze.
Fulk’s chin went up, and his eyes were on the alert. The figure shaped
itself into that of a grey friar, and Fulk guessed it to be Father
Merlin.
He came gliding in like a ghost. A grey arm went up and gave Fulk a
benediction.
“Peace to you, Fulk Ferrers.”
Merlin sat himself down on the stone seat outside the cell, with his
staff across his knees. His cowl was drawn, and Fulk could not see his
face, but merely a patch of blackness where the face should be.
The Franciscan took his beads and muttered three prayers, and Fulk
watched him, wondering what Merlin’s business might be, and how far he
was to be trusted.
“Has the blood grown restless in you, Fulk Ferrers?”
His voice was smooth and persuasive.
“No more than in a hawk on a perch.”
“The hawk would fly, eh! Young blood runs hot. I have many things to say
to you, Fulk of the Forest.”
The darkness was between them, and Merlin’s voice came out of it with a
cautious, intimate murmur.
“My son, who has not heard of wrongs that should be righted, of things
hidden away under the ground when they should be brought into the light
of day? Listen to me, son Fulk. A priest comes by many truths, and by
strange stories, and sometimes it is difficult for a man to believe his
own ears and eyes.”
He bent over his staff and stared into Fulk’s face, his cowl slipping
back a little, so that a gaunt chin poked out and Fulk saw the gleam of
his eyes.
“Listen to strange tidings.”
Merlin’s voice fell to a whisper; and Fulk, looking into the dim face,
felt as though some sly and persuasive hand were touching him. Isoult’s
enigmatic words were in his ears, and his mistrust bristled.
“Speak out, friar, if you have anything to say.”
“Assuredly I can paint you a picture such as few young men have ever
looked upon.”
* * * * *
It may be that Father Merlin had passed an hour in the quarry before Guy
the Stallion and his men heard a throttled voice calling for help. They
tumbled up from about the fire and went running into the quarry, dodging
in and out between the masses of bramble and furze. Guy had taken a
burning brand from the fire, and its flare showed them Merlin flat on
his back and Fulk of the Forest on top of him.
They fell upon Fulk, dragged him off, and bore him back against the
quarry wall. He did not struggle with them, and his passivity was part
of his scorn. Merlin turned over on his hands and knees, wheezing and
fighting for breath, his lips blue, and his eyes full of tears. He
gathered himself up, coughing, and feeling his throat.
Guy swaggered forward.
“Give the word, father, and we’ll make an end.”
Merlin’s hood had fallen back. He turned on Guy with grinning, furious
face.
“Fool! Tie the man up, and put a sack over his head. And keep that
dagger of yours out of mischief.”
A man went off towards the fire, and returned with leather thongs and an
old sack. Merlin was still fingering his throat, and his voice was a
hoarse whisper.
“Make no mistake over it—tie him up as a spider ties up a fly.”
He stood and watched them, and when the thing was done he went very
close to Fulk and stared into his face.
“Fool! What of six feet of cold earth under a beech tree? Sleep on the
edge of the black hole, my son, and look down into it when the daylight
comes—the cold grey light after cock-crow.”
Fulk kept his mouth shut and his eyes on Merlin’s. His nostrils
quivered. There was no slackening of his pride. Merlin sneered at him.
“Put the sack over my lord’s head, and lay him down like a baby to sleep
on the bracken. Fulk Ferrers, I wish you good dreams, and cool blood in
the morning.”
It was Isoult, mistrustful of Father Merlin’s subtlety, who came through
the beech wood just when the grey light of the dawn was making the world
look huge and vague and very mysterious. She found the men sleeping
about the fire, and Guy the Stallion, who should have been on the watch,
sitting doubled up with his head on his arms.
Isoult glided past them and came to the doorway of the cell. It was so
dark within that she could see nothing, though she could hear the sound
of a man’s breathing. She stood there and called softly, putting her
hands about her mouth.
“Fulk! Fulk of the Forest!”
He was sleeping lightly, and woke with a start to the presence of an old
flour sack over his head and shoulders, and the leather thongs about
wrists and ankles. It was very dark in the cell, and his waking mood was
as coldly grim and implacable as his proud disgust could make it. He had
fallen asleep with the prospect of having his throat cut in the morning,
and it was no affair of his if some fool woke him so early.
“Good comrade, are you still dreaming?”
She had stolen in, but could see little but a vague shape lying on the
bracken. Fulk bristled at the sound of her voice.
“Isoult?”
“Surely! Speak low. The birds are just beginning, and our friend Guy is
asleep.”
One piping note had thrilled up from the beeches, and of a sudden a
score of other bird voices followed it, making the grey light quiver.
“Is the sun up?”
“Surely a man can see with his own eyes!”
“With a sack tied over his head! Here is something for a woman to laugh
at.”
She came nearer.
“What! Have they tied you up? I had a feeling that you and Merlin had
come to the dagger point. Has he spoken?”
“Spoken? It would have been his last sermon if those fellows yonder had
given me three more minutes.”
She knelt down beside him and he felt her fingers moving over his face.
“Lie very still.”
Isoult took the knife from her girdle, thrust the point through the
sacking, slit it crosswise, and turned back the flaps. A haze of grey
light was streaming into the cell, but it was not strong enough to show
her the set and rigid hostility of his face.
“So Merlin has spoken. Now, good comrade, do you see the light?”
His lips moved stiffly, ironically.
“I see many things—treachery, and lies, and dishonour, and the hands of
a woman.”
Isoult sat back on her heels, and thrust her knife back into its sheath.
“Ah, so you look askance at me, and my hands are full of treachery!”
He did not look at her, but at the vault of rock above him.
“What God knows the devil discovers. This madman Merlin spoke of
shriving me at dawn. He shall find me stiff in the neck.”
“This madman would make and unmake kings; he will use you, Messire Fulk,
or break you, if he can. Wait, answer me one question. Think you that I
am so mean a thing as to play the quean at Merlin’s bidding, even though
I follow the same cause?”
“With hedgehogs, and rats, and field-mice——”
“Answer me this question.”
Her voice challenged him with an edge of passion, and her eyes looked
straight at his.
“What do you believe of me, Fulk Ferrers?”
“Everything—and nothing.”
“So! My hands fastened these thongs on you?”
“It may be.”
She bent over him with sudden vehement fierceness.
“Fulk Ferrers, look at me.”
Isoult’s face was so close to his that he could feel her warm breath
upon his mouth. The daylight had gathered, and her hair was like a black
cloud, her face the moon, and the red of her lips was the dawn.
Moreover, her eyes held his as desire challenges desire, or as a sword
presses upon a sword.
“Look at me. Am I a cut-throat jade, Merlin’s creature? By my
maidenhood, I should not be here an I were. Listen. The truth may say
that you are a bastard brother to the King, that you are as like as two
apples, that you may serve as well as he. I say it may be so, else why
should Merlin be so venomously wise? As for you, you say that you have
chosen. Good. But I too have a choice to make; the hands you mistrust
might unfasten the bonds that bind you!”
He looked up at her with a half-sullen fire in his eyes.
“Call me a bastard, and the mother who bore me a ——. No, by God, I’ll
not put my lips to it! Let that truth stick in Merlin’s throat.”
She sat back and gazed at him.
“Oh, stiffnecked, proud, splendid fool! Were I to soar, would you not
follow? Such a flight of falcons into the blue together!”
He turned his head aside, for her eyes, her mouth, her voice tormented
him.
“Isoult, have done. Whether this be one gross lie or not—I’ll not
wanton with it, or with these scrapings of the fields. God—if I have a
prince’s blood in me, I’ll play the prince.”
She thrust out her hands, eyes alight, her breath coming and going more
quickly.
“Ah! That has an echo! I soar to that. I——Listen! Did you hear?”
She turned sharply, and Fulk saw her bosom, throat, and face outlined
against the doorway.
“Merlin’s voice!”
She started up and passed out into the quarry just as Father Merlin’s
grey cowl appeared among the furze bushes. He was alone, and his face
seemed to narrow when he saw Isoult.
She went to meet him boldly, head held high, and with an imperiousness
that attacked and did not wait to be challenged.
“Merlin, you have neither the wit nor the hands of a woman. What!
Brought to the footpad’s threat of the knife and six feet of earth
already? Thank me for being up before dawn.”
He eyed her cautiously, and when he spoke his voice was still harsh from
Fulk’s crumpling of his throat.
“Ah, my bird of the morning!”
“I have uncovered the man’s eyes. A woman’s face is fairer to look at
than the inside of a sack. Wait and see whether there is no magic.”
Merlin laughed noiselessly.
“We are less proud this morning?” he said.