SAINT MARTHA’S WELL
THE Princess Audiart crossed the river that made a crescent south
and east of the town,—her errand, to see how went the defences on
that side. Two stout towers reared themselves there, commanding the
river-bank, guarding the bridge-head. Beyond the towers workmen in
great numbers deepened a fosse, heaped ramparts, strengthened walls,
and in the earth over which Montmaure must advance planted sharpened
stakes and all gins and snares that the inventive mind might devise. To
hold this bridge was of an importance!—South and east stretched the
yet unharried lands and the roads by which must come in food for the
town, the roads by which it might keep in touch with the world without,
the roads by which might travel succour!
The day was a blaze of light, a dry and parching heat. The river ran
with a glitter of diamonds. The stone of the many-arched bridge threw
back light. The hill of Roche-de-Frêne, the strong walls, the town
within them, the towered, huge church, the castle lifted higher yet,
swam in radiance. They lost precision of outline, they seemed lot and
part of the daystar’s self.
With the princess there rode three or four of her captains. Clearing
the river they must turn their horses aside, out of the way of a
multitudinous, approaching traffic that presently, embouching upon the
bridge, covered it from parapet to parapet. Noise abounded. A herd
of cattle came first, destined, these, for the slope of field and
meadow between the stream and the town walls. Wagons followed—many
wagons—heaped with provision and drawn by oxen. They held grain in
quantity, fodder, cured meat, jars of oil, dried fruit, pease and
beans, whatever might be gathered near and far through the land. They
came, a long line of them, creaking slow, at the head of the oxen
sometimes a man walking, oftener a lad or a woman. They kept the
princess and those with her in the glare of the sun. A knight spoke
impatiently. “They creep!”
“They creep because they are heavily laden,” said the princess. “Let us
thank our Lady Fortune that they creep!”
The wagons gave way to a flock of sheep, bleating and jostling each the
other. Followed swine with their herd, goats, asses bearing panniers
from which fowls looked unhappily forth, carts with bags of meal,
a wide miscellany of matters most useful to a town that Montmaure
proposed to besiege—with Aquitaine behind him! The princess noted all.
The stream flowed by her orders, and her mind appraised the store that
was adding itself this morning to the store already gathered in town
and castle. She turned her horse a little and gazed afar over the
green and tawny country.
Out of the sheen of the day came from another direction a straggling
crowd. Nearer at hand it resolved itself into a peasant horde—a
few men neither strong nor weak, but more very aged men, or sick or
crippled, many women from young to old, many children. They also had
carts, four or five, heaped with strange bits of clothing and household
gear. Lying upon these were helpless folk—an old, palsied man, a woman
and her day-old babe. They came on with a kind of deep, plaintive
murmur, like a wood in a winter blast.
“Ah, Jesu!” said the princess. “More driven folk!”
As they came near she pushed her horse toward them, bent from her
saddle, questioned them. They had come from a region where Montmaure
was harrying—they had a tale to tell of an attack in the night and a
burned village. Unlike many others, these had had time to flee. When
they found themselves upon the road, they had said that they would go
to Roche-de-Frêne and tell the princess, the prince being dead.
“Aye, aye!” said the princess. “Poor folk—poor orphans!”
She gave them cheering words, then sat as in a dream and watched them
faring on across the bridge and up the climbing road to the town gate.
There spoke to her one of her captains, a grey, redoubtable fighter.
“My lady, you are not wise to let them enter! In the old siege your
great-grandfather let not in one useless mouth!”
“Aye!” said the princess. “When I was little I heard stories from my
nurse of that siege. A great number died without the walls. Men, women,
and children died, kneeling and stretching their arms to the shut
gates!—That was my great-grandfather. But I will not have my harried
folk wailing, kneeling to deaf stone!—Now let us ride to see these
barriers.”
The day was at the crest of light and heat when with her following
she recrossed the bridge, rode up the slope of summer hill, and in at
the gate of the town called the river-gate. Everywhere was a movement
of people, a buzzing sound of work. The walls of Roche-de-Frêne were
strong—but nothing is so strong that it cannot be strengthened!
Likewise there were many devices, modern to the age or of an advanced
efficiency. The princess had sent for a master-engineer, drawing him
with rich gifts to Roche-de-Frêne. The town hummed like a giant hive,
forewarned of the strong invader. Prince Gaucelm lay in the crypt under
the cathedral. At night the horizon, north and west, burned red to show
the steps of Montmaure. Over there, too, was Stephen the Marshal with a
host—though with never so great a host as had Montmaure whom Aquitaine
aided. In the high white light and dry heat Roche-de-Frêne, town and
castle, toiled busily. The castle looked to the town, the town looked
to the castle. In the town, by the walls, were gathered master-workman
and apprentice, not labouring to-day at dyeing and weaving and
saddlery, at building higher the church-tower; labouring to-day at
thickest shield-making; studying to keep out sack and fire, death and
pillage, rape and ruin, studying to keep out Montmaure.
Thibaut Canteleu was mayor, chosen by the town last spring. He made the
round of the walls with the princess. “By all showing,” said Thibaut,
“the walls are greater and stronger than in the old siege.”
“Not alone the walls,” the princess answered.
“You are right there, my Lady Audiart! We are more folk and stronger.
We begin this time,” said Thibaut, “well-nourished, and, after a manner
of speaking, free. Also, which is a very big thing, liked and liking.”
“I would, Thibaut Canteleu, that my father were here!”
“Well, and my lady,” said Canteleu, “I think that he is. My father,
rest his soul! was a good and a bold man, and, by the rood, I think
that he is here—only younger and something added!”
The princess stayed an hour and more by the walls, moving from point
to point with the captains and directors of the work. At one place a
company of men and women were seated, resting, eating bread, salad, and
cheese, drinking a little red wine. She asked for a bit of bread and
ate and drank with them.
A child clung to its mother’s skirt, hiding its face. “It’s the
princess—it’s the princess—and I have not on my lace cap, mother!”
Audiart smiled down on her. “I like you just as well without!” She
talked with the workers, then nodded her head and rode on.
“Aye,” said Canteleu beside her. “This is such a tempered town as
Julius Cæsar or King Alexander might have been blithe to have about
them!”
The princess studied him, walking by the bridle of her white Arabian.
“What would you do, Thibaut Canteleu, if I gave you Montmaure for lord?”
Thibaut looked at Roche-de-Frêne spread around them, and then looked at
the sky, and then met, frank and full, the princess’s eyes with his own
black ones.
“What could we do, my Lady Audiart? Begin again, perchance, where we
began in your great-grandfather’s time. Give us warning ere it happen!
So all who love freedom may hang themselves, saving Count Jaufre the
trouble!”
“It will not happen,” said Audiart. She, too, looked at Roche-de-Frêne,
and looked at the sky. When she had made the round of the walls, she
rode through the street where the armourers and weapon-makers worked
at their trade more busily than in the days of peace, and to the
quarter where the fletchers worked, and to the storehouses where was
being heaped the incoming grain and other victual. Everywhere reigned
activity. Roche-de-Frêne contained not alone its own citizens,
together with the castle retainers, the poor knights, the squires, the
people of vague feudal standing and their followers whom ordinarily it
lodged, but in at the gates now, day by day, rode or walked fighting
men. There mustered to the town and the crowning great pile of the
castle lords and knights, esquires and mounted men and footmen. Men who
owed service came, and in lesser numbers free lances came. And all the
great vassals that entered had kneeled in the castle hall, before the
Princess Audiart, and putting their hands between hers, had taken her
for their liege lady. Where had reigned Gaucelm reigned Audiart.
Each day, before she recrossed the castle moat and went in at the great
gate between Red Tower and Lion Tower, she would go for a little time
to the cathedral. She rode there now, knights about her. The white
Arabian stopped where he was wont to stop. Dismounting, she passed the
tremendous, sculptured portal and entered the place.
Within abode a solemn and echoing dimness pointed with light. There
were a score of shadowy, kneeling folk, and the lights of the shrines
burned. The pillars stood like reeds in a giant elder world. Thin
ladders of gold light came down between them. Obeying the princess’s
gesture, the two or three with her stayed their steps. She went alone
to the chapel of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. Here, between the Saracen
pillars, before the tall, jewelled Queen of Heaven, before the lamps
fed with perfumed oil, lay a great slab of black stone. The Princess
Audiart knelt beside it, bowed herself until her forehead felt the
coldness....
She bent no long while over Gaucelm the Fortunate, lying still in the
crypt below. Sorrow must serve, not rule, in Roche-de-Frêne! Before she
rose from her knees and went, she lifted her eyes to the image in blue
samite, with the pierced heart and the starry crown. But her own heart
and mind spoke to something somewhat larger, more nearly the whole....
She quitted the cathedral, and mounting her Arabian, turned with her
following toward the castle heaped against the sapphire sky.
Riding that way, she rode by the bishop’s palace, and in the flagged
place, beside the dolphin fountain, she met Bishop Ugo. He checked
his mule by the spraying water, those with him attending at a little
distance.
“Well met, my Lord Bishop!” said Audiart. “I have wished to take
counsel with you as to these stones. Here are five hundred fit for
casting upon Montmaure.”
Ugo regarded the fair space between fountain and palace. “Then have
them taken up, princess, and borne to the walls.” He left the subject.
“Has there come any messenger from the host to-day?”
“No. None.”
“If there is battle,” said Ugo, “I pray the Blessed Mother of God that
the right may win!”
He spoke with attempted unction. What was gained was more acid than
balm.
The princess had a strange, hovering smile. “How may a man be assured
in this world,” she asked, “which of two shields is the right knight’s?”
Ugo darted a look. “How may a man?—May a woman, then?”
“As much, and as little, as a man,” answered the Princess Audiart. “My
Lord Bishop, if Count Jaufre strikes down Roche-de-Frêne, will you wed
him and me?”
Ugo kept a mask-like face. “I am a man of peace, my Lady Audiart! It
becomes such an one to wish that foes were friends, and hands were
joined.”
With this to think of, the princess rode through the chief street of
Roche-de-Frêne, the castle looming nearer and more huge with each
pace of the Arabian. Here was the deep moat and the bridge sounding
hollowly; here the barbican, Lion Tower and Red Tower. She rode beneath
the portcullis, through the resounding, vaulted passage, and in the
court the noblest knight helped her from her horse. She was dressed in
a dull green stuff, fine and thin, with a blue mantle for need, and
about her dark hair a veil twisted turban-wise. Her ladies came to meet
her, silken pages and chamberlains stepped backward before her. She
asked for Madame Alazais, and learning that she was in the garden, went
that way.
Cushions had been piled upon a bank of turf in the shadow of a fruit
tree. Here reclined Alazais, beautiful as Eve or Helen, her ladies
about her and Gilles de Valence singing a new-old song. Alazais’s face
was pensive, down-bent, her cheek against her hand—but here in the
shade the day was desirable, with air enough to lift away the heat—and
Gilles’s singing pleased her—and the world and life must be supported!
In her fashion she had felt fondness for the dead prince,—felt
it now and still,—but yonder was death and here was life.... As
for war in the land and impending fearful siege, Alazais held that
matters might yet be compounded. Until this garden wall were battered
in, her imagination would not serve to show her this great castle
death-wounded. At the worst, thought Alazais, Audiart might wed Count
Jaufre. Men were not so hugely different....
The reigning princess came and sat beside her step-dame. “It is singing
and beauty just to be here for a moment under this tree!” She shut
her eyes. “To cease from striving and going on! To rest the whole
at one point of achieved sweetness, even if it were not very high
sweetness—just there—for aye! It would tempt a god....”
The next day she rode westward from the town. Again the day was dry,
with an intense and arrowy light. She rode with a small train some
distance into the tawny land, to a strong castle that, strongly held,
might give Montmaure a check. She rode here to give wise praise,
to speak to those who garrisoned it words of the most courageous
expectation. She ate with her train in hall, rested in the cool of
the thick-walled room for the hour of extremest heat, spoke again
with feeling, wit, and fire to the knights and men-at-arms who must
desperately hold the place; then, with her following, said farewell and
good-speed. She turned back toward Roche-de-Frêne, through the burned,
high summer country.
The sun was in the western heaven. Tall cypresses by the road cast
shadows of immense length. There lay ahead a grove of pine and oak, a
certain famous cold and bubbling spring, and a meeting with a lesser,
winding road. “I am thirsty,” said the princess. “Let us draw rein at
Saint Martha’s Well.”
Entering the grove, they found another there before them, athirst and
drinking of the well. A knight in a blue surcoat knelt upon the grass
beside the water and drank. His shield rested against a tree, he had
taken off his helmet and placed it on the grass beside him, a squire
held his horse. As the princess and her train came to the well-side he
rose, stepped back with a gesture of courtesy. He had in his hand a cup
of horn set in silver.
Several of those with the princess dismounted—one spoke to the
stranger knight. “Fair sir, we have no cup! If you will be frank with
yours—”
Garin stooped again to the water, rinsed and filled the cup, and
carried it to the side of the white Arabian. The princess took it,
thanked him, and drank. Her eyes noted, over the rim of the cup, the
cross, proclaiming that he had fought in Palestine. Below it, on the
breast of his blue surcoat, was embroidered a bird with outstretched
wings. She drank, returned the cup and thanked the knight. He was
deeply bronzed, taller, wider of shoulder, changed here and changed
there from Garin the Squire. In his face sat powers of thought and
will that had hardly dwelled there so plainly years ago. She was not
aware that she had seen him before. She saw only a goodly knight, and
possessing, as she did, wide knowledge of the chivalry within her
princedom, wondered whence he had come. She had viewed famed knights
from many a land, but she could not recall this traveller with his
embroidered bird.
She spoke to him with her forthright graciousness. “Fair sir, are you
for Roche-de-Frêne?”
“Aye,” said Garin. “I come from the host, bearer of a letter to the
princess from my lord Stephen the Marshal. If, lady, you are she—”
“I am Audiart,” said the princess, and held out her hand for the letter.
Garin bent his knee, took from his breast the letter wrapped in silk,
and gave it. The princess drew off her glove, broke the seal and
read, sitting the white Arabian by the murmuring spring. Those with
her waited without movement that might disturb. Trees of the grove
whispered in the evening air, splashed gold from the sun lay here and
there like fairy wealth. The marshal wrote of ambushments, attacks,
repulses, conflicts where Roche-de-Frêne had been victorious. But the
two counts were together now, and the odds were great. New men had come
to them from Aquitaine. The host was great of spirit, and he, Stephen
the Marshal, would do his best. But let none be dismayed if there came
some falling back toward the town. So the frank marshal, a good general
and truth-teller.
The princess read, sat for a moment with her eyes upon the light
falling through the trees, then spoke, giving to her knights the
substance of the letter. “So it runs, sirs! So the wheel turns and
turns, and no mind can tell—But the mind may be courageous, though it
knows not the body’s fortunes.”
She folded the marshal’s letter, put it within her silken purse, and
drew on her glove. She spoke to Garin. “How do they call you, sir? Are
you man of ours?”
“I am your man, lady. I am Garin, younger brother of Foulque of
Castel-Noir, and I am likewise called Garin of the Golden Island.”
“Ride beside us to the town,” said the princess, “and give tidings of
the host.”
Garin mounted Noureddin. Rainier bore his helmet and shield. The
company left the grove for the open road. The road and all the earth
lay in the gold of evening, and in the distance, lifted against the
clear sapphire of the east, was Roche-de-Frêne. Garin rode beside
the princess and gave the news of the host. She questioned with keen
intelligence, and he answered, it seemed, to her liking.
When she had gained what she wished, she rode for a time in silence,
then, “I knew not that Foulque of Castel-Noir had a brother.”
“Years ago,” said Garin, “I took the cross and went to Palestine. This
summer I came home and found the land afire. With two score men I left
Castel-Noir, and with them joined the marshal and the host.”
“He speaks of you in his letter and gives you high praise. It is Lord
Stephen’s way to praise justly.”
“I would do my devoir,” said Garin.
Roche-de-Frêne lay before them. Castle and town and all the country
roundabout were bathed by a light golden and intense. “_Garin de l’Isle
d’Or_,” said the princess. “There is a troubadour named so—and he
sang, too, in the land beyond the sea. Are you he?”
“Yes.”
“You sing of one whom you name the _Fair Goal_?”
“Aye, princess,” said Garin. “She is my lady.”
“Lives she in this land?”
“I know not. I have been in her presence but once—and that was long
ago. I think that she lives afar.”
“Ah,” thought the princess, “behold your poet-lover, straining and
longing toward he knows not what nor whom—save that it is afar!” Aloud
she said, “If we are besieged in Roche-de-Frêne brave songs, as well
as brave deeds, will have room.”
Turning to the south and then to the east they rode by the river and so
came to the fosse, ramparts, and towers, guardians of the bridge-head,
and then upon the bridge itself. Right and left they saw the gilded
water, in front the hill of Roche-de-Frêne, with, for diadem, the
strong town walled and towered, and high and higher yet, the mighty
castle. The horses’ hoofs made a deep sound, then they were away from
the bridge and climbing the road to the river-gate. A horn was winded,
clear and silver. Now they were riding through the streets, filled
with folk. Garin thought of an autumn day, and looked at the tower of
the cathedral, higher now than then.... The street climbed upward, the
castle loomed, vast as a dream in the violet light.
“The castle will give you lodging, sir knight,” said the princess.
Here was the moat, across it Red Tower and Lion Tower. Garin looked
up at the great blue banner, and then along the battlements to where
waved the green of the garden trees. Again there flashed into mind that
autumn day, and that he had wondered if ever he would enter here, a
knight, and serve his suzerain.