THE ABBEY OF THE FOUNTAIN
MORNING broke. They rose and travelled on. This day they passed
definitely from the dragon’s present reach, though yet they were
in lands of Roche-de-Frêne, done into ruin by him, poisoned by his
breath. Adventures they had, perils and escapes. These were approached,
endured, passed. At night they came to a hermit’s cell where was no
hermit, but on a stone hearth wood ready for firing. They closed the
door, struck flint and steel, had presently a flame that reddened the
low and narrow walls and gave the two, tired and cold, much comfort.
The hermit’s cupboard was found, and in it dried fruit and pease and a
pan or two for cooking. Without the cell was water, a bubbling spring
among moss and fern.
The night was dark and windy. None came to strike upon the hermit’s
door, no human voice broke in upon them. The wind shook the forest
behind the cell and scoured the valley in front. It whistled around
their narrow refuge, it brought at intervals a dash of rain against
door and wall. But the two within were warmed and fed, and they found
an ocean-music in the night. It rocked them in their dreams, it soothed
like a lullaby. The princess dreamed of her father, and that they were
reading together in a book; then that changed, and it was her old,
old nurse, who told her tales of elves and fays. Garin dreamed of the
desert and then of the sea. Dawn came. They rekindled their fire and
had spare breakfast, then fared forth through a high and stormy world.
Night came, day came, nights and days, beads of light and its doings,
beads of dimness and rest. They kept no list of the dangers they
entered and left, of the incidents and episodes of peril. They were
many, but the two went through like a singing shaft, like a shuttle
driven by the hand of Genius. Now they were forth from the invaded
princedom, now they were gone from fiefs of other suzerains. Where they
had faced north, now they walked with the westering sun.
When that happened, Jael the herd wore no longer the saffron cross. It
had served the purpose, carrying her through Montmaure’s host, that
else might not have let a woman pass.... The two had slept upon leaves
in an angle of a stone wall, on the edge of a coppice. The wall ran by
fields unharmed by war; they were out from the shadow. A dawn came up
and unfolded like a rose of glory. The coppice seemed to sleep, the air
was so still. The night had been dry, and for the season, warm. Cocks
crew in the distance, birds that stayed out the year cheeped in the
trees.
The herd-girl took her frieze mantle, and, sitting upon a stone,
broke the threads that bound to it the Church’s stigma and seal. The
jongleur watched her from where he leaned against the wall. When it was
free from the mantle, she took the shaped piece of saffron-dyed cloth
and moving from the stone kneeled beside their fire of sticks and gave
it to the flame. She watched it consume, then stood up. “It served me,”
she said. “I know not if it ever served any upon whom it was truly
chained. As I read the story, He who was nailed to the cross had a
spirit strong and merciful. It is the spirits who are strong that are
merciful.”
The rose in the east grew in glory. Colour came into the land, into
the coppice, and to the small vines and ferns in their niches and
shrines between the stones. Garin of the Golden Island stood in green
and brown, beside him the red-ribboned lute. “As the first day from
Roche-de-Frêne, so now again,” said Audiart, “you are the jongleur,
Elias of Montaudon. I am your _mie_, Jael the herd.”
“Your will is mine, Jael the herd,” said Garin.
He bent and extinguished the fire of sticks. The two went on together,
the sun behind them.... Once Vulcan had had a stithy in this country.
Masses of dark rock were everywhere, old, cooled lava, dark hills,
mountains and peaks. Chestnut and oak ran up the mountain-sides, the
valleys lay sunken, there was a silver net of streams. Hamlets hid
beneath hills, village and middling town climbed their sides, castles
crowned the heights, in vales by the rivers sat the monasteries. The
region was divided between smiling and frowning. Its allegiance was
owed to a lord of storms, who, in his nature, showed now and then a
broad golden beam. At present no wild beast from without entered the
region to ravage; there it smiled secure. But Duke Richard drained
it of money and men; its own kept it poor. He drained all his vast
duchy and fiefs of his duchy, as his brothers drained their lands and
his father drained England. They were driving storms and waters that
whirled and drew; one only was the stagnant kind that sat and brewed
poison. This region was a corner of the great duke’s wide lands, but
the duke helped himself from its purse, and the larger number of its
men were gone to his wars.
But for all that, the jongleur and the herd-girl met a many people and
saw towns that to them from Roche-de-Frêne seemed at ease, relaxed, and
light of heart. Baron and knight and squire and man were gone to the
wars, but baron and knight and squire and man, for this reason, for
that reason, remained. Castle drawbridges rested down, portcullises
rusted unlowered. The roads, bad though they were, had peaceful
traffic; the fields had been harvested, and the harvest had not gone to
feed another world. The folk that remained were not the fiercer sort,
and they longed for amusement. It rested not cold, and folk were out of
doors. The country-side, mountain and hill and valley, hung softened,
stilled, wrapped in a haze of purple-grey.
Jongleur’s art, human voice at its richest, sweetest, most
expressive—such was wanted wherever now they went. They had jongleur’s
freedom in a singing time. Travelling on, they made pause when they
were called upon. The jongleur sang the heart out of the breast, the
water into the eyes, high thoughts and resolves into the upper rooms of
the nature. The dark-eyed, still girl, his companion and _mie_, sat on
doorstep, or amid the sere growth of the wayside, or stood in castle
hall or court, or in the market-place of towns, and listened with the
rest to the singing voice and the song that it uttered. The few about
them, or the many about them, sighed with delight, gave pay as they
were able, and always would have had the jongleur stay, sing on the
morrow, and the morrow’s morrow. But jongleurs had license to wander,
and no restlessness of theirs surprised. Day by day the two were able,
after short delays, to take the road again.
They came to Excideuil.
“Is the duke here?”
“No. He was here, but he has gone to Angoulême.”
Elias of Montaudon brought that news to Jael the herd. She listened
with a steady face. “Very well! In ways, that suits me better. There
are those at Angoulême whom I know.”
The jongleur sang in the market-place of Excideuil. “Ah, ah!” cried
many, “you should have been here when our duke was here! He had a day
when there sang six troubadours, and the prize was a cup of gold! And
yet no troubadour sang so well as you sing, jongleur!”
A week later, crown of a hill before them, they saw Angoulême. The
morning light had shown frost over the fields, but now the sun melted
that silver film and the day was a sapphire. Wall and battlement,
churches, castle, brilliant and spear-like, stood out from the blue
dome: beneath spread a clear valley and clear streams. Other heights
had lesser castles, and the valley had houses of the poor. Travel upon
the road thickened, grew more various, spiced with every class and
occupation. The day carried sound easily, and there was more sound
to carry. Contacts became frequent, and these were now with people
affected, in greater or less degree, by the sojourn in Angoulême of
Duke Richard. The air knew his presence; where he came was tension,
energy held in a circumference. From the two that entered Angoulême
spread another circle. Garin felt power and will in her whom he walked
beside, felt attention. The force within him rose to meet hers and they
made one.
The town grew larger before them, walls and towers against the sky.
“Ask some one,” said Audiart, “where is the Abbey of the Fountain?”
He asked.
“The Abbey of the Fountain?” answered the man whom he addressed. “It
lies the other side of the hill. Go through the town and out at the
west gate, and you will see it below you, among trees.”
They climbed the hill and entered Angoulême, thronged with life. To the
two who kept the picture of Roche-de-Frêne, wrapped in clouds of storm
and disaster, Angoulême might appear clad like a peacock, untroubled
as a holiday child. Yet was there here—and they divined that,
too—grumbling and soreness, just anger against Richard the proud,
coupled with half-bitter admiration. Here was wide conflict of opinion
and mood. Life pulsed strongly in Angoulême.
Jongleur and herd-girl threaded the town, where were many jongleurs,
and many women with them lacking church’s link. They regarded the
castle, and the Leopard banner above it. “Richard, Richard!” said the
herd-girl, “I hope that a manner of things are true that I have heard
of you!”
They came to the west gate and left the town by it. Immediately, when
they were without the walls, they saw in the vale beneath groves of now
leafless trees and, surrounded by these, the Abbey of the Fountain.
Jael the herd stood still, gazing upon it. “I had a friend—one whom
I liked well, and who liked me. Now she is abbess here—the Abbess
Madeleine! Let us go down to the Abbey of the Fountain, and see what we
shall see.”
They went down to the vale. Great trees stretched their arms above
them. A stream ran diamonds and made music as it went. Now there came
to Garin the deep sense of having done this thing before—of having
gone with the Princess Audiart to a great house of nuns—though surely
she was not then the Princess Audiart.... He ceased to struggle;
earthly impossibilities seemed to dissolve in a deeper knowledge. He
laid down bewilderment and the beating to and fro of thought; in a
larger world thus and so must be true.
Passing through a gate in a wall, they were on Abbey land, nor was it
long before they were at the Abbey portal. Beggars and piteous folk
were there before them, and a nun giving bread to these through the
square in the door. Garin and Audiart stood aside, waiting their turn.
She gazed upon him, he upon her.
“Came you ever to a place like this,” she breathed, “in green and brown
before?”
“I think that it is so, Jael the herd.”
“A squire in brown and green?”
He nodded, “Yes.”
Jael the herd put her hand over her eyes. “Truth my light! but our life
is deep!”
The mendicants left the portal. The slide closed, making the door solid.
“Wait here,” said the herd-girl. “I will go knock. Wait here until you
are called.”
She knocked, and the panel slid back. He heard her speaking to the
sister and the latter answering. Then she spoke again, and, after a
moment of hesitation, the door was opened. She entered; it closed
after her. He sat down on a stone bench beside the portal and watched
the lacework of branches, great and small, over the blue. A cripple
with a basket of fruit sat beside him and began to talk of jongleurs
he had heard, and then of the times, which he said were hard. With
his lameness, something in him brought Foulque to Garin’s mind. “Oh,
ay!” said the cripple, “kings and dukes make work, but dull work that
you die by and not live by! The court will buy my grapes, but—” He
shrugged, then whistled and stretched in the sun.
“How stands Duke Richard in your eye?”
The cripple offered him a bunch of grapes. “Know you aught that could
not be better, or that could not be worse?”
“Well answered!” said Garin. “I have interest in knowing how high at
times can leap the better.”
“Higher than the court fool thinks,” said the cripple. He sat a little
longer, then took his crutch and his basket of fruit and hobbled away
toward the town.
Garin waited, musing. An hour passed, two hours, then the panel in the
door slid back. A voice spoke, “Jongleur, you are to enter.”
The door opened. He passed through, when it closed behind him. The
sister slipped before, grey and soundless as a moth, and led him over
stone flooring and between stone walls, out of the widened space by
the Abbey door, through a corridor that echoed to his footfall, subdue
his footfall as he might. This ended before a door set in an arch.
The grey figure knocked; a woman’s voice within answered in Latin. The
sister pushed the door open, stood aside, and he entered.
This, he knew at once, was the abbess’s room, then saw the Abbess
Madeleine herself, and, sitting beside her, that one whose companion he
had been for days and weeks. The herd-girl’s worn dress was still upon
her, but she sat there, he saw, as the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, as
the friend, long-missed, of the pale Abbess. He made his reverence to
the two.
The Abbess Madeleine spoke in a voice of a silvery tone, mellowing here
and there into gold and kindness. “Sir Knight, you are welcome! I have
heard a wondrous story, and God gave you a noble part to play.—Now
will speak your liege, the princess.”
“Sir Garin de Castel-Noir,” said Audiart, “in Angoulême lodges a great
lord and valiant knight, Count of Beauvoisin, a kinsman of the most
Reverend Mother. She has written to him, to my great aiding. Take the
letter, find him out, and give it to him, your hand into his. He will
place you in his train, clothe you as knight again. Only rest still of
Limousin, and, for all but this lord, choose a name not your own.” She
mused a little, her eyes upon the letter, folded and sealed, that she
held. “But I must know it—the name. Call yourself, then, the Knight of
the Wood.” She held out the letter. He touched his knee to the stone
floor and took it. “Go now,” she said, “and the Saints have a true man
in their keeping!”
The Abbess Madeleine, slender, pure-faced, of an age with the princess,
extended her hand, gave the blessing of Mother Church. He rose, put
the letter in the breast of his tunic, stepped backward from the two,
and so left the room. Without was the grey sister who again went,
moth-like, before him, leading him through the corridor to the Abbey
door. She opened this—he passed out into the sunshine.
Back in Angoulême, the first man appealed to sent him to the court
quarter of the town, the second gave him precise directions whereby
he might know when he came to it the house that lodged the Count
of Beauvoisin, here in Angoulême with Duke Richard. By a tangle of
narrow streets Garin came to houses tall enough to darken these ways,
in the shadow themselves of the huge castle. He found the greatest
house, where was a porter at the door, and lounging about it a medley
of the appendage sort. Jongleur’s art and his own suasive power got
him entrance to a small court where gathered gayer, more important
retainers. He sang for these, and heads looked out of windows. A page
appeared with a summons to the hall. Following the youngster, Garin
found himself among knights, well-nigh a score, awaiting in hall
the count’s pleasure. Here, moreover, was a troubadour of fame not
inconsiderable, knight as well, but not singer of his own verses. He
had with him two jongleurs for that, and these now looked somewhat
greenly at Garin.
A knight spoke. “Jongleur, sing here as well as you sang below, and
gain will come to you!” Garin sang. “Ha!” cried the knights, “they sing
that way in Paradise!”
The troubadour advanced to the front of the group and bade him sing
again. He obeyed. “Gold hair of Our Lady!” swore the troubadour. “How
comes it that you are not jongleur to a poet?”
“I had a master,” answered Garin, “but he foreswore song and, chaining
himself to a rock, became an eremite. Good sirs, if the Count might
hear me—”
“He will be here anon from the castle. He shall hear you, jongleur,
and so shall our Lord, Duke Richard! Springtime in Heaven!” quoth the
troubadour. “I would take you into my employ, but though I can pay
linnets, I cannot pay nightingales!—Do you know any song of Robert de
Mercœur?”
He asked for his own. Garin, seeing that he did so, smiled and swept
the strings of the lute. “Aye, I know more than one!” He sang, and did
sweet words justice. The knights, each after his own fashion, gave
applause, and Robert de Mercœur sighed with pleasure. The song was
short. Garin lifted his voice in another, made by the same troubadour.
“Ah!” sighed Robert, “I would buy you and feed you from my hand!”
He sat for a moment with closed eyes, tasting the bliss of right
interpretation. Then, “Know you Garin of the Golden Isle’s, _If e’er,
Fair Goal, I turn my eyes from thee_?”
Garin sang it. “Rose tree of the Soul!” said Robert de Mercœur; “there
is the poet I would have fellowship with!”
The leaves of the great door opened, and there came into hall the Count
of Beauvoisin, with him two or three famed knights. All who had been
seated, or lounging half reclined, stood up; the silence of deference
fell at once. Garin saw that the count was not old and that he had a
look of the Abbess Madeleine. He said that he was weary from riding,
and coming to his accustomed great chair, sat down and stretched
himself with a sigh. His eyes fell upon the troubadour with whom he had
acquaintance. “Ha, Robert! rest us with music.”
“Lord count,” said Robert, “we have here a jongleur with the angel of
sound in his throat and the angel of intelligence in his head! Set him
to singing.—Sing, jongleur, again, that which you have just sung.”
Garin touched his lute. As he did so he came near to the count. He
stood and sang the song of Garin of the Golden Island. “Ah, ah!”
said the Count of Beauvoisin. “The Saints fed you with honey in your
cradle!” A coin gleamed between his outstretched fingers. Garin came
very near to receive it. “Lord,” he whispered as he bent, “much hangs
upon my speaking to you alone.”
A jongleur upon an embassy was never an unheard-of phenomenon. The
Count moved so as to let the light fall upon this present jongleur’s
face. The eyes of the two men met, the one in an enquiring, the other
in a beseeching and compelling gaze. The count leaned back in his
chair, the jongleur, when he had bowed low, moved to his original
station. “He sings well indeed!” said the Count. “Give him place among
his fellows, and when there is listening-space I will hear him again.”
Ere long he rose and was attended from the hall. The knights, too, left
the place, each bent upon his own concerns. Only the troubadour Robert
de Mercœur remained, and he came and, seating himself on the same bench
with Garin, asked if he would be taught a just-composed _alba_ or
morning song, and upon the other’s word of assent forthwith repeated
the first stanza. Garin said it over after him. “Ha, jongleur!” quoth
Robert, “you are worthy to be a troubadour! Not all can give values
value! The second goes thus—”
But before the _alba_ was wholly learned came a page, summoning the
jongleur. Garin, following the boy, came into the count’s chamber. Here
was that lord, none with him but a chamberlain whom he sent away. “Now,
jongleur,” said the count, “what errand and by whom despatched?”
Garin drew the letter from his tunic and gave it, his hand into the
other’s hand. The count looked at the writing. “What is here?” he
said. “Does the Abbess Madeleine choose a jongleur for a messenger?”
He broke the seal, read the first few lines, glanced at the body of
the letter, then with a startled look, followed by a knit brow, laid
it upon the table beside him but kept his hand over it. He stood in
a brown study. Garin, watching him, divined that mind and heart and
memory were busied elsewhere than in just this house in Angoulême.
At last he moved, turned his head and spoke to the page. “Ammonet!”
Ammonet came from the door. “Take this jongleur to some chamber where
he may rest. Have food and wine sent to him there.” He spoke to Garin,
“Go! but I shall send for you here again!”
The day descended to evening, the evening to night. Darkness had
prevailed for a length of time when Ammonet returned to the small, bare
room where Garin rested, stretched upon a bench. “Come, jongleur!” said
the page. “My lord is ready for bed and would, methinks, be sung to
sleep.”
Rising, he followed, and came again to the Count’s chamber, where
now was firelight and candle-light, and the Count of Beauvoisin in a
furred robe, pacing the room from side to side. “Wait without,” he
said to Ammonet, and the two men were alone together. The count paced
the floor, Garin stood by the hooded fireplace. He had seen in the
afternoon that he and this lord might understand each other.
The count spoke. “No marvel that we liked your singing! What if there
had been in hall knight and crusader who had heard you beyond the sea?”
“Chance, risk, and brambles grow in every land.”
“_Garin of the Golden Island._—I know not who, in Angoulême, may know
that you fight with Roche-de-Frêne. Duke Richard, who knows somewhat of
all troubadours, knows it.”
“I do not mean to cry it aloud.—Few in this country know my face, and
my name stays hidden.—May we speak, my lord count, of another presence
in Angoulême?”
The other ceased his pacing, flung himself down on a seat before the
fire, and leaned forward with clasped hands and bent head. He sat thus
for an appreciable time, then with a deep breath straightened himself.
“When she was the Lady Madeleine the Abbess Madeleine ruled a great
realm in my life. God knoweth, in much she is still my helm!... Sit you
down and let us talk.”