SPRING TIME
IN the winter dawn Garin rose, saddled his horse, and, mounting, rode
from that place. He travelled through burned and wasted country, and he
saw many a piteous sight. But folk that were left were building anew,
and the sky was bright and the sunshine good. He went by the ruins of
Raimbaut’s keep, and at last he came to Castel-Noir.
Foulque lived and the black tower stood. News of salvation had run like
wildfire. Garin found Foulque out-of-doors, old and meagre men and
young lads with him. The dozen huts that sheltered by the black castle,
sheltered still. The fields that it claimed had gone undevastated.
“Garin’s luck!” said Foulque; whereupon old Jean crossed himself
for fear that Sir Foulque had crossed the luck.—But the young and
middle-aged men who had gone to war for Roche-de-Frêne had not yet
returned. Some would not return. The women of the huts looked haunted,
and though the children played, they did not do so freely. But the war
had ended, and some would come back, and Christmas-tide was at hand and
the sun shone on the brown fields.
Foulque saw Garin coming. He put his hand above his eyes. “_Peste!_” he
said. “I always had good sight—what’s the matter now? Look, boy, for
my eyes blur!”
They all looked, then they cried, “Sir Garin!” and the younger rushed
down to the road.
That day and night passed. The folk of Castel-Noir had liking for Sir
Foulque, and that despite some shrewdness of dealing and a bitter wit.
But they were becoming aware that they loved Sir Garin. He stood and
told them of how this man had done and how that, of two brave deeds
of Sicart’s, and how Jean the Talkative talked but did well. He told
them who, to his knowledge, had quitted this life; and he spoke not
like a lord but like a friend to those who upon that telling broke into
mourning. He could not tell them how life and death stood now among
Castel-Noir men, for he had been away from Roche-de-Frêne. Castel-Noir
came to understand that he had been upon some service for the princess,
and that that explained why there was with him neither squire nor man.
To Foulque that evening in the hall, by the fire, he told in part the
story of what the princess had wrought for Roche-de-Frêne.
Foulque drew deeper breath. The colour came into his withered cheek, he
twisted in his chair. “I heard rumours when Aquitaine lifted and went
away, and Montmaure slunk back—but my habit is to wait for something
more than rumours!... That is a brave lady—a brave adventure! By the
mass! When I was young that would have stirred me!”
Garin laughed at him. “It stirs you now, Foulque!”
Foulque would not grant that. But even while he denied, he looked less
crippled and shrivelled. “You did your _devoir_ also.... _Audiart the
Wise_—Well, she may be so!”
“She is so,” said Garin.
He slept that night, stirred in the early morning, rose, and, dressing,
called to Sicart’s son in the courtyard to bring his horse. Old Pierre
gave him wheaten bread and a bowl of milk. Foulque, wrapped in his
furred mantle, came from the hall and talked with him while he ate and
drank. The sun at the hill-tops, he rode down the narrow way from the
black tower and was lost to sight in the fir wood. He rode until he
reached a certain craggy height of earth from which might be viewed the
road by which the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne must approach Our Lady
in Egypt. The height was shaggy with tree and bush, it overhung the
way, commanding long stretches to either hand. Dismounting, he tied
his horse in a small, thick wood at the back of the hill, then climbed
afoot to the rough and broken miniature plateau atop. Even as he came
to this he saw upon the western stretch of the road two horsemen, and
presently made out that they were men of Beauvoisin’s sent ahead. They
passed beneath him, cantered on, faces set for Our Lady in Egypt.
Garin found a couch of rock, a hollow, sandstrewn cleft where, lying at
length, small bushes hid him from all observation. Here he stretched
himself, pillowed his head upon his arms, and waited to see the
princess pass. Time went by, and the morning air brought him sound from
the other hand. He parted the bushes and looking east saw approaching
a great and gallant troop—lords and knights of Roche-de-Frêne, coming
to greet their princess close within the boundaries of her own land....
They came on with banners—a goodly column and a joyful. Close at hand,
he began to single out forms and faces that he knew, and first he saw
Stephen the Marshal riding at the head, and then Raimon of Les Arbres,
and beside this lord, Aimar de Panemonde. Garin’s heart rejoiced that
Aimar lived. He looked fondly upon his brother-in-arms, riding beneath
the craggy hill. Many another that he knew he saw. Others he missed,
and feared that they did not live or that they lay hurt, for else they
would have been here.
The great troop, for all it rode with a singing heart, with exultation
and laughter and triumph, had a war-worn look. The men and the horses
were gaunt. The men’s eyes seemed yet to be looking on battle sights.
Their gestures were angular, energetic and final, their speech short,
not flowing. The colour of bronze, the hardness of iron, the edge of
steel were yet in presence. It was to be seen that they had known
hunger and weariness and desperation, and had withstood with courage.
The man stretched upon the rock-edge above the passing numbers felt his
communion with them. They were his brothers....
Not only these. As they rode by he saw in vision all the lands of
Roche-de-Frêne and those who peopled them, men and women and children.
And the town of Roche-de-Frêne and its citizens, men and women and
children, and all who had defended it. And all the hills and vales of
life.... He saw the slain and the hurt and the impoverished and the
hearts that bled with loss—the waste fields and the broken walls. He
saw work to be done—long work. And when that work was done and there
were only scars that did not throb, yet was there work—building and
building, though it could not be weighed. He saw as he knew that she
saw—and the land became deep and dear to him, and the people became
father and mother and child, brother and sister and friend.... “It is a
baptism,” said Garin, and covered his eyes with his hands.
The great company went by, lessened in apparent bulk, lessened still
upon the westward running road. Its trumpeters sounded their trumpets.
Out of the distance came to Garin’s ear an answering fanfare, delicate
and far like fairy trumpets. Rising ground and purple wood hid the
meeting between the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne and her barons and
valiant knights.
The sun climbed toward the summit. The troubadour lay in the high cleft
of the rock, felt the beams, breathed the clear, pure air, hearkened
to the sough of the breeze in sere grass and bush. All earth and air
were his, and the golden home of warmth and light, the great middle orb
whose touch he felt. He waited for sound or sight that should tell him
that the princess and her doubled train were coming. It was not long
to wait. In the night a light rain had fallen—there was no dust, and
the road was softened beneath the horses’ hoofs. The great company
appeared now, like a vision, brightened and heightened to the outer eye
by strength of the inner. Beauty and might, and sadness and joy, all
lights and all shadows, gained a firmer recognition.
Garin, concentrated, watched the company come toward him. Again there
echoed the eve of his knighthood, when through the darkness he had kept
vigil. But he kept vigil now a more awakened being, with a wider reach
and a richer knowledge.
The train came toward him, and now he heard the sound of it, the tread
of horses, metallic noises, the human voice, all subdued to a deep
murmur as of an incoming sea. This increased until single notes were
distinguishable. The form grew larger, then he could see component
forms. Music was being made, he saw the great blue banners.... And
still he knew that all was a mightier and a brighter thing than
yesterday he had known.... Now he saw the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne
riding between Beauvoisin and Stephen the Marshal.
She passed the rock whereon he lay, and he saw a great and high and
bright soul.... It passed—all passed. He felt the darkness, but then
the starlight.
He stayed yet an hour there in the cleft, with the brown grass about
him and overhead the sky like sapphire. Then, descending the crag, he
sought his horse in the wood and, mounting, turned his face toward
Castel-Noir.
That evening in the black tower Foulque would discuss family fortunes,
and how Castel-Noir might be first recovered, then enlarged. Garin
listened, spoke when the elder brother paused for him to speak. It
seemed that he wished somehow to better the condition of tenants and
serfs, to find and teach better methods of living. Foulque jerked aside
from that. “We are good masters. Ask any one without this hall!”
“Good masters?... We may be. But—”
Foulque struck at the fire with his crutch. “You are a poet—I am a
practical man. Let us leave dreaming!... Raimbaut’s castle will be
rebuilt by the next of kin.”
“Dreaming?... What is dreaming?”
Foulque left his chair, and limped to and fro before the huge
fireplace. Garin from the settle corner watched him. The light played
over both and reddened the ancient hall. “Garin,” said Foulque.
“knightly fame is good and fame of a poet is good, and emirs’ ransoms
are good—God knows they are good! But when will you wed and so build
our house?”
“Ah!” said Garin, “did you ever think, Foulque, of how long may be
time?”
Foulque waved his hand. “You should not play with it! You should think
of the future! They say that you love one whom you call the Fair Goal—”
But Garin, rising, moved to a deep window, and looking out, breathed
the night. “There is the great star in the arm of the cypress!... I
used to see that, when I lay in those hot towns of Paynimry.” Nor would
he speak again of that manner of building Castel-Noir.
The morrow came and went and the morrow and that morrow’s morrow.
December paced by and gave the torch of time to January. January, a
cold and dark month, gave the torch to February, a brief and windy one,
March had it then, and he had ideas in his head of birds and flowers.
April came and the world was green.
The ravaging of the dragon was becoming in Roche-de-Frêne an old
thought. Throughout the winter the Princess of Roche-de-Frêne and
the able people of her lands laboured to redeem well-being and the
conditions of growth. Plan and better plan, faint success and greater
success; and now when the spring was coming, good ground beneath
the feet! The land began to smile. The town of Roche-de-Frêne, the
cathedral and the castle felt the warmth. Bishop Ugo preached the
Easter sermon, and he preached a mighty and an eloquent one. You felt
lilies and roses come up through it.
Ugo had said at Christmas-tide that he had never doubted the triumph of
the right. Questioned at Candlemas, though very gently, by one of the
hyperbold, he had answered gravely that Father Eustace, in confession,
had acknowledged that he was not certain as to whether Our Blessed
Lady of Roche-de-Frêne had indeed spoken to him. Pride had been in
his heart, and the demon himself might have taken dazzling form and
spoken! Father Eustace for penance had been sent, barefoot and dumb,
to a remote monastery where in his cell he might gain true vision.
Easter-tide, Bishop Ugo flowered praise of Roche-de-Frêne’s princess.
That great lady took it with her enigmatical smile.
In the castle-garden Alazais watched the crocus bloom, the hyacinth and
the daffodil. Gilles de Valence sang to her, and sometimes Raimon de
Saint-Rémy, or, when no troubadour was there, Elias of Montaudon was
brought upon the greensward to sing other men’s verses. Knights came
and went. Her ladies made a bright half-ring about her, and she and
they and the knights and poets discussed the world under the star of
Love.
Sometimes Audiart came into the garden, but not often. There was much
that yet was to be done.... She was oftener in the town than in the
castle, often away from both, riding far and near in her domain, to
other towns and villages and towers. But as the spring increased and
the green leaves came upon the trees, order was regained. The sap
of life returned to the veins that had been drained, time and place
knew again hope and power. The princess looked upon a birthland that
had lifted from a pit, and now was sandalled and ready for further
journeying. She came oftener now to the garden, and at night, from her
chamber in the White Tower, she watched the stars.
In the town whose roofs lay below her, the craftsmen were back at
their crafts. Again they were dyeing scarlet and weaving fine webs and
working in leather and wax and metal and stone. Merchant and trader
renewed their life. Roche-de-Frêne once more hummed as a hive that
produced, not destroyed. It produced values dense and small, but so
it learned of values beyond these. Presently the old talk of liberty
would spring up, not feared by this princess. When, in late April, she
held high court and a great council, Thibaut Canteleu—Master Mayor,
clear-eyed and merry—sat, with two of the town’s magistrates, in the
council chamber.
On the eve of that council Stephen the Marshal spent an hour with the
princess. She made him sit beside her in the White Tower; she spoke to
him at length, in a low voice telling a story. Stephen listened with
his eyes held by hers, then, when she kept silence, bowed his face upon
his hands and sat so for a time. At last he raised his head. “Mine is a
plain mind, my Lady Audiart,—only a faithful one! There are many good
words, and ‘friend’ is a right good word, a high knight among them,
and ‘friendship’ is a noble fief. I take ‘friend’ and ‘friendship’ for
my wearing and my estate, my Lady Audiart—aye, and I will wear them
knightly, not cravenly, with a melancholy heart! Friend to you and
friend to him, and Saint Michael my witness! loyal servant to you both.”
“Stephen, my friend,” answered the princess, “you say true that great
liking is a great knight, and lasting friendship is a mighty realm! It
plants its own happiness in its own fields.”
She rose, and standing with him at the window, spoke of old things, old
long memories that they had in common, spoke of her father, Gaucelm the
Fortunate.
The next day she held council, sitting on the dais robed in blue, a
gold circlet upon her head, facing her barons and knights-banneret,
churchmen who held lands from her, and leaders of the townsmen. That
which she had to lay before them was the matter of her marriage....
At Castel-Noir the dark fir trees wore emeralds. The stream had its
loud spring music. Nor Foulque nor Garin had been idle through the
winter. Back to the black tower and the hamlet had come their men who
had fought at Roche-de-Frêne—Foulque’s men and the men who had come
with Garin from the land over the sea. Houses had to be built for
these—more fields ploughed and planted. Stables had to be made larger.
The road was bad that led from the black tower to the nearest highway;
it was remade. When spring came Castel-Noir was in better estate than
ever before. Garin spoke of what manner of priest they should bring
in—and of some clerk who might be given a house and who could teach.
Raimbaut the Six-fingered had for his fief been man of Montmaure, but
for it Montmaure had been man of Roche-de-Frêne. Now, again, was it
only Roche-de-Frêne’s. Montmaure might look blackly across from his
own borders, but that was all.... It seemed that, escheating to the
ruling house, the barony was not yet given, for service paid and to be
paid, to some lord who should rebuild the castle and bring up the lands
that now were waste.... Foulque had hours of speculation as to that.
In the hall, of evenings, he looked out of the corners of his eyes at
Garin, reading or dreaming by the fire. Who had done greater service,
fought better, than Garin? If the princess were truly wise—if she were
grateful—
* * * * *
Foulque spoke once on this matter to Garin, but received so absolute
a check that his tongue declined to bring it forward again. None the
less, his brain kept revolving the notion. To add to Castel-Noir the
whole containing fief, from knight alone to become baron, to keep
the black tower but to build besides a fair, strong castle—Who at
Roche-de-Frêne, or away from Roche-de-Frêne, had served more fully than
had Garin? Foulque thought with a consuming impatience of how little he
seemed to care for wealth and honours.
On the heel of such an hour as this with Foulque, came Aimar de
Panemonde. He came with the sheen and beauty of the spring. Foulque saw
him from the tower window as he left the fir wood and began to mount
the winding road. Behind him were four or five others. All rode noble
horses, all were richly clad. It came into Foulque’s head—from where
he knew not—that here was an envoy with his company. The little troop
seemed to him rich and significant, despatched with knowledge, directed
to an end. At once Foulque connected that with Garin—and why again he
knew not, save that, and despite his sluggishness in the matter of the
fief, fairy things did happen to Garin.
Garin of the Golden Island met his brother-in-arms without the castle
gate. Aimar threw himself from his horse. Foulque in the tower above
watched the two embrace, then limped down the stair to meet the
guest and order the household.... And soon it seemed that Sir Aimar
de Panemonde might indeed be considered an envoy! The Princess of
Roche-de-Frêne would have Sir Garin de Castel-Noir return to her
court—commanded his presence on the day of Saint Mark.
There were three days to spare. Aimar, having discharged his mission,
spent them happily, as did those who had ridden with him. Foulque
made talk of the court and the town until—and that was not long—he
found that, for some reason that he could not discern, Aimar did not
talk readily of these. Ever Foulque wished guests of Castel-Noir to be
happy, was courteously minded toward them. This one especially, seeing
how great a friend to Garin he had been and was. So Foulque followed
the lead of the younger men, and in the hall, after supper, had his
reward in stories of the land over the sea—a thousand adventures not
before drawn from Garin. Aimar’s followers and as many Castel-Noir men
as could crowd into hall, came, too, to listen.
Three days went by. On the morning of the fourth farewells were made.
Garin and Aimar passed out of the gate with their following and down
the winding road. With Garin was Rainier the squire, and two or
three besides. Foulque and all who might watched them go, took the
backward-turning wave of the knights’ hands, marked them until they
vanished in the fir wood. Foulque went back to hall and began to
day-dream of Garin and that fief had that been Raimbaut’s.
The two knights with their following rode through the spring weather.
Very sweet it was, earth and sky more fair than might be told.... And
so, in the early afternoon, they came in sight of Roche-de-Frêne.
It was holiday and festival. The people upon the road seemed
light-hearted. The scarred plain had been helped, and now spring flung
over it a mantle of green. When they came to the hill of Roche-de-Frêne
the people had thickened about them; when they entered by the western
gate the town seemed joyous. The folk were abroad and there was to be
made out laughter and singing. As they rode through the streets they
met again and yet again, and at last continually, recognition. It
had a nature that might please the knightliest knight! The marvel of
the cathedral rose before them, and the gold of the sunshine and the
sweetness of the air took from it a shading of awfulness but gave in
return benignancy. They mounted the high street, and now the mighty
shape of the castle increased. Sunlight wrapped it, too, and above
was the stair of the sky. Black Tower and Eagle Tower, Red Tower
and Lion Tower and White Tower—and Garin saw the tree-tops of the
garden.... They crossed the moat, entered between Red Tower and Lion
Tower. Trumpets were being sounded. Here, too, seemed festival. They
dismounted in the outer court—men of rank came about them with the
fairest welcome—they were marshalled soon to a rich lodging. Nones
were ringing, the spring afternoon slipping away.
An hour passed, another was half run. Garin of the Golden Island, alone
save for Rainier in the room that had been given him, heard the knock
at the door. “Let him in,” he said to the squire, and Pierol entered.
The page gave his message. “Sir Garin de Castel-Noir, the princess
rests in the garden. She would speak with you there.” Garin took his
mantle and followed.
In the castle garden the fruit trees were abloom. Their clear shadows
lay on the sward while the shadows of the taller trees struck against
the enclosing walls. Below the watch-tower there was a sheet of
daffodils. The many birds of the garden were singing, and the bees
yet hummed in the fruit trees. But there was no gay throng other than
these, or other winged things, or the selves of the flowers.
It was quiet in the garden, and at first view it seemed a solitude.
Then, as he came toward the heart of it, he saw the princess, seated
beneath the great tree about which the garden was built. In the droop
and sweep of its boughs had been placed a seat of marble finely
wrought. Here she sat, robed in blue, and wearing, held in place by a
circlet of gold, a veil threaded with gold and silver. But to-day it
did not hide her face.
As he came near, “Greeting, friend!” she said, and her voice was
thrilling music.
Garin would have bent his knee. But, “No!” she said, “do not do that!
That is not to be done again between you and me.” She rose from the
marble seat. She stood in flowing robes, on her head the gold circlet
of sovereignty, and she looked a mighty princess, knowing her own mind,
guiding her own action, freeing her own spirit, unlocking always new
treasures of power and love! She came close to him, stood equal with
him. Their eyes met, and if the princess sat in hers, the prince sat
in his. “Do you know why I have brought you here?” she said: “I have
brought you here, Garin of the Golden Island, to ask you if you will
marry me?”
... In midsummer, on the Eve of Saint John, they were wed in the
cathedral, with great music, pomp, and joy. Afterwards they knelt
before the shrine of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne, and there were people
who said that it was then that the Blessed Image’s lips moved and
there issued the words “Peace and Happiness.” Going, the two passed
the pillars raised by Gaucelm of the Star, and coming to the tomb of
Gaucelm the Fortunate laid flowers there.... But when their own long
reign closed, their land held them in memory as Audiart and Garin the
Wise.
THE END