THE END OF THE WORLD
Robert le Débonair was King of France, Robert le Diable Duke of
Normandy, John XIX Pope in Rome, Héribert bishop of a diocese taking
name from a certain town between Orléans and Paris, Rothalind abbess of
a great house of Benedictine nuns, Rainulf the Red, baron holding a wide
fief and dwelling, when he was not hunting or ravening in war or gone
upon some visit with an errand of his own, in the castle above the
river. Rainulf was a tiger, a stream in flood, a devastating flame.
Mellissent was his wife. Isabel his sister, was gone to be a nun, and
was the happier. Gerbert was a music-maker who ate in Rainulf’s hall.
Black Martin was not king nor baron nor bishop, but he ruled his own
that was a troop of Entertainers of the time. The time knew much
wretchedness and clamoured for crude forgetfulness. Black Martin sold
that by the hour, whether in market-place or castle hall or at
crossroads when travellers enough gathered themselves together. He was
seventy years old and yet strong as an ox. He was dour as an old wolf in
winter, and in fight as bad to meet, and he had the cunning of Sire
Reynard. He ruled the score of human beings composing his band with more
absoluteness than King Robert ruled France. Four of the number were his
sons, and four the women with his sons. Two of these were lawful wives,
two were not. There were five children in the band. The remainder, all
but one, were kindred only because of Adam and Eve, and because their
common occupation was to lighten the heart or impart motion to the mind.
The remaining one was Gersonde, Black Martin’s granddaughter, child of a
dead eldest daughter and some man somewhere. Black Martin’s band
included buffoons, tumblers and wrestlers, a dwarf, a dancer, two
singers of ballads and players of harps, a man with an ape and a
fortune-teller or soothsayer.
That last was the part of Gersonde. She was a dark woman in a red gown
with a blue mantle. Now Black Martin beat her, and now he listened to
what she said when it came to points upon which he was perplexed. He
never listened to her when she wished to stop soothsaying and play and
sing with Bageron and Rosamund, or to dance with Maria. If she was
insistent he beat her. He was not perplexed here; coin came into the
soothsayer’s lap when the singers and players and even the dancer made
no collection.
It had been a year of greedy staring, but small, small collections. The
lesser folk, serfs and villeins and craftsmen in mean villages or towns,
gave nothing at any time unless it were coarse food, or a turn of their
trade, or a night’s rest in a dark and crowded hut. This year they did
not give the food for it was a famine year. And the burghers in the
larger towns gave little, the landed folk gave little, castle court and
hall proved saving.
Black Martin spoke to Gersonde. “Soothsay for me! We have had famine
years before--”.
“They told us in that monastery, ‘The End of the World is coming.’ The
priest we met on the road said, ‘The End of the World is at hand.’ Three
days ago, in that town, the church bells rang and our crowd left us,
and gave their money into the bag at the door.”
“The End of the World--! I would I might give it a rope’s end! The world
ends if I starve! Hark you! Soothsay that the world does NOT end--at
least not in our time! Soothsay along this road so that we get money!
Get money or get thy ribs broken!”
The road that they were travelling proved villainously muddy and uneven.
Toward noon they found sitting by the wayside a man who led in a chain a
brown bear. “This road is most fearful--plain bog and mountain! But
never will it be mended, because presently comes the End of the World!”
Black Martin shook his bull shoulders and scraped the mud from a torn
shoe. “We have been south. I heard a little talk of that, but nothing in
a month to what is heard now in a day! Is it coming to an end in France
before it comes in Aquitaine?”
“Only the learned knew much about it,” said the bearward. “Then, all of
a sudden, comes a word from the bishops that has to be read in all the
churches. And it begins, ‘As the End of the World is at hand--’ So it
began to run from mouth to mouth.--The road is muddy and it is raining?
Well, the earth sweats with terror!”
It was yet raining when the troop of Entertainers came into the town
between Orléans and Paris. They came through a narrow street that turned
and wound upon itself to the market-place, and all the way Jouel and
Baudwin beat drum and played viol, and Black Martin at the head cried in
a bull’s voice. “Choice Entertainment! My masters! My masters! Choice
Entertainment!” They brought into the market-place a queue of followers
and attracted certain folk already there. But the rain came down hard,
and the Entertainers were dead tired and downhearted and all went
spiritlessly. Even fear of Black Martin could not keep it up. The crowd
felt the chill rain and dissolved. The individuals that stayed, having
no better place to go, were not the kind that scattered gain.
There was a black, tangled knot of lanes and alleys like frozen
serpents. Mean houses cowered on either side. The Entertainers bargained
for night’s lodging in certain of these, and fire to cook food by. Dusk
shut in, with a great monastery bell booming overhead. Pastourel the
wrestler and his wife Jeanne and their three children and Gersonde the
soothsayer had a hut-like place with a hearth in the middle and the
smoke going out through a hole overhead. Pastourel was Black Martin’s
son, Gersonde’s uncle. If he had not had a black temper he would have
been by no means a bad giant. Jeanne was younger than he, not much older
than Gersonde. Gersonde loved Jeanne and the children.
Outside poured the rain. The smoke within the hut circled acrid and
heavy. Jeanne, bringing Pastourel his supper, let fall the wooden bowl
and spilled the stew of little-meat and fragments of vegetables.
Pastourel had a stick which he used in vaulting. He took it now and beat
Jeanne, beat her much worse than he usually did, since the rain and
ill-luck were in his temper. Jeanne began to cry out loudly; his hand
was twisted in her long hair, and he flung her to the floor and still
beat her. The children cried, huddled in the corner. Gersonde dragged at
Pastourel’s arm, caught at the stick. He was strong as a bull, he flung
her to the other side of the hut and kept on beating Jeanne. The hut
stood in a populous alley; now came folk striking at the door to know if
there was murder.
Pastourel flung the door open. “I am beating my wife who spoiled my
supper! Cannot a man beat his wife in peace and quietness?”
The people left the door. “It is nothing! There is nothing unlawful. He
is beating his wife.”
Pastourel gave Jeanne half a dozen more blows, upon the sides, the
shoulders and the head, then set his stick in the corner, and flinging
himself down upon the straw ate the meat and black bread without the
broth. The night set in, dark, wet and chill.
Yet the next morning showed a bright sky with sunbeams that pierced even
those lanes. Black Martin’s band took station betimes in the
market-place. That was a large, unpaved space, muddy this morning under
foot, but roofed by a sky of sapphire. The great buildings that showed
above intermediate structures were the church and monastery. Above them
in turn, upon the rock above the town, struck against the blue Bishop
Héribert’s house that was nothing less than a castle. Coming back to
market-place, there were found a storehouse, a guild house, other
buildings rude and small, a few better houses belonging to the principal
burghers. Down the opening of a street showed the peaked roof of a
_béguinage_, and nearer yet to the market-place the long front of the
brothel licensed by the town. The market cross rose in the middle of the
market-place, and all around were the hucksters’ booths.
Rude was the time and place, and rude the folk, clergy and laity,
country and town, fief-holding noble, man-at-arms and servitor, serf and
villein, monk and pilgrim, stroller, beggar, outlaw, leper, Jew,
Saracen, and Christian. Such as they were, samples of all skirted or
traversed the market-place of this town.
It should have been a good day. But though a crowd gathered, it was
nothing like so good a crowd as it should have been. Its units looked
hungrily for a turn or two, then drifted away. Others took their places,
but these also proved unstable. There was little real applause, hardly
any loud jocularities tossed back to the Entertainers. These, like all
Entertainers, had the quickest ear for any drop or hollowness in
applause. Such communication received, the ray _What’s the use?_ saw to
it that their own movements became dispirited. The people of this town
had been taxed of all their money or had given it all away. At least,
none of the booth people seemed to have it, for their faces, too, were
long, and on the other side of the place the man with the brown bear did
not seem to have it. The bells clanged noon; the folk were streaming
into the church. A palmer crossed the market-place. He held up his staff
that had tied to it a bit of dried palm. “It is almost One Thousand
years since He suffered! Almost One Thousand years! Be not taken buying
and selling, ploughing and building, laughing and clapping of the
shoulder as though ye did not believe! Almost One Thousand years!” The
bell clanged again. Up in the sky was a cloud. Now it floated so that it
came between the sun and the town. Shadow wrapped the place. Half the
people took panic fright. “Signs and signs! The End of the World--!”
Rainulf the Red rode into town with a train of twenty. He had a quarrel
with Bishop Héribert; he came to make it lighter or make it darker. To
the sound of ringing bells he came into the market-place on his way to
the bishop’s house that was in every aspect a castle. He knew the town
well, and the castle and the bishop--at least he thought that he knew
the bishop. There came in the only doubt--doubt as to whether the
quarrel’s shade was solely a matter of Red Rainulf’s will.
He rode his huge grey horse across the market-place, caring not at all
that he and his men thrust against booths, made goods to fall in the
mire, threatened to trample children and the old and unwary. “Rainulf
the Red!” cried the people, men and women, and ducked and cringed.
“Come laugh at Baudwin Buffoon! Come marvel at Pastourel and Rayneval
the wrestlers! Come listen to Barnabo’s song, a circumcised Jew that
became a Christian! Will you see the dwarf Seguin?--Maria the dancer
that danced before the soldan of Paynimry! A soothsayer, a soothsayer!
Gersonde the soothsayer, who can taste what the king has for dinner, and
hear the bells in Rome!”
Black Martin’s bull voice burst its way from the other side of the
market cross. Rainulf the Red rode on, then turned his horse’s head. His
men turned with him, Gerbert the music-maker, whom, for some whim, he
had brought with him, turned--Black Martin, seeing them coming, felt as
though he had swallowed a stoup of wine. He spoke in an undervoice to
the Entertainers, that, for this reason and that and another, he
dominated as though they were his fingers: “Do your best--each one of
you! Get bright coin from him--or answer to me--or answer to me!”
Rainulf the Red said, “Where is your soothsayer?”
Black Martin indicated Gersonde where she sat upon a stone, her mantle
about her. “Lord, will you have her come to your bridle-rein?”
Soothsayers, more than ordinarily, had left their youth behind them. But
this one was yet young, and she had, if you chose to see it, beauty....
Pastourel and Rayneval were tumbling marvellously upon the carpet they
had laid. Baudwin Buffoon strutted from corner to corner. One of
Rainulf’s men laughed loudly, then another; Baudwin had caught them.
Pastourel, planting the stick with which he had beat Jeanne, vaulted
high over it. A man-at-arms clapped his hands, watched for the next
trick. Maria the dancer began to bend and whirl.
“Soothsayer,” spoke Rainulf, “if two fiefs quarrel, my fief and another
fief, shall my fief win? Will we get it done before Christ comes, and
will there be time in which I may get absolution if there has been
sacrilege committed?”
The soothsayer stood still with folded hands. All light in her face
seemed to go inward, and though her eyes did not close they appeared to
rest from use in vision. She stood so for a span of time, while the
bells yet rang and the cloud passed from overhead so that the
market-place lay in sunshine. She spoke in an inward and murmuring
voice. “Why do the folk dread the End of the World? That would be a fair
sight, to see Christ come!--but have no fear, lord! Long, long, long
will it be ere you see Him coming!”
“I will get clear before the End of the World?”
“Yea. The End of the World is not yet.”
Her face became as usual. She sighed, then smiled as was the rule, and
made her reverence and cupped her outstretched hand for the piece of
money.
Rainulf the Red stooped from the saddle, put the coin in her hand and
closed his own over it. “What is your name?”
“Gersonde, lord.”
She went back and sat upon her stone. Rainulf the Red spoke to Black
Martin, standing cap in hand. He spoke in a somewhat lowered, but not
greatly lowered voice. He was a strong baron, and these were strollers,
and it was nothing extraordinary that which he proposed. He drew his
horse aside, but not much aside. He looked at the soothsayer in her blue
mantle, then bargained with the head of the band. Black Martin pursed
his lips, then named a sum. The Baron halved it; they finally agreed
upon three fourths of the first amount. Black Martin sold his
granddaughter’s body and agreed that it should be found at such an hour
in such a place.
Rainulf the Red and his men rode on to the bishop’s castle, whither
presently followed Black Martin’s band of Entertainers. These gained
some recompense in the great court, with dinner in the kitchens, and a
night’s lodging in a loft. But Black Martin gave Gersonde to the man
sent for her.... It was not the first time he had sold her. He gave her,
as before, a beating and pushed her out. She followed Gerbert the
music-maker, to whom his lord had given the order to bring her to the
tower in which Héribert had placed his guest.
Rainulf abode three days with the bishop; then, having made up his mind
to declare war, rode away to reach safety before he did so. Among his
various determinations was one in regard to the soothsayer Gersonde. At
one moment he thought that she was not fair, and at another that she was
so. Twice in the three days he had demanded soothsaying and had found a
value in the words that came from behind still face and wide eyes.
He sent one to bring to him Black Martin. “The woman your granddaughter.
She will be cared for. Here are three pieces of gold.”
“Sire, sire, the gain she brings me--”
“Three pieces of gold. When you have quitted bishop’s land you are in my
land. Merchants who do not like my buying meet ill luck.”
“Lord, when you have done with her--”
“I do not buy with conditions.--Are there not granddaughters enough in
every land? Find yourself another!”
Black Martin returned to his band. He had not Gersonde, but he had gold
in his purse. “That lord will throw her from him when his mood changes!
Then will she feel her way back to us who are all she knows--for what
better, Christ, can a woman do?”
Jeanne and the children wept, but that made no difference.
Rainulf the Red and his men took the road to his castle. There were
several led horses, and on one of these was placed the soothsayer.
The day was cloudy, the road bad. Rainulf rode well ahead, with two or
three. The body of his train, loath to leave the town, grumbled, swore,
was quarrelsome among its members. Under the grey sky the country wore a
desolated look. There was a field in which, earlier that morning, there
had been reapers. It lay half cut, and the sickles upon the earth among
the corn. Farther on, they came to the reapers themselves, hurrying
along the wayside. “Where are you going, you hinds?” A young man
answered: “To St. Martin’s shrine. It is the End of the World!”
Farther on were other folk, men and women. A priest harangued these.
“Holy Church tells you, it draws nigh to a thousand years since He
suffered! If the sky be not rolled back and the earth does not perish it
will be because of Church’s prayers. So pray to Church to pray for you!
Believe, give, amend your lives! But do not leave your fields and your
smithies, your tending of flocks and diking and ditching--”
The country grew wilder and more unkempt. The sky hung leaden grey.
Rainulf was well ahead; depression took his followers. One turned in his
saddle. “Gerbert there, with your viol! For Holy Virgin’s sake, make us
music!”
Gerbert dropped the reins of his horse. The beast plodded on, no fiery
war-steed. Gerbert himself was little thought on, of little importance
in Red Rainulf’s demesne. The music-maker drew bow across strings. He
played well, loving his art. He made the music that he played, and now
it was merry and now it was sad. To-day he made a music that was swift
and wild. “Gay, gay!” cried the men. “Fast and sweet!”
Gerbert’s bow danced upon the viol strings. Then a string snapped.
“Mute--mute!” he said. “The End of the World for this music!”
The old horse that he rode had fallen back, was going with the
hindermost. Gerbert found himself beside Gersonde the soothsayer. She
had been listening to the music. Now she spoke. “The world ends, the
world begins.”
Gerbert said, “To-morrow, doubtless, I shall mend the viol and play
again.”
They were riding side by side, and none giving them heed. “Why is it,”
said Gerbert, “that I feel greatly at home with you? There is here
something strange, that I cannot understand. It is as though a light and
warmth went from me to you and you to me.”
“Some strings are stretched alike and give the same sound.--Your name
now is Gerbert?”
“Gerbert. And your name is Gersonde.... In the Red Castle if you need
help.... But I am only Gerbert who thinks at night, and in the daytime
plays before the Baron! As little as if I were a woman can I give help!”
As he spoke they came in sight of the Red Castle. Rainulf’s hold was a
rude, great place, moat and bridge and wall, towers and keep. It crowned
a hill and looked down upon a river, and by the river cowered a wretched
village of huts. Around stretched field and forest, and more forest than
field. The sky hung grey. Ravens were flying above a wood, and the hill,
when Rainulf’s horn was blown, threw back a sullen echo.
Mellissent, Rainulf’s wife, watched from the wall the troop come up the
road. She had two tire-maidens with her, and she spoke to them. “Is not
that a woman?”
“Yea, mistress.”
“Ever he nets new birds! Well, I would I were a man!”
That was one day. Mellissent waited two days, then, Rainulf riding on
business to the north, sent and bade to her presence the new-caught
bird. “Stand there!... You soothsay?”
“Falsely when I am paid, lady, and sometimes truly when I gain naught.”
“Then soothsay as to yourself.”
“I cannot.”
“Then will I for you,” said Mellissent. “Rainulf will hold you in liking
for a month, then will he wish other food. Most women have no other
claim than being women; whether that is their fault or sorrow or
mournful plight put upon them, I cannot say. You can tell what fortune
will befall, so you may not be thrust out at gate. So long as your
fortune-telling pleases Rainulf you shall have your hole in the wall and
your crust of bread. ’Ware any soothsaying that does not please
him!--for then you will be only woman again.”
“I shall not stay the month, dame,” said Gersonde.
Mellissent regarded her, chin in hand. “Have you fondness for Rainulf?”
“No.”
“I will tell you some things,” said Mellissent. “There forms a wish in
me to speak to you.... I was a girl in this castle, but it was brighter
then than it is now. My father and his sons were slain in battle, and
Count Odo was my overlord. He would give this fief to one who fought
hard and ruled hard, so one morning there rode here Rainulf to be my
husband. Now I loved a man whose castle was not far away, and he was
noble, and in all ways fit to carry this fief. So I stole from this
castle and rode to find Count Odo, and kneeling before him begged him to
give me that one for my husband. But he would not, and he held me there
in his town, and sent for Rainulf, and married me to him, there in the
church, and the next day we rode back to Red Castle. That was summer,
and when winter came Rainulf picked quarrel with that man whom I loved.
War was between them, and Red Rainulf slew my man.... Soothsay to me if
a woman is ever and always to marry only as says father or brother or
suzerain! They say that the End of the World is coming. I care not how
soon it comes if things change. If they change not, it is nothing,
coming or going!”
“I cannot soothsay to-day,” said Gersonde. “I only know that the world
does not end and much is yet to happen.”
What should happen immediately with herself was to leave the castle. She
was homesick for Jeanne and the children.
But a month passed before she might win away. Then the quarrel between
bishop and baron flamed from earth to zenith. Out at gate, over bridge,
down the road clattered Rainulf the Red and his men. They went to the
bishop’s lands there to harrow, burn, and slay. The Red Castle stood
emptied of fighting men.
The sun set; there followed a chill night of clouds with a few stars in
between. The soothsayer crept out upon the wall, the great and small
gates being fastened. She had a rope which she had made of many
different woven things. This she tied about a jutting stone and flung
the loose end clear. Resting upon her hands she looked over the wall and
saw that it hung not far from earth. Trusting her weight to the rope she
came down the castle wall. At hand was the moat, cold under the stars.
She entered the water, finding it rise not higher than her bosom. Over
moat she went, climbed the bank, and presently was upon wild hillside.
Below were the huts of the serfs of Red Castle; these she avoided, and
went her way by a cart track that took her by meadow and forest. She did
not know how she should find Jeanne and the children, but she trusted to
find them.
After walking for a long while she saw to the right in the woods a red
star. Going toward it she came to a woodcutter’s hut, and peering in at
the crack that did for window saw that it held none but women and a
babe. She saw that the fire had been lighted because there was birth.
She knocked at the door, and when at last, after consultation within, it
was opened a little way, asked for shelter and warmth. “Naught but a
woman alone?” asked she who held the door. “Sit quiet then by the fire.”
She entered and sat by the fire and dried her clothing.
In a corner, upon a sheepskin and some straw, lay sleeping the mother of
the two-hour-old babe. An old woman sat in the red firelight, the child
in her lap. The woman who had opened the door took again her seat upon a
billet of wood on the other side of the hearth. She rested her elbow
upon her knee, her cheek in her hand. Gersonde sat upon the earthen
floor, between the two. The fire of faggots danced and glowed. The thin
smoke wandered and circled in the hut before it found and went out at
the hole in the roof.
“Who are you, and why are you so wet?” asked the younger woman.
“I forded a stream. I am a soothsayer, Black Martin’s granddaughter.”
They were not curious, or it seemed to be enough. They stayed silent and
Gersonde with them. The mother and the babe slept; the old woman and the
two younger ones sat somewhat huddled over the fire. Now and then one
put out a hand, took a faggot from the heap, and fed the flame. The
hours went by. Somewhere a cock crew.
Gersonde lifted her head, then rose to her feet. “It is time to go. I
thank you all.”
Said the younger woman: “Guyot and Simon have gone with the Baron. You
may stay if you wish and help with the woodcutting.”
The old woman spoke. “What do they say outside about the World coming to
an End?... What I do wish to know is this: Is there to be turn and turn
about in heaven? Will the baron be the woodcutter, and the woodcutter
the baron? Will man be woman, and woman be man?”
“That is not the way they manage,” said Gersonde. “For then still would
be unhappiness.”
She drew her cloak around her, said good-bye, and left the hut. It was
pink dawn, and the birds were cheeping in the trees. As she went she ate
the black bread they had given her.
At noontide a man, travelling the same narrow road from the castle, came
by the woodcutter’s hut. He carried a viol strung over his shoulder, and
a lean hound padded before him. The younger woman was chopping a felled
tree, the old woman gathering faggots. They rested from their work to
look at the music-maker.
“Did a woman come by here--a dark woman with a red dress and a blue
mantle?”
“No woman, sir.”
But the hound kept on, and Gerbert.
The Abbey of the Blessed Thorn had for Abbess a count’s sister, a woman
more able than the count, able, determined, genial, no more religious
than Bishop Héribert or Abbot Simon, but a good ruler of her nuns, a
highly competent wielder and manager of the wide fief of Blessed Thorn.
The Abbess Rothalind rose early, and was a dear lover of hawking. Now,
the day being fine, she was out with several of her nuns, with two
falconers and a groom, and with Ermengarde, a lady accused of evil, who,
pending judgement in her case, had taken sanctuary with Blessed Thorn.
The morning’s sport over, the train came, under blue sky and with a
jingling of bells at bridle reins, to a crossroads on a bit of heath.
Here it overtook a woman in a blue mantle.
The Abbess checked her horse. “Who are you, wandering here?”
“Gersonde the soothsayer. I try to find my people from whom I was
parted.... I am tired with walking and wasted with hunger.”
“Do you see the roofs of Blessed Thorn?” said the Abbess. “Go there, and
you shall be fed and have your night’s rest in the dormitory of the
poor. To-morrow morn we may try your art--so that you in no wise make
black magic!”
Blessed Thorn had a fair parlour, giving through an arched door upon
grass and flower beds and fruit trees in a double row, and one huge
linden, the resort in blossom time of nations of bees. Under this great
tree, the next day, sat the Abbess, beside her a table with books and
writing materials and before her a frame on which was stretched the cope
she was embroidering with coloured silks and gold thread. The Lady
Ermengarde likewise embroidered, and five or six nuns, all sisters or
daughters of noble houses, held among them a long and narrow web which
they embroidered with green and blue and scarlet. A nun seated under a
pear tree read aloud the recorded lives of Saints. When she came to an
end of a half-hour by the water glass, the Abbess, who would rather talk
than read, motioned her to close the book. This was the Abbess’s hour of
refreshment from a forenoon of hard work with accounts, with orders of
the executive extending to mill and forge and ferry, outlying hamlets,
forest and field, with details of Abbey discipline and with
correspondence. Rest from the immediate and particular stretched its
limbs naturally in the field of the somewhat removed and general.
The Abbess leaned back in her chair, drew an ample breath and looked
around upon her spiritual daughters. Her eyes passing the nuns and
lighting upon Ermengarde marked a tear coursing down that lady’s cheek.
“Saints! Saints!” spoke the Abbess. “I would save my tears till cause
was fairly upon me! Here is the sun shining and poppies blooming. The
lord who accuses you of first beseeching his love and then striving to
poison him may be struck by God’s bolt of repentance. Here is one ‘may’!
If he be iron to the bolt your herald may return, and with him the
noblest, most valiant, strongest, and skilfullest champion in France,
Normandy, Aquitaine, Chartres, or Burgundy--one that this lying lord
will eat dust before! There is another ‘may’! Perchance such an one will
not present himself and you must take one unfamed, weak, or dull in the
fight, while the accuser is strong and famed. Yet are we told that the
angels protect the weak, and Michael himself may guide your champion’s
arm and pierce Torismond’s shield and shiver his spear and avoid him
from his horse and break his neck and declare him a lying, false lord!
Here is a third ‘may’! Consider also that you may die, my daughter,
before your cause comes to combat. And again, and lastly, that the
innocent who is wrongly judged and doomed and given to death is truly a
martyr, and rises swiftly through purgatory to Christ and the Blessed
Virgin!”
Ermengarde folded her hands from her embroidery. She had a strong,
young frame that even this dire trouble had not made weak, and an apple
cheek that was, however, fast paling. “Reverend Mother, I ask myself,
‘Is it a bad dream?’ I pinch myself, so mad and unreal does the world
seem! I have no great wealth to pay with; I shall not get a strong
champion! That is a fair flower, the fancying it, but it has no root. I
know that you, yourself, think I shall have good fortune if I find one
who can strike a good blow, and is likewise fool or reckless or knows
not Lord Torismond! Now, as to the angels and the Angel Michael. I know
what we say, Reverend Mother, but do we think Lord Torismond will go
down before a champion who will come to my piping, who have small dowry
and no mighty kindred?... My case is so hard, my need is so sharp, that
my eyes are clear. That miracle may happen, and I ask the prayers of
Blessed Thorn that it may! But if it happens not? True it is, I may die
before whether I die or live comes to be decided by combat. Truly, I
grieve and madden enough to die! But I seem not to be able to do so,
and, indeed, Reverend Mother, I like the sunshine and the poppies
blooming. And if I get no champion, or, getting one, he cannot stand
before Torismond, and if I am put to death with a cruel death, truly,
though the world will say I guiltily besought Torismond’s love and
guiltily put poison in wine that I gave him, I shall be innocent! And I
shall hope that my purgatory may be short and that I shall swiftly rise
to Christ and the Blessed Virgin. But I am young, Reverend Mother, and I
might be happy yet awhile here on earth, and see and learn a-many
things.... I dig again my nails into my flesh, and I say, ‘It is an evil
dream!’”
“Blessed Thorn,” said the Abbess, “will pray the Saints and the Blessed
Virgin and our Lord her Son that the right may prosper and the truth be
shown--”
“Blessed Thorn, giving sanctuary to one oppressed, helps right and
truth,” said Ermengarde. “And yet I may be slain, and I am told that no
more may be done here, and we know not the mind of the Saints to meward.
O Blessed Mother of God, I shall be foully slain!--This, this it is that
makes it all dream-like or mad-like, and makes me to wonder how all
things are turned and twisted!... I am strong: I am let to ride, to
hawk, to dance. Were I daughter of serf or villein, where is the work in
field or house, the ditching and digging, the drawing and carrying, the
mending and making, the cutting of wood, the swinging a reaper’s sickle
I should not be given, yea, made to do?... This is my plaint, Reverend
Mother! I can mount and manage a horse. I might have been taught to
thrust with the lance, or strike with the sword. I was not so
taught--no! But with long watching men at feats of arms I think that I
could make some show at doing both. Saints my witness, I think that I
might acquit me better than any champion I am likely to get! My quarrel
it is--I have no weight of guilt upon my heart--and through me runs a
white, a steadying, flame of wrath against Torismond and his lie! O God!
I could do better, my own champion! If I had Thy Michael to fight for
me! But few have him, and I am not of those who are so near Thy Heaven!
I am of the many, like the leaves in the forest, who could do better by
their own quarrel.... Perchance I find no champion at all, and since
none fight for me I am judged guilty and perish. Should I not do better
for myself than none at all? O God, I think that fighting for the truth
would pour a wine into me that should give me brute strength to slay
the brute lie! Why am I not let to choose, some great angel failing, to
fight in my own defence, in my own quarrel? Does the lie slay me then
and there in the place of combat? Is that worse than being slain by the
lie a day after, two days or three, mayhap, judged worthy of death,
because no champion came, or, coming, was too weak? O God! rather should
I that Torismond’s lance pierced me through in the place of combat!--”
She dropped her head upon her folded arms, her folded arms upon her
knees. “I am young and strong! Why do they bind my hands behind me, not
letting me keep my own honour?--”
The Abbess cleared her throat. “My daughter, we are women--”
But Ermengarde was not comforted by that.
The six nuns plied their needles. The blue, the green, the scarlet went
into the long, narrow web. The linden flowers sent out a sweet odour;
the multitude of bees shaped a sound as continuous as a fountain. The
sunshine through the leaves made a net of gold. The Abbess Rothalind
turned the gold thread in her fingers.
She was moved--the stitching nuns were moved. Because law and custom
were what they were, it was true enough that Ermengarde might very soon
be put to death as harlot and poisoner. And none in the garden believed
in their heart that she was such. That perception had somehow to be
squared with the time’s belief as to the manifested “judgment of God.”
As it would take great trouble to square the two, they were able simply
to decline the trouble. If Ermengarde’s cause met defeat, they and all
people must say, under penalty of sin, that she was justly doomed and
punished. But already was in use with them and all folk the Mental
Reservation--though it was not capitalized and was given a hidden cell
up a winding twilight stair. At the moment, it was allowable still to
believe that Ermengarde might find a champion and that the champion
might slay Torismond.
The Abbess pushed aside the gold thread and coloured silk cope and
talked. It was always a relief to her to talk and not to listen, though
she had that self-control that she could listen by the hour if that
better served her plans. “Freedom, my daughters, is in the nunnery--”
The bees hummed in the linden tree, hummed and hummed.
Her homily drew to a close. “At the World’s End, how well then to be
found in the shade, in the fold, about the knees of Blessed Thorn!”
Cried one of her nuns, a favourite and a bell for the thought of the
others: “Reverend Mother, it grows that we cannot sleep at night for
thinking that the End of the World is nigh--and how we shall meet it--”
The Abbess threaded her needle with gold thread. “It is just, my
daughter, that ‘how shall we meet it?’ which makes so excellent a broom
of this news of the End of the World--”
A lay sister came to the garden door and with her the soothsayer
gathered yesterday from the heath.
The Abbess nodded. “Come, you, and tell us what you know! Soothsaying is
an idle thing, but like a sandalwood box or a curious flower it passes
the moment!”
Gersonde stood in the garden before the embroidering women.
“Whence do you come, and where do you go, and what is your name?”
questioned the Abbess.
“Please you, I know many times less than all that,” said Gersonde. “But
I lately left a hut in the forest, and I hope erelong to find a band of
Entertainers into which I was born, and I am called Gersonde the
soothsayer.”
“Soothsay, then,” said the Abbess. And, “Ah, Reverend Mother,” cried
Ermengarde, “if she could tell me--”
“I cannot tell sooth every day,” said Gersonde. “I would that I could!”
“Look at this lady,” said the Abbess, who was good-natured because she
was fearless. “Tell her if she shall find a strong champion.”
Gersonde obeyed. “Her champion is in herself.”
“O God, I am lost!” cried Ermengarde, and covered her forehead with her
hands.
“No, no, you are not lost,” said the soothsayer. “You are not lost--you
are not lost. Such little words go little ways!”
“Say more,” said the Abbess. “You soothsay darkly.”
But Gersonde shook her head. “That is all the light that is in the
dark.... May I go now to look for Black Martin’s band where are Jeanne
and the children? I thank you truly, Mother, for harbour and kindness.”
However they tried, no more was to be had from her, and so she was let
to go. Blessed Thorn’s grey walls sank behind her.... She was tracing a
circle, and before her, now not many leagues away, stood the bishop’s
town where she had left Jeanne and the children.
The day was bright, the summer dressed in green and gold. She passed a
grove of slender trees, a dog ran a little way beside her, far away and
veiled she heard a crowing cook. The rays of light grew slant and
golden. The footpath mounted, an old hound came to meet her, in a bare
field beneath a thorn bush she found Gerbert the music-maker.
“Gersonde, I, too, was tired of the castle!”
“Now know I that it was music that I have been missing out of the
world!”
They sat beneath the thorn, and Gersonde’s arms were about Gerbert and
Gerbert’s arms about Gersonde.
The sun set. The music-maker had his cloak and the soothsayer hers. The
grass was short and dry, the earth held summer warmth, the air was
still. The field covered a rise of earth, islanded presently by faint
streamers of mist. The moon pushed up round and golden, as though it
rose above marsh, above a great river. The man and woman who had come so
far lay asleep.
Morn came. They waked; he had bread in his scrip; they ate, then left
the thorn tree and the islanded field. Their part of the earth turned
full to the glory of the sun. They walked amid glories and splendours
and blisses.... What they determined to do was to walk always thus
together among glories and splendours and blisses.... When they came to
consider the immediate pathway, that took them through wandering the
earth together, earning and spending together. Jeanne and the children?
Sooner or later they would find Jeanne and the children. Splendours and
glories and blessedness....
It seemed wise, when they considered it, to keep on this road of France
that led again to the bishop’s town. Rainulf the Red and the bishop were
at war. It was a strong town. Rainulf was not likely to take it, though
he might furiously plough and harrow the earth around. Nor could he
reach two sparrows, flying there in the bishop’s shadow. It was not
likely that Black Martin was still in this town. He would have moved
on, going toward Paris. Yet was the town on the way to Jeanne and the
children.
So Gersonde and Gerbert kept on to the bishop’s town.
They went through a country filled with misery. Men and women, children,
animals that worked for humanity and depended upon it--everywhere was
misery and misery. It put out cold fingers and touched Gersonde and
Gerbert. “We cannot keep our glory and splendour and bliss!”
Out of the misery rose a hectic enthusiasm, bred of misery and
superstition. Every third person now struck hands together and cried,
“The End of the World!” Gaunt and tattered bands went about, from hamlet
to hamlet, crying, “Throw by the things of every day! It is the End of
the World!” There came monks who said, “Not yet--not yet awhile, good
folk! There are two years yet before the Thousand Years is spent! Go
back to your fields and your houses!” But by now the pale excitement had
mounted into a fanatic wish to believe in Terror. A monk was stoned who
said, “It is not yet!” The contagion spread.
Gersonde and Gerbert saw in the distance the bishop’s castle on the
hill, then the church roof and other roofs and the town wall. They came
close to the town, and here were certain huts, clustering under the
shadow of the wall, ready to pour their inmates through the gate, at the
first breath on the wind of Rainulf’s coming. It was evening. Gerbert
and Gersonde thought to enter the town in the morning; in the meantime,
by a cast of art, to gain here bread and night’s lodging. She knew the
songs of Rosamund; he could play far better than did Bageron.
They played and sang, they gained supper and night’s rest, under the
shadow of the wall.... In the middle of the night came Rainulf the Red,
an evil whirlwind out of the darkness, strong, with five hundred men
behind him. He came to strike like a battering-ram against the bishop’s
gates; perchance, with splendid luck, to find them weak, ill-guarded. To
do that he overran, like a care-naught tempest, the huddle of houses
without.... All was sudden waking, crying, confusion, blows, wounding,
and death.
The bishop’s gates were strong; the bishop was baron before he was
bishop. He had a strength at hand within the town. Red Rainulf did not
break the gates. Instead, they opened against him and the host the
bishop had gathered poured in torrent. It whelmed Red Rainulf’s men;
there was a clashing as of opposing waters, a scattering and bearing
back. Many on both sides were killed or hurt, some borne off prisoners.
Rainulf, giving back in the night, cursing the foulness of his luck,
drew off at last his diminished host.
Héribert was not ready to pursue. With shouting and flaring of torches
those from town and castle went back through gate, behind wall. They
took with them their wounded. Likewise there surged into the town with
them the folk of those huts that now were burning, burning, fired by
Rainulf’s men that had fought from hut to hut, trampling, hurting,
slaying, driving apart the inmates, men, women, and children. All of the
bishop’s folk hasted now, or were pressed and driven, one part by
another, through the gates, into the town.
With them was pushed Gersonde, looking this way, that way, in the
alternate glare and darkness, for Gerbert. She saw him not; Gerbert was
swept away with Red Rainulf’s men. Hurt, stunned by a blow from a mace,
fallen across a doorstep, he had been seen by one from Red Castle. This
one knew not why the music-maker was there, but having a liking for him,
called to a fellow. The two lifted Gerbert and laid him upon a horse,
and bore him away with them.
Gersonde found him not; nowhere could she find him. When morn came and,
with others who sought also for missing ones, she returned to the
charred heaps where had stood these huts, still she found him not. Here
the slain had been left in the road, and the bishop, riding forth at
dawn, had seen that the bodies were flung in the river that ran past.
Gersonde said, “He is dead! O End of the World, he is dead!”
Hours passed, days passed, though they passed so slowly. Gersonde, to
keep her body fed and sheltered, must earn. Black Martin and his band
were not here; they were gone on toward Paris. She thought of Jeanne and
the children, but she thought dully, not caring greatly for any on
earth. Yet she gave her body food as she could get it, and she found a
kennel-like place in a black lane where the people in the house above
let her sleep. She tried to sing, but the songs of Rosamund would not
come, with the music-maker dead.... She fell back upon soothsaying. She
sat in a corner of the market-place, her blue cloak drawn about her and
her hand outstretched. But the bells were ringing and men and women
streaming by to hear the chanting monks. “The End of the World!
Presently will the moon fall and the sun go out!”
Then came a black-eyed, anxious-faced youth who said: “You are the
soothsayer who was here with those wrestlers and singers.... Tell me if
I shall have time before World’s End to get to my mother in Tours?”
Gersonde’s face became still. With her hands she made the passes that
were not at all necessary to soothsaying, but which Black Martin had
taught her to make to impress the questioner and those gathered around.
She made them now without thought; they had become old habit, what her
body did while the inner woman reported what dim, veiled things she
might perceive.... The youth’s stopping had stopped others. Said one,
“Those are witch’s passes!”
Gersonde spoke. “You shall have time--you shall have time--but you shall
meet your mother on the road. She comes to find you who are herself
straying afar. For all that she is crippled, she will meet you before
World’s End.”
“How,” cried the youth, “did you know that she was crippled?”
He spoke, spreading his hands, to the increasing crowd: “This is that
soothsayer who was here before. She can tell when God is going to shake
the stars like apples upon the earth--”
A current had set toward this corner. With it came the palmer who had
crossed this place before. He came, tall and burning-eyed, holding his
staff with the dried bit of palm. “What do you here who should fill the
church porch? What do you here, gathered about a woman?”
One cried out of the throng to Gersonde: “Tell us when will God shake
the stars like apples upon the earth?”
Gersonde made her passes in the air. “When the stars grow on an apple
tree.”
“When comes the End,--this week--next week?”
“Know you not,” cried the palmer, “that these soothsaying women are
sorceresses, leagued with the Fiend?”
“When comes the End?”
Gersonde pressed her hands against her eyes. She was weary, she wished
to find heaven, she and Gerbert and Jeanne and the children. “That End
of the World that some of you dread and some of you lust for is not
coming. You are not ready for the End of the World! World ends when we
rise to the Truth, melting into it because we are ready. Your End of the
World is not at hand--no, it is not at hand!”
“Soothsayer, the thousand years is over--”
“A thousand years, and then a thousand, and it will not be!”
The palmer rent his robe and cried aloud: “She blasphemes!” He found a
second in the throng. “She is a sorceress! Was she not seen, a month
ago, to go out of gate, riding with Red Rainulf’s men?”
At that many voices joined in. “Right--right! She was with Red
Rainulf--”
The palmer cried again: “Like Eve she eats of the Tree of
Knowledge--eats and betrays! Evil--evil! Where is woman there I taste
evil!”
“Age, brother, aye! Save when women are in a nunnery, or under roof with
children--”
“Or yonder in the brothel--”
“Red Rainulf--She would spy and betray the town--”
“‘_The End of the World comes not_’--O blasphemer!”
“Still is she sib to the Fiend and the Serpent!”
“Witch!”
“Witch!”
“Have her before the bishop!”
It was so that they had her--a throng haling her up the hill. Now
Héribert had had that morning evil news of the ravening of that baron
with whom he was at war. His thoughts followed Rainulf, he contemplated
putting him and all who held from him under ban, obtaining from Rome an
interdict. He hardly glanced at the woman they brought. “Blasphemy and
sorcery and betraying?--Put her in the prison--here is not time to judge
the matter! Have her in chains till the next day of hearing!”
They brought her down into the town and put her in the black and strong
place that did for town prison. She sat in the dark and thought of
flowers and heard a tinkling, rippling music.
The bishop divided his fighting men into two forces; left one within the
town, and with the other went forth to burn and slay in Red Rainulf’s
territory....
In the crowded town broke forth pestilence. Now there were famine and
pestilence and a wild superstition and fanatic longing for prodigies.
Without the walls it was harvest-time, but few harvested. Here Red
Rainulf’s iron scourge prevented, and here mere willingness not to
labour further, seeing that harvest-fields and all were presently to see
the End! The country poured its folk into the town. All wanted company;
all wished to dream of, to talk of, to await the End in company.
There came news that the bishop was worsted in fight. The church bells
rang, priest and monk made all day long prayers and chanting. The
pestilence was not worsted--from the crowded alleys were brought forth
that day many dead. Children, too, were crying with hunger. That night,
just after dusk, a great, bearded meteor passed over the town. Plain
sign was that of God’s early Coming--of a Coming in wrath! The palmer’s
voice was heard like a tolling bell. “Prepare your house--make clean
this place! If there is Evil among you, cast it to the fire!” When
morning came the people crowded into the market-place, all who might
coming together to bear one another company.... In sight of all, one of
the towers of the church fell.
“_That woman who prophesied against High God and His ways--_”
They beat down the prison door and brought forth Gersonde. There was in
the market a long shed where faggots were sold. Near the cross, rising
from a mound of hardened earth, stood a column of stone to which at
times offenders were bound. They brought a chain from the prison and
chained the soothsayer to this. Then men and women ran to bring the
bundles of faggots. There were enough of these to make a great pyre.
In the distance, down the street that led from the gate, began the music
of a viol, a tune rich and sweet, well played. The market-place, given
now to the frenzy of the frightened lower nature, paid it no heed; there
was but one there who gave it heed and that was the bound soothsayer.
The music came nearer, but it did not come fast; it grew fuller and
louder by littles. The music-maker came leisurely, not knowing that the
wrong in the world was more immediate to-day than it had been yesterday.
He walked, playing, revolving in his mind ways to find Gersonde. He
played because he thought that if she were in this town that was a way
to draw her. In the market-place they struck a torch among the faggots.
Gerbert came, playing, up the gate street toward the market-place. The
street was empty of folk; he must go, playing, to the market-place. He
played old folk-music, old airs that Bageron might have played. Then he
played a new air, making it as he played, and it had in it music of the
earth and air, and the leap of fire and the flow of light and the dance
of thought and the spread of the soul. So, after a while, he came to the
market-place.
“What are all the people doing?”
“They are burning a sorceress who said the End of the World is not yet!”
The bow still touched the viol strings, the hand working on though the
head said nought. Then within the market-place the head spoke and the
hand dropped. Gerbert came to the pyre by the cross and saw that there
was an end. As the strings of the viol drawn too tightly might snap, so
snapped the cords of his heart. The throng, now silent, listening to the
bells from the standing tower of the church, saw only that a musician
fell dead, his hands closed upon the ashes of that pyre. The bells rang
and rang. A monk, standing upon the steps of the market cross, began to
preach. “The World Ends--The World Ends! In Eden Garden the woman
leagued herself with Sin, that old serpent! Then did she tempt our
father Adam who fell. Then came Death and Evil. Then was planted the
vine of the World’s ending, whose grapes are ripe to-day.”