Now Raymond and his son had gone over into Berkshire, to the building
of the great castle at Faringdon, as has been said; and for a while Sir
Arnold remained in his hold, and very often he rode over alone to
Stoke, and spent many hours with the Lady Goda, both in the hall and in
the small garden by the moat. The priest, and the steward, and the
men-at-arms, and the porter, were all used to see him there often
enough, when Sir Raymond was at home, and they thought no evil because
he came now to bear the lonely lady company; for the manners of those
days were simple.
But on a morning at the end of April, there came a messenger from King
Stephen, bidding all earls, barons, bannerets, and knights, upon their
oath of fealty, join him with their fighting men in Oxford. For form's
sake, the messenger came to Stoke Regis, as not admitting that any
Norman knight should not be on the king's side; and the drawbridge
being down, he rode under the gateway, and when the trumpeter who was
with him had blown three blasts, he delivered his message. Then the
steward, bowing deeply, answered that his lord was absent on a journey;
and the messenger turned and rode away, without bite or sup. But,
riding on to Stortford Castle, he found Sir Arnold, and delivered the
king's bidding with more effect, and was hospitably treated with meat
and drink. Sir Arnold armed himself slowly in full mail, saving his
head, for the weather was strangely warm, and he would ride in his hat
rather than wear the heavy steel cap with the broad nose-guard. Before
an hour had passed he was mounted, with his men, and his footmen were
marching before and behind him on the broad Hertford road. But he had
sent a messenger secretly to the Lady Goda, to tell her that he was
gone; and after that she heard nothing for many days.
In the morning, and after dinner, and before sunset, she came every day
to the little garden under the west wall of the manor, and looked long
toward the road--not that she wished Sir Raymond back, nor that she
cared when Gilbert came, but she well knew that the return of either
would mean that the fighting was over, and that Sir Arnold, too, would
be at leisure to go home.
On that fifth of May, as the sun was going down, she stood still and
looked out toward the road for the tenth time since Curboil had gone to
join the king. The sun sank lower, and still she saw nothing; and she
felt the chill of the damp evening air, and would have turned to go in,
but something held her. Far up the road, on the brow of the rising
ground, she saw a tiny spark, a little dancing flame like the
corpse-candles that run along the graves on a summer's night--first
one, then all at once three, then, as it seemed to her, a score at
least, swaying a little above a compact dark mass against the red sky.
The lights were like little stars rising and falling on the horizon,
and always just above a low, black cloud. A moment more, and the
evening breeze out of the west brought a long-drawn harmony of chanting
to the Lady Goda's ear, the high sweet notes of youthful voices
sustained by the rich counterpoint of many grown men's tones. She
started, and held her breath, shivered a little, and snatched at the
rose bush beside her, so that the thorns struck through the soft green
gauntlet and pricked her, though she felt nothing. There was death in
the air; there was death in the moving lights; there was death in the
minor wail of the monks' voices. In the first moment of imperfect
understanding, it was Arnold whom they were bringing home to her, slain
in battle by her lawful husband, or by Gilbert, her son; it was Arnold
whom they were bringing back to her who loved him, that she might wash
his wounds with her tears, and dry his damp brow with her glorious
hair. Wide-eyed and silent, as the train came near, she moved along by
the moat to meet the procession at the drawbridge, not understanding
yet, but not letting one movement of the men, one flicker of the
lights, one quaver of the deep chant, escape her reeling senses. Then
all at once she was aware that Gilbert walked bareheaded before the
bier, half wrapped in a long black cloak that swept the greensward
behind him. As she turned the last bastion before reaching the
drawbridge, the funeral was moving along by the outer edge of the moat,
and between the procession and her there was only the broad water,
reflecting the lights of the moving tapers, the dark cowls of the
monks, the white surplices of the song-boys. They moved slowly, and
she, as in a dream, followed them on the other side with little steps,
wondering, fearing, starting now with a wild thrill of liberty at last,
now struggling with a half conventional, half hysterical sob that rose
in her throat at the thought of death so near. She had lived with him,
she had played the long comedy of love with him, she had loathed him in
her heart, she had smiled at him with well-trained eyes; and now she
was free to choose, free to love, free to be Arnold's wife. And yet she
had lived with the dead man; and in the far-off past there were little
tender lights of happiness, half real, half played, but never
forgotten, upon which she had once taught her thoughts to dwell
tenderly and sadly. She had loved the dead man in the first days of
marriage, as well as her cold and unawakened nature could love at
all--if not for himself, at least for the hopes of vanity built on his
name. She had hated him in secret, but she could not have hated him so
heartily had there not once been a little love to turn so fiercely
sour. She could not have trained her eyes to smile at him so gently had
she not once smiled for his own sake. And so, when they brought him
dead to the gate of his own house, his wife had still some shreds of
memories for weeds to eke out a show of sorrow.
She passed through the postern in the small round tower beside the
gateway, knowing that when she came out under the portcullis, the
funeral train would be just reaching the other end of the bridge. The
little vaulted room in the lower story of the tower was not four steps
in width across, from door to door; but it was almost dark, and there
the Lady Goda stopped one moment before she went out to meet the
mourners. Standing still in the dimness, she pressed her gloved hands
to her eyes with all her might, as though to concentrate her thoughts
and her strength. Then she threw back her arms, and looked up through
the gloom, and almost laughed; and she felt something just below her
heart that stifled her like a great joy. Then all at once she was calm,
and touched her eyes again with her gloved hands, but gently now, as
though smoothing them and preparing them to look upon what they must
see presently. She opened the little door, and was suddenly standing in
the midst of the frightened herd of retainers and servants, while the
last strains of the dirge came echoing under the deep archway. At that
instant another sound startled the air--the deep bell-note of the great
bloodhounds, chained in the courtyard from sunrise to sunset; and it
sank to a wail, and the wail broke to a howl, dismal, ear-rending,
wild. Before it had died away, one of the Saxon bondwomen shrieked
aloud, and the next took up the cry, and then another, as a likewake
dirge, till every stone in the shadowy manor seemed to have a voice,
and every voice was weeping for the dead lord. And many of the women
fell upon their knees, and some of the men, too, while others drew up
their hoods, and stood with bent heads and folded hands against the
rough walls.
Slowly and solemnly they bore him in and set the bier down under the
mid-arch. Then Gilbert Warde looked up and faced his mother; but he
stood aside, that she might see her husband; and the monks and
song-boys stood back also, with their wax torches, which cast a dancing
glare through the dim twilight. Gilbert's face was white and stern; but
the Lady Goda was pale, too, and her heart fluttered, for she had to
play the last act of her married life before many who would watch her
narrowly. For one moment she hesitated whether to scream or to faint in
honour of her dead husband. Then, with the instinct of the born and
perfect actress, she looked wildly from her son's face to the straight,
still length that lay beneath the pall. She raised one hand to her
forehead, pressing back her golden hair with a gesture half mad, half
dazed, then seemed to stagger forward two steps, and fell upon the
body, in a storm of tears.
Gilbert went to the bier, and lifted one of his mother's gloved hands
from the covered face, and it dropped from his fingers as if lifeless.
He lifted the black cloth pall, and turned it back as far as he could
without disturbing the woman's prostrate figure; and there lay the Lord
of Stoke, in his mail, as he had fallen in fight, in his peaked steel
helmet, the straight, fine, ring-mail close-drawn round his face and
chin, the silky brown hair looking terribly alive against the dead
face. But across the eyes and the forehead below the helmet there was
laid a straight black band, and upon his breast the great mailed hands
clasped the cross-hilted sword that lay lengthwise with his body.
Gilbert, bareheaded and unarmed, gazed down into his father's face for
a while, then suddenly looked up and spoke to all the people who
thronged the gateway.
"Men of Stoke," he said, "here lies the body of Sir Raymond Warde, your
liege lord, my father. He fell in the fight before Faringdon Castle,
and this is the third day since he was slain; for the way was long, and
we were not suffered to pass unmolested. The castle was but half built,
and we were encamped about it with the Earl of Gloucester, when the
king came suddenly from Oxford with a great host; and they fell upon us
unawares at early morning, when we had but just heard the mass and most
of us were but half armed, or not at all. So we fought as we could, and
many fell, and not a few we killed with our hands. And I, with a helmet
on my head and a gambison but half buckled upon my body, and my hands
bare, was fighting with a full-armed Frenchman and was hard pressed.
But I smote him in the neck, so that he fell upon one knee and reeled.
And even in that moment I saw this sight. A score of paces from me, my
father and Sir Arnold de Curboil met face to face, suddenly and without
warning, their swords lifted in the act to strike; but when my father
saw his friend before him, he dropped his sword-arm and smiled, and
would have turned away to fight another; but Sir Arnold smiled also,
and lowered not his hand, but smote my father by the point, unguarded,
and thrust his sword through head and hood of mail at one stroke,
treacherously. And so my father, your liege lord, fell dead unshriven,
by his friend's hand; and may the curse of man and the damnation of
Almighty God be upon his murderer's head, now and after I shall have
killed him. For, as I would have sprung forward, the Frenchman, who was
but stunned, sprang to his feet and grappled with me; and by the time
he had no breath left, and the light broke in his eyes, Sir Arnold was
gone, and our fight was lost. So we made a truce to bury our dead, and
brought them away, each his own."
When he had spoken there was silence for many moments, broken only by
the Lady Goda's unceasing sobs. In the court within, and on the bridge
without, the air grew purple, and dark, and misty; for the sun had long
gone down, and the light from the wax torches, leaping, flaming and
flickering in the evening breeze, grew stronger and yellower under the
gateway than the twilight without. The dark-robed monks looked gravely
on, waiting till they should be told to pass into the chapel--men of
all ages and looks, red and pale, thin and stout, dark and fair, but
all having that something in their faces that marks the churchman from
century to century. Between them and the dead knight, Gilbert stood
still with bent head and downcast eyes, with pale face and set lips,
looking at his mother's bright hair, and at her clutching hands, and
listening to the painfully drawn breath, broken continually by her
agonized weeping. Suddenly the bloodhounds' bay broke out again, fierce
and deep; and on the instant a high young voice rang from the court
through the deep arch.
"Burn the murderer! To Stortford, and burn him out!"
Gilbert looked up quickly, peering into the gloom whence the voice had
spoken. He did not see how, at the words, his mother started back from
the corpse, steadied herself with one hand, and fixed her eyes in the
same direction; but before he could answer, the cry was taken up by a
hundred throats.
"Burn the traitor! burn the murderer! To Stortford! Fagots! Fagots and
pitch!"
High, low, hoarse, clear, the words followed one another in savage
yells; and here and there among the rough men there were eyes that
gleamed in the dark like a dog's.
Then through the din came a rattling of bolts and a creaking of hinges,
as the grooms tore open the stable doors to bring out the horses and
saddle them for the raid; and one called for a light and another warned
men from his horse's heels. The Lady Goda was on her feet, her hands
stretched out imploringly to her son, turning to him instinctively and
for the first time, as to the head of the house. She spoke to him, too;
but he neither heard nor saw, for in his own heart a new horror had
possession, beside which what had gone before was as nothing. He
thought of Beatrix.
"Hold!" he cried. "Let no man stir, for no man shall pass out who would
burn Stortford. Sir Arnold de Curboil is the king's man, and the king
has the power in England; so that if we should burn down Stortford
Castle to-night, he would burn Stoke Manor to-morrow over my mother's
head. Between Arnold de Curboil and me there is death. To-morrow I
shall ride out to find him, and kill him in fair fight. But let there
be no raiding, no harrying, and no burning, as if we were Stephen's
French robbers, or King David's red-haired Scots. Take up the bier; and
you," he said, turning to the monks and song-men, "take up your chant,
that we may lay him in the chapel and say prayers for his unshriven
soul."
The Lady Goda's left hand had been pressed to her heart as though she
were in fear and pain; but as her son spoke, it fell by her side, and
her face grew calm before she remembered that it should grow sad. Until
to-day her son had been in her eyes but a child, subject to his father,
subject to herself, subject to the old manor-priest who had taught him
the little he knew. Now, on a sudden, he was full-grown and strong;
more than that, he was master in his father's place, and at a word from
him, men-at-arms and bondsmen would have gone forth on the instant to
slay the man she loved, and to burn and to harry all that was his. She
was grateful to him for not having spoken that word; and since Gilbert
meant to meet Curboil in a single combat, she felt no fear for her
lover, the most skilled man at fence in all Essex and Hertfordshire,
and she felt sure, likewise, that for his reputation as a knight he
would not kill a youth but half his age.
While she was thinking of these things, the monks had begun to chant
again; the confusion was ended in the courtyard; the squires took up
the bier, and the procession moved slowly across the broad paved space
to the chapel opposite the main gate.
An hour later Sir Raymond's dead body lay before the altar, whereon
burned many waxen tapers. Alone, upon the lowest step, Gilbert was
kneeling, with joined hands and uplifted eyes, motionless as a statue.
He had taken the long sword from the dead man's breast, and had set it
up against the altar, straight and bare. It was hacked at the edges,
and there were dark stains upon it from its master's last day's work.
In the simple faith of a bloody age, Gilbert Warde was vowing, by all
that he and his held sacred, before God's altar, upon God's Sacred
Body, upon his father's unburied corpse, that before the blade should
be polished again, it should be black with the blood of his father's
murderer.
And as he knelt there, his lady mother, now clad all in black, entered
the chapel and moved slowly towards the altar-steps. She meant to kneel
beside her son; but when she was yet three paces from him, a great
terror at her own falseness descended into her heart, and she sank upon
her knees in the aisle.