June was upon Italy, as a gossamer veil and a garland on the brow of a
girl bride. The first sweet hay was drying in Tuscan valleys; the fig
leaves were spreading, and shadowing the watery fruit that begins to
grow upon the crooked twigs before the leaves themselves, and which the
people call "fig-blossoms," because the real figs come later; the fresh
and silvery olive shoots had shed a snow-flurry of small white stars;
the yellow holy thorn still blossomed in the rough places of the hills,
and the blending of many wild flowers was like a maiden blush on the
earth's soft bosom.
At early morning Gilbert rode along the crest of a low and grassy hill
that was still sheltered from the sun by the high mountains to
eastward, and he drank in the cool and scented air as if it had been
water of paradise, and he a man saved out of death to life by the
draught. There was much peace in his heart, and a still security that
he had not felt yet since he had seen his father lying dead before him.
He knew not how it was, but he was suddenly sure that Beatrix loved him
and had escaped to the court of France in the hope of finding him, and
was waiting for him day by day. And he was also sure that the Church
would not cut him off from her in the end, let the churchmen say what
they would. Was not the Queen of France his friend? She would plead his
case, and the Pope would understand and take away the bar. He thought
of these things, and he felt his hopes rising bright, like the steady
sun.
He reached the end of the crest and drew rein before descending, and he
looked down into the broad valley and the river winding in and out
among trees, gleaming like silver out there in the sun beyond the
narrowing shadow, then dark blue, and then, in places, as black as ink.
The white road, broad and dusty, winding on to Florence, followed the
changing river. Gilbert took his cap from his head and felt the
coolness of the morning on his forehead and the gentle breath of the
early summer in his fair hair; and then, sitting there in the deep
silence, bareheaded, it seemed to him that he was in the very holy
place of God's cathedral.
"The peace of God, which passeth all understanding," he repeated softly
and almost involuntarily.
"Now the God of peace be with you all, amen," answered Dunstan.
But there was a tone in his voice that made Gilbert look at him, and he
saw in the man's face a quiet smile, as if something amused him, while
the black eyes were fixed on a sight far away. Dunstan was pointing to
what he saw; so Gilbert looked, too, and he perceived a gleaming, very
far off, that moved slowly on the white road beside the shining river.
"They are expecting a fight to-day," said Gilbert, "for they are in
mail and their mule-train is behind them."
"Shall we turn aside and ride up the mountain, to let them pass?" asked
Dunstan, who could fight like a wildcat, but had also the cat's
instinctive caution.
"It would be a pity not to see the fight," answered Gilbert, and he
began to ride forward down the descent.
The track was worn down to the depth of a man's height by the hoofs of
the beasts that had trodden it for ages; and in places it was very
narrow, so that two laden mules could hardly pass each other. Young
chestnut shoots of three or four years' growth sprang up in thick green
masses from the top of the bank on each side, and now and then the
branches of nut trees almost joined their broad leaves across the way,
making a deep shade that was cool and smelt of fresh mould and green
things. A little way down the hill a spring of water trickled into a
little pool hollowed out by travellers, and the water overflowed and
made thick black mud of the earth churned up with last year's dead
leaves.
Gilbert let his horse stop to drink, and his men waited in single file
to take their turn.
"Psst!" The peculiar hiss which Italians make to attract attention came
sharp and distinct from the low growth of the chestnut shoots.
Gilbert turned his head quickly in the direction of the sound. A
swarthy face appeared, framed in a close leathern cap on which small
rings of rusty iron were sewn strongly, but not very regularly. Then a
long left arm, clad in the same sort of mail, pushed the lower boughs
aside and made a gesture in the direction whence Gilbert had come,
which was meant to warn him back--a gesture of the flat hand, held
across the breast with thumb hidden, just moving a little up and down.
"Why should I go back?" asked Gilbert, in his natural voice.
"Because yes," answered the dark man, in the common Italian idiom, and
in a low tone. "Because we are waiting for the Florentines, certain of
us of Pistoja, and we want no travellers in the way. And then--because,
if you will not--"
The right arm suddenly appeared, and in the hand was a spear, and the
act was a threat to run Gilbert through, unmailed as he was, and just
below his adversary. But as Gilbert laid his hand upon his sword,
looking straight at the man's eye, he very suddenly saw a strange
sight; for there was a long arrow sticking through the head, the point
out on one side and the feather on the other; and for a moment the man
still looked at him with eyes wide open. Then, standing as he was, his
body slowly bent forward upon itself as if curling up, and with a crash
of steel it rolled down the bank into the pool of water, where the
lance snapped under it.
For little Alric, the Saxon groom, had quietly slipped to the ground
and had strung his bow, suspecting trouble, and had laid an arrow to
the string, waiting; and little Alric's aim was very sure; it was also
the first time that he had shot a man, and he came of men who had been
bowmen since Alfred's day, and before that, and had killed many, for
generations, so that it was an instinct with them to slay with the bow.
"Well done, boy!" cried Gilbert.
But his horse reared back, as the dead body fell splashing into the
pool, and Alric quietly unstrung his bow again and remounted to be
ready. Then Gilbert would have ridden on, but Dunstan hindered him.
"This fellow was but a sentinel," he said. "A little further on you
will find these woods filled with armed men waiting to surprise the
riders we saw from above. Surely, I will die with you, sir; but we need
not die like rats in a corn-bin. Let us ride up a little way again, and
then skirt the woods and take the road where it joins the river, down
in the valley."
"And warn those men of Florence that they are riding into an ambush,"
added Gilbert, turning his horse.
So they rode up the hill; and scarcely were they out of sight of the
spring when a very old woman and a ragged little boy crept out of the
bushes, with knives, and began to rob the dead man of his rusty mail
and his poor clothes.
Gilbert reached the road a long stone's-throw beyond the last chestnut
shoots, and galloped forward to meet the advancing knights and
men-at-arms. He drew rein suddenly, a dozen lengths before them, and
threw up his open right hand. They were riding leisurely, but all in
mail, some having surcoats with devices embroidered thereon, and most
of them with their heads uncovered, their steel caps and hoods of mail
hanging at their saddle-bows.
"Sirs," cried Gilbert, in a loud, clear voice, "you ride to an ambush!
The chestnut woods are full of the men of Pistoja."
A knight who rode in front, and was the leader, came close to Gilbert.
He was a man not young, with a dark, smooth face, as finely cut as a
relief carved upon a shell, and his hair was short and iron-grey.
Gilbert told him what had happened in the woods, and the elderly knight
listened quietly and thoughtfully, while examining Gilbert's face with
half-unconscious keenness.
"If you please," said the young man, "I will lead you by the way I have
ridden, and you may enter the bushes from above, and fight at better
advantage."
But the Florentine smiled at such simple tactics. To feel the breeze,
he held up his right hand, which issued from a slit in the wrist of his
mail, so that the iron mitten hung loose; and the wind was blowing
toward the woods. He called to his squire.
"Take ten men, light torches, and set fire to those young trees."
The men got a cook's earthenware pot of coals, fed all day long with
charcoal on the march, lest there should be no fire for the camp at
night; and they lit torches of pitched hemp-rope, and presently there
was a great smoke and a crackling of green branches. But the leader of
the Florentines put on his steel cap and drew the mail hood down over
his shoulders, while all the others who were bareheaded did the same.
"Sir," said the knight to Gilbert, "you should withdraw behind us, now
that you have done us this great service. For presently there will be
fighting here, and you are unmailed."
"The weather is overwarm for an iron coat," answered Gilbert, with a
laugh. "But if I shall not trespass upon the courtesies of your country
by thrusting my company upon you, I will ride at your left hand, that
you may the more safely slay with your right."
"Sir," answered the other, "you are a very courteous man. Of what
country may you be?"
"An Englishman, sir, and of Norman blood." He also told his name.
"Gino Buondelmonte, at your service," replied the knight, naming
himself.
"Nay, sir," laughed Gilbert, "a knight cannot serve a simple squire!"
"It is never shame for gentle-born to serve gentle-born," answered the
other.
But now the smoke was driving the men of Pistoja out of the wood, and
the hillside down which Gilbert had ridden was covered with men in
mail, on horseback, and with footmen in leather and such poor armour as
had been worn by the dead sentinel. Buondelmonte thrust his feet home
in his wide stirrups, settled himself in the saddle, shortened his
reins, and drew his sword, while watching all the time the movements of
the enemy. Gilbert sat quietly watching them, too. As yet he had never
ridden at a foe, though he had fought on foot, and he unconsciously
smiled with pleasure at the prospect, trying to pick out the man likely
to fall by his sword. In England, or in France, he would certainly have
put on the good mail which was packed on the sumpter mule's back; but
here in the sweet Italian spring, in the morning breeze full of the
scent of wild flowers, and the humming of bees and the twittering of
little birds, even fighting had a look of harmless play, and he felt as
secure in his cloth tunic as if it had been of woven steel.
The position of the Florentines was the better, for they had the broad
homeward road behind them, in case of defeat; but the men of Pistoja,
driven from the woods by the thick smoke and the burning of the
undergrowth, were obliged to scramble down a descent so steep that many
of them were forced to dismount, and they then found themselves huddled
together in a narrow strip of irregular meadow between the road and the
foot of the stony hill. Buondelmonte saw his advantage. His sword shot
up at arm's length over his head, and his high, clear voice rang out in
a single word of command.
In a moment the peace of nature was rent by the scream of war. Hoofs
thundered, swords flashed, men yelled, and arrows shot through the
great cloud of dust that rose suddenly as from an explosion. In the
front of the charge the Italian and the Norman rode side by side, the
inscrutable black eyes and the calm olive features beside the Norman's
terrible young figure, with its white glowing face and fair hair
streaming on the wind, and wide, deep eyes like blue steel, and the
quivering nostrils of the man born for fight.
Short was the strife and sharp, as the Florentines spread to right and
left of their leader and pressed the foe back against the steep hill in
the narrow meadow. Then Buondelmonte thrust out straight and sure, in
the Italian fashion, and once the mortal wound was in the face, and
once in the throat, and many times men felt it in their breasts through
mail and gambison and bone. But Gilbert's great strokes flashed like
lightnings from his pliant wrist, and behind the wrist was the Norman
arm, and behind the arm the relentless pale face and the even lips,
that just tightened upon each other as the deathblows went out, one by
one, each to its place in a life. The Italian destroyed men skilfully
and quickly, yet as if it were distasteful to him. The Norman slew like
a bright destroying angel, breathing the swift and silent wrath of God
upon mankind.
Blow upon blow, with clash of steel, thrust after thrust as the darting
of serpents, till the dead lay in heaps, and the horses' hoofs churned
blood and grass to a green-red foam, till the sword-arm waited high and
then sank slowly, because there was none for the sword to strike, and
the point rested among the close-sewn rings of mail on Buondelmonte's
foot, and the thin streams of blood trickled quietly down the dimmed
blade.
"Sir," said Buondelmonte, courteously, "you are a marvellous fine
swordsman, though you fence not in our manner, with the point. I am
your debtor for the safety of my left side. Are you hurt, sir?"
"Not I!" laughed Gilbert, wiping his broad blade slowly on his horse's
mane for lack of anything better.
Then Buondelmonte looked at him again and smiled.
"You have won yourself a fair crest," he laughed, as he glanced at
Gilbert's cap.
"A crest?" Gilbert put up his hand, and uttered an exclamation as it
struck against a sharp steel point.
A half-spent arrow had pierced the top of his red cloth cap and was
sticking there, like a woman's long hairpin. He thought that if it had
struck two inches lower, with a little more force, he should have
looked as the man in the woods did, whom Alric had killed. He plucked
the shaft from the stiff cloth with some difficulty, and, barely
glancing at it, tossed it away. But little Alric, who had left the
guide to take care of the mules and had followed the charge on foot,
picked up the arrow, marked it with his knife and put it carefully into
his leathern quiver, which he filled with arrows he picked up on the
grass till it would hold no more. Dunstan, who had ridden in the press
with the rest, was looking among the dead for a good sword to take, his
own being broken.
"Florence owes you a debt, sir," said Buondelmonte, an hour later, when
they were riding back from the pursuit. "But for your warning, many of
us would be lying dead in that wood. I pray you, take from the spoil,
such as it is, whatsoever you desire. And if it please you to stay with
us, the archbishop shall make a knight of you, for you have won
knighthood to-day."
But Gilbert shook his head, smiling gravely.
"Praised be God, I need nothing, sir," he answered. "I thank you for
your courteous hospitality, but I cannot stay, seeing that I ride upon
a lady's bidding. And as for a debt, sir, Florence has paid hers
largely in giving me your acquaintance."
"My friendship, sir," replied Buondelmonte, not yielding in compliment
to the knightly youth.
So they broke bread together and drank a draught, and parted. But
Buondelmonte gave Dunstan a small purse of gold and a handful of silver
to little Alric and the muleteer, and Gilbert rode away with his men,
and all were well pleased.
Yet when he was alone in the evening, a sadness and a horror of what he
had done came over him; for he had taken life that day as a man mows
down grass, in swaths, and he could not tell why he had slain, for he
knew not the men who fought on the two sides, nor their difference. He
had charged because he saw men charging, he had struck for the love of
strife, and had killed because it was of his nature to kill. But now
that the blood was shed, and the sun which had risen on life was going
down on death, Gilbert Warde was sorry for what he had done, and his
brave charge seemed but a senseless deed of slaughter, for which he
should rather have done penance than received knighthood.
"I am no better than a wild beast," he said, when he had told Dunstan
what he felt. "Go and find out a priest to pray for those I have killed
to-day."
He covered his brow with his hand as he sat at the supper table.
"I go," answered the young man. "Yet it is a pleasant sight to see the
lion weeping for pity over the calf he has killed."
"The lion kills that he may eat and himself live," answered Gilbert.
"And the men who fought to-day fought for a cause. But I smote for the
wanton love of smiting that is in all our blood, and I am ashamed. Bid
the priest pray for me also."