In the late dusk of summer Bernard went his way from the place where he
had preached, to the presbytery of Saint Mary Magdalen, where he was to
lodge that night. The King and Queen walked beside him, their horses
led after them by grooms in the royal liveries of white and gold; and
all the long procession of knights and nobles, priests and laymen,
gentlefolk and churls, men, women, and children, streamed in a motley
procession up the road to the village. As they went, the King talked
gravely with the holy man, interlarding and lining his sententious
speeches with copious though not always correct quotations from the
Vulgate. On Bernard's other side Eleanor walked with head erect, one
hand upon her belt, one hanging down, her brows slightly drawn
together, her face clear white, her burning eyes fixed angrily upon the
bright vision cast by her thoughts into the empty air before her.
She had used the only means, and the strongest means, of bringing
Gilbert back to France; she had foredreamt his coming, she had
foreknown that from the first he would ask for Beatrix; but she had
neither known nor dreamt of what she should feel when he, standing at
her feet below the platform, looked up to her offering eyes with a
hunger in his face which she could not satisfy, and a desire which she
could not fulfil. His very asking for the other had been a refusal of
herself, and to be refused is a shame which no loving woman will accept
while love is living, and an insult which no strong woman forgives when
love is dead.
But neither the King nor the abbot heeded her as they walked along,
talking in Latin mixed with Norman French. The monk, not tall, slender,
spiritualized even in the remnant of his flesh, the incarnation of
believing thought and word, the exposition of matter's servitude to
mind, was the master; the King, heavy, strong, pale, obedient, was the
pupil, proving the existence of the greater force by his blind
submission to its laws. Beside them the Queen imaged the independence
of youthful life, believing without realizing, strong with blood, rich
with colour, fearing regret more than remorse, thoughtlessly cruel and
cruelly thoughtless, yet able to be very generous and brave.
The bell of Saint Mary's tolled three strokes, then four, then five,
then one, thirteen in all, and then rang backward for the ending day.
The sun had set a full half-hour and the dusk had almost drunk the
dregs of the red west. Bernard stood still, bareheaded in the way, with
folded hands, and began the Angelus Domini; the King from habit raised
his hand to take his cap from his head, and touched the golden crown
instead. Instantly a little colour of embarrassment rose in his pale
cheeks, and he stumbled over the familiar response as he clasped his
hands with downcast eyes, for in some ways he was a timid man. The
Queen stood still and spoke the words also, but neither the attitude of
her head nor the look in her eyes was changed, nor did she take her
hand from her belt to clasp it upon the other. The air was very soft
and warm, there was the musical, low sound of many voices speaking in
the monotone of prayer, and now and then, on whirring wings, a droning
beetle hummed his way from one field to another, just above the heads
of the great multitude.
The prayer said, they all moved onward, past the first houses of the
village and past the open smithy with its shelter of twisted chestnut
boughs, beneath which the horses were protected from the sun while they
were being shod. But the smith had not been to the preaching, because
Alric, the Saxon groom, had brought him Gilbert's horse to shoe just
when he was going, and had forced him to stay and do the work with the
threat of an evil spell learned in Italy. And now, peering through the
twilight, he stood watching the long procession as it came up to his
door. He was a dark man, with red eyes and hairy hands, and his shirt
was open on his chest almost to his belt. He stood quite still at
first, gazing on Bernard's face, that was luminous in the dusk; but as
he looked, something moved him that he could not understand, and he
came forward in his leathern apron and his blackened hose, and knelt at
the abbot's feet.
"Give me also the Cross," he cried.
"I give thee the sign, my son," answered Bernard, raising his hand to
bless the hairy man. "The crosses we had are all given. But thou shalt
have one to-morrow."
But as the smith looked up to the inspired face the light came into his
own eyes, and something he could not see took hold of him suddenly and
hard.
"Nay, my lord," he answered, "I will have it to-day and of my own."
Then he sprang up and ran to his smithy, and came back holding in his
hand a bar of iron that had been heating in the coals to make a shoe.
The end of it was glowing red.
"In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost!" he
cried in a loud voice.
And as he spoke the words, he had laid the red-hot point to his breast
and had drawn it down and crosswise; and a little line of thin, white
smoke followed the hissing iron along the seared flesh. He threw the
bar down upon the threshold of his door and came to join the throng,
the strange smile on his rough face and the light of another world in
his fire-reddened eyes. But though the multitude sent up a great cry of
praise and wonder, yet Bernard shook his head gravely and walked on,
for he loved not any madness, not even a madness for good deeds, and
the light by which he saw was as steady and clear and true as a
life-long day.
Moreover, even while he had been speaking he had felt that fanatic
deeds were not far off, and a deep sadness had fallen upon him, because
he knew that true belief is the fulness of true wisdom and by no means
akin to any folly.
Therefore, when he was alone that night, he was very heavy-hearted, and
sat a long time by his square oak table in the light of the
three-cornered brazen lamp which, stood at his elbow. The principal
chamber of the presbytery was cross-vaulted and divided into two by a
low round arch supported on slender double columns with capitals
fantastically carved. The smaller portion of the room beyond the arch
made an alcove for sleeping, which could be completely shut off by a
heavy curtain; the larger part was paved with stone, and in one corner
a low wooden platform, on which stood a heavy table before a carved
bench fastened to the wall, was set apart for writing and study. On the
table, besides the lamp, there stood a reading-desk, and above the
bench a strong shelf carried a number of objects, including several
large bottles of ink, a pot of glue for fastening leaves of parchment,
and two or three jars of blue and white earthenware. On nails there
hung a brush of half dried broom, a broad-brimmed rush hat, and a
blackened rosary. On the other side of the table, and by the window,
there was a small holy-water basin with a little besom. On the walls
were hung pieces of coarse linen roughly embroidered with small crosses
flory, worked in dark red silk. The vault was blank and white, and
rushes were strewn on the stone pavement. In the deep embrasures of the
windows there were dark window-seats worn black with age.
The abbot had begun a letter, but the pen lay beside the unfinished
writing, his elbow rested on the parchment, and he shaded his eyes from
the light. The brilliancy was gone from his face and was succeeded by
an almost earthy pallor, while his attitude expressed both lassitude
and dejection. He had done what had been required of him, he had fired
the passion of the hour, and one hour had shown him how completely it
was to be beyond his control. He remembered how Peter the Hermit had
led the vast advance-guard of the First Crusade to sudden and miserable
destruction before the main force could be organized; he had seen
enough on that afternoon to prove to him that the air was laden with
such disaster, of which the responsibility would surely be heaped upon
himself. He regretted not the thoughts he had preached, but the fact of
having yielded to preach at all to such men and at such a time. He had
begun to set forth all this and much more in a letter to Pope Eugenius,
but before he had written a dozen lines the pen had fallen from his
hand, and he had begun to reflect upon the impossibility of stemming
the tide since it had turned to flood.
A soft step sounded in the outer hall beyond the curtained doorway, but
Bernard, absorbed in his meditations, heard nothing. A jewelled hand
pushed aside the thick folds of the hanging, and the most beautiful
eyes in the world gazed curiously upon the unheeding abbot.
"Are you alone?" asked the Queen's voice.
Without waiting for an answer she came forward into the room and paused
beside the low platform, laying one hand upon the table in a gesture
half friendly, half deprecating, as if she still feared that she had
disturbed the holy man. His transparent fingers fell from his eyes, and
he looked up to her, hardly realizing who she was, and quite unable to
guess why she had come. A dark brown mantle completely covered her
gown, and only a little of her scarlet sleeve showed as her hand lay on
the table. Her russet-golden hair hung in broad waves and lightened in
the rays of the oil lamp. Her eyes, that looked at Bernard intently and
inquiringly, were the eyes of old Duke William, whom the Abbot of
Clairvaux had brought to confession and penance long ago, and who had
gone from the altar of his grand-daughter's marriage straight to
solitary hermitage and lonely death in the Spanish hills; they were
eyes in which all thoughts were fearless and in which tenderness was
beautiful, but in which kindness was often out of sight behind the
blaze of vitality and the burning love of life that proceeded from her
and surrounded her as an atmosphere of her own.
"You do not welcome me," she said, looking into his face. "Are you too
deeply occupied to talk with me awhile? It is long since we have met."
Bernard passed his hand over his eyes as if to brush away some material
veil.
"I am at your Grace's service," he said gently, and he rose from his
seat as he spoke.
"I ask no service for myself," she answered, setting her foot upon the
platform and coming to his side. "Yet I ask something which you may do
for others."
Bernard hesitated, and then looked down.
"Silver and gold have I none," he said, quoting, "but such as I have I
give unto thee."
"I have both gold and silver, and lands, and a crown," answered the
Queen, smiling carelessly, and yet in earnest. "I lack faith. And so,
though my people have swords and armour, and have taken upon them the
Cross to succour their brethren in the Holy Land, yet they have no
leader."
"They have the King, your husband," answered Bernard, gravely.
Eleanor laughed, not very cruelly, nor altogether scornfully, but as a
man might laugh who was misunderstood, and to whom, asking for his
sword, a servant should bring his pen.
"The King!" she cried, still smiling. "The King! Are you so great in
mind and so poor in sense as to think that he could lead men and win?
The King is no leader. He is your acolyte--I like to see him swinging a
censer in time to your prayers and flattening his flat face upon the
altar-steps beatified by your footsteps!"
The Queen laughed, for she had moods in which she feared neither God,
nor saint, nor man. But Bernard looked grave at first, then hurt, and
then there was pity in his eyes. He pointed to the window-seat beside
the table, and he himself sat down upon his carved bench. Eleanor,
being seated, rested her elbows on the table, clasped her beautiful
hands together, and slowly rubbed her cheek against them, meditating
what she should say next. She had had no fixed purpose in coming to the
abbot's lodging, but she had always liked to talk with him when he was
at leisure and to see the look of puzzled and pained surprise that came
into his face when she said anything more than usually shocking to his
delicate sensibilities. With impulses of tremendous force, there was at
the root of her character a youthful and almost childlike indifference
to consequences.
"You misjudge your husband," said the abbot, at last, drumming on the
table nervously and absently with the tips of his white fingers. "They
who do their own will only are quick to condemn those who hope to
accomplish the will of Heaven."
"If you regard the King as the instrument of Divine Providence,"
answered Eleanor, with curling lip, "there is nothing to be said.
Providence, for instance, was angered with the people of Vitry.
Providence selected the King of France to be the representative of its
wrath. The King, obedient as ever, set fire to the church, and burned
several priests and two thousand more or less innocent persons at their
prayers. Nothing could be better. Providence was appeased--"
"Hush, Madam!" exclaimed Bernard, lifting a thin hand in deprecation.
"That was the devil's work."
"You told me that I was condemning one who is accomplishing the will of
Heaven."
"In leading the Crusade, yes--"
"Then my husband works for both parties. Today he serves God; to-morrow
he serves Mammon." Eleanor raised her finely pencilled eyebrows. "I
believe there is a parable that teaches us what is to become of those
that serve two masters."
"It applies to those who try to serve them at the same time," answered
the abbot, meeting her contemptuous look with the quiet boldness of a
man sure of power. "You know as well as I that the King took oath to
lead a Crusade out of repentance for what he did at Vitry."
"A bargain, then, of the very kind against which you preached to-day."
The Queen still smiled, but less scornfully, for she fancied herself as
good as Bernard in an argument.
"It is a very easy thing to fence with words," Bernard said. "It is one
thing to argue, it is quite another to convince your hearers."
"I do not desire to convince you of anything," answered Eleanor, with a
little laugh. "I would rather be convinced."
She looked at him a moment and then turned away with a weary little
sigh of discontent.
"Was it without conviction that you took the Cross from my hands
to-day?" asked Bernard, sadly.
"It was in the hope of conviction."
Bernard understood. Before him, within reach of his hand, that great
problem was present which, of all others, Paganism most easily and
clearly solved, but with which Christianity grapples at a disadvantage,
finding its foothold narrow, and its danger constant and great. It is
the problem of the conversion of great and vital natures, brave, gifted
and sure of self, to the condition of the humble and poor in spirit. It
is easy to convince the cripple that peace is among the virtues; the
sick man and the weak are soon persuaded that the world is a sensuous
illusion of Satan, in which the pure and perfect have no part nor
share; it is another, a greater and a harder matter, to prove the
strong man a sinner by his strength, and to make woman's passion
ridiculous in comparison of heaven. The clear flame of the spirit burns
ill under the breath of this dying body, and for the fleeting touch of
a loving hand the majesty of God is darkened in a man's heart.
Bernard saw before him the incarnate strength and youth and beauty of
her from whom a line of kings was to descend, and in whom were all the
greatest and least qualities, virtues and failings of her unborn
children--the Lion Heart of Richard, the heartless selfishness of John,
the second Edward's grasping hold, Henry the Third's broad justice and
wisdom; the doubt of one, the decision of another, the passions of them
all in one, coursing in the blood of a young and kingly race.
"You wish not to convince others, but to be convinced," Bernard said,
"and yet it is not in your nature to yield yourself to any conviction.
What would you of me? I can preach to them that will hear me, not to
those that come to watch me and to smile at my sayings as if I were a
player in a booth at a fair. Why do you come here to-night? Can I give
you faith as a salve, wherewith to anoint your blind eyes? Can I
furnish you the girdle of honesty for the virtue you have not? Shall I
promise repentance for you to God, while you smile on your next lover?
Why have you sought me out?"
"If I had known that you had no leisure, and the Church no room for any
but the altogether perfect, I would not have come."
She leaned back in the window-seat and folded her arms, drawing the
thin dark stuff of her cloak into severe straight lines and shadows, in
vivid contrast with the radiant beauty of her face. Her straight and
clear-cut brows lowered over her deep eyes, and her lips were as hard
as polished coral.
Bernard looked at her again long and earnestly, understanding in part,
and in part guessing, that she had suffered a secret disappointment on
that day and had come to him rather in the hope of some kind of mental
excitement than with any idea of obtaining consolation. To him, filled
as he was with the lofty thoughts inspired by the mission thrust upon
him, there was something horrible in the woman's frivolity--or
cynicism. To him the Cross meant the Passion of Christ, the shedding of
God's blood, the Redemption of mankind. To her it was a badge, an
ornament, the excuse for a luxurious pilgrimage of fair women living
delicately in silken tents, and clothed in fine garments of a fanciful
fashion. The contrast was too strong, too painful. Eleanor and her girl
knights would be too wholly out of place, with their fancies and their
whims, in an army of devoted men fighting for a faith, for a faith's
high principle as between race and race, and for all which that faith
had made sacred in its most holy places. It was too much. In
profoundest disappointment and sadness Bernard's head sank upon his
breast, and he raised his hands a little, to let them fall again upon
his knees, as if he were almost ready to give up the struggle.
Eleanor felt the wicked little thrill of triumph in his apparent
despair which compensates schoolboys for unimaginable labour in
mischief, when they at last succeed in hurting the feelings of a
long-suffering teacher. There had been nothing but an almost childish
desire to tease at the root of all that she had said; for before all
things she was young and gay, and her surroundings tended in every way
to repress both gayety and youth.
"You must not take everything I say in earnest," she said suddenly,
with a laugh that jarred on the delicate nerves of the overwrought man.
He turned his head from her as if the sight of her face would have been
disagreeable just then.
"Jest with life if you can," he said. "Jest with death if you are brave
enough; yet at least be earnest in this great matter. If you are fixed
in purpose to go with the King, you and your ladies, then go with the
purpose to do good, to bind up men's wounds, to tend the sick, to cheer
the weak, and by your presence to make the coward ashamed."
"And why not to fight?" asked the Queen, the light of an untried
emotion brightening in her eyes. "Do you think I cannot bear the weight
of mail, or sit a horse, or handle a sword as well as many a boy of
twenty who will be there in the thick of battle? And if I and my court
ladies can bear the weariness as well as even the weakest man in the
King's army, and risk a life as bravely, and perhaps strike a clean
blow or drive a straight thrust for the Holy Sepulchre, shall our souls
have no good of it, because we are women?"
As she spoke, her arm lay across the table, and her small strong hand
moved energetically with her speech, touching the monk's sleeve. The
fighting blood of the old Duke was in her veins, and there was battle
in her voice. Bernard looked up.
"If you were always what you are at this moment," he said, "and if you
had a thousand such women as yourself to ride with you, the King would
need no other army, for you could face the Seljuks alone.
"But you think that by the time I have to face them my courage will
have cooled to woman's tears, like hot vapour on a glass."
She smiled, but gently now, for she was pleased by what he had said.
"You need not fear," she continued, before he had time to answer her.
"We shall not bear ourselves worse than men, and there will be grown
men there who shall be afraid before we are. But if there were with us
a leader of men, I should have no fear. Men will fight for the King,
they will shed their blood for Eleanor of Guienne, but they would die
ten deaths at the bidding of--"
She paused, and fixed her eyes on Bernard's face.
"Of whom?" he asked, unsuspecting.
"Of Bernard of Clairvaux."
There was a short silence. Then in a clear far-off voice, as if in a
dream, the abbot repeated his own name.
"Bernard of Clairvaux--a leader of men? A soldier? A general?" He
paused as if consulting himself. "Madam," he said at last, "I am
neither general, nor leader, nor soldier. I am a monk, and a churchman
as the Hermit was, but not like him in this--I know the limitation of
my strength. I can urge men to fight for a good cause, but I will not
lead them to death and ruin, as Peter did, while there are men living
who have been trained to the sword as I to the pen."
"I do not ask that you should plan battles, lead forlorn charges, nor
sit down in your tent to study the destruction of walled towns. You can
be our leader without all that, for he who leads men's souls commands
men's bodies and lives in men's hearts. Therefore, I bid you to come
with us and help us, for although a sword is better at need than a
hundred words, yet there are men at whose single word a thousand swords
are drawn like one."
"No, Madam," said the abbot, his even lips closing after the words,
with a look of final decision, "I will not go with you. First, because
I am unfit to be a leader of armies, and secondly, because such life as
there is left in me can be better used at home than in following a
camp. Lastly, I would that this good fight might be fought soberly and
in earnest, neither in the fever of a fanatical fury nor, on the other
hand, lightly, as an amusement and a play, nor selfishly and meanly in
the hope of gain. My words are neither deep, nor learned, nor well
chosen, for I speak as my thoughts rise and overflow. But thanks be to
Heaven, what I say rouses men to act rather than moves them to think.
Yet it is not well that they be over-roused or stirred when a long war
is before them, lest their heat be consumed in a flash of fire, and
their strength in a single blow. You need not a preacher, but a
captain; not words but deeds. You go to make history, not to hear a
prophecy."
"Nevertheless," said the Queen, "you must go with us, for if the spirit
you have called up sinks from men's memories, our actions will be worse
than spiritless. You must go."
"I cannot."
"Cannot? But I say you must."
"No, Madam--I say no."
For a long time the two sat in silence facing each other, the Queen
confident, vital, fully roused to the expression of her will; Bernard,
on the other hand, as fully determined to oppose her with all the
fervent conviction which he brought to every question of judgment or
policy.
"If we fall out among ourselves," said Eleanor, at last, "who shall
unite us? If men lose faith in the cause before them and grow greedy of
the things that lie in their way, who shall set them right?"
The abbot shook his head sorrowfully and would not meet her eyes, for
in this he knew that she was right.
"When an army has lost faith," he said, "it is already beaten. When
Atalanta stooped to pick up the golden apples, her race was lost."
"As when love dies, contempt and hatred take its place," said Eleanor,
as if in comment.
"Suck love is of hell," said Bernard, looking suddenly into her face,
so that she faintly blushed.
"Yes," she retorted scornfully, "for it is the love of man and wife."
The holy man watched her sadly and yet keenly, for he knew what she
meant, and he foresaw the end.
"Lucifer rebelled against law," he said.
"I do not wonder," said the Queen, with a sharp laugh. "He would have
rebelled against marriage. Love is the true faith--marriage is the
dogma." She laughed again.
Bernard shrank a little as if he felt actual pain. He had known her
since she had been a little child, yet he had never become used to her
cruelties of expression. He was a man more easily disgusted in his
aesthetic sensibilities than shocked by the wickedness of a world he
knew. To him, God was not only great, but beautiful; Nature, as some
theologians maintain, was cruel, evil, hurtful, but she was never
coarse, nor foul in his conception, and her beauty appealed to him
against his will. So also in his eyes a woman could be sinful, and her
sins might seem terrible to him, and yet she herself was to him a woman
still, a being delicate, refined, tender even in her wickedness; but a
woman who could speak at once keenly and brutally of her marriage
reacted upon him as a very ugly or painful sight, or as a very harsh
and discordant sound that jars every nerve in the body.
"Madam," he said in a low voice, but very quietly and coldly, "I think
not that you are in such state of grace as to bear the Cross to your
good."
Eleanor raised her head and looked at him haughtily, with lids half
drooped as her eyes grew hard and keen.
"You are not my confessor, sir," she retorted. "For all you know, he
may have enjoined upon me a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It is a common
penance." For the third time she laughed.
"A common penance!" cried the abbot, in a tone of despair. "That is
what it has come to in these days. A man kills his neighbour in a
quarrel and goes to Jerusalem to purge him of blood, as he would take a
physician's draught to cure him of the least of little aches. A
pilgrimage is a remedy, as a prayer is a medicine. To repeat the act of
contrition so and so often, or to run through a dozen rosaries of an
afternoon, is a potion for the sick soul."
"Well, what then?" asked the Queen.
"What then?" repeated the abbot. "Then there is no faith left in the
true meaning of the Crusade--"
"That is what I fear," answered Eleanor. "That is why I am begging you
to come with us. That is why the King will be unable to command men
without you. And yet you will not go."
"No," he replied, "I will not."
"You have always disappointed me," said the Queen, rising, and
employing a weapon to which women usually resort last. "You stand in
the front and will not lead, you rouse men to deeds you will not do,
you give men ideals in which you do not believe, and then you go back
to the peace of your abbey of Clairvaux, and leave men to shift for
themselves in danger and need. And if, perhaps, some trusting woman
comes to you with overladen heart, you tell her that she is not in a
state of grace. It must be easy to be a great man in that way."
She turned as she spoke the last words and stepped from the platform to
the stone pavement. At the enormous injustice of her judgment,
Bernard's face grew cold and stern; but he would not answer what she
said, for he knew how useless it would be. In her, and perhaps in her
only, of all men and women he had known, there was the something to
which he could not speak, the element that was out of harmony with his
own being, and when he had talked with her it was as if he had eaten
sand. He could understand that she, too, was in contradiction with her
natural feelings in her marriage with such a man as the King; he could
be sorry for her, he could pity her, he could forgive her, he could
pray for her--but he could not speak to her as he could to others.
A dozen times before she reached the door he wished to call her back,
and he sought in the archive of his brain and in the treasury of his
heart the words that might touch her. But he sought in vain. So long as
she was before his eyes, a chilled air, dull and unresonant, divided
his soul from hers. Her hand was on the curtain to go out when she
turned and looked at him again.
"You will not go with us," she said. "If we fail, we shall count the
fault yours; if we quarrel and turn our swords upon one another, the
sin is yours; if our armies lose heart, and are scattered and hewn in
pieces, their blood will be on your head. But if we win," she said at
the last, drawing herself to her height, "the honour of our deeds shall
be ours alone, not yours."
She had raised the curtain, and it fell behind her as she spoke the
last word, leaving the abbot no possibility of a retort. But she had
missed her intention, for he was not a man to be threatened from the
right he had planned. When she was gone, his face grew sad, and calm,
and weary again, and presently, musing, he took up the pen that lay
beside the half-written page.
But she went on through the outer hall to the vestibule, drawing her
thin dark mantle about her, her lips set and her eyes cruel, for she
had been disappointed. Beneath the idle wish to hear Bernard speak,
behind the strong conviction that he must follow the army to the East
if it was to be victorious, there had been the unconscious longing for
a return of that brave emotion under which, in the afternoon, she had
taken the Cross with her ladies. And a woman disappointed of strong
feeling, hoped for and desired, is less kind than a strong man defeated
of expectation.
She was alone. Of all women, she hated most to be followed by
attendants and watched by inferiors when she chose solitude. Reliant on
herself and unaffectedly courageous, she often wondered whether it were
not a more pleasant thing to be a man than to be even the fairest of
womankind, as she was. She stood still a moment in the vestibule,
drawing the hood of her cloak over her head and half across her face.
The outer door was half open; the single lamp, filled with olive-oil
and hanging from the middle of the vault, cast its ray out into the
night. As Eleanor stood arranging her headdress and almost
unconsciously looking toward the darkness, a gleam of colour and steel
flashed softly in the gloom. It disappeared and flashed again, for a
man was waiting without and slowly walking up and down before the door.
The Queen had chosen to come alone, but had no reason for concealing
herself; she made two steps to the threshold and looked out, opening
wide one half of the door.
The man stood still and turned his head without haste as the fuller
light fell upon him. It was Gilbert, and as his eyes turned to the
Queen's face, dark against the brightness within, she started a little,
as if she would have drawn back, and she spoke nervously, in a low
voice, hardly knowing what she said.
"What is it?" she asked. "Why did you come here?"
"Because I knew your Grace was here," he answered quietly.
"You knew that I was here? How?"
"I saw you--I followed."
Under her hood, the Queen felt the warm blood in her cheeks. Gilbert
was very good to see as he stood just outside the door, in the bright
lamplight. He was pale, but not wan like Bernard; he was thin with the
leanness of vigorous youth, not with fasting and vigils; he was grave,
not sad; energetic, not inspired; and his face was handsome rather than
beautiful. Eleanor looked at him for a few moments before she spoke
again.
"You followed me. Why?"
"To beg a word of your Grace's favour."
"The question you asked today?"
"Yes."
"Is it so urgent?" The Queen laughed a little, and Gilbert started in
surprise.
"Your Grace wrote urgently," he said.
"Then you are zealous only to obey me? I like that. You shall be
rewarded! But I have changed my mind. If the letter were to be written
again, I would not write it."
"It was the letter of a friend. Would you take it back?"
Gilbert's face showed the coming disappointment. In his anxiety he
pressed nearer to her, resting his hand on the doorpost. The Queen drew
back and smiled.
"Was it so very friendly?" she asked. "I do not remember--but I did not
mean it so."
"Madam, what did you mean?" His voice was steady and rather cold.
"Oh--I have quite forgotten!" She almost laughed again, shaking her
hooded head.
"If your Grace had need of me, I might understand. Beatrix is not here.
I looked at each of your ladies to-day, through all their ranks--she
was not among them. I asked where she was, but you would not answer and
were angry--"
"I? Angry? You are dreaming!"
"I thought you were angry, because you changed colour and would not
speak again--"
"You were wrong. Only a fool can be angry with ignorance."
"Why do you call me ignorant? These are all riddles."
"And you are not good at guessing. Come! To show you that I was not
angry, I will have you walk with me down through the village. It is
growing late."
"Your Grace is alone?"
"Since you followed me, you know it. Come."
She almost pushed him aside to pass out, and a moment later they were
crossing the dark open space before the church. Gilbert was not easily
surprised, but when he reflected that he was walking late at night
through a small French village with one of the most powerful sovereigns
in Europe, who was at the same time the most beautiful of living women,
he realized that his destiny was not leading him by common paths. He
remembered his own surprise when, an hour earlier, he had seen the
Queen's unmistakable figure pass the open window of his lodging. And
yet should any one see her now, abroad at such an hour, in the company
of a young Englishman, there would be much more matter for
astonishment. Half boyishly he wished that he were not himself, or else
that the Queen were Beatrix. As for his actual position in the Queen's
good graces, he had not the slightest understanding of it, a fact which
just then amused Eleanor almost as much as it irritated her. The road
was uneven and steep beyond the little square. For some moments they
walked side by side in silence. From far away came the sound of many
rough voices singing a drinking-chorus.
"Give me your arm," said Eleanor, suddenly.
As she spoke, she put out her hand, as if she feared to stumble. Doing
as she begged him, Gilbert suited his steps to hers, and they were very
close together as they went on. He had never walked arm in arm in that
way before, nor perhaps had he ever been so close to any other woman.
An indescribable sensation took possession of him; he felt that his
step was less steady, and that his head was growing hot and his hands
cold; and somehow he knew that whereas the idea of love was altogether
beyond and out of the question, yet he was spellbound in the charm of a
new and mysterious attraction. With it there was the instantaneous
certainty that it was evil, with the equally sure knowledge that if it
grew upon him but a few moments longer he should not be able to resist
it.
Eleanor would not have been a woman had she not understood.
"What is the matter?" she asked gently, and under her hood she was
smiling.
"The matter?" Gilbert spoke nervously. "There is nothing the matter;
why do you ask?"
"Your arm trembled," answered the Queen.
"I suppose I was afraid that you were going to fall."
At this the Queen laughed aloud.
"Are you so anxious for my safety as that?" she inquired.
Gilbert did not answer at once.
"It seems so strange," he said at last, "that your Grace should choose
to be abroad alone so late at night."
"I am not alone," she answered.
At that moment her foot seemed to slip, and her hand tightened suddenly
upon Gilbert's arm. But as he thought her in danger of falling, he
caught her round the waist and held her up; and, as he almost clasped
her to him, the mysterious influence strengthened his hold in a most
unnecessary manner.
"I never slip," said Eleanor, by way of explaining the fact that she
had just stumbled.
"No," answered Gilbert. "Of course not."
And he continued to hold her fast. She made a little movement vaguely
indicating that she wished him to let her go, and her free right hand
pretended to loosen his from her waist. He felt infinitesimal lines of
fire running from his head to his feet, and he saw lights where there
were none.
"Let me go," she said, almost under her breath; and accentuating her
words with little efforts of hand and body, it accidentally happened
that her head was against his breast for a moment.
The fire grew hotter, the lights brighter, and, with the consciousness
of doing something at once terrible yet surpassingly sweet to do, he
allowed his lips to touch the dark stuff that hid her russet hair. But
she was quite unaware of this desperate deed. A moment later she seemed
to hear something, for she turned her head quickly, as if listening,
and spoke in an anxious half-whisper.
"Take care! There is somebody--"
Instantly Gilbert's hand dropped to his side and he assumed the
attitude of a respectful protector. The Queen continued to stare into
the darkness a moment longer, and then began to walk on.
"It was nothing," she said carelessly.
"I hear men singing," said Gilbert.
"I dare say," answered Eleanor, with perfect indifference. "I have
heard them for some time."
One voice rose higher and louder than the rest as the singers
approached, and the other voices joined in the rough chorus of a
Burgundy drinking-song. Near the outskirts of the village, lights were
flashing and moving unsteadily in the road as those who carried them
staggered along. To reach the monastery which was the headquarters of
the court, the Queen and Gilbert would have to walk a hundred yards
down the street before turning to the right. Gilbert saw at a glance
that it would be impossible for them to reach the turning before
meeting the drunken crowd.
"It would be better to go back by another way," he said, slackening his
pace.
But the Queen walked quietly on without answering him. It was clear
that she intended to make the people stand aside to let her pass, for
she continued to walk in the middle of the street. But Gilbert gently
drew her aside, and she suffered him to lead her to a doorway, raised
two steps above the street, and darkened by an overhanging balcony.
There they stood and waited. A dense throng of grooms, archers and
men-at-arms came roaring up the steep way toward them. A huge man in a
dirty scarlet tunic and dusty russet hose, with soft boots that were
slipping down in folds about his ankles, staggered along in front of
the rest. His face was on fire with wine, his little red eyes glared
dully from under swollen lids, and as he bawled his song with mouth
wide open, one might have tossed an apple between his wolfish teeth. In
his right hand he held an earthen jug in which there was still a little
wine; with his left he brandished a banner that had been made by sewing
a broad red cross upon a towel tied to one of those long wands with
which farmers' boys drive geese to feed. Half dancing, half marching,
and reeling at every step, he came along, followed closely by a dozen
companions one degree less burly than himself, but at least quite as
drunk; and each had upon his breast or shoulder the cross he had
received that day. Behind them more and more, closer and closer, the
others came stumbling, rolling, jostling each other, howling the chorus
of the song. And every now and then the leader, swinging his banner and
his wine jug, sent a shower of red drops into the faces of his
followers, some of whom laughed, and some swore loudly in curses that
made themselves felt through the roaring din. But loudest, highest,
clearest of all, from within the heart of the drunken crowd, came one
of those voices that are made to be heard in storm and battle. In a
tune of its own, regardless of the singing of all the rest, it was
chanting the Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Long-drawn, sustained, and
of brazen quality, it calmly defied all other din, and as the crowd
drew nearer Gilbert saw through the torchlight the thin white face of a
very tall man in the midst, with half-closed eyes and lips that wore a
look of pain as he sang--the face, the look, the voice of a man who in
the madness of liquor was still a fanatic.
The hot close breath of the ribald crew went before it in the warm
summer night, the torches threw a moving yellow glare upon faces red as
flame, or ghastly white, and here and there the small crosses of
scarlet cloth fastened to the men's tunics caught the light like
splashes of fresh blood.
Eleanor drew back as far as she could under the doorway, offended in
her sovereign pride and disgusted as gentlewomen are at the sight of
drunkenness. By her side, Gilbert drew himself up as if protesting
against a sacrilege and against the desecration of his holiest
thoughts. He knew that such men would often be as riotous again before
they reached Jerusalem, and that it would be absurd to expect anything
else. But meanwhile he realized what a little more of disgust would be
enough to make him hate what was before him. For a moment he forgot the
Queen's presence at his side, and he closed his eyes so as not to see
what was passing before them.
A little angry sound, that was neither of pain nor of fear, roused him
to the present. A man with a bad face and a shock head of red hair had
fallen out of the march and stood unsteadily before the Queen, plucking
at her mantle in the hope of seeing all her face. He seemed not to see
Gilbert, and there was a wicked light in his winy eyes. The Queen drew
back, and used her hands to keep her mantle and hood close about her;
but the riot pressed onward and forced the man from his feet, so that
he almost fell against her. Gilbert caught him by the neck with his
hand; and when he had torn the cross from his shoulder, he struck him
one blow that flattened his face for life. Then he threw him down into
the drunken crowd, a bruised and senseless thing, as island men throw a
dead horse from the cliff into the sea.
In a moment the confusion and din were ten times greater than before.
While some marched on, still yelling the tipsy chorus, others stumbled
across the body of their unconscious fellow as it lay in the way; two
had been struck by it as it fell, and were half stunned; others turned
back to see the cause of the trouble; many were forced to the ground,
impotently furious with drink, and not a few were trampled upon, and
hurt, and burnt by their own torches.
Eleanor looked down upon a writhing mass of miserable human beings who
were blind with wine and stupid with rage against the unknown thing
that had made them fall. She shrank to Gilbert's side, almost clinging
to him.
"We cannot stay here," she said. "You must not let me be recognized by
these brutes."
"Keep between me and the wall, then," he answered authoritatively.
His sword was in his hand as he descended the two steps to the level of
the street and began to force his way along between the houses and the
crowd. It was not easy at first. One sprang at him blindly to stop him,
but he thrust him aside; another drew his dagger, but Gilbert struck
him on temple and jaw with his flat blade so that he fell in a heap;
and presently the man who was sober was feared by the drunken men, and
they made little resistance. But many saw by the torchlight that the
hooded figure of a woman was gliding along beside him, and foul jests
were screamed out, with howls and catcalls, so that the clean Norman
blood longed to turn and face the whole throng together with edge and
thrust, to be avenged of insult. Yet Gilbert remembered that if he did
that, he might be slain, leaving Eleanor to the mercy of ruffians who
would not believe that she was the Queen. So he resigned himself and
went steadily on along the wall, forcing his opponents out of his way,
striking them, stunning them, knocking them down mercilessly, but
killing none.
The time had been short from the beginning of the trouble till Gilbert
reached the turning for which he was making. And all the while the
high, brazen voice was chanting the words of the Canticle, above the
roaring confusion. When Eleanor, safe at last, slipped into the shadows
beyond the corner, the voice was singing, "He hath visited and redeemed
his people," and far up the street the red-cross banner was waving
furiously in the glare of the torchlight.
As Gilbert sheathed his sword, Eleanor laid her hand on his.
"You please me," she said; and though there was no light, he knew by
her tone that she was smiling. "Thank you," she added softly. "Ask what
you will, it is yours."
In the dark he bent down and kissed the hand that held him.
"Madam," he said, "I thank Heaven that I have been allowed to serve a
woman in need."
"And you ask nothing of me?" There was an odd little chill in her voice
as she spoke.
Gilbert did not answer at once, for he was uncertain whether to press
her with a question about Beatrix, or to ask nothing.
"If I asked anything," he said at last, "I should ask that I might
understand your Grace, and why you bade me come in haste to one who is
not even with you."
They were within a few steps of the abbey, and the Queen separated a
little from him and walked nearer to the wall. Then she stopped short.
"Good-night," she said abruptly.
Gilbert came close to her and stood still in silence.
"Well?" She uttered the single word with a somewhat cold interrogation.
"Madam," said Gilbert, suddenly determined to know the truth, "is
Beatrix here with you or not? I have a right to know."
"A right?" There was no mistaking the tone now, but Gilbert was not
awed by it.
"Yes," he answered; "you know I have."
Without a word Eleanor left him and walked along the wall in the deep
shadow. A moment later Gilbert saw two forms of women beside the taller
figure of the Queen. He made a step forward, but instantly stopped
again, realizing that he could not press the question in the presence
of her ladies. She had doubtless placed them there when she had come
out, to wait until she should return.
When he could no longer see her in the gloom, he turned and retraced
his steps. The drunken soldiers were gone on their way to join others
in some tavern beyond the church, and the street was deserted. The
moon, long past the full, was just rising above the hills to eastward,
and shed a melancholy light upon the straggling village. Resentful of
the Queen's mysterious silence, and profoundly sad from the impression
made upon him by the drunken throng through which he had forced his
way, Gilbert slowly climbed the hill and went back to his lodging near
the church.
He spent a restless night, and the early summer dawn brought him to his
open window with that desire which every man feels, after a troubled
day and broken rest, to see the world fresh and clean again, as if
nothing had happened--as the writing is smoothed from the wax of the
tablet before a new message can be written. Gilbert listened to the
morning sounds,--the crowing of the cocks, the barking of the dogs, the
calls of peasants greeting one another,--and he breathed the cool dawn
air gratefully, without trying to understand what the Queen wanted of
him.