victual which he had made before riding from Athens, and which he had
the presence of mind to preserve in the midst of all the agony of the
murderous slough. Unstopping his flagon, he parted Rainouart's lips
with the gentle firmness of a strong, sure hand, and tilted some of the
red liquor down his companion's throat. After a little while Rainouart
began to show signs of returning consciousness. The color rekindled
in his cheeks, his lips began to move to a more easy breathing, and
presently he opened his eyes with a sigh, and looked around him
with the dazed regard of those that wake from sleep in unfamiliar
surroundings. Soon his wandering regard fixed itself on the face of
Simon, who was looking steadily at him, and, recognizing a known
countenance, Rainouart struggled to a sitting posture and clapped his
hands to his humming head.
"What are you staring at me for?" he asked first, fretfully. Then, as
he glanced about him and saw the carpet of grass that he lay on and
the thicket of trees that encompassed him, he continued in amazement,
"Where, in Heaven's name, are we?"
To this question Simon answered, solemnly, "In safety, thanks be to
Heaven."
Rainouart, with his wits still wool-gathering, wondered. "Safety from
what?" Then, suddenly, memory swooped back into her temple, and the
young man sprang to his feet swiftly and advanced upon Simon.
"Where are the rest of us? Where is the duke? Where are my comrades?"
To the which hot questions Simon could do no more than render cold
answer.
"I hope their souls are in paradise by now, for, indeed, their bodies
are no longer quick, and we are the leave of that fellowship."
Then at first the prince began to storm and ejaculate, being shaken
out of his native gravity by his strange case and his imperfect
understanding of the matter, but Simon presently told him a plain tale
that quenched his heat with tears. Simon showed him how the cause
of Athens was lost, how Duke Baldwin and his pride of knights had
perished, how Simon had saved his prince and himself from the peril,
and how his prince's immediate duty was to the girl he loved, the girl
who loved him.
Rainouart was silent a little space as the memory of the morning's
business came back to him, and he mused on Simon's words and found them
honest. Then he held out his hand to Simon, who clasped it.
"Friend," he said, "I had little cause to love Athens or those that
dwelt therein, always excepting Guy de Hainault and Jaufre de Brabant,
good knights. As for my sire, I will not speak of him, for he made my
mother's life bitter, and it may be that I sinned in thinking thereof
bitterly. But God knows I would have died with my fellowship. Yet since
it has pleased God to save me, by your strength and your fidelity, from
the swamp of slaughter, I am clean of any treason and free to seek for
my sweetheart."
"Now this is well," crowed Simon, yet he gulped a groan, too, as he
spoke, thinking how he had rescued a youth for whom he cared nothing to
pleasure a maid for whom he cared much.
By now it was dark, and though the moon filled the forest with white
fire, it seemed vain to search the woodland for Argathona that even. So
Simon fished some bread and meat out of his wallet, and with that and
the flagon the pair made a journeyman's meal of it, and changed many
thoughts. There was little in common between the pair, save that they
were both strong men and brave soldiers, but at the end of their parley
they knew each other better, and liked each other better, though it
may be that there would never be any great love lost between them. But
at least the friendship was fond enough to prompt Simon to pluck from
his bosom a little book and give it to his companion, who, looking upon
it, recognized that very volume of the _Romance of the Rose_ which he
had carried with him on the day, so short a while ago, that brought him
acquainted with Argathona. Simon told him cheerfully how dishonestly
he came by it, and Rainouart did not quarrel with him for that, for
though, indeed, he was pleased to get his book of verses again, he had
learned since last he looked upon it that there were better things in
the world than the reading of verses or the writing of verses.
After a little more discourse, Rainouart and Simon, the night being now
upon them, laid them their lengths upon the turf and slept peacefully
through the summer night. Simon dreamed that he was back in that
place of pleasure at Byzantium, and would have nothing to do with the
women-folk there just because he had fallen in love with an old-time
image of stone that stood in the garden and that would have nothing to
say to his wooing. Rainouart dreamed that he was in the demesnes of my
lord Mirth, and that he walked between Love and Venus to the thicket
where the noble rose was throned. So they slept, and woke late when
the sun was high in heaven, for the aches and pains of the dead day
had been of a kind to compel heavy slumber. They broke their fast
with a bite of bread apiece and a few drops from the flagon, which
Simon husbanded scrupulously till supply came his way. Then, leaving
their steed tethered in ease and safety, they proceeded to explore
the forest, and when they had made their way to the very core of the
woodland they came to the place where Argathona lay asleep in the shade.
Rainouart gave a little cry of joy and Simon choked a moan of despair,
for the girl seemed fairer in her sleep than ever to his eyes. He
whispered in his companion's ear that he would leave him with his lass
and would wander awhile in the woods for his diversion, but he made a
tryst with him that he would come back to that same spot in a little
time. So Simon left Rainouart to stand by his sleeping love and drifted
into the depths of the wood. Rainouart looked down upon Argathona and
loved her with all his soul, and by-and-by her eyelids trembled and
then opened, and the girl awoke and gazed into her lover's face.
In an instant Argathona sprang to her feet and caught at her lover's
extended hands and looked into her lover's adoring eyes.
"My dear," she cried, "you are welcome to the greenwood," and then
she fell to laughing and to crying at the same time like a silly girl
that is glad and sad in a companionable moment, and to stay her tears
Rainouart was quick to kiss her on the lips, though the sound of her
laughter was sweeter in his ears than the chime of blessed bells.
For a while of delicious silence they clung together in the sunlight,
murmuring each other's names in little broken spells of speech, and
fondling each other after the manner of happily met lovers since the
dawn of time. But at last, when the sweetness of their first delicate
embraces was sufficiently tasted, and the restraint of two pure hearts
glided ghostlike between desire and desire, Argathona drew a little
way from her lover, and, holding him at arm's-length with her hands
upon his shoulders, asked him what sadness he carried. For her clear
eyes saw that there was sorrow behind the joy he had in finding her and
fondling her, and she would not be denied to know the care that ate
upon his heart.
So Rainouart and she sat side by side upon the grass, each with arms
about the other, while Rainouart in a hushed voice told her what had
come to pass. How the Duchess of Thebes, strengthened by the secession
of the Catalan Grand Company, had defied the pride and power of Athens,
and how the pride and power of Athens had ridden forth to beat Thebes
to reason, and how the pride and power of Athens were swallowed up in
the bloody slough. And he told her how he himself was escaped from that
slaughter, dwelling little upon his own stubbornness to turn from the
shambles planned by the Catalan Grand Company--for it becomes no man to
elaborate his devotion to duty--but lauding to the full the courage of
Simon that by his courage and purpose had plucked him from destruction
and carried him from present death to the depths of the greenwood,
which same Simon he told her was now taking his ease somewhere in the
skirts of the forest, having quitted his companion as soon as the pair
came upon the sleeping girl.
While he told his tale the immortal maiden clung to him close, and
trembled at her lover's peril, and revelled in his strength of spirit
that would rather have died than come to her dishonored, but she had
little grief in her heart for the tragedy of the Athenian gallants.
Beautiful evil creatures they had seemed to her in her short sojourn
among them, fair as a snake may be named fair, and dangerous as a snake
is dangerous.
And "Oh, my love," she whispered, "I was blithe to spy you"; and "Oh,
my love," he whispered, "I was blithe to find you." So they prattled
and babbled together, strong man and strong maid, and the world seemed
very young to Rainouart, for he remembered nothing but the discovery
of his love, and the world seemed very old to Argathona, for she knew,
and joyed with a fierce, sorrowful joy in the knowledge, that there was
little usage of the world left for her.
After a while Rainouart told her of his plans: how a messenger had gone
to Avignon to the pope, there to break him free from his marriage,
and how, in the meanwhile, he was now minded to make his way swiftly
into Peloponnesus, where he hoped to win help at best from the Duke of
Corinth, or at worst to take ship for France and the court of Philip
the Fair, bearing Argathona with him to be his bride and wife in France.
Argathona listened as he whispered his will, and when he had made an
end of his aims she turned to him suddenly and stretched out her arms
and cried out to him, "Take me in your embrace, beloved, and kiss me
once with all your heart and with all your soul, for never again shall
you kiss me as I am now at this hour."
Rainouart, amazed, entreated her meaning, and she answered him sad and
simple: "All my life I have lived in a faith strange to you, the faith
of us who have lived in the woodlands since the days beyond the dawn,
but now I intend to take your faith and to share your worship and to
praise your God. So let us rise and go to the home of the holy man, and
he will bless me and make me as you are, and all shall be well between
us till the time comes when nothing can be well for either of us."
Now Rainouart did not very clearly understand what his sweetheart
meant when she said these words, but rather took her to mean that she
had been bred in that form of the Christian faith which was practised
by the Grecians, and he rejoiced that she was so ready to come from
the tents of error and dwell in the serenity of what he held to be
the truth. So he kissed his mistress long and lovingly upon the lips
with his arms bound about her body, kissing her with all that strength
of his clean heart and his clean soul, and she gave him back both
kiss and clasp, and as she did so she gave also the good-bye to her
deathless life.
Then they rose to leave that place and go towards the hermitage when
their purpose was stayed by the sound of running feet through the
brushwood, and Simon came upon them, hurrying through the trees. Now
Rainouart had forgotten Simon, being all absorbed in his joy at finding
Argathona, but Argathona was glad to see him, just because he had saved
her lover. They saw that Simon's face was grave, yet not with the
gravity of sadness, and when he beheld them he quickened his pace till
he came up with them, and when he was up with them he gasped, being
breathed from his hurry, "Be happy, lass and lad, you can be married
this morning."
XXIX
WHAT SIMON FOUND IN THE FOREST
Simon made his way through the forest idly and at all adventure. He
was trying to think what the world would have been like if a girl of
the kind of Argathona had chosen to take him for mate. But by-and-by
he found this manner of musing too melancholy, and did his best to
banish it by pricking a lively interest in his surroundings, looking
hither and thither at woodland sights that pleased him, reminding him
of Normandy. So by degrees he made some way across the wood, steering,
as he guessed, in the direction of the highway, when suddenly he became
aware of something bright and golden glancing through the tree-trunks.
Curious to see what that could be which glittered and twinkled so
brilliantly through those sombre aisles, Simon pushed his way rapidly
till he came to a little open space where the trees were thinner, and
there he saw a strange sight.
From the boughs of one of the trees a man was hanging that was clad in
coat of gold and had a cloth bound about the lower part of his face,
but the man was not hanging free, for his feet were firmly planted
on the saddle of a dappled horse that seemed to wait very contentedly
beneath him. As Simon came into the clearing he saw the eyes of the
poor wretch that was pinioned and gibbeted thus fixed upon him in the
very eloquence of entreaty, and Simon's purpose was very instant to
answer the appeal. He trod at a brisk trot across the interval of grass
that divided him from the piteous fellow in that perilous pillory, and
when he had come near him he coaxed and wooed the horse cunningly for
a moment or so lest he should start and put his surmounter's neck in
danger. But the horse stood still and allowed him to come close, and
when he was hard by Simon caught at the bridle with a gentle firmness
to stay the animal from stirring. Slipping the bridle over the hook of
his left elbow, he clasped that arm around the legs of the pendulous
fellow, while with his right hand he plucked his sword from its sheath
and sheared at the rope that was about the pinioned man's neck. In
another moment the captive was safe in his arms, and the next Simon had
set him on his legs on the grass. Simon cut the bonds that bound his
wrists, and then, pulling the gagging-cloth from the victim's face,
recognized to his astonishment the page Bohemond, that was wont to wait
so dapper and alert upon the Duchess of Thebes.
At first the poor lad could scarcely speak, but when he had wit and
skill to articulate he cried in an awful voice: "The duchess, the
duchess, where is the duchess?" Then it seemed as if he could say no
more, but after Simon had plied him with a little of the scanty liquor
that yet remained in his flagon the boy grew voluble, and told in
scraps and tags of passion and anguish a most monstrous story.
It seemed that overnight the Duchess of Thebes had asked Ximenes to
lend her men of the Catalan Grand Company for a certain purpose, and
when he had refused her she bade Bohemond find for her the men she
needed. What the duchess's purpose was Bohemond did not know, further
than that he believed she wished to make sure of some enemy of hers
that she held to be lurking in the secrecy of the Eleusinian wood.
Chance had made Bohemond acquainted with a kind of freebooter whom,
from the lad's description, Simon had little difficulty in recognizing
as his one-time waylayer Captain Fox. This footpad promised to pick
up a fellowship, and he kept his word. Early in the present morning
Esclaramonde, with Bohemond for companion, slipped away from Athens,
joined a band of six spadassins outside the walls, and rode for the
forest, the duchess ahead in a rigid spirit of silence. At first all
went well enough, though it showed strange to Bohemond to see his
duchess travelling in the company of half a dozen ruffians. But it
seemed that when the party had got within the confines of the wood the
bearing of the men suddenly changed towards the lady that led them.
The fellow that no doubt was Captain Fox had fallen somewhat behind
as they rode with one of his pillagers. The pair kept whispering
apart, and between them it is probable that they changed their plans
from one crime to another crime. The first that Bohemond knew of their
intent was when he suddenly found himself stricken from his horse by
a brace of the knaves, while the rest of the malefactors set upon the
duchess and snatched her from her saddle though she raged at them
like a fury. Two of the miscreants dragged the screaming, struggling
woman--whose clamor was now the more horrid in contrast with her former
silence--into the wood, while Captain Fox gave the horses in charge of
another, and bade the two that had hold of Bohemond to treat him in
the fashion in which Simon had found him. "For," quoth the rogue, "I
would not have the lad's blood on my hands, since he helped us to this
booty, but if it pleases Heaven to hang him by spurring his horse to
stir, why then let him swing for me." So Bohemond had remained there,
for how long he knew not, standing on his steed that by the bounty of
Providence was content to keep still until Simon came through the trees
to save his rider.
All this amazing tale was blurted and stuttered out in gasps and spasms
of speech, its hearer grasping at half words and interpreting much from
little. Now when Simon had heard it, and it took but a few hot seconds
in the telling, he saw one thing plain for him to do, which was to try
to rescue the duchess, much as he hated her. Simon would willingly have
left Bohemond behind, thinking him too pretty a stripling to be of
grave use in a scuffle. But Bohemond would by no means be persuaded to
stay, seeing which Simon liked his mettle and clapped him on the back.
Then noting that the rogues had stolen the lad's sword, he lent him his
great dagger. "For," said Simon, "if we find the fly-by-nights, you may
busy yourself in putting out of their pain any that I chance to leave
unfinished."
Now as they started on their search, which did not prove a long one, as
you shall hear, Bohemond, babbling at his companion very incoherently,
for he was weeping himself sick for his wicked mistress, told all that
had chanced in Athens after the slaughter in the marsh. How of Duke
Baldwin's knights only two came off with their lives that were made
prisoners by special charge of Fernand Ximenes, and these twain were
Count Ernault of Toulouse and Sir Jaufre de Brabant. How the Catalan
Grand Company, marching on the track of the scattered army, entered the
city of Athens unopposed and unimpeded. How the estates of the slain
knights were divided among the followers of Ximenes and their women
distributed among the victors, so that many a sturdy Catalan mercenary
received for wife some noble lady for whom the day before the battle
he would have counted it an honor to carry a basin for her washing of
the hands. How Ximenes compelled the archbishop of Athens to wed him
in state to Esclaramonde, insisting that she was a widow, which was,
indeed, the common belief. Simon already knew how, on the morning
after her latest marriage, Esclaramonde had left the city to seek for
Argathona in the forest with the intent to slay her.
While Bohemond was moaning out his story Simon was using his eyes
as well as his feet. Indeed, there was little difficulty for a keen
campaigner in getting on the track of the duchess and her abductors.
A scrap of silk clinging to a twig, and recognized by the page as
being of the color of his lady's gown, first set them on a trail that
thereafter proved easy to follow. Simon's keen glances could read the
record of the journey in snapped branches and trampled grasses, even
if his guesses had not been confirmed again and again by bits of silk
and bits of lace and once a fallen pearl. So, going warily, Simon and
Bohemond came by-and-by to the edge of a little hollow place in the
thick of the trees, and there, looking down, saw that which would have
made the boy cry aloud in rage but that Simon clapped his great hand
over his loyal mouth and silenced him.
There was a single tree in the little hollow, and to that tree
Esclaramonde was bound, quite naked, with her hair about her face. The
six bandits were huddled together a little way from her, kneeling on
their leader's mantle which was spread upon the grass, and all were
intently absorbed in playing at dice. Simon was an old battle-hand, and
such ugly sights were familiar enough, yet he could not help raging
to think of that beautiful evil being as the prey of those filthy
fingers. The boy's fury was not to be restrained, and, drawing his
dagger, he began to spring down the slope regardless of odds. In a
moment Simon was after him, and the astonished robbers, looking up from
their sport, beheld a giant and a lad come thundering towards them.
As they scrambled to their feet and snatched at their weapons their
foes were close at hand. Simon was first in the field, his long legs
outstripping Bohemond, and he was upon the desperadoes with his great
sword sweeping and swinging like the sails of a windmill.
The caitiffs were six to one, or, at best, six to one and a quarter.
For a lad with no more than a dagger was no match for the meanest
of that gang, but for all their advantage they could make no head
against the whirlwind assault of Simon. Two of the felons were headless
before the band could rally, and now they were but four to two, for
Bohemond had caught up a sword that had fallen from one of the dead
scoundrels and showed that he knew how to handle it. Simon's mighty
weapon rose and fell, and another of the rapscallions was despatched,
while Bohemond wounded a fourth. Then, while the woman tied to the tree
lifted her head and stared through her black hair at the battle, the
three recreants turned and fled in different directions.
Captain Fox as he ran made for where the prisoner was pinioned, and
before Simon could reach him he passed his sword through her body.
Then, with his weapon red with the woman's blood, he turned on Simon,
his face all warped and white, hideous with lust and hate and fear, and
he began to scream out something to the effect that Simon should not
have her; but he never finished the sentence, for Simon sliced him like
a pear, and the sword bit to the breastbone. Wrenching his weapon free,
Simon turned to where Bohemond was being pressed by the two remaining
rogues, who, finding only a lad at their heels, had turned to tackle
him. Again they fled, but Simon was swifter than they and slew them as
they ran. Thus in a little pinch of time there were six dead men and
one dying woman in that dismal hollow, where still the white dice shone
ironically, scattered over the black mantle on the grass.
Simon unbound the duchess, for Bohemond, now that the fight was over,
could do nothing but bite at his hands to keep himself from crying, and
indeed she was a tragic sight with the blood dabbling her whiteness.
Simon wrapped her decently and tenderly in a mantle, for, after all,
she was a woman, and a dying woman, and he laid her gently on the
grass. The simplest knowledge of wounds was sufficent to assure him
that her hurt was mortal, and, indeed, in a few seconds she expired
without having spoken a word. To the end of his days Simon, when he
remembered that time, wondered what were the thoughts of the duchess as
she peered through her hair at the battle.
XXX
RENUNCIATION
This was what Simon had to tell to Argathona and to Rainouart when he
came upon them side by side in the forest. This and the order he had
taken thereafter. For he had found the horses of the robbers with the
horse of the duchess tethered in a glen, and he had bound the body
of the dead woman decorously upon her horse's back and intrusted the
corpse to Bohemond's care, charging him to ride at a walking pace
to Athens and tell the tale to Ximenes. With the aid of the other
horses, Argathona and Rainouart and he could make their way quickly to
Peloponnesus and safety before any pursuit could reach them if pursuit
were attempted.
When the maid and the man heard Simon's story they were silent for a
while, troubled alike with sad thoughts and glad thoughts. To Rainouart
the news meant that he was free to marry his true-love, but to his
true-love it brought fiercely the knowledge of mortality, and her
spirit shivered in its house, and suddenly she snatched at her lover's
hand, and in the clasp caught back strength and comfort that had
threatened for a moment to abandon her. And so in silence they turned
and went their way with Simon after them till they came in sight of the
hermit's hut, and they halted before the shrine with its glory of the
silver image of the Redeemer pierced upon the tree.
Then Argathona turned to her lover and begged him to let her approach
the holy man alone, and Rainouart, who would not have said her nay
in anything, granted her prayer. Then she bade him wait where he
stood, and he and Simon knelt before the shrine and prayed, while
Argathona quitted him, and coursed fleetly over the grass and came to
the hermit's door and knocked at it for admittance. The anchorite was
within, and he opened his door, and he welcomed the maiden as if he
had been awaiting her, and he took her by the hand and drew her within
the hut and saluted her with, "Peace be with you, daughter." Argathona
surveyed the palace of the anchorite with its mean walls and its naked
floor, and its wooden table laden with a great book and a vessel of
water and a crucifix of ivory.
Argathona said to the ancient, "Father, I have slept and dreamed and
wakened, and I return to you to pray you to take me into your faith and
to change me, immortal, into a mortal maid."