trees. The only habitable place was the tower; it had escaped the fire,
probably because the wind had been blowing from the south when Roger
Bland’s men had thrown their torches into the hall. A newel staircase
led to an upper room, and though there was nothing but the boarded
floor, the place was dry and habitable.
Martin did not enter the room, but stood on the threshold, as though
some finer instinct held him back.
“There is plenty of old bracken in the beech wood,” he said; “it would
serve—for a night.”
She was leaning her hands on the window ledge and looking down on the
sea of white apple blossom below. Martin left her there, and, crossing
himself, went out to the woods to gather bracken.
When he returned he found her watering the horse at the edge of the
mere.
“We can let him lodge in one of the thickets for the night,” she said,
smiling at the great bundle of brown bracken on Martin’s back.
A blackbird was singing in the orchard, and bats were beginning to flit
against the yellow sky. Martin carried the bracken to the tower, and
threw the bundle down on the floor of her room. The door still hung on
its hinges, and he nodded his head approvingly when he saw that it could
be bolted on the inside. It was fitting and right that she should feel
secure in her chamber, since she was the queen of the place and more
sacred to him than any lady in the land.
Martin went for more bracken, and when he returned with it he left the
bundle on the flagstones at the foot of the stairs. Mellis had found a
sheltered woodland stall for the horse, and had tethered him there with
several lapfuls of grass for his supper. Dusk was falling over the
Forest, and a great stillness prevailed. The surface of the mere was
black and smooth as a magician’s mirror.
Martin heard Mellis calling.
“Bread and wine—and then to bed.”
She had found a rickety, worm-eaten oak bench, and carried it out to the
terrace above the garden. They sat one at each end of the bench, using
the space between them as a table.
“To-morrow there will be much work for you, Martin Valliant,” she said,
smiling.
“Work is the sap of life.”
“Oh, sententious man! You will build me an oven, and I will bake bread.
There are plenty of fish in the mere, and some venison would help to
stock our larder. You will be a slave to-morrow, Martin Valliant; we
have to victual our stronghold and stop the gaps in its defenses. Every
day may be precious.”
He could see that she was weary, and ready to yawn behind her hand.
“Go and sleep,” he said, when they had ended the meal; “I shall lie on
guard, ready for an alarm.”
“Martin Valliant, man-at-arms!”
So Martin made his bed at the foot of the stairs, and slept across them,
so that no one could pass save over his body.
_Chapter XX_
Mellis woke on her bed of bracken soon after the birds had broken into
song. She went to the window of the tower room and found the valley full
of white mist and the whole world all wet with dew. The day promised
gloriously, heralded by such a dawn.
As she had said to Martin Valliant, every hour was precious, for the
Lord of Troy’s riders would be scouring the Forest, and Woodmere would
not be forgotten. If she and Martin were to hold it as a strong rallying
place for their friends of the Red Rose, then it behooved them to be up
and doing before their ruinous stronghold was attacked.
She opened her door, and going softly down the stairs, found Martin
Valliant still sleeping across them on his bed of fern. And for the
moment she felt loth to rouse him, for he lay breathing as quietly as a
child, one arm under his head.
“Martin Valliant——”
She touched him with her foot, and the result was miraculous. He sat up,
clutching the billhook that lay on the step beside him, a most fierce
and unpeaceful figure in the gray light of the dawn.
“Stand! Who’s there?”
Mellis retreated a step or two, laughing, for he was a dangerous
gentleman with that bill of his.
“A friend, Martin Valliant.”
He got up, looking not a little angry with himself for having let her
catch him asleep.
“What, daylight already!”
“I was loth to wake you, but there is much to be done.”
“It is I who should have been awake, not you.”
He looked in a temper that wanted to catch the day’s work by the throat
and throttle it. Mellis stepped over the pile of bracken and stood in
the doorway that opened on the courtyard.
“One does not work well hungry,” she said, “and we must talk over the
day’s needs.”
Her hair hung loose, and she shook it down so that it fell like a black
cloak about her green-sheathed body. The color and the richness of it
thrilled Martin to the heart. Her throat looked as white as May blossom,
and her eyes had all the mystery of the dawn. And of a sudden a swift
exultation leaped in him at the thought that he was her man-at-arms,
chosen to shield her with his body, her comrade in this great adventure.
“The day is ours,” he said; “I feel stronger than ten men.”
She turned her head, and her eyes held his.
“I think I am fortunate in you, comrade-in-arms.”
He could have taken the hem of her gown and kissed it.
Mellis served the meal, and they broke their fast in the garden, sitting
on the oak bench and watching the white mist lift and melt from the
valley. The woods grew green, the sky became blue above them, the mere
flashed gold, the flowers glowed like wet gems in the grass. And Martin
Valliant’s soul was full of the dawn, the mystery and freshness thereof;
the smell of the sweet, wet world intoxicated him; the red rose that
Mellis had given him lay over his heart. He looked at her with secret,
tentative awe, and life seemed a strange and miraculous dream.
She began to speak of the day’s needs.
“That bridge does not please me, comrade. We want a thing that can be
dropped and kept raised at our pleasure. And then there is the gate.”
“The hinges and nails are all that are left of it.”
“I have it. There is some good timber in those outhouses; we could build
a new gate. The curtain walls are still strong and good. Then there is
the gate leading into the kitchen court; we could wall that up with
stones. We must hope to keep the Lord of Troy’s men from crossing the
water, if they come before we have raised a garrison.”
She grew more mysterious.
“I shall have other things to show you, but they can keep till the
evening. And now—as to the horse.”
The beast raised quite a debate between them, since he complicated the
matter of the bridge. Martin was for leaving him tethered in one of the
glades, and trusting to luck and to Roger Bland’s men not discovering
him if they rode to Woodmere within the next few days. And in the end
Mellis agreed with him, since he was to be responsible for the
contriving of a drawbridge.
“Your plan has it,” she confessed. “I will go and tether Dobbin in one
of the glades, and then come and serve as housewife. The man’s part
shall be yours.”
Martin went to work with fierce enthusiasm. He had a scheme in his head
as to how the thing might be done, and he set about it when Mellis had
crossed the water. He bored a hole through one end of the big beam, ran
the rope through the hole and knotted it. At the other end he contrived
a rough hinge by driving four stout stakes criss-cross into the ground,
with a crossbar under them which could be pegged to the butt-end of the
beam. The pulley wheels for the chains of the old bridge were still in
the two chain holes of the gate-house, about ten feet from the ground.
Martin piled some stones against the wall, climbed on them, and ran the
rope through one of the chain holes. The trick worked very prettily. He
found that he could raise and lower the beam from inside the gate-house,
and all that was needed was a stake to which he could fasten the rope
when the bridge was up.
Mellis came back from the woods as he was driving the stake into the
ground under the gateway. He had rolled his cassock over his girdle, and
turned the sleeves up nearly to his shoulders, so that the muscles
showed. And he looked hot and masterful and triumphant as he turned to
show her how his bridge worked.
“Well done, Martin Valliant. Let the beam down and I will come over and
see if I am strong enough to raise it.”
He lowered the beam, and she walked over to him.
“Now I understand why you did not want to build a bridge that would
carry a horse. Let me see what I can do. I might have to play bridgeward
some day.”
She found that she was strong enough to raise the beam, for she was tall
and lithe, with a beautiful breadth across the bosom.
Martin’s eyes shone.
“Now I must build you a gate,” he said, “a gate that nothing but a
cannon shot can shiver.”
It took him the rest of the morning to pull down one of the outhouses,
sort out his timber, and get it cut to size and shape. He had dragged
the charred mass of the old gate from its bed of nettles, and had
stripped it of its great iron hinges when Mellis came to call him to
dinner.
“I have done famously: hot meat, and new bread, and a dish of herbs. I
found two old iron pots in the cellar, and I am quite kitchen proud.”
Martin was loth to leave the work. He was hunting for the smith’s nails
that had fallen out of the burned wood of the old gate; they were more
precious than pieces of gold. She pretended to be hurt by his lack of
gratitude.
“I have cooked for my comrade in arms, and he will not eat what I have
cooked.”
Martin straightened up, and left his hunting for nails among the
trampled nettles.
“It was not churlishness on my part.”
“I know. You must do things fiercely, Martin Valliant, with your whole
heart, or not at all.”
“My hunger is fierce,” he confessed, smiling gravely. “No food could be
sweeter than what your hands have prepared.”
He was shy of her, and voiceless, all through that meal, and there was
an answering silence in Mellis’s heart, for though so short a time had
passed since their lives had been linked together, she was forgetting
Martin the monk in regarding Martin Valliant the man. She began to look
at him with a vivid and self-surprised curiosity; his shyness infected
her; she became conscious of the deep wonder light in his eyes. Hitherto
she had been a creature of impulses, a wild thing blown along by the
wind of necessity; but of a sudden she saw the man as a man, and her
heart seemed to cease beating for a moment, and her thoughts to stand
still.
He was the very contrast of herself, with his tawny hair tinged with
red, and his frank, steadfast, trusting eyes. Regarded as a woman,
Mellis was a fine, lithe, white-skinned creature, and Martin Valliant
matched her in the matter of bodily beauty. There was no gnarled
uncouthness about his strength. He carried himself like a king’s son,
and without any arrogance of conscious pride. The soul of the man seemed
to show in his movements, a steady, gentle, unflurried soul, capable of
great tendernesses, of great wraths, and of strange renunciations.
Her eyes grew wayward, more shadowy; they avoided his. A new subtlety of
feeling stole into the hearts of both of them. The sun shone, the woods
were green, the wild flowers were bright in the lush grass. When a
blackbird sang Martin Valliant felt that the bird’s song and his heart
were one.
He broke away, for the grosser hunger was soon satisfied.
“I shall not sleep till that gate is up.”
She brushed the crumbs from her lap.
“You will need me. I will come when you call.”
He was walking away when she uttered his name.
“Martin.”
Her voice had never sounded so strange and human in his ears.
“I have a secret to show you—presently—when the gate is up.”
He went off, wondering, his eyes full of his new exultation.
Martin worked like a giant, with a fever of love in his blood. In three
hours he had the gate finished and ready to be hung, but the hanging of
it was the devil. The thing was monstrously massive and cumbersome to
lift, and too broad for him to get a grip of it with spread arms.
He went in search of Mellis.
“I can build my gate—but as to hanging it——”
She smiled at his grim, baffled face.
“Women are cunning!”
She went to help him, and spoke of wedges and the crowbar.
“I can steady the thing while you heave it up, little by little, till
the hinge straps are over the bolts.”
He gave her a look from his blue eyes.
“A man rushes like a bull. While you——”
“Ah, as I told you, women are cunning.”
Between them they got the gate on its hinges, and though it groaned and
moved reluctantly, it was as strong as a man could wish.
“No spear truncheon will prise that up in a hurry.”
She was flushed and breathing fast, and her quick beauty swept into
Martin’s heart like the wind. He stood still, gazing at her, till she
looked at him, and then his eyes fell.
“See how strong that is,” he said.
And his heart would have cried, “Strong as my love.”
The main gate of Woodmere was safe now from a surprise, and no enemies
could attack the place save by swimming the mere. Martin had made a
round of the walls; they stood twelve feet high and were strongly built.
The only other openings in them were the gate leading from the kitchen
court and the wicket opening on the garden. The garden wicket still hung
on its hinges, a stout oak door studded and banded with iron, and easily
barred in case of an attack. The kitchen gateway they had decided to
wall up, and Martin set to work upon the wall, using the big stones that
had fallen from the battlements of the hall. They were so heavy that
they wedged and weighted each other in place, and stood as solidly as
though they had been laid by a mason.
Martin had nearly closed the gap when Mellis called him.
“The sun is near the hills. You have done enough.”
In spite of his youth and his strength Martin Valliant was very weary.
He looked at the wall that he had built, and saw that it was strong
enough to stand against a surprise.
Her voice came nearer.
“Are you ever hungry?”
He went whither her voice lured him. She had made a table in the garden
out of some stones and pieces of wood, set flowers on it, and laid
supper thereon.
Her dark eyes seemed to him to be deep with a new mystery. They broke
bread together and drank their wine, and the meal had the flavor of a
sacrament.
“There is yet work to be done,” she had said to him, “before the
daylight goes. And I shall show you a thing, Martin Valliant, that shall
pledge me your honor.”
When they had ended the meal she rose and looked at him with great
steadfastness.
“Martin Valliant, is your heart still set on this life of the sword?
Tell me the truth, and keep nothing hidden. God knows that a man must
make his choice.”
His eyes met hers without flinching.
“I have chosen,” he said; “there shall be no turning back.”
She went toward the tower, beckoning him to follow.
“I have not been idle, and here is my secret.”
It was her brother’s treasury that Mellis showed him, the vault at the
base of the tower, filled with war gear and a store of food. She had
raised the stone by thrusting a long pole through the iron ring. A stout
leather sack lay on the ground beside the entry.
“There are bows and bills and war harness below there,” she told him.
“We have fooled the Lord of Troy, who swore that there should not be so
much as a boar-spear left in the Forest. Take that sack, Martin
Valliant, and carry it for me into the garden.”
He shouldered the thing, and knew that he carried iron, both by the
weight of it and by the way a sharp edge bit into his shoulder.
“Lay it on the grass—there.”
He obeyed her, wondering what was in her mind.
Mellis knelt and cut the leather thong that fastened the throat of the
sack. The leather had kept out the damp, and her white hands drew out
armor that was bright as the blade of her poniard. It was a suit of
white mail beautifully wrought, yet noble in its clean simplicity.
Salade, breast-plate, shoulder pieces, back-plate, tassets, loin-guard,
vam-braces, rear-braces, elbow pieces, gauntlets, thigh plates, greaves,
solerets and spurs, she laid them all upon the grass. And last of all
she drew out a belt and sword, and a plain shield colored green.
She spread her hands, palms downwards, over them.
“This was to have been my brother’s harness.”
Martin Valliant was kneeling at her side.
“And now, God helping me, I have chosen the man who shall wear it—even
you, Martin Valliant, my comrade in arms.”
Martin’s eyes seemed to catch the sunlight. He knelt for a while in
silence, as though he were praying.
“May no shame come to it through me,” he said at last; “and though it
may sit strange on me, my heart shall serve you to the death.”
She took the sword and rose from her knees.
“My hands shall gird you.”
He reached out, drew the pommel of the sword toward him, and kissed it.
“I swear troth to you, Mellis.”
He looked up, and her eyes held his.
“Martin Valliant you are called, and valiant shall you be. Stand, good
comrade.”
She buckled the sword on him, knowing in her heart that he was her man.
_Chapter XXI_
Martin Valliant slept at the foot of the tower stairway with Mellis’s
sword beside him. He fell asleep with one hand gripping the hilt, like a
child clutching a toy.
Mellis did not have to wake him that morning, for he was up before the
birds had begun their orisons, his heart full of the great adventure
that life had thrust upon him. He had taken it solemnly, like a young
man before his knighthood, or a soldier setting forth on a Crusade, and
all that he did that morning in the gray of the dawn betrayed the
symbolical passion of the lover. He was to enter upon a new state before
he touched that white harness, and so he went to the mere, stripped off
his clothes, and bathed in the water. Then he knelt awhile, grave-eyed
and strong, watching the sun rise on the new day, while the birds were a
choir invisible.
When Mellis came down from her chamber she found him in the garden with
the harness spread out upon the leather sack, so that the wet grass
should not tarnish it. He had cut his cassock short above the knees, and
was holding the salade in his hands and staring at it like a crystal
gazer.
He flushed, and glanced at her with an air of bafflement.
“These iron clothes are new to me.”
Mellis did not smile at his predicament, though she guessed that he had
no knowledge of how to arm himself.
“You must try the feel of it,” she said, “for a man should test himself
with the weight of his harness. Four hands are needed for such a toilet.
When we have eaten I will play the page to you.”
She was as good as her word, and the arming of Martin Valliant was an
event in the life of the garden. Mellis made him seat himself upon the
bench, while she picked up the pieces one by one and taught him his
lesson by buckling them on with her own hands. First came the breast-
and back-plates, the pauldrons and gorget, the vam-braces and
rear-braces. Then she made him stand up.
“You may call that half-harness; a man can move lightly and fight on
foot, but when bowmen are about, a man-at-arms should be sheathed from
top to toe.”
Next she buckled on tassets, loin-guard, cuishes, greaves and solerets,
set the salade on his head, and slung the green shield by its strap
about his neck.
“Now, man of the sword!”
She stood back and surveyed him.
“Yes, it is better than I had hoped. You are a bigger man than my poor
brother, but the harness covers you. Of course you should be wearing a
wadded coat to save all chafing, and hose of good wool.”
Her eyes lit up as she looked him over, and she held her head proudly.
“I have no spear to give you, though I doubt not that you will make a
better beginning with the sword—if needs be. Try the joints, Martin.”
He walked up and down before her, raised his arms, spread them wide,
folded them over his chest. He seemed made for such heavy harness; the
strong, sweeping movements of his limbs were not crabbed or clogged by
it.
“The thing is like an iron skin.”
“Ah! it was made by a fine armorer. The joints are perfect. And the
weight of it?”
“I’ll swear I could run or leap.”
“You are fresh as yet. A man must wear such harness for a day to learn
where it irks him. And so I am thinking that I will leave you to master
it. There is work for me in the Forest.”
He unhelmed himself, and his blue eyes looked at her questioningly.
“What! You are venturing abroad?”
“Yes; I shall take the horse, and your wallet full of food.”
“Why must you go?”
“Why, brother-in-arms, because we are not the only people on God’s earth
who thirst to humble the Lord of Troy. We have friends in the Forest,
and I must see them—take counsel, and plan what can be done. They were
waiting for friends from France, and for poor Gilbert to give the word.”
He answered her with sudden fire.
“I carry your brother’s sword and wear his harness. It is my right to
go.”
She smiled at him with quiet eyes.
“Dear man, that would not help us; you could not prove, as yet, that you
are in the secret. Besides, all the wheels of it are in my head. I shall
ride to Badger Hill and see John Falconer; he holds the reins in the
Forest.”
“But what of the Lord of Troy? Those dead men——”
“What does he know as yet? He may send out riders, but I know the Forest
better than any man that Roger Bland can count on. I shall not be caught
in a snare. Moreover, Martin Valliant, I leave you to guard our
stronghold and the precious gear in that cellar.”
He was very loth to let her go alone, and bitterly against it, though he
saw the wisdom of her argument.
“My heart mislikes this venture.”
“You run to meet a ghost,” she said. “I shall come to no harm, believe
me.”
She had her way, and he went to open the gate and lower the bridge while
she put on a cloak and hood, and filled the wallet with food. She joined
him on the causeway, where he stood scanning the woods mistrustfully.
“I would to God I might go with you.”
Her eyes looked into his.
“Your heart goes with me. Bear with that harness, for your bones will
ache not a little. And keep good guard.”
He watched her cross the grassland toward the thicket where they had
hidden the horse. Woodmere seemed to lack sunlight of a sudden, and his
heart felt heavy when the trees hid her.
Nor were Martin’s fears for her safety the mere idle qualms of a man in
love. There was a saddling of horses at Troy Castle, and Fulk de Lisle,
Roger Bland’s bravo, was shut up with him in my lord’s closet.
Vance’s archer man, who had escaped Martin Valliant’s spade, had come in
the night before, after losing his way in the Forest. His tale lost
nothing in the telling. Mellis Dale had stabbed the Forest Warden with
her poniard, and her paramour, the priest, had then beaten him, and John
Bunce, to death. If my lord doubted it, let him send men to the Black
Moor, and they would find the bodies.
So Fulk de Lisle had his orders. He was a gay, swashbuckling devil, very
handsome, very debonair, a great man with his weapons. He stood before
the Lord of Troy, leaning on his sword, his black hair curled under his
flat red hat, his sword belt bossed with gold. He wore no armor save a
cuirass, and light greaves; the blue sleeves of his doublet were puffed
with crimson; his hose were striped red and blue.
“Take thirty men; let them ride in three troops. Go yourself with one
troop to the Black Moor; send Peter Rich with ten men to Badger Hill,
and Swartz with the rest to Woodmere. I have sent messengers to Gawdy
Town. I want the wench and the priest, both of them. And Vance’s body
had better be brought in.”
Fulk de Lisle turned to go. This was work that pleased him. The Forest
had been dull and law-abiding for many months.
“Wait!”
Fulk faced about.
“My lord?”
“How do you think to know the girl when you see her?”
“They say she is dark and vixenish, with eyes that bid a man stand back,
a well-favored wench.”
“Tush! Any pretty jade would do for you, man!”
“Oldham, the archer, can recognize them both.”
“He cannot be in three places at once, Sir Fulk de Lisle.”
“He shall go with me. Swartz and Rich shall have orders to take and
bring in any likely looking damsel.”
“Yes, leave it at that. Waste no time. I am not patient when such tricks
are played me.”
So Fulk de Lisle and his men rode out from Troy Castle. They were
lightly armed for fast riding, and ten of them shouldered cross-bows
instead of spears. They kept together till they reached Red Heath, where
Peter Rich and Swartz broke off with their two troops with guides for
Woodmere and Badger Hill.
Meanwhile Mellis was on her way to John Falconer’s house at Badger Hill.
She sighted it about nine o’clock, a great, low, black-beamed,
white-plastered place, walled around with gray stone, on the side of a
sandy hill. Fir woods, dark as midnight, climbed skywards behind it; the
farm lands lay in the valley to the south, but elsewhere the soil was
poor, and grew nothing but gorse and heather.