moving through the orchard grass. Martin was in the shadow of the tree,
and the moonlight showed him a primeval figure scouting furtively toward
the house. It was Swartz, naked, and very cold.
Martin hailed him, and the man of the horn joined him under the tree.
“God be blessed; all the devils in hell seem loose to-night! A dance I
have had of it, everyone’s enemy and no man’s friend. These Forest
worthies have been hunting me like a pig. I had to take to the water and
sit with my chin in it under the bank.”
He was shivering.
“My kingdom for a bit of lamb’s wool, brother.”
“Where did you leave your clothes, man?”
“On my lady’s table in the garden, God forgive me! But if those wild
devils get a sight of such a thing as I am—I shall have a scythe blade
between my ribs.”
Martin was in too grim and sad a mood to see the ludicrous in Peter
Swartz. He rose, went into the garden, and returned with the soldier’s
clothes.
“Corn in Egypt!”
Swartz tumbled into them, his teeth chattering.
“Hallo! those fellows are lighting a fire; they must be taught to love
Peter Swartz. And I would not quarrel with some wine and a bite of
supper.”
Martin’s melancholy was not a thing that could be overlooked. Swartz
discovered it, and ceased his prattling.
“Why, man, things did not go amiss?”
“No. She is safe.”
Swartz was trying to remedy the disastrous haste of his undressing.
“May the curse of the prophet fall on these tags and tatters! What ails
you, man?”
“Nothing.”
“Then let it be nothing.”
He stared hard at Martin, puzzled by his strange sullenness, but too
shrewd to vex it further.
“Old Falconer came in finely—like a pot boiling over. And Messire Fulk
de Lisle has gone galloping home to Troy; he passed within five yards of
me. Hallo—cheering! They are in great heart, yonder.”
Those rough men in the ruined court of Woodmere had seen a vision, for
Mellis had come out to them, clad in bright harness, her dark hair
pouring over it, a naked sword in her hands. Behind her walked John
Falconer, carrying a green and blue banner fastened to the throat of a
lance. The men crowded from the fire, and from every corner of the
courtyard. And she stood and spoke to them in a clear, calm voice:
“Good gentlemen and comrades all, I thank you for coming to me. We have
begun bravely. God speed King Harry!”
They cheered her.
“Shout, lads, for our captain.”
“Mistress Mellis—Mistress Mellis!”
“Let Roger Bland try to take ye from us.”
“Aye, and there be more of us a-comin’.”
Mellis’s eyes were restless, searching for something that she could not
see. She turned and spoke to John Falconer.
“Martin Valliant——”
Falconer shook his head. She grew imperious.
“Call him. He must be here.”
“The man may have some shame, Mellis.”
“Shame!”
She flushed with sensitive wrath.
“Shame! God forgive you. Ah! I see how things have sped!”
Falconer’s eyes shirked meeting hers.
“There may be draughts that men are loth to swallow,” he said dourly; “I
did not make the world or men’s hearts.”
She stood a moment, with dark, thinking eyes and a proud, hurt face.
“I am young—still. Oh, these jealous tangles that men weave! Must we be
little and thankless for the sake of fools?”
Mellis made her way through the crowd of mesne lords and gentlemen,
looking neither to the right hand nor the left. They stood back for her,
for she was proud, more pure in her strength than they. The moon hung
clear and white and splendid in the sky, shining on her face and the
plated steel half hidden by her hair.
“So they would think him an outcast,” she said to herself. “My scorn is
theirs for the asking.”
Some instinct led her through the garden into the orchard, where the
long grass was all patterned with the black shadows of the trees. She
stood in the moonlight, and called softly:
“Martin—Martin Valliant!”
Old Swartz crept away, a dog grown mute, and wise in his silence.
Martin’s face was all twisted with a spasm of pain, for he was fey that
night with a mysterious forefeeling of great sorrow and despair.
“Martin—Martin Valliant!”
She came down through the orchard, and Martin rose to his feet. The
moonlight through the trees shone on his harness, and betrayed him to
her. He stood absolutely still, waiting for her to draw near.
“Martin!”
Her voice had a soft, wounded plaintiveness.
“Why are you hiding here?”
His face was all somber in the shadows.
“I had a wish to be alone.”
He could not bring himself to look at her, because of the new bitterness
in his heart, and because her voice was so soft and luring.
“What has happened to you, Martin?”
She went close, looking in his face.
“Tell me. Have I no right to know?”
He answered her with strange gentleness, but his eyes would not meet
hers.
“Perhaps I have seen a vision, a glimpse of the world as it is. Some
things are too beautiful to endure, for other men break them in pieces.”
She drew her breath deeply.
“Ah! Have these rough fools touched your pride? They can have my scorn
for the asking. And are you nothing to me, or I to you? Have we not gone
through the deeps together, and have you not carried my life in your
hands? Man, what do these rough squires matter? Look into my eyes and
see if there is shame in them.”
He bowed his head.
“Mellis—what am I but an outcast?”
“Then I am an outcast also. But for me you would be chanting your
Masses. And you have been very noble and good to me. Oh, Martin, Martin!
this wounds my heart.”
He gave a sudden cry, and fell on his knees before her.
“God help me, but there is nothing else in the world but you. I cannot
bear that for my sake you should even suffer pain.”
She bent over him, her hands hovering close to his face.
“Pain! What pain is there? And were it real—should I not bear it?”
“God forbid! Child, I have a kind of dark forefeeling to-night.
Yesterday was all sunlight, there was no fear or sorrow in my heart. I
was Martin Valliant, a man who was ready to die for you. What has
happened? I feel a menace, a threat, a shadow drifting toward us; we are
not alone; other voices strike in on ours. This island is not the world;
here—I could serve you; but beyond us there are shadows, the shadows of
other men—other women; they whisper together against me.”
A great light transfigured her face. She was on her knees, her hands on
his shoulders, her eyes wonderful to behold.
“Martin, what has come to us? Oh, my dear, must I speak out?”
He looked at her, awed, trembling, entranced.
“Mellis, Mellis!”
“Is not my fate yours—and yours mine? What is pain to you is pain to
me. If there is a world of shadows before us, I go—where my man goes.”
He uttered a deep cry.
“Can I touch you? Is it possible? Will you not melt into the air? Oh, my
God! but I dare hardly look at you.”
“Martin, I am a soul in a body. What am I but a woman? Guard me—hold
me!”
His arms went around her, but they were all tremulous with awe. Her face
was close to his, a white, yearning face, with parted lips and
half-closed eyes.
“Mellis—oh, my heart!”
She lay in his arms and smiled at him as he kissed her.
_Chapter XXXII_
Fulk de Lisle rode all that night, a madman, inflamed, balked of the
satisfaction of a violent desire. He had nothing but the stars and the
moon to guide him; the Forest was no more than a pathless waste; he
pushed northwards, raging like a torch burning in the wind. At dawn his
horse died under him, driven by the spurs till its heart failed on the
brow of a steep hill. Fulk de Lisle kicked the beast’s body, and looked
with red eyes at a gray and silent world.
But the luck was with him—the luck of the adventurer and the drunkard.
Dim and sullen, Troy Castle stood less than two miles away on its great
hill; the rising sun struck slantwise upon it, so that it looked like a
huge turreted ship sailing above a sea of green.
Fulk de Lisle came on his own feet to Troy Castle. There was a sense of
stir about the place although the day was still so young. A couple of
dusty and sweat-streaked horses were waiting outside the gate-house;
grooms and servants were gossiping, and on the battlements soldiers were
unlashing the canvas covers of my lord’s cannon.
Some one on the walls recognized Fulk de Lisle when he was a quarter of
a mile from the dry fosse; there was some shouting and running to and
fro; a man vaulted on to the back of one of the tired horses and went
cantering down the road. He was a squire in Roger Bland’s service, a
youngster with red hair and an impudent mouth.
“Good morning to you, sir. Why this humility?”
Fulk de Lisle took him by the leg and pitched him out of the saddle.
“Thanks. I will ride the last furlong, and help you to mend your
manners.”
Red Head scrambled up and dusted his clothes. Fulk de Lisle was too
soaring a bird for him to fly at, but his impudence refused to be
chastened.
“I trust your news is better than your face, sir. Our dear lord has the
ague this morning.”
Fulk de Lisle rode on, without troubling to turn the lad’s wit.
He clattered over the bridge and into the main court, and the men who
saw him ride in stared at his savage face.
“Pride has had a fall,” said some one.
“Or been balked of a woman.”
Fulk de Lisle called a page who was loitering on the steps of the
chapel.
“Have you nothing but eyes, you brat? Where is my lord?”
“In his closet, sir.”
“Run and tell him that I am in the castle.”
Roger Bland already had the news, and his groom of the chamber came out
with a haggard face.
“My lord would see you—instantly.”
“Damnation—may not a man eat?”
The Lord of Troy sat in his great padded chair with a writing-board on
his knees, and quills and an inkhorn on the table at his side. He looked
white about the gills, with that whiteness that tells of a faltering
heart; his hand had lost its steady, clerkly niceness, and there were
blots upon the paper. He had not been barbered, and still wore a
gorgeous crimson bed-gown that made his thin face look all the yellower.
“What’s this—what’s this, man? Shut that door, Bennington. Not more bad
news?”
He was petulant to the point of childishness. Fulk de Lisle’s red-brown
eyes looked at him with veiled and subtle scorn.
“I could not make it worse, my lord. The Forest is up.”
“The Forest—in arms against us! Man—you are dreaming!”
“I am very wide awake, sir. We were ambushed last night as we lay
outside Woodmere. They must have been a hundred to our thirty. We made a
fight of it; that is all that can be said.”
Roger Bland’s face twitched.
“How many men came back with you?”
“None, my lord.”
There was a short silence. My Lord of Troy’s fingers were playing with
his quill. He looked old and querulous.
“These swine! I thought we had tamed them. There is a deeper cunning in
all this. I have had secret news this very morning. Richmond is on the
sea. By now he may have landed.”
Fulk de Lisle took the news as a soldier of fortune takes his pay.
“The King will not grudge him a battle, my lord.”
“Bombast is so easy. But to say who are friends and who are enemies!
Supposing I chose to have you hanged, sir?”
“A most unreasonable fancy, my lord.”
“And why?”
“I have risked my neck in your service. I have no quarrel with your
generosity. And my pride is concerned in this—the pride of a soldier
and a captain.”
“We shall see, sir; I may let you prove it. And now—we must strike, and
strike quickly. These letters shall go at once; they must not miscarry.
In three days we should muster a hundred spears and two hundred archers.
The falconets and serpents are to come from Roychester; Sir Humphrey
Heron will be master of the cannon. I have chosen my gallopers. Look to
the garrison, and see that our tenants are fitly armed as they come in.”
Fulk de Lisle bowed.
“My heart is in this venture, my lord,” he said; “you can trust me,
because my blood is up.”
So Roger Bland’s gallopers went out from Troy Castle, carrying letters
to Sir Humphrey Heron at Roychester, to Sir Paul Scrooby at Granet, and
to such lords and gentlemen as favored the White Rose. The rallying
place was to be Troy Castle. Naught was said of the Earl of Richmond
being upon the seas, for such news might have aroused a dubious loyalty
among the gentry of those parts, where fear ruled and the King.
“I charge you to come to me with all your might—and within three
days—for the chastening and humbling of certain rebels and traitors.”
So ran the Lord of Troy’s message. These smaller fires had to be
quenched before the great beacon burst into a blaze.
My Lord of Troy had eyes in Gawdy Town to serve him, and men were
watching to see the Rose come into port; but, seeing that she carried
merchandise that was too precious to be fingered, her master elected to
lower it overboard before making the land. The Rose came towering along
about sunset, with a mild breeze behind her. The sea was a deep purplish
blue, and the red west promised fair weather.
Her master had put the ship on a strange course. She hung out to sea
till the land grew gray with the dusk, and then, turning her gilded bows
shorewards, footed it solemnly toward the land. No one in Gawdy Town had
seen her topsails. The gossips on the quay said that she would not make
port before the morning.
Half a mile from the land the Rose backed her sails and lay to. The sky
was all blue-green above, the sea black as pitch, and the land, with its
Forest ridge, looked like a great cloud-bank. The Rose lowered two
boats, each manned by half a dozen seamen. Baggage was tumbled into them
from the waist, and about a score of voyagers left the ship.
The master stood on the poop and lifted his hat to them as the boats
pulled away.
“A good market to you, gentlemen,” he shouted.
A deep voice answered him,
“God save the King.”
The boats went shorewards at a good speed, looking like two gray beetles
on the water crawling with white legs, the foam from the oars. They
melted into the dusk, and the Rose veered and beat up against the
breeze, to play mother till her boats returned.
The baggage and the twenty adventurers were landed in a horseshoe-shaped
cove under the cliffs. Some one had been watching for them above, for a
couple of men came scampering down the steep path, one of them waving a
piece of red cloth.
“All’s well.”
The seamen pushed off and rowed back toward the Rose, but the men stood
in a group on the shingle and talked.
“The King is at sea.”
“Sure enough.”
“And the Forest is up.”
“So soon!”
“A woman as usual! They stabbed young Dale in Gawdy Town, and would have
taken his sister. So Falconer raised the Forest. Bland’s men came to
beleaguer Woodmere; we ambushed thirty of them last night, so the fat is
in the fire.”
The man with the deep voice, who seemed to be the leader, betrayed a
savage impatience. He had the hard, flat, high-cheeked face of a Mongol,
with a brutal mouth, and cold blue eyes.
“The devil fly away with all women! Young Dale was a fool to take the
wench with him, and Falconer was a fool to trouble his head about her.”
“That is not the whole story, Sir Gregory.”
“Damn your story! They have rushed matters too rashly. We may have to
fight before we are ready. Now for the baggage. Have you any horses
above?”
“Six.”
“Bustle up, then. The sooner we are knee-deep in the Forest the better.”
The baggage was carried up the cliff and lashed on the backs of the
pack-horses. The men who had landed were well armed under their cloaks.
Sir Gregory took the lead, one of the foresters walking beside him.
“Now, man, this story of yours; let us hear it.”
The forester told all that he knew concerning Mellis and her championing
by Martin Valliant.
The round-headed man was not pleased.
“Beelzebub—what a beginning! A blackguard monk is a pretty stormcock to
open the hurly-burly for us. Fools are superstitious, and I am one of
the fools.”
_Chapter XXXIII_
The Forest had sounded its war-horn, and the woods and heaths and
leaf-hidden hamlets gave up their men. They gathered in Woodmere valley,
foresters, laborers, charcoal burners, breeders of horses, swineherds,
and a scattering of broken men. The gentry and their tenants were
passably horsed and harnessed; the foresters had their bows; but there
was many a fellow who had no more than an oak cudgel or a scythe blade
lashed to a pole.
They brought cattle and sheep with them and tumbrils laden with sacks of
flour. Booths were built, fires lit, scouts sent to watch the woodland
ways and the gray menace of Troy Castle. The vault at Woodmere was
emptied of its arms, and a new bridge built in place of Martin’s single
beam.
As for Martin Valliant, he held aloof from the mesne lords and slept at
night across Mellis’s door.
Now the Forest was superstitious, and devout with the devoutness of
ignorance. There was no wild thing that could not happen, no marvel that
might not be believed. God, the Virgin and the Saints, the devil and his
progeny were part of the Forest life, mysterious beings to be prayed to
and to be feared. There were holy wells, wonder-working images in more
than one of the churches, places that were accursed, goblin stones,
devil’s hounds that ran by night, headless horsemen, ghosts, fairies,
haunted trees. The people of the Forest were obstinate, credulous
children. They believed all that the Church taught them, even though
many a priest spat at his own conscience.
Martin Valliant had been a priest. He had shed blood, and he slept at
night outside the door of a woman’s bed-chamber. The facts were
flagrant, fiercely honest. Your pious savage does not love honesty; he
lives in a world of make-believe; he will not quarrel with imperfections
that spue their slime in dark and hidden corners. He will even laugh and
delight in the lewd tales that are told of priests. But let some priest
be honest, shake off his vows, and declare himself a clean man, then he
has committed the unforgivable sin, and any foul sot or filthy hag may
sit in judgment upon him.
So it proved with these rough Forest gentry. Martin Valliant had sensed
things truly. That sudden shadowy foreboding had heralded a real
darkness that was spreading toward him from the mistrusts and prejudices
of these common men. They looked at the facts baldly as they would have
looked at pigs in a sty. The strange, tragic, sacrificial beauty of the
thing was lost on them. To them love was a giggling scrimmage. Their
religion was so much bogey worship, a rude mysticism that was shaped to
suit their lives.
Before a day had passed Martin Valliant found himself outlawed by a
vague and reticent distrust. He cast a shadow. The common men looked
askance at him and held aloof. The gentry were more open, and more
brutal in their displeasure; with them it was not a mere matter of
superstition; there were young men among them, and Mellis was very
comely. And this fellow had the insolence to sleep across her door.
Falconer was the only man who spoke to Martin Valliant, and it was done
grudgingly and with an ill grace.
The rest looked through him, over him, at his feet. There was no place
for Martin at the table that had been set up under a shelter of boughs
in the hall. Even Peter Swartz was better treated; he was half prisoner,
half comrade, but he drank and ate with them, diced with them, told
tales.
Martin took his meals on the leads of the tower or in the garden. His
heart grew heavy in him, and a kind of fierce sadness showed in his
eyes.
These English worthies were ready with their judgments as they sat at
table.
“The wench is mad.”
“The fellow is wearing her brother Gilbert’s harness.”
“Such a thing cannot be stomached, sirs. We lack godliness if we carry
such an unclean vagabond with us. My men are grumbling already, and
seeing a curse in the fellow.”
“Send him back to Paradise.”
“The prior will thank you for nothing. One kicks a mangy dog out of the
gate, and that’s the end of it.”
Swartz listened and said nothing. He was a rough god compared with these
boors; he had seen the world and tasted the wine of many countries, and
he knew that it is mere foolishness to step in between a clown and his
drink.
Falconer tried to speak up, but they were against him to a man.
“I choose to live with honest men, sir, not with vermin.”
Such was the Forest’s verdict.
On the second day the gentlemen of the Rose marched into Woodmere, Sir
Gregory at their head. There was much cheering, much shaking of hands.
“The King was upon the sea.” That night they drank much ale. And women
had come from Gawdy Town, bold-eyed wenches dressed as men. Some of the
wilder spirits made a rough night of it, shouting, quarreling, and
singing songs, and Mellis was kept awake by their clowning. Nor did
Martin Valliant get much sleep, for he had to take more than one drunken
man by the shoulders and prove to him that the threshold of Mellis’s
chamber was sacred ground.
The coming of Sir Gregory and the gentlemen from France made matters
more sinister for Martin Valliant. Sir Gregory was a man of violent
self-pride, obstinate as sin, and far more cruel.
He bearded John Falconer.
“A pretty chaplain you have found us! This fellow must go, or I’ll not
answer for the men.”
“We owe him some gratitude.”
“And for what? Bloodying our game for us? Dale was a fool in the
beginning, and you have been little better than his shadow. I’ll have no
women picking and choosing in my company.”
Falconer owned as rough a temper as this crop-headed bully, but he knew
that Sir Gregory had the crowd at his back.
“There is no harm done yet. I will speak to the girl.”
“What claim has the wench to be considered?”
“The claim of courtesy—and compassion, sir. Look to it, Gregory, I will
have none of the bully in you; my fist is as heavy as ever it was.”
And there the matter rested for a while.
John Falconer did not deceive himself; these mesne lords and squirelings
were no children of romance. The wars had bred a savage spirit in the
land; the middle age was dying, cruel and brutish in its decadence, and
the strong man was not there as yet to smite it down forever with his
kingly club. Martin Valliant would have to go; these men of the Forest
would not hesitate to sacrifice him.
But Mellis?
He hardened his heart, and went in search of her, and finding her in the
tower room, he shut the door and spoke out.
“Child, this man cannot stay with us; he will bring us evil luck.”
“Who sent you with that message, John?”
“The whole place is whispering it. It might have been born with the men,
but our friends will have none of him.”
She stood at her full height, calmly scorning him and them all.
“What an amazing thing is life! You come to me, and bid me turn on this
man, and hound him out as an outcast. Am I so vile and heartless a
thing, and are men so afraid of the devil that they must throw a sop to
him?”
Falconer stood his ground.
“You should know the Forest, Mellis.”
“I know the trees and the glades, the blown leaves and the sunlight, the
little streams and the deer—but its men! If these are they, I know them
not!”
“Valliant has blackened himself in their eyes.”
She flung out her hands.
“And for whom, and for what purpose? I tell you that man has the heart
of a child. I was in peril, and he succored me; I was lost, and he gave
me his all. Nay, more than his all, for in saving me he lost the good
will of God’s noble men. And you—you come to me and tell me to spurn
him, desert him, because these fools are afraid of the devil. I would
rather die than stoop to such shame.”
His face was clouded and stubborn.
“Your heart is too kind, because——”
“Ah! Speak out.”
She went nearer, her eyes dangerously shining.
“I am not afraid, John Falconer. Tell me I love this man. I do most
dearly love him, with all my heart and soul. And who shall cast a
reproach at me, or make me believe that there is any man who would have
treated me with such sweet, strong faith? I care not what men say. God
shall judge. If there is beauty and tenderness and truth in our poor
hearts, will He throw us to the dogs?”
“You are mad!” he said miserably.
“Mad! Then I would that all the world were mad! And if your law is God’s
law, then I am a rebel against God. Yes, and I would glory in it. I have
no more to say to you, John Falconer.”
He left her, ashamed, angry, feeling that tragic things were about to
happen.
As for Martin Valliant, he knew what he knew, and his heart was heavy.
He thought of the lepers in the wood of yews at Paradise, and his lot
seemed like unto theirs. Love had made him an outcast, a thing of evil
omen to be thrust away into the darkness. No one was ready to call him
brother or comrade in arms, or to pity him because the man had been
stronger than the monk.