him. Her horse carried saddle-bags, so did Fulk de Lisle’s, and the two
beasts were nosing each other as though to protest that a man’s quarrel
was not theirs. Mellis took them by the bridles and tied them to a tree,
unstrapped the bags, and laid them on the grass. In her own she found
some clean linen, in Fulk de Lisle’s a bottle of wine.
Martin Valliant lay on his back, white and faint, his eyes staring
dreamily at the flickering sunlight in the fir boughs overhead. A great
lassitude had fallen on him—a sweet indolence. His manhood surrendered
itself into the hands of a woman.
She came and knelt by him.
“Now—your shoulder. That must be mended.”
She had drawn the wooden spigot out of the stone bottle.
“Wine is clean and good. Lie still.”
The wound was washed with red Bordeaux, wiped clean, and swathed in the
bandages torn from her piece of linen. Then she raised Martin’s head and
made him drink, looking at him with eyes that glimmered mystery.
He caught a strand of her hair and laid it against his lips.
“What more could a man ask of life?”
She smiled, and brushed her cheek against his hand.
Presently Martin sat up and looked about him, at the dead man, the
horses, his own ragged cassock, and his spur-torn legs. They were
burning as though he had fallen into the fire, and he knew that his face
had been cut by the gads on De Lisle’s gloves. A pretty object he must
look to her, and yet her love was like a soft light around him.
“A swim in the Rondel would not come amiss.”
“To-night, perhaps.”
He took the wine and the rest of the linen from her, and rising, went
away among the trees. He bathed his face with the wine, swathed his legs
with the linen, and put his hands ruefully through the rents in his
cassock. It seemed to be hanging by shreds, and his skin showed in a
dozen places.
“Martin!”
He rejoined her, looking very solemn, but she was holding up a rich red
cloak that she had unstrapped from De Lisle’s saddle.
“This will serve.”
She tossed it to him, and he flung it over his shoulders and tied the
laces.
“A new color.”
“And no ill color either.”
Mellis picked up her own green cloak and fastened it so that it made her
look more of a woman. She blushed, and gave Martin a shy, laughing
glance.
“This man’s gear does not please me. I shall have to thieve or borrow.
And, alas! all the world has gone against us.”
De Lisle’s red figure lying there stark and still made them remember the
peril that threatened them. The Red Rose was in the dust; the Forest was
but a hunting ground for my Lord of Troy and his riders; the gallows at
Troy Castle would bear deadly fruit.
Mellis’s eyes darkened, and her face lost some of its soft, rounded
light.
“God help us! This has been an ill day for the Forest. And yet—they
were my enemies!”
She stole a glance at Fulk’s body.
“Let us go, dear comrade. We have no friends now—save each other. How
dark this wood is!”
“Where would you go?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Ah! what a question! Where? Into the deep woods with the wild things,
and so somewhere where our faces are not known. I would live a little
while yet, Martin, for life can be sweet—now.”
He looked at her strangely.
“Yes; you are too beautiful to die.”
The horse that Martin had ridden had wandered off into the wood, but
Fulk de Lisle’s was at his service. Moreover, the dead man’s sword and
dagger might have their uses, and for the better carrying of them Martin
took Fulk’s belt and buckled it about him.
“I like it not,” he said; “but necessity is our master.”
He helped Mellis to her saddle, unfastened the horses, and mounted Fulk
de Lisle’s. Then he hesitated, looking into Mellis’s eyes, for he knew
not where to turn.
“Which way?”
“On through the wood. Thanks be to God, I was born in the Forest.”
_Chapter XXXIX_
Mellis knew the ways, and through all the heat of the day she guided
Martin southwards toward the Rondel river, picking up the wild tracks
and never faltering in her choice. They kept to the woods, and avoided
the open heaths, sometimes following a brown stream that flickered under
the green shadows and leaving it when it left the woods. Not a living
creature did they see save a few deer far down a deep glade, a hawk
searching for food, and once, a gray-green snake basking on a bank in
the sun.
A gloom seemed to have fallen on the Forest, and even the young foliage
looked darker, heavier, less bright with the freshness of spring. The
open woods were full of a listening sadness, a mysterious expectancy;
for Death was out, Death and the Lord of Troy. Yet Mellis was touched by
no such melancholy, no sinister forebodings; her man’s life was in her
hands, her eyes were keen and watchful; danger gave a sparkle to her
beauty; the day’s need steadied her heart.
Martin Valliant watched her, and marveled. He forgot his wounds in
looking at her forest-shaded face with its clean, clear comeliness, its
alert, proud self-trust. There was nothing more wonderful than her eyes
and the way they filled with light when meeting his. Their color seemed
so elusive, changing from blue to black, and sometimes they were all
a-glimmer like water touched by the sun. He looked at her lips, her
white throat, her hair, the hands that held the reins, and had to tell
himself that she was his. Every part of her seemed a piece of
enchantment. She was so fair in his eyes that the thought of touching
her seemed sacrilege.
He found her smiling at him shyly.
“Have we lost our tongues, dear man?”
“So much has happened, and you——”
“And I?”
“Sometimes I think that you do not belong to this world, that you will
vanish away.”
She looked at him intently, curiously, for it seemed to her that his
mood foreshadowed some solemn and subtle fancy that was working in his
heart. He desired her, and yet did not desire her. The glamour of a
mystical self-renunciation was not dead in Martin Valliant.
“I am flesh and blood, God be thanked for it.”
He half closed his eyes.
“I see more than that.”
She colored.
“See the woman in me. For it is the man in you that has made me dream
dreams.”
They rode in silence for a while, but both were conscious of a listening
tenderness, a mysterious and unsolved unrest.
“Martin?”
He glanced at her gravely.
“Life and Death march on either side of us. We have to take thought for
to-morrow and to-morrow’s morrow. It will not be easy.”
She saw his eyes grow dark and deep.
“Nor is life easy, child. I hold your soul in pledge, and this place is
full of our enemies. And what am I but a broken man, an outcast?”
“You are my love,” she said simply.
He did not speak for a moment, and there were lines on his forehead.
“Is God satisfied? Does He look on us as two children? I could show Him
my heart—without fear—and yet——”
“Well?”
“I could die and not be afraid. But life is yours, and the beauty and
the sweetness thereof, and where is the chalice for such wine? Are my
hands fit to carry it?”
“I ask for no other hands. Let God judge.”
Martin rode at her side, sunk in deep thought. He had not forgotten
Peter Swartz and the inn of the Crossed Keys at Gawdy Town. Life and
liberty might lie that way, escape from the vengeance of my Lord of
Troy, and from the curses of the brethren of Paradise; but it would be
at the cost of exile, of wanderings in a strange land. Was Mellis made
for such a life? Was not her very beauty too rich and perilous?
Moreover, all hope had not vanished for her out of England; Richmond was
on the seas; the Red Rose might yet out-flower the White.
Mellis was waiting on his meditations. Her mind was most obstinately
made up; she was no green child or the victim of fanciful tenors; life
had taught her much; the rough wisdom begotten of her adventures had
been wedded to the sure instincts of the woman. Martin Valliant was her
man; he was strong, and could keep her from the hands of other men, for
she had no waywardness, no wish to change her lovers. Some women are
born to be courtesans, but Mellis was not one of them.
“Still thinking, Martin?”
He hesitated, and then told her of Swartz, and the inn at Gawdy Town.
Her eyes brightened.
“Good Swartz! Good comrade! Why, that is a plan worth trying when
matters look so desperate. The men of Gawdy Town have no great love for
my Lord of Troy.”
Martin looked at her in astonishment, for the brave adventurousness of
her face betrayed no fear of the future.
“Mellis. Have you considered?”
“Everything. More than you can guess, dear lad. Why, I am wiser than you
are, and tougher in the ways of the world. We should find ourselves in
France, taking the open road, sleeping in all manner of odd places,
sometimes begging, sometimes singing for pay. The great vagabond life!
But Swartz was right. Strong men soon jostle free, get a higher seat
than their fellows. I have wandered; I know what can be done. Martin
Valliant was born to fight and to rule.”
But she had not won him yet. His mystical love still glimpsed
self-sacrifice, renunciation.
It was before they came to the Rondel river that they sighted a
forester’s cottage in a deep hollow under the woods. Mellis knew the
place, and after scanning it awhile turned her horse toward it.
“Jeremy Marvel lived there—a good fellow. He may sell us what we need.”
She smiled at Martin’s blank face.
“Yes. I have a little money. I am quite shrewd, good sir. I kept it
under my bed at Woodmere, and a little money is the best friend in the
world.”
They rode down to the cottage and found it deserted, for Jeremy Marvel
had sent his wife and babes across the river before marching to Woodmere
with his bow. Martin had to force the door, and Mellis abetted him.
“The place will be burned or plundered, so let your conscience be easy.
And Jeremy had many a good thing from my father.”
Their needs were simple, food and raiment, and they found both. Mellis
went smiling into the little bed-chamber, and the great cupboard there
gave a plain russet gown, a hooded cloak, rough hose, and a pair of
shoes. She flung a green doublet and gray woolen hose out to Martin, and
shut herself into the good folks’ room. Fulk de Lisle’s red cloak was
stuffed up the stone chimney, and Martin found one of brown kersey to
replace it, hanging on a nail beside an oak press.
When Mellis came out to him she was the laughing country wench in
russet, her hair tied with a green ribbon, her feet in rough shoes.
Martin’s raiment kept hers company. He had discovered a green cloth cap
with a raven’s feather stuck into it, and the thing hid that still too
obvious tonsure of his.
“Good-day to you, Goodman Martin.”
He looked at her dearly.
“Fine clothes do not make the woman.”
“That is rank heresy, dear man; but if it contents you, I will not
complain.”
The larder gave them bread and honey, and Martin went with a pitcher to
the well. They sat down at Jeremy Marvel’s table, and when they had
ended the meal, Mellis left a piece of silver there to quiet her own
conscience.
“I doubt whether it will ever reach the poor clown’s pocket.”
Which was true, for Jeremy Marvel lay dead on Bracknell Plain.
Before they sallied Mellis took some linen from the press for the
dressing of Martin’s wounds. Moreover, a loaf of bread was useful
plunder, though Martin had found bread and meat and half a spiced cake
in Fulk de Lisle’s saddle-bag. Mellis also insisted on his taking the
pitcher.
“Sling it to your saddle. We may bless it to-night.”
The sun was low in the west when they struck the Rondel flowing between
two broad stretches of wild grassland—grassland that was all white with
ox-eyed daisies. They had to follow the river for a while, searching for
a ford where ruffled water marked the shallows. Mellis’s eyes were
watching for a cairn of stones that had been built by a hermit a century
ago to show the depth of the river in winter.
She pointed it out at last.
“I thought that I had not strayed.”
The stretch of sand below the bank was smooth and unscarred; no one had
crossed by that ford for many days, and Mellis uttered a cry of relief.
“This is the nearest way to Gawdy Town, and we are the first over. We
shall be there before the news of Bracknell Plain. That comes of being
bred in these parts.”
They splashed across, and let their horses drink before climbing the
farther bank. The grassland south of the river rose in great green
sweeps to touch the wild woods east of Bloody Rood. A soft breeze sent
patches of wavering green moving over the silver of the feathered grass
tops and the flowers. Here and there a lark rose from its nest, or a
plover went wheeling and complaining.
A gradual silence had fallen on Martin Valliant. As the sun sank low and
the light grew more mysterious, his mood seemed to deepen toward a
passionate and wondering mysticism. He saw Mellis in a glamor of gold,
and his love bent toward a solemn sadness. A deep pity for her touched
him—an infinite tenderness. She became for him a symbol, a beautiful
pure child too wonderful to be sacrificed to the common life of the
world. A new awe of her stole over him, and he was afraid. What was he
that he should take her and her love? What could he offer her? What had
he to give? Surely she was not made for the rough pilgrimage that might
be his, and he could not trade upon her generous courage.
Moreover, Martin Valliant fell to a sudden stroke of superstition. Would
he not carry a curse? And would not Mellis be entangled in it? He might
bring her a great unhappiness, dim all the radiance of her youth and
desire. What right had he to join her life to his? There was such a
thing as “right of sanctuary”; he could lodge here in some religious
house where she would be safe till the times proved themselves, and the
land turned again to peace. He would have been honest with her and with
himself; bitter wounds would heal; God could not say that he had sinned
against her.
The green half-light of the woods seemed in sympathy with this mood of
his. He would not let himself look at Mellis, for he was afraid to meet
her eyes.
“My man is weary?”
She challenged his silence, watching him with steady eyes. But he would
not confess to her, and she had to puzzle out the meaning of his sudden
melancholy. Mellis asked no questions, grew silent in turn, nor was she
long in discovering to herself the thoughts and emotions that troubled
him.
Perhaps she had foreseen this generous obstinacy of his, counted on
having to combat it, for women fly from hill to hill while men labor
through the valleys.
The woods thinned about them, and they found themselves in a soft, green
glade on the brow of a high hill, with the sunset shining in on them,
and bits of blue forest visible in the distance. Mellis reined in. She
was beginning to gather the subtle threads of life into her own hands.
“Here is our camping ground. It will serve us for to-night. We passed a
spring five minutes ago, a spring of clear water.”
She dismounted.
“To-morrow night we shall be in Gawdy Town, if no one says us nay.”
_Chapter XL_
Martin Valliant unsaddled and unbridled the horses while Mellis took the
pitcher and went down to the spring.
She did not hurry herself, but walked slowly through the bracken and
under the full shade of the trees, her eyes looking into the distance as
though she were deep in thought. Once or twice she smiled, and pressed
her hand over her heart. Her face had a soft white radiance, a
mysterious glow beneath the skin.
The spring was the beginning of one of the forest streams, a brown pool
that overflowed and trickled in a green and oozy dampness down the
hillside. The clear water lay like a mirror, reflecting the branches and
the fragments of blue sky overhead. Mellis knelt down and gazed at
herself in the pool. She was very fair, with dark and desirous eyes, and
she loved herself for Martin’s sake. Her hair came falling from under
her hood, and one strand touched the water, stirring a faint and
transient ripple.
Mellis filled her pitcher and went back to the glade. The west was a
glory of gold, the light smiting the trees and spreading a yellow glow
upon the grass. The distant forest vistas were all purple, shading into
a violet horizon. Somewhere a blackbird was singing to his mate.
She saw Martin Valliant sitting at the foot of a great oak, and staring
at the sunset. The slanting light touched his face and made it shine
with a strange yet somber fire. So absorbed was he that he did not see
Mellis coming through the bracken. The two horses were cropping the
grass; saddles, harness, and saddle-bags lay piled under Martin’s oak
tree.
Mellis caught a deep breath, and laid a hand upon her bosom.
“Martin—Martin Valliant!”
Her voice was very soft and challenging. Martin turned, looked at her
strangely, and stood up.
“Dreams!”
Her eyes were full of light.
“Yet men must live by bread.”
She set the pitcher on the grass, opened the saddle-bags, and spread
their supper on the grass. Martin stood and watched her, mute, frowning,
like a man breathless from a sudden pain at the heart.
“Mellis!”
“Dear lad?”
“I have been thinking.”
She went on calmly with her work, cutting the bread with a knife she had
brought from Marvel’s cottage, and spreading honey upon the slices.
“What troubles you, Martin?”
He did not answer for a moment. She knelt, looking up at him; the
obstinate anguish in his eyes betrayed to her all that was in his heart.
“Come, you are tired; you shall eat and sleep.”
She spread a cloak and made a rest of one of the saddles, talking the
while as though no love-crisis threatened them.
“I know what it is to be weary, to feel that death might take you, and
you would not care. Then one falls down under a haystack and sleeps, and
in the morning the sun is shining, and the world seems young again. Wine
and water, cooked meat, bread and honey and a spiced cake! Let us be
thankful.”
He lay down some two paces from her, propping himself on one elbow and
not using the saddle that she had fetched to serve as a rest. His eyes
avoided hers. Mellis had spread the slices of meat on a great green dock
leaf, and she held out the dish with both hands.
“Eat, and then you shall talk to me.”
It was a silent meal, but Mellis had her way. She did not trouble him
with words, or by watching him with questioning eyes. He was like a
restive horse, or a thing in pain, to be soothed and calmed and rescued
from its own restlessness. Her mood seemed as calm and as tranquil as
the brown dusk that was beginning to fill the woods while the western
sky still blazed.
When they had ended their meal she knelt up and drew the linen out of
her saddle-bag.
“The light is going. Come here to me, Martin.”
He looked at her almost with fear.
“What would you?”
“That wounded shoulder must be cared for. You will carry the mark of it,
always, for my sake.”
He did not move, and she went to him on her knees, reaching for the
pitcher and the wine. He raised a hand as though to repulse her, but she
put it gently aside.
Yet all the while that she was busy with his shoulder he sat with bowed
head, silent, brooding, not even wincing when she cleaned the raw wound,
and poured in wine. His eyes stared at the grass; the only pain he felt
was the mystical anguish that her soft hands caused him.
“There!”
She knelt facing him of a sudden, her eyes looking steadily into his
face.
“Now, you may speak to me, Martin Valliant. There can be no silence
between us. Tell me all that is in your heart.”
His head seemed to sink lower.
“Are you afraid of me, Martin—you who would fear no man? What am I but
a woman?”
“It is the woman I fear.”
“Oh! man—man!”
He answered her sullenly.
“I was on the way to sin against you. What am I but an outcast? What can
I give you?”
“What do I ask of life?”
“It is I who must ask for you, think for you, face God for you.”
She caught his hands.
“Martin, look into my eyes.”
He obeyed her.
“Tell me, what do you see in them?”
His face shone with a strange light.
“I see—something—something that is too good and great for me, a sacred
thing that I must not touch.”
She drew her breath deeply.
“Oh, my man, what has come to you? Will you not think of me as the
woman, the woman to be saved from other men?”
“Mellis!”
His voice was hoarse, and she felt the muscles in his arms quivering.
“Yes, you cannot shirk that truth. But what is in your mind? You spoke
of Swartz and Gawdy Town.”
He steadied himself.
“That is ended. Is there no right of sanctuary in the land?”
“Sanctuary?”
She had begun to tremble a little.
“The nuns of Lilburn Minster are good women; you could take sanctuary
there—till the times mended. No man could harm you.”
“Martin, you are offering me death!”
“Death?”
“Oh, man—man! Have we not suffered enough together? Are you turning to
stone? Is it for my sake? I would rather die than do this thing! My
heart will have none of it!”
He bowed his head over her hands.
“May I be strong—for your sake!”
“Strong—to wound me—to the death.”
She let go of his hands, drew aside, and knelt staring at the grass.
Presently she spoke, and her voice accused him.
“Are you but a child, Martin, soul blinded, the fool of visions? Life
cannot go back. Things happen; it is like the dawn of the day, the birth
of a flower. You cannot stay the sun from rising, or bid the sap not
flow in the tree. And you have made me love you. I have spoken. Would
you put the truth in me to shame?”
He rose up, leaving her kneeling there, and his face was a mist of pain.
“Mellis!”
“It is the truth. It is in your hands.”
He stood staring at the fading west.
“God, speak to me! Let me listen for a voice. Give me
strength—strength.”
_Chapter XLI_
He began to walk up and down the glade as though he were in the
cloisters at Paradise, and Mellis did not hinder him or try to persuade
him any further.
She rose up, put the food that was left back into the saddle-bags, and
took the horses down to the spring to drink. When she returned to the
glade Martin Valliant was still walking up and down, his hands gripping
the bosom of his smock. He did not look at her, and his face had grown
gray in the dusk.
Mellis fastened the two horses to a tree for the night, and taking Fulk
de Lisle’s sword, she set about gathering bracken. The western sky was
streaked with amber, and the light was growing dim; yet as Mellis used
the sword a faint glimmer shone from it, like the glimmer of a star. The
bracken was all feathery blackness under the great trees, falling to the
sharp blade as she swung it from right to left. The sweet, wild scent of
the fern was like a plaintive memory. The sword made hardly a sound as
it cut through the tall stems.
Martin had paused, and was watching her. She showed as a dim figure in
the dusk, with white face and hands. And even this strange labor of hers
seemed part of the mystery of the Forest and of life, so much so that he
felt enveloped by it, caught in some enchantment. What was she doing?
And why did every act of hers take on a strange significance?
He saw Mellis set the sword in the ground, and gather up a bosomful of
bracken. She came past him as he stood, and her eyes were dark and
inscrutable. She threw the bracken down under the oak tree, and went
back for more. Then Martin understood.
A shiver of emotion went through him; he found himself trembling at the
knees. What a silence was this about them! What a falling of the night!
What secrecy! What enchantment! The sunset had died on the hills;
nothing but a faint afterglow remained, and above the trees the stars
were beginning to shine.
Martin moved to and fro, but all his thoughts were with Mellis, and her
gathering of the fern. She had taken the sword and had cut more bracken.
The thick green riding-cloak that had been strapped behind her saddle
served to carry the stuff; she spread the cloak on the ground, piled
bracken on it, drew the two ends together, and carried the bundle to the
oak tree. Mellis made a dozen such journeys to and fro, till she had
built up a deep bed of the soft green fronds.
Martin saw her spread her cloak on the bracken and set Fulk de Lisle’s
sword in the ground at the head thereof.
He turned away, and as he turned she called to him.
“Martin, are you still thinking?”
“Yes.”
“And it is all so simple!”
He heard her sigh, and his heart smote him.
Then she said:
“I am lonely. And I still have a fear that in the night men will break
in and take you away.”
“If God wills it, it will be so,” he answered her with obstinate
sententiousness.