'STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE.'
'Sir Aimand de Sourdeval a prisoner in this castle?' repeated the
countess in a tone of the most complete surprise, and her cheeks grew
white with a sudden horror, for, to explain this thing, either, it
seemed to her, the young knight, whose honest face and noble bearing
had won her respect and the heart of her best-loved bower-maiden, must
be unworthy; or--and the thought gave her a keener pang than even she
had suffered from the rumour of his death--the master of the castle had
made evil use of his power.
'Wherefore is this? Knowest thou his offence, father?' demanded the
countess.
The young priest bowed his head. 'Daughter, if thou wilt know the
truth, the offence of a too great fidelity to his suzerain, William of
Normandy,' he answered in a low voice.
A spasm of pain crossed Emma's face at this objective presentment of
her worst fear, and the terrible heart-searchings with which she had
entered into the struggle against the Conqueror returned with renewed
force.
'I would hear this prisoner's defence from his own lips, and judge for
myself of his guilt,' she said, turning to Father Pierre with quick
decision, and a pale, set face. 'Lead me to him.'
'Noble Emma, the dungeon in which he is chained is no seemly place for
gold-embroidered slippers and ermined robes.'
'Less seemly still, then, for an innocent man, if innocent he be,'
cried Emma, each syllable sounding like a challenge thrown at a foe.
'Show me the way. I will see myself to the lodgment of all under my
roof.'
Then a satisfied light gleamed from Father Pierre's unworldly dark
eyes, and his thin, ascetic features relaxed into a smile. 'The Holy
Mother reward and sustain thee, my daughter!' he said softly. 'Come
then at once!'
Emma followed him; outwardly calm, but in reality deeply moved, and not
without terror at thought of entering those terrible dungeons, which,
although she had passed her life in castles, had hitherto been known to
her only by name.
He led her through winding passages secured by more than one heavy,
clangorous portal--the vaulted walls echoing to the creak of their
hinges--into the silence and the darkness of the basement.
The chaplain was free to penetrate at will into these halls of
suffering and despair in the prosecution of his sacred office, but the
warders who guarded the various portals half forgot to make their
reverence to the priest, as they stared with open-eyed surprise at the
lady, till, on recognising her, they saluted with clumsy haste, and
strove to atone for momentary negligence by quick opening of the door
which formed their ward.
Emma shuddered as the torch with which Father Pierre had provided
himself gleamed on the damp, massive walls. It seemed to her that
imprisonment between them would of itself bring death to her, and she
marvelled how any human creature should sustain life under such
conditions.
'In sooth, noble Emma,' said Father Pierre, as the countess gave
expression to this feeling, 'the holy saints have sent thee hither this
night, because time grew pressing. A little while, and the man who is
the object of thine errand of mercy would be released by a sterner
liberator--death. If thou shouldst deem him worthy of his dungeon, he
will not need guarding long!'
'Ah!' sighed Emma, with a sharp pang of horror, and instinctively
quickening her steps, as if a moment might be fatal.
They had reached a narrow, ponderous door, studded with huge nails.
Father Pierre produced a key which he had taken from a warder who stood
at the end of the passage. He turned it in the lock, and, drawing back
their solid bolts, pushed open the door and entered the cell into which
it gave access, the countess following with shrinking steps.
The cell was small, for it was hollowed in the wall of the keep, some
thirteen feet in thickness at the outside; it was, perhaps, eight feet
square. The walls were running with moisture, and the air was dank and
foetid. On a stone ledge raised a little higher than the ground, the
prostrate figure of a man was revealed by the fitful gleam of the
torch, and Father Pierre went forward and bent over him.
'Awake, my son!' he said gently, holding the torch so that the light
fell upon the slumberer's face.
Emma's hands clung together in anguish as she saw the gaunt, cadaverous
features, the paled skin, and the wild matted hair and beard of the
prisoner, and marked the fleshlessness of the limbs that were extended
in uneasy length upon the inhospitable couch. His appearance might have
moved the hardest-hearted to pity, and seemed all the more terrible in
contrast with the image that was in Emma's mind, of the young knight as
she had last seen him, in all the bravery of the harness of the
jousting-field, neat-shaven and close-cropped as any modern English
gentleman, according to the fashion of the Normans.
The unhappy knight opened his eyes with a nervous start, and sprang
into a sitting posture; the rattle of chains that accompanied his
movement revealing to the ruthful eyes of the countess that his ankles
were loaded with heavy rings of iron, attached by chains to a stanchion
in the floor.
'Fear nothing, Sir Aimand,' said the priest reassuringly. 'It is
I--Father Pierre; and I have brought thee hope, and at least the surety
that thy case will be inquired into and sifted to the ground. See, the
noble Countess Emma has herself deigned to visit thy prison. St.
Michael has answered thy prayers!'
The captive stared round him with haggard eyes, which seemed almost
supernaturally large and bright, and Emma quailed as they rested at
length upon her, with an expression of wonder and inquiry.
'The Countess Emma?' he repeated in a faint voice,--'the bride?'
Time for him had been standing still since the day of that fatal
bride-ale, which brought evil in some form to all who partook of it!
'Art thou indeed Sir Aimand de Sourdeval?' said Emma, crossing the cell
and standing before the prisoner, her beautiful face full of pity, yet
not all softness. 'Unhappy knight,' she added almost sternly, her
clear, decisive utterance ringing round the cell, 'what crime hast thou
committed against my lord, that thou art subject to such durance?'
De Sourdeval threw back his head with a gesture of indignation; then
his expression changed to one of sadness, and he threw himself on his
knee before the countess.
'Noble Emma,' he said, 'the only crime I have committed against thy
lord and mine own liege, was that of being faithful to his suzerain and
mine, nor can I believe the kind and generous De Guader knows my fate.'
'Thank God!' cried Emma, with a sudden sob.
'Thou hast been good to me always!' exclaimed De Sourdeval, with
intense excitement, his breast heaving and his eyes shining as he
spoke. 'Oh, gracious countess, bear my petition to thy lord, and tell
him that Aimand de Sourdeval was never unfaithful to him in word or
deed, and pray him to sift this matter to the bottom, for if he knoweth
aught, 'tis most like that his ears have been abused by the untrue
malignities of my enemies.'
'Knowest thou not that the earl is sped to Denmark, there to collect
fresh forces wherewith to relieve us from the beleaguering host that
now sits before the castle walls?' asked Emma, with less firmness,
feeling for the first time the full weight of the responsibilities she
had undertaken. 'In my hands is the ruling of the castle; tell me,
therefore, the burden of thy petition.'
Then Sir Aimand related to her the story of his adventures on the night
of her bridal, and how Sir Alain de Gourin had foully entreated him, a
narrative broken by terrible fits of coughing, showing how deeply the
chills of his prison had wrought upon his frame, and by exclamations of
surprise from the countess, who was much startled to discover the
conduct of the Breton knight, and in great perplexity, for she felt
keenly that Sir Aimand had but acted the part of an honourable man, and
that to offer him a pardon under such circumstances would be but an
insult. Moreover, he seemed to ignore the earl's present position of
active rebellion, and she could not gather how far he was aware of the
position of affairs.
'Doubtless, Sir Knight,' she said, 'thine impulse to be faithful to thy
suzerain was that of a true and loyal soul, and none can blame thee;
but William of Normandy has made the land groan under his tyranny, and
so haught and overbearing was he, that, for the mere delight of showing
his power, he crushed his most loving peers under his heel. Thou
knowest that he strove to part my lord from me, and forbade our
marriage; and so wroth was he at the breach of his capricious mandate,
that, in self-defence, my lord was driven to take arms. Let the past be
forgotten. Thou shalt be reinstated in all knightly honour, and shall
prove thy faith to the earl thy lord, by defending his lady in his
absence.'
She held out her white jewelled hand to the gaunt, unkempt prisoner,
looking in his face with a persuasive witchery that might have tempted
a man to leave a palace for a dungeon. But De Sourdeval kept back his
meagre, unwashed hand.
'Noble countess,' he exclaimed, with a long sobbing sigh, that showed
how great the effort was to speak words that might close for ever his
half-opened prison door, 'against whom am I to defend thee? Am I to
fight men who are faithful to their knightly vows, by the side of
traitors who have broken troth?'
'My son! my son!' interposed Father Pierre anxiously. The knight's bold
words brought home the unvarnished truth of the situation with a
startling clearness, which his own dreamy nature had enabled him to
shirk facing hitherto.
Emma proved cowardly; she evaded a direct answer, and sheltered herself
behind the privileges of her sex.
'Surely thy vow of chivalry binds thee to succour ladies in danger? We
are in danger, myself and my ladies. Eadgyth of Norwich,'--she paused
and looked in his face. De Sourdeval made a gesture of distress,--'Dame
Amicia, whose age and infirmity should nerve the arm of a brave young
knight and all our band, need the help of every stalwart friend who can
be found. Still further, Sir Aimand, famine is our most dread foe,' she
added, half smiling at the inhospitable thought. 'We can ill support
idle mouths in Blancheflour.'
'Let me then starve, dear lady,' replied De Sourdeval in a low voice of
desperate earnest, and avoiding her too persuasive eyes. 'I cannot lift
my hand against my heart's witness to the right.'
'Fight not then, noble Sir Aimand!' exclaimed the countess, deeply
moved. 'Only pass thy knightly pledge not to betray us to the foe, or
to struggle to escape, and thou shalt be free! Nay, if we make a
prisoner we will honourably exchange thee!'
'Not even that can I do, noble countess,' said Sir Aimand with
unwavering firmness. 'I cannot pledge myself not to help the right.'
'Nay then, thou art obstinate!' cried Emma, stamping on the stones with
one of the gold-embroidered slippers which Father Pierre had observed
to be ill suited to dungeon floors, and turning away.
Sir Aimand bowed his head in silence, and made no effort to recall her,
as she swept towards the door, though his trembling lips and clenched
fingers showed the fierceness of the struggle he was making.
But Emma paused before she reached the door. 'Thou art too proud, Sir
Knight,' she said coldly. 'But few can rival the Fitzosberns in that
quality, and I also have my pride. I scorn to make conditions with a
man circumstanced as thou art. Abuse my generosity if thou list. Thou
art free!'
'Mary Mother in heaven bless thee for thy goodness, noble countess!'
cried De Sourdeval, raising his head with a start of joy. 'Yet methinks
I am scarce free yet!' He lifted his shackled limbs, and made the heavy
irons clang upon the floor.
'Ah, good St. Nicholas, no!' cried Emma, with a fresh shock, as she
realised what sufferings the prisoner must have undergone. 'But thou
shalt be free before the sun is in the sky.'
'Noble countess,' interrupted a harsh voice behind her, 'what means thy
presence in this cell at such an hour? By the Rood! thou dost great
honour to the would-be murderer of thy husband.'
'Liar!' hissed the prisoner between his set teeth.
Emma turned with a start to face Sir Alain de Gourin, his cheeks purple
with passion, and his quivering hand on the hilt of his _misericorde_.
The countess thought it politic to ignore his speech, although every
word had reached her ears.
'Sir Alain!' she exclaimed, simulating pleasure at his appearance. 'Thy
coming is most opportune. I was about to send a messenger to thee. Give
orders forthwith that the irons be struck from the limbs of this worthy
knight without delay. He hath been shrewdly misunderstood, and my will
is that he be set free!'
She looked the mercenary hardily in the face as she gave him her
command, and the villain quailed. He saw that he had come too late to
prevent her from hearing Sir Aimand's statement of the case.
He accepted the oblivion in which she had buried his first insulting
speech, and took an entirely different tone. 'Thy will is law, noble
countess,' he said obsequiously, and with a low bow.
Emma did not retire to rest until she knew that the knight was
comfortably lodged in the state apartments of the castle.
The Breton had been completely taken by surprise. He had imposed upon
the earl with a story which the latter, in the excitement attendant
upon his ambitious enterprise, had neglected to verify, and it had
never entered his head that the countess would trouble herself about
the matter. He supposed that the earl himself had at least spoken to
her of Sir Aimand as a culprit, and that she was entirely ignorant of
his presence as a prisoner in the castle; as she had been, until the
strange impulse which came to her to have a mass said for him, caused
her to name him to the chaplain.
Even in case of her finding the matter out and wishing to probe it, he
had an ingenious story ready, wherewith to put her off the scent.
But the suddenness with which she had taken matters into her own hands,
and had visited the prisoner and heard _his_ version of the facts,
quite overcame the somewhat clumsy wit of the Breton.
His first impulse, as usual, had been to bluster, but the firmness with
which the countess confronted him had fairly cowed him for the moment,
as he knew that he would have to justify himself, and to eat a good
many of his words before Sir Hoel and the Norman knights of the
garrison, to whom he had accounted for De Sourdeval's absence by
representing that he had been sent on an embassy by the earl.
Many were the curses that he inwardly showered on the devoted head of
Father Pierre, to whom he attributed the discovery of his schemes, and
he also reviled himself for having forgotten him as a possible channel
of communication between the prisoner and the countess.
His wits had not been the brighter for the hour at which Emma had
happened on her inopportune discovery, for he had been indulging freely
in his favourite spiced hippocras during the evening, and therefore it
seemed best to his clumsy cunning to offer no further open opposition
to the countess, and to carry out her orders himself, thus gaining time
to concoct plausible excuses before Sir Hoel should know of the affair.
Emma also kept her own counsel, and did not say a word even to Eadgyth,
when the Saxon maiden, who slept in her chamber, came to help her to
unrobe.
When Eadgyth ventured a question as to what had detained her to such a
late hour, the countess smiled and kissed her.
'Thou shalt know all in good time, dear donzelle,' she answered. 'Ask
me not to-night.'