Denise was so much the saint and the Lady of the Goldspur woods that the
country folk had almost ceased to wonder whence she had come, and what
her past had been. She was Sancta Denise to them, a woman to whom they
went when they were sick or in trouble, who came and prayed for them,
and smiled on their children with her miraculous eyes. All the woodland
folk in the hundreds round looked on Denise as a saint, a child of
mystery who dwelt up yonder amid the great beech trees under the clouds.
Offerings were left before her gate, milk, bread, eggs, and herbs, the
offerings of the poor. If there was digging to be done, or the grass to
be scythed in the glade, some of Aymery’s villeins would be there at
dawn, working like brown gnomes in the dusk of the breaking day. Four
times a year a pedlar brought her the gold thread for her orfrays work,
for Denise had wonderful hands, and her embroidery had been worn by
queens. The money that she earned Denise spent among the poor, and she
might have walked from Rye to Shoreham, and no Sussex man would have
laid hands upon her, save to touch her gown for a blessing.
Olivia, Aymery’s mother, alone had known Denise’s history, and Olivia
was dead. Some had said that she was the “love child” of a great lady,
others a “ward” who had fled from the King’s court rather than be
married to some creature who had offered the King money. But Denise was
Denise, and her past was of no account, though any hind could have sworn
that she was no peasant’s child. The cell in the beech wood had been
built for her by Dame Olivia, and the ground about it turned into a
garden. Denise had become part of the woodland life, a tender and
mysterious figure that threw a glamour over the hearts of all.
Her coming had been soon after the great famine, when the crops had
failed after a wet summer. Death had passed over the land like a plague,
and in the towns the dead had lain for days unburied. The famine had
left sickness behind it, sick women, and sick babes at the breast, as
though the whole countryside had grown feeble for lack of bread. Denise
had come down from her cell in the beech wood, a veritable Lady of
Compassion. It was not the bread that she had given, but the pity and
the tenderness that had enshrined her in the hearts of all the people.
It was as though she had magic power, a glory given of God and the
Virgin. Men soon spoke of miracles. Sick children were brought to her,
and water taken from her holy spring. The abbots and priors of the south
heard of her, and more than one “house” considered the value that might
be set upon a saint.
Perhaps Denise’s power lay largely in her youth, for she was no ulcerous
and lean recluse, but a woman in the morning of her beauty, a beauty
that was strange and elfin-like, rich as an autumn in red leaf. She had
but to look at men, and they felt an awe of her; at children, and they
came to her like birds to a witch. The hair under the grey hood had the
colour of copper, with tinges of red and of gold. Her eyes were between
amber and the brown of a woodland pool, her skin so clear and white,
despite the sun and the wind, that men believed her heart could be seen
shining like a red gem beneath. Denise was tall, and broad across the
bosom. Her fingers were so long, and slim, and white, that the
superstitious believed that pearls might drop from them, and that not
even the brown soil of her garden could cling to those miraculous hands.
Denise carried her pitcher to the spring the morning after they had
brought Waleran’s boy to her with an arrow through his heart. She
stripped herself at the pool, and washed her body, scooping up the water
in her palms, her hair knotted over her neck. Denise’s naked figure
might have stood as the symbol of her womanhood, clean, comely,
unshadowed by self-consciousness. It was part of the infinite mystery of
things, a mystery that dwelt in Denise’s heart, and gave her power over
women and over men.
Her brown eyes were sad that morning as she slipped on her white shift
and her grey gown, and went back under the beech trees to her cell. With
the fragrance of the wild flowers and the dew came the consciousness of
the rougher world within that world of hers. She remembered the flames
of the night before, Waleran’s dead boy, the savage anguish of the man
breaking out into bitterness and laughter. What more might not happen in
the deeps of the woods? Denise was no ignorant child, she had lived in
another world before Olivia had built her the cell under the Goldspur
beeches.
Denise said her prayers, worked awhile in her garden, and then brought
out her orfrays of gold, and sat in the doorway under the deep shade of
the thatch. But though her fingers were busy with the threads, her mind
was full of a spirit of watchfulness and of unrest. She felt as it were
the stir and movement of another world beyond the towering domes of the
trees. She had a premonition that someone would come through the wood
that morning. It would be a man, and yet not Grimbald. Denise’s hands
were idle awhile, and her brown eyes looked thoughtfully into the deeps
of the wood.
Nor was it very wonderful that Aymery’s thoughts should turn towards
Denise as a man struggles through the thick of a crowd when he sees a
beloved head in danger. He and Grimbald had been at the burying of
Waleran’s boy, but Aymery had left Grimbald and the rest, and ridden
back to Goldspur to see Denise.
The trampling of his horse’s hoofs through the dead beech leaves came as
no surprise to the woman who sat with the orfrays work of gold in her
lap. She had watched her own mind, till, like a crystal, it had been
full of the man’s coming. Often in her life Denise had been able to
foresee the faces of those dear to her, and to feel friends near while
they were still far distant. She had the gift of inward vision, though
the power became lost to her later when she had suffered many
humiliations.
Aymery rode out into the sunlight of the glade, and Denise could see
that he was armed. A surcoat of apple green covered the ringed hauberk,
though the hood of mail was turned back between his shoulders. Aymery
rode his big black destrier that day, and not the rough nag he used for
hawking and cantering over his lands. He looped the bridle over the post
at the gate, and came up the path with the air of a man who has more in
his heart than his lips might utter.
Denise let her work lie idle in her lap. She had had no fear of Aymery
from the first, his face had become so familiar that it seemed part of
the life round her, like the trees, or the hills, or the distant sea.
Yet from the instant that he opened the wattle gate that morning, a
sense of strangeness took hold of both of them. Each felt the change and
wondered at it, so simple in its significance, and yet so strange. The
shadow of a cloud lay over them for the first time. The more intimate
hour had come when the man looked into the woman’s eyes and thought that
thought which opens the eyes of the soul—“if any harm should befall
her! If that dear head should suffer shame!”
“We have buried the boy,” he said. “That will be the beginning of a long
tale.”
There was something satisfying about Aymery, a man who carried his head
high, and looked fearlessly at the horizon. He had a quick yet quiet way
with him had Aymery of Goldspur. Shirkers and cowards were afraid of
those grey eyes of his, for they were not the eyes of a man to be
trifled with or fooled.
He spoke to Denise, resting his hands on his sword, and looking at the
golden orfrays work in her lap. She was leaning against the door-post,
her face in the shadow, thought and feeling as intimately one as the
rose and the scent of the rose.
“The woods are no longer safe. Peter of Savoy’s riders will be with us
again. Waleran will see to that.”
Denise’s brown eyes had a tremor of light in them.
“Have you proved me a coward?”
“We are cowards, Denise, where others are concerned. What do the days
promise us? Waleran could not hold his house against those hired
swarthies, nor can I mine; I am not fool enough to doubt it. A few
arrows bearded with burning tow, the thatch alight, and the smoke and
the flames would make us run like rats. It will be war in the woods
where our bows can serve us, and where their men-at-arms cannot ride our
peasants down.”
Denise did not answer him for a moment. Her hands were turning over the
embroidery in her lap.
“I have lived with you all in the sunshine,” she said. “And now that
trouble comes you would have me run away!”
“What man would not wish it?”
“But you——”
“I—I am the worst of all.”
She dropped her head suddenly as though hiding the light and colour that
had rushed into her eyes and face.
“I am not afraid,” she said.
“I am”—and he shut his lips on the words—“it is human to be afraid. If
you knew this scum of Gascons, Flemings, and what not, you would wish
them well beyond the sea. Would to God that we could whip them out of
the land. But what would you! We cannot pull down such a rock as
Pevensey with our hands. These castles that the King’s men hold for him
are too strong for us to meddle with. It is they who will do the
meddling, and what do these hired men care for what we honour? You will
be on the edge of a pit here. Women are best away when swords are out.”
He bent towards her, looking down into her face, his manhood shining out
on her, strong and honest, denying itself the right of a romantic beast.
“Come with me, and I will guard you against all Christendom.” A weaker
and vainer man might have spoken in such heroics. Aymery knew what he
knew. Denise would be safer away from him when such men as Waleran were
to be his brethren-in-arms.
“I tell you the truth, Denise, because——”
She looked up at him suddenly, and their eyes met. Denise saw the deeper
truth, that great mystery of life that cannot hide itself from the eyes
of a woman.
“Lord, what shall I say to you?”
He spread his arms.
“Say nothing. Do what I, Grimbald, all, desire. I have good friends at
Winchelsea. You will be safe there. The King wishes to win the Cinque
Ports over. He will not be rough with them, as yet. They are too
precious to be ravaged.”
Denise looked at the sky beyond the boughs of the beech trees, letting
her hands hang over her knees.
“Lord,” she said, “I am still obstinate. I have lived among you all.”
“Denise, I also am obstinate.”
“I would not have you otherwise. And yet, how can I shirk the truth that
I shall be deserting you all the moment trouble comes?”
He smiled at her, and shook his head.
“Should we be the happier if you fell into the hands of Peter of Savoy?
No. That is unthinkable! I would rather see you—dead like Waleran’s
boy—before they carried you into Pevensey! Good God, you, to be touched
by such hands!”
Denise understood all that was in his heart. She crossed herself as
though against the evil things of the world.
“Lord,” she said, “let there be this promise between us. If Goldspur is
threatened, then—I will do what you desire. When the people take to the
woods, I shall feel less of a coward. They shall not say that I fled
from a shadow.”
And thus it was agreed between them, Aymery riding back through the
woods towards Goldspur, the face of Denise more wonderful to him than it
had ever seemed before. Aymery had come by the truth that morning, and
the world had a mystery—the mystery of the tenderness of spring.
Close by Goldspur village, on the edge of the manor ploughlands, he met
Grimbald, who had come in search of him. The priest’s face had the look
of a stormy and ominous sky. He took Aymery’s bridle, and turned back
with him towards the village.
“Waleran has gone towards Pevensey,” he said. “We must be ready for a
whirlwind when such storm-cocks are on the wing.”