Gaillard rode up to the wicket and saw Denise kneeling on the path with
weeds and grass tufts scattered along the stones. Paltry, misplaced
labour, this, for a woman with such a body and such eyes and hair!
Gaillard had his grudge against Denise, and though his impulse was to
humble her, he could not forget how the morning sunlight had struck upon
her that morning at the pool.
“The best of matins to you, Sanctissima,” he said. “I trust that you are
rid of your sins as easily as you are rid of those weeds.”
Denise rose to her feet, his scoffing voice bringing the colour to her
face. The look in Gaillard’s eyes made her hate him, a jeering,
masterful, boastful look that showed that he was insolently sure of
himself, and knew how to play the bully on occasions.
“What would you, messire?” and she felt her face hot under the man’s
eyes.
Gaillard stared her over, as though he had no high opinion of women, and
especially of those who were comely and yet pretended to be righteous.
“Holy Sister,” and his eyes looked beyond her towards the cell, “why do
you shut your door so close of a May morning?”
His red eyes flashed down at her again, and Denise, with a fierce
burning of the cheeks, felt that he was watching her, and that her
secret might hang upon the tremor of a word.
“You are curious over trifles,” she said curtly. “I live alone here
after my own fashion. What would you with all your dogs and men?”
Gaillard heeled his horse close to the gate. Count Peter, Etoile, and
all their company watched and waited.
“Come nearer, Sanctissima,” said the Gascon, keeping his eyes fixed upon
her face.
Denise did not stir.
“Come now, saint of the beech woods, put your pride aside, and let us
talk together. And keep those eyes of yours from anger. It may be that I
can give service for service.”
He spoke softly to her, almost suggestively, but Denise hated his
smoothness more than his insolence.
“I do not understand you, messire,” she said.
Gaillard’s eyes grew keen and greedy.
“Such a woman as you, my lady, should not be rash in refusing
courtesies. Now, if I ask you to open yonder door?”
She tried to outstare him, but his eyes seemed to look her innocence
through and through.
“Say what you please,” she said. “Men fled through the wood here before
you came. But I have not meddled in your affairs.”
He tossed his head back suddenly and laughed, so that Denise saw the red
roof of his mouth above his smooth, strong, shining chin.
“Sister, do they write of such things in heaven? Clerks tell us a tale
that whenever a cock crowed, St. Peter was seized with a spasm of
coughing. Who is it that you are hiding, yonder?”
Denise stood dumb before him. The man’s face mocked her like the face of
a mocking Faun.
“I have no answer for you, messire,” she said. “Go back to those who
sent you, and to your horns and your dogs.”
She turned slowly, meaning to reach the cell and bar the door, hoping
the last hope that these people would ride on and leave her in peace.
But Gaillard was too shrewd to be cheated thus. He struck his horse with
the spurs, set him at the low fence, cleared it, and trampling the
garden under foot, put himself between Denise and the cell.
“A capture, a capture!”
He laughed down in Denise’s face, as he waved his sword to those who
were waiting on the fringes of the beech wood.
The flash of the Gascon’s sword brought the whole rout swarming down
upon the place, dogs, men, and horses, fur, steel and colour. The wattle
fence went down before them; the herbs and the spring flowers were
trampled into the soil. A horse plunged and reared close beside Denise,
so that she had a glimpse of a black muzzle with the teeth showing, and
soaring hoofs ready to crush her to the earth. Some unknown hand thrust
her roughly aside, when a hound sprang at her, and was dragged back
snarling on the end of a leash. Suddenly in the whirl of it she found
Gaillard beside her on his horse, pushing the beast forward so as to
shelter her from the rout that had stormed in as though half Waleran’s
rebels held the hermitage.
“Back, fools,” and he struck at some of them with the flat of his sword.
“Out, out! Who called for a charge?”
He turned his horse this way and that, driving the men back, and
clearing a space about the cell.
“Roland, on guard there, man, by the door. Stand to your arms, sirs; am
I captain of a drove of swine?”
There was something fine in the way he wheeled his great horse to and
fro, driving men and dogs like so many sheep. Denise, her hair falling
upon her shoulders, drew back towards the cell, her senses dazed for the
moment by all this violence and roughness.
The crowd of armed men parted suddenly, and through the gap between
their swords and lances came riding the woman on the milk-white horse,
haughty, yet smiling, her bow across her knees. Peter of Savoy rode
close beside her, a quiet, noiseless man, whose cold eyes were more
dangerous than a dozen swords. Gaillard wheeled towards them, touching
his horse with the spur so that the beast caracoled and showed off his
lord’s masterfulness in the saddle.
Peter of Savoy smoothed his beard with a gloved hand that showed a great
ruby upon the leather.
“What have we here, my friend? The lady in the grey gown looks as though
she would kill you an she could.”
Gaillard laughed, and glanced at Etoile.
“That is our Lady of the Woods, sire, a saint whom the boors worship.
Yet I might swear that she has more than her scourge, her stone bed, and
her cross in that cell.”
Etoile’s black eyes covered Denise.
“Does a saint carry such a fleece of hair,” she sneered. “This man-chase
pleases me better and better, sire. See how Madame Dorcas is standing on
live coals!”
She laughed, and looked at Denise, tilting her chin, her eyes
inquisitively insolent.
“Have the door opened, sire, and let us see what her man is like.”
Peter of Savoy glanced shrewdly at Etoile.
“How fair women love one another! Rosamond’s cup is always ready to the
hand.”
Denise had drawn back close to the door of the cell, and stood leaning
against the wall under the shadow of the overhanging thatch. Her hair
seemed to burn under that band of shade like stormy sunlight under a
ragged cloud. Her hands were folded over her bosom, her brown eyes fixed
on the white forehead of Etoile’s horse. There was no furtiveness about
her face, no flickering of a half confessed shame. The open space
between her and Gaillard’s men seemed to symbolise something, perhaps an
awe of her that made these rough men of the sword hold back.
Etoile pointed with her bow towards the door, and her eyes challenged
Denise.
“Perhaps our Holy Sister will satisfy us with an oath,” she said. “For
the lips of a saint cannot utter a lie.”
Denise answered her nothing, and Etoile’s face darkened maliciously
under her golden caul.
“Will you lay me a wager, sire?” and she tapped Peter of Savoy on the
knee with her bow.
His eyes gleamed at her.
“A star is made wise by the stars; I keep an open mind.”
“Then have the door opened, and let us see whether this good woman
cannot hide a lover.”
Peter of Savoy nodded towards the cell, and Gaillard wheeled his horse,
catching a glimpse of Denise’s white and waiting face.
“Roland, Jean, Guillaume!”
His strident voice rang out. The three men stood forward with their eyes
fixed on him. Gaillard pointed with his sword to the door of the cell.
“Open it.”
They turned to obey him, one of the fellows forcing the door back with
the point of his sword, all three of them upon the alert with their
shields forward as though expecting the rush of armed men.
The door had swung back showing nothing but a shadowy interior, a dark
and deep recess in the midst of the day’s sunlight. The three men craned
their heads over their shields. Gaillard heeled his horse forward, and
ordered the men aside. Stooping low in the saddle he looked into the
cell, his face lean and intent, his eyes like the eyes of a suspicious
dog. At first he could distinguish nothing. Then he laughed very softly,
straightened in the saddle, and looked down at Denise.
“Perhaps, Sister, your bed works miracles!” he said.
He laughed a little more loudly, his mouth mocking her, his eyes
sparkling over the humbling of her pride. The three men began to laugh
also. The pother seemed as infectious as the cackling in a farmyard; the
dogs opened their mouths, and bayed; the wood became full of stupid,
Bacchic mirth.
Etoile laughed as loudly as any of the men, yet with a metallic hardness
that was not beautiful.
“Here is a quaint tale,” she said. “Who is it, the lord of Goldspur, did
someone say? She has prayed over him like a saint!”
The woman’s shrill laughter stung Denise like the lash of a whip. Her
lips moved, but she said nothing.
They were all laughing, and looking upon Denise when a man appeared in
the doorway of the cell. He was unarmed, with reddened bandages about
one shoulder, and his white face blazed out from the shadows as though
all the wrath in the world burnt like a torch behind his eyes. There was
something so grim and scornful about that face that the men nearest him
fell back, silenced, repulsed, crowding upon one another.
Aymery came out into the sunlight. He looked right and left, his eyes
sweeping the circle of rough faces, and leaving on each the mark of his
sharp contempt. Gaillard alone had a smile upon his face. He sat in the
saddle with his sword over his shoulder, and pouted out his lips as
though to whistle. Denise had not turned her head. Yet it was as though
she were trying to look at Aymery without betraying the quest of her
brown eyes, for Etoile was watching her with a sneer lifting the corners
of her mouth.
Aymery glanced up at the Gascon, and then beyond him towards Lord Peter
and the lady.
Gaillard laughed aloud.
“It is our friend who ran away from us two nights ago,” he said. “I hope
you were happy, sir, hiding under a lady’s bed.”
Aymery’s knees shook under him, and his eyes had turned to grey steel.
“If your heart and mouth are foul,” he said, “make no boast thereof, my
hireling. God give me the chance some day, and I will choke you with
those words.”
He held his head high, and looked Gaillard in the eyes. But the strength
was ebbing from him; he had lost more blood. Two of the Gascon’s men
caught him by the arms as he began to totter.
Etoile touched Count Peter with her bow.
“The man has courage in him. We have bated him enough.”
The lord of the castles smiled like a cynic.
“We men are so deserving of pity, we are such fine fellows! Lend him
your horse, my desire!”
Peter of Savoy laid a hand over his heart, looking at Etoile under
half-closed lids as though she were a child to be humoured. He gave
Gaillard his orders. A spare horse was led forward, and Aymery lifted
into the saddle. He held to the pommel with both hands, trying to steady
himself, a confusion of faces before his eyes.
“Wine, and I shall not hinder you.”
A horn set with silver and closed with an ivory lid, passed from hand to
hand. It had come from the wallet that hung from Etoile’s saddle. A
soldier held it to Aymery’s mouth, steadying him with one arm. Aymery
drank, his hand shaking, so that the red wine stained his chin.
“Thanks, friend, for that.”
He gave the horn back again, raised his head, and looked round him for
Denise. She was still leaning against the wall of the cell. Their eyes
met for a moment in one quick look that left sadness and joy and pain in
the hearts of both.
Gaillard’s voice rang out. A horn screamed. Dogs, men, and horses moved
suddenly like a crowd that has been held behind a barrier. Etoile
remained motionless upon her horse, watching the men pass by her with
Aymery in their midst. Already Gaillard’s red surcoat beaconed towards
the gloom of the beech wood, the sun shining upon it so that it looked
the colour of blood.
Peter of Savoy loitered beyond the trampled garden, waiting for Etoile,
and wondering what whim kept her near the cell. The men had streamed
away before she turned her horse and walked the beast slowly past
Denise. And she stared at Denise boldly as she passed, her black eyes
mocking her from the vantage of her horse.
“Sweet dreams to you, Holy Sister!” she said.
And she rode on laughing, and leapt her horse over the wattle fence.
Denise stood there motionless, her face bleak and cold, her eyes looking
into the distance as though they saw and understood nothing. Suddenly
her face blazed with a rush of blood. She hung her head, and seemed to
be praying.