So briskly did the Lord of Pevensey sweep the woods that Maytide,
hunting his enemies with horn and hound, that he drove such mesne lords
as had drawn the sword beyond his borders into other parts. The mere
gentleman and the yeoman could make no fight of it as yet against a
great lord who held the castles. The peasants were cowed by the lances
of the troopers; a few still lurked in the deeps of the woods, chased
hither and thither like wild things that fly from the cry of the hound.
The finer and fiercer spirits fled with savage thoughts in their hearts,
counting on the day when their chance should come again. Waleran de
Monceaux took refuge in Winchelsea, and joined himself to the men of
that town. Others galloped away to seek Earl Simon, and to ease their
wrath under De Montfort’s banner. As for Grimbald the priest, he lay
near to death, hidden near a swineherd’s hovel, stricken with the wounds
that he had gotten him at Goldspur manor.
When Waleran de Monceaux, that man of the fierce face and the bristling
beard, fled to Winchelsea town, he rode by the Abbey of Battle as the
dawn was breaking and halted there and called for food. He and his men
had touched neither meat nor bread for a day and a night. Some were
wounded, all of them ragged, famished, and caked with the mire of the
woodland ways. The hosteler looked sulkily at these savage and beaten
men. Love them he could not because of their importunity, and their
great hunger. And while they cursed him because of his slowness, he sent
word to the Abbot, desiring his commands.
Abbot Reginald’s message came to him with curt good sense.
“Feed them, and be rid of them.”
So Waleran and his men had their paunches filled, because Reginald of
Battle was a man of discretion and desired to keep his lands untainted.
There were sundry inconveniences that clung even to the right of
sanctuary and such high prerogatives. Reginald of Brecon was a smooth
and astute man, a fine farmer, and keen as any Lombard. He would have no
neighbour’s sparks from over the hedge setting fire to his own hayrick.
If fools quarrelled, he could pray for both parties, and hold up the
Cross benignantly, provided no one came trampling his crops.
In those days Dom Silvius was almoner at the Abbey, a quiet,
sharp-faced, gliding mortal, very devout yet very shrewd. Men said that
Dom Silvius loved his “house” better than he loved his soul. Never was a
mouse more quick to scent out peas. He knew the ploughlands in every
manor, every hog in every wood, how much salt each pan should yield, the
value of the timber and the underwood, the measure of the corn ground at
the mills, the honey each hive yielded, the number of fish that might be
taken from the stews. The Abbey’s charter, and each and every several
bequest might have been written on Dom Silvius’s brain. He was ever on
the alert, ever contriving, and such a man was to be encouraged. His
brethren loved him, for he was not miserly towards the “girdle,” and
their pittances were bettered by Dom Silvius’s briskness. What did it
matter if a monk meddled with more than concerned him, provided the
buildings were in good repair, and his brethren had red wine to warm
their bellies.
Dom Silvius’s ears were always open. He was a quiet man who did not
frighten folk, but he learnt their secrets, and he often touched their
money. Few lawyers could have snatched a grant from under the almoner’s
cold, white fingers. He was a man of foresight, and of some imagination.
Property to him was not merely a matter of so many plough teams and so
many hides, pannage for hogs, and grindings at the mill. The Church held
all charters in the land of the Spirit; she could take toll from the lay
folk, and make them pay for using her road to heaven.
The very day that Waleran rode through Battle, Dom Silvius walked with
folded arms and bowed head into the Abbot’s parlour. He stood meekly
within the door, his face full of a smooth humility, his eyes fixed upon
the rushes.
Abbot Reginald trusted greatly in this monk. The man was ever courteous
and debonair, never turbulent or facetious, always inspired for the
“glory” of his “house.”
“The blessing of the day, Brother. What business lies between us?”
Dom Silvius lifted his eyes for the first time to his superior’s face.
“If I repeat myself, Father, my importunity is an earnest failing. It
concerns the Red Saint for whom Olivia of Goldspur built a cell.”
Reginald of Brecon leant back in his chair, and closed the book that he
had been reading.
“The woman whom they call Denise?”
Silvius looked demure, as though his sanctity were especially sensitive
where a woman was concerned.
“Her fame has become very great these months,” he said quietly.
“You covet it, Silvius.”
The almoner bowed his head.
“I grudge no soul its good works, Father. But in these days of burnings,
and of spilling of blood——”
“The woods have grown perilous, Silvius, with Lord Peter’s men abroad.”
“That is the very truth, sir. There is no place safe outside the
sanctuaries. I have heard it said that the Prior of Mickleham has
offered protection to the woman.”
Abbot Reginald smiled, the smile of a philosopher.
“Speak your thoughts, brother.”
Silvius spread his hands.
“The woman is certainly a saint,” he said. “It is common report that she
has worked many and strange cures. And, lord, with the foresight of
faith I look towards the future. From simple beginnings great things
have arisen. We do not draw pilgrims here—to our Abbey. How much glory,
sir, has the altar of Canterbury won by the swords of those violent
men.”
Reginald of Brecon saw Dom Silvius’s vision.
“A hundred years hence, brother, we shall be blessed through the relics
of St. Denise!”
Silvius had no mistrust of his inspiration.
“The maid is certainly miraculous,” he said. “We could grant her a cell
within our bounds.”
He of the mitre put the tips of his fingers in opposition.
“Our brethren of Mickleham or of Robertsbridge would forestall us, if
they could?”
“They love their ‘houses,’ Father, and for that I praise them.”
“Worthy men! Where would you lodge her, Silvius?”
“There is that stone cot near Mountjoye, sir, with the croft below it.
We could set up a cross there that would be seen from the road. If the
maid can but work miracles here, people will flock to her; then gifts
can be laid upon our altar.”
A sudden clangour of bells from the tower brought the almoner’s audience
to an end. Reginald of Brecon rose, and laid aside his book.
“What does the woman say?” he asked, touching the core of Silvius’s
conception.
“That, lord, must be discovered. If I have your grace in this——?”
“Go, Brother, and prosper.”
And Silvius went out noiselessly from the parlour, his hands hidden in
the sleeves of his habit.
Though the may was whitening in the woods, and the blue bells spread an
azure mist above the green, May was a harsh and rugged month that year,
with north winds blowing, and the sky hard and grey. And Dom Silvius
when he mounted a quiet saddle horse and trotted away followed by two
servants, drew his thick cloak about him, and was glad of his gloves and
his lamb’s-wool stockings.
Up in the beech wood above Goldspur the wind made a restless moan
through the branches of the trees. Sometimes the sun struck through the
racing clouds, and a wavering chequer of light and shadow fell on the
thin forest grass. There was a shimmer of young green everywhere, yet
the year seemed sad and plaintive as though chilled to heart by the
north winds.
Denise, wrapped in her grey cloak, wandered that morning along the grass
paths of her trampled garden, brooding over the wreck thereof. Here were
her thyme and lavender bushes trodden under foot, or snapped and
shredded by the browsing teeth of a horse. Crushed plants peered at her
pathetically from the pits where hoofs had sunk into the soft soil; a
bed of pansies seemed to scowl at her with their quaint and
many-coloured faces, as though reviling her for having brought such
barbarians to trample them. Almost the whole of the wattle fence had
fallen, dragging down into the dirt the roses that had been trained to
it.
Yet never had Denise’s garden been a more intimate part of herself than
that May morning with the wind tossing the beech boughs against a heavy
sky. What a change from yesterday, what a breaking in of violent life,
what revelations, what regret! The quiet days seemed behind her, far in
the distance, for the vivid present had made even the near past seem
unreal. As for her own heart, Denise was almost afraid to look therein.
It was like her garden, with the barriers broken, and the life of
yesterday trodden into the soil.
She had tried to put these passionate things from her, and to turn again
to the life that she had known. There were a hundred things for her
hands to do, but do them she could not, for the will in her seemed dead.
Even the familiar trifles of her woodland hermitage were full of
treachery and of suggestive guile. Her bed, Aymery had lain there. Her
earthen pitcher, she had brought him water therein. The very stones of
the path still seemed to show to her the stains of the man’s blood.
Memories were everywhere, memories that would not vanish, and would not
pale.
Denise’s face still burnt when she remembered Etoile’s laughter, that
hard, metallic laughter like the clash of cymbals. The woman’s insolence
showed her the mocking face of the world, yet for the life of her,
Denise could not tear her thoughts from the happenings of those two
days. Had the whole country risen to jeer at her, she could have
suffered it because of the mystery that made of the ordeal a sacrifice.
She had not saved the man, and yet she did not grudge all that she had
borne, all that she still might bear. The violence of yesterday had
opened the woman’s eyes in Denise. The world had a new strangeness, and
the chant of the wind a more plaintive meaning.
She had been unable to sleep with thinking of Aymery, and of what had
befallen him, for she still seemed to see his white, furious face,
throwing its scorn into the scoffing mouths of the Gascon’s men. Nor
could she forget the last look that had passed between them, the appeal
in the man’s eyes as though he would have said to her: “God forgive me,
for all this.” Where were they taking him, would they be rough with him,
would he die of his wounds upon the road? What offence had he committed
that his house should be burnt, and his life hazarded, and who was this
Peter of Savoy, this Provençal that he should lord it over the men of
the land, claiming to act for his over-lord the King? It was the right
of the strong over the weak, the pride of the men who held the castles
crushing those who refused to be exploited. The curse of a weak King was
over the country. These hawks of his whom he had let loose in England
obeyed no one, not even their own lord.
But Denise’s conscience took scourge in hand at last, and drove her from
her broodings and her visions. Work, something to fill the mind,
something tangible to fasten the hands upon! What did it avail her to
loiter, to dream, and to conjecture? There was no salvation in mere
feeling. Her heart was turning to wax in her, she who had worked for
others, and who had been knelt to as a saint. A rush of shame smote her
upon the bosom. The peasant women, these men of the fields, what would
they think of her if they could read her thoughts? She had held up the
Cross before their eyes, and was forgetting to look at it herself.
So Denise drove herself to work that morning, lifting the fallen fence
and propping it with stakes, gathering the wreckage, binding up the
broken life of the place. It eased her a little this labour under the
grey sky, with the wind in the woods, and the smell of the soil. For in
simple things the heart finds comfort, and idleness is no salve to the
soul.
It was about noon when Dom Silvius came to the clearing in the beech
wood, and Denise, who was binding up her trailing roses, saw figures
moving amid the trees. Her brown eyes were alert instantly as the eyes
of a deer. But there was nothing fierce about Dom Silvius’s figure, and
nothing martial or masterful about the paces of his horse.
The almoner left the two servants under the woodshaw and rode forward
slowly over the grass. Silvius’s eyes had a habit of seeing everything,
even when they happened to express a vacant yet inspired preoccupation.
He saw the scarred turf, the hoof marks everywhere, the broken fence
about the garden, the woman in the grey cloak at work upon her roses.
Silvius kept a staid and thoughtful face till he had come close to the
hermitage. Then his eyes beamed out suddenly as though he had only just
discovered Denise behind the spring foliage of her roses. And Dom
Silvius could put much sweetness into his smile so that his face shone
like the face of a saint out of an Italian picture.
“Peace to you, Sister; we were nearer than I prophesied.”
Denise lifted her head and looked at him. A rose tendril had hooked a
thorn in the cloth of her cloak. And to Silvius as he gazed down into
the questioning brown of her eyes, that thorn seemed to point a moral.
“I come as a friend,” he said, hiding his curiosity behind smooth
kindness. “Silvius the almoner of the Abbey of Battle.”
“I have heard of you, Father,” she answered him.
Silvius smiled, as though there were no such thing as spite and gossip
in the world.
“May my grace fly as far as yours, Sister,” he said. “You are wondering
why I have ridden hither? Well, I will tell you. It is because of the
rumours of violence and of bloodshed that have come to us. Even here, I
see that you have not been spared.”
He looked about him gravely, yet with no inquisitive, insinuating
briskness. His eyes travelled slowly round the circle of the broken
fence, and came to point at last upon Denise.
“I have come with brotherly greetings to you, Sister, from Lord Reginald
our Abbot. All men know what a light has burnt here these many months
upon the hills. It is a holy fire to be cherished by us, and all men
would grieve to see it dimmed or quenched.”
After some such preamble he began to speak softly to Denise, for he was
a good soul despite his shrewdness, and the woman’s face was like a face
out of heaven. He put the simple truth before her, speaking with a
devout fatherliness that betrayed no subtler motive. Peace should be
hers, and a sure sanctuary, roof, clothes, bed, and garden, and a daily
corrody from the Abbey. The times were full of violence, lust, and
oppression, and Silvius feared for those far from the protecting shadow
of some great lord or priest. At Battle she should enjoy all the
sweetness of sanctity; she should have even her flowers there, and he
waved a hand towards the ruinous garden.
Denise listened to him with a pale and unpersuaded face. Perhaps a
flicker of distrust had leapt up at first into her eyes. But the monk’s
simplicity seemed so sincere a thing that she put distrust out of her
heart.
When he had ended, she looked towards the woods in silence for a while,
and Silvius made no sound, as though he reverenced her silence, and
understood its earnestness.
“For all this I thank you, Father,” she said at last. “But come to you I
cannot. It is not in my heart to leave this place.”
Silvius smiled down at her very patiently.
“Who shall deny that the Spirit must guide you. Yet even St. Innocence
may remember what God has given.”
Denise reddened momentarily, and Silvius looked away from her towards
the sky.
“I am not a child, Father,” she said simply. “The people in these parts
love me, and I, them. They will return home in time, and will come and
seek for me. I should seem to them the worst of cowards, if they found
that I had fled.”
Silvius was too sensitive and too shrewd to press his importunity upon
her, seeing that she was prejudiced in her heart. He could leave her to
think over what he had said to her. Her pride might refuse to waver at
the first skirmish.
“You are living your life for others, Sister,” he said. “Nor do we live
in the midst of a wilderness at Battle. Trust the Spirit in you; do not
be misled. Yet I would beseech you to remember what manner of world this
is. Had not St. Paul fled from the city of Damascus, the Faith would
have lacked a flame of fire.”
Denise looked up at him with miraculous eyes.
“And yet, I would stay here,” she said.
“So be it, Sister; some day I will ride this way again.”
So Denise sent Dom Silvius away, clinging with all this strange new
tenderness of hers to a place that seemed sacred by reason of its
memories. Yet if she had known what others knew, or guessed what was
passing beyond her ken, she might have fled with Silvius that day, and
left her cell to the wild winds, the sun, and the rain.