It was possible for such a man as Gaillard to be in love with two women
at one and the same moment, if indeed what Gaillard felt for a woman
could be called love. Peter of Savoy was at Lewes, and the Gascon had
the command at Pevensey, and had taken to oiling his hair, and having
musk sewn up in a corner of his surcoat. He and Etoile saw much of one
another, but the lute girl knew how to keep Gaillard at arm’s length. He
might play the troubadour, and make himself ridiculous by singing under
her window at night. Etoile wished to try the man further before she
trusted such a cousin as Gaillard with her power over Count Peter of
Savoy.
One thing Etoile did not know, that Gaillard had ridden more than once
to the beech wood above Goldspur, and that he had seen Denise, and come
away feeling baulked and foolish. The Red Saint had shut herself
obstinately in her cell, and as for singing her love songs, even
Gaillard had not the gross conceit to treat Denise as he would have
treated Etoile. Yet Gaillard had no sense of the comic in life, and
accepted himself with such enthusiasm that anything was possible to so
blatant a creature. Display was a passion with him, and any clouding of
his conceit, an injury that made him scowl like a spoilt child. Life had
to be full of noise and bustle, the blowing of trumpets, and the
applause of women. Gaillard was so much in love with himself that he ran
about like a fanatic waving a torch, and expecting all the world to
listen to what he said.
The Gascon might be a fool, but he was a pernicious fool in those rough
days, when there was a woman to be pleased. Denise had shut her door on
him, but Gaillard did not doubt but that she would open it in due
season. Her pride was a thing on the surface, so Gaillard told himself,
and she had more to surrender than had most women. Etoile also was
unapproachable, but in very different fashion to Denise. The one was a
white glare that blinded and repulsed, the other a glittering point that
lured and kept its distance. And Gaillard, like a great gross red moth,
blundered to and fro, making a great flutter.
Etoile had much of the spirit of those Byzantine women who had the
devil’s poison under their tongues. Gaillard amused her. It pleased her
to discover how far she could drive him into making a fool or a cur of
himself, even as she might tease Count Peter’s leopards, playing on
their jealousy, or tantalising them by holding out food and snatching it
away between the bars. And Etoile’s ingenuity searched out an adventure
that should show her how far Gaillard could be trusted. She was shrewd
enough to realise that the man might be of use to her. Peter of Savoy
was but a child with a play-thing. It was worth Etoile’s discretion to
have a man upon whom she could rely.
Gaillard grew more importunate, and was for ever offering her his
homage. “Well,” said Etoile to herself, “let him prove himself, but not
in the matter of brute courage.” She knew that it is always more
dangerous for a man to be tempted than to be dared. And Etoile gave
Gaillard a tryst at dusk among the cypresses of Count Peter’s garden,
and turning on him like a cat challenged Gaillard to prove his faith.
No man was ever more astonished than the Gascon when she told him what
she would have him do. At first he hailed the devil of mischief in her,
but Etoile was in earnest, and flamed up when he laughed at her.
Gaillard shrugged his shoulders, and saw destiny stirring the live coals
of his desire.
“It would be simpler to bring you her head,” he said, wondering whether
Etoile knew more than she had betrayed. “Cut off the woman’s hair,
indeed! The folk yonder would crucify me, if they caught me harming
their saint.”
Etoile looked him in the eyes.
“You are for ever shouting at me to prove you my Gaillard. Here is your
chance. There is often some wisdom in a whim. You are to bring me her
wooden cross, too, remember, as well as a piece of her hair.”
Gaillard, uneasy under Etoile’s eyes, hid his more intimate thoughts
behind an incredulous obstinacy. He could have scoffed at the absurdity
of the thing. And yet, when he looked at it squarely, the adventure was
not so physically absurd. What did it mean but the robbing of one woman
to win another, the plundering of one treasure house to use the spoil to
bribe the keeper of other treasures! The fine rascality of the thing
delighted him. He threw back his head and laughed, though Etoile mistook
the meaning of his laughter.
“You have not the courage, Gaillard, eh? The man who sings under my
window must be something better than a troubadour fool.”
Gaillard bit his nails as though in the grip of a dilemma. The devil in
him applauded. He could have clapped himself on the back over the broad
humour of his cleverness.
“What a road to set a man on, my desire,” he said, looking rather sullen
over it. “There is a sin that they call sacrilege——”
Etoile clapped her hands.
“Cousin Gaillard with a conscience! Oh, you fool, am I worth a piece of
hair, and the wood of a cross?”
Gaillard spread his arms.
“Fool! Do you think that I want a man with weak knees to serve me, a boy
who empties half the cup and then turns sick?”
Gaillard made a show of faltering, rocking to and fro on his heels, and
looking at her under half closed lids.
“Assuredly,” said he, “you are a devil. And to win a devil I will rob a
saint.”
Denise’s inward vision helped her so little those days that she had no
foreshadowings of Gaillard’s treachery. He had shown none of his rougher
nature to her when he had ridden through the beech wood to her cell. And
Denise had let him talk to her once or twice, intent on discovering all
that had befallen Aymery since he had fallen into the hands of Peter of
Savoy. Only when Gaillard had tried to come too near had she closed the
door on him, frightened by the look in the man’s eyes, and yet feeling
herself very helpless in that solitary wood. For some days she had seen
nothing of the Goldspur folk, nor did she know whether Grimbald was dead
or alive. Gaillard had gone off sulking from the frost that she had
thrown out on him. Denise believed herself rid of the man. And yet in
her unrest, and loneliness, she thought of what Dom Silvius had said to
her, and was half persuaded to put herself within sanctuary at Battle.
Gaillard had told her nothing about Aymery, save that he was alive, and
waiting the King’s pleasure. And of all these happenings Aymery knew
nothing as he lay on the straw in a tower room at Pevensey. His wounds
were mending, for Peter of Savoy had some of the instincts of a
Christian, and had sent his own barber surgeon to minister to Aymery’s
needs. Yet the lord of Goldspur manor thought little of his own wounds
those days.
Though Aymery’s flesh was free from fever, the spirit chafed in him,
tossing and turning with an unceasing flux of thought. Those happenings
at the hermitage haunted him, and in the spirit he drank wine that was
both bitter and sweet, cursing himself for the helplessness that had
brought such things to pass, and laying to his own charge all the shame
that had fallen upon Denise.
Yet Aymery had other thoughts to trouble him, for those hours at the
hermitage came back more clearly and vividly, as though they had
happened in the twilight, and been remembered in the day. He felt again
the touch of Denise’s hands, saw the gleam of her hair, and caught the
mystery of tenderness that had flashed and faded in the deeps of her
eyes. Aymery would be very still in the narrow room, still as one who
lies dead with a smile on his lips, and in blind eyes a vision of things
splendid.
Sometimes Aymery would take to preaching to himself, growing sensible
and almost prosy, like a merchant looking methodically into his ledgers.
Without doubt Grimbald would be at Goldspur, the people would come back
to the village, they would think no shame of Denise, even if they heard
of the thing that she had attempted. The quiet life would begin again,
for there was no cause now for my Lord Peter to harry the countryside.
No harm might come of all these adventures, and to insure that end,
Aymery preached to himself still further.
“Heart of mine,” said he. “Denise is for no such worldly desires. True,
she has taken no sworn vows, but for all that, my friend, she is as good
as a nun. Take heed how you tempt sacrilege. For to the people Denise is
a lady of many marvels. She is not of mere clay, there is mystery
yonder—and her love is the love of the angels and the saints.”
In some such simple and sturdy fashion Aymery spoke often to his own
heart. Yet there was always an enchanted distance shining beyond these
vows of his like a sunset seen through trees. Flashes of passion
lingered that should not linger. A look of the eyes, a touch of the
hand, such things are not forgotten.
As for his own fortune, Aymery had no grip thereon; he could only eat
his food and shake up the straw of his bed for comfort. He was mewed
there, “waiting the King’s pleasure,” a useful phrase in the mouth of a
lord who shared with others in persuading the King. Aymery might have
stood at his window and shouted “Charter” till the barber surgeon
decreed that he was turgid and feverish, and should be bled. There was
no such thing as a rescue to be thought of. Presently he might scheme at
breaking out in other and grimmer fashion if they did not release him.
For there was still much talk in the land of “Stephen’s days,” and it
was said that when the saints saved a soul, the devil erected a castle.