Since the fight at Goldspur Father Grimbald had lain hidden in a saw-pit
on one of the forest manors, the swineherd who had hidden him being also
woodman and sawyer when his hogs were rooting amid the beech mast and
the acorns. Saw-dust with heather spread over it made none so miserable
a bed, and the swineherd had fortified Grimbald against wind, rain, and
the inquisitiveness of enemies by covering the mouth of the pit with
faggots. For a month Grimbald had lain there, his shirt and cassock
clotted to great wounds that no man dared to touch. At first a fever had
taken him, and he had roared and stormed at night like some sturdy saint
at grips with Apollyon in a corner of hell. The swineherd had banked up
the faggots to deaden the sound, praying God to abate Father Grimbald’s
fever, for a dozen of Gaillard’s men were camped that very night not two
furlongs from the saw-pit. Yet Grimbald’s shouts had come rumbling out
of the earth, “Strike, strike, St. George!” “Shine, brown bills, and
beat the Frenchmen into the sea!” And so strenuous and bellicose had the
fever grown in him, that the swineherd, staking purgatory or peace on a
pail of water, had lifted the faggots and doused Grimbald to cool him.
Nor had any harm come of it, but rather good, for Grimbald had grown
less fiery, and fallen into a deep sleep.
About the time that Dom Silvius made his second pilgrimage to the beech
wood above Goldspur, Grimbald was so well recovered of his wounds that
he could sit up on his bed, and take his food with great relish. Being
also an industrious soul he made the swineherd throw him down billets of
seasoned oak, a knife, and a hatchet, and set himself to carve heads of
the saints for decorating the corbels of his little church. But either
St. Paul and St. Simon were in an ill humour, or Grimbald knew little of
his craft, for the saints emerged pulling most villainous faces, sour,
evil, and grotesque, with flat noses, and slits for eyes. So Grimbald
gave up his struggle with them, and heaved them up out of the pit to be
burnt, and took to pointing and feathering arrows, for your woodlander
was often his own fletcher.
The flesh prospering so well with him, and the end of his sojourn in the
saw-pit seeming near, Grimbald sent the swineherd for some of the
Goldspur folk. The very same evening the swineherd brought in the two
men Oswald and Peter, both of them full to the brim with gossip, and
ready to empty themselves at their spiritual father’s feet. Grimbald sat
on his bed in the pit, whittling a yew bough with his knife; Oswald and
Peter squatted side by side on a faggot like a couple of solemn brown
owls on a bough.
“Father,” quoth Oswald, “we have seen the devil in St. Denise’s wood.”
Peter chimed in to add to the impression.
“A black devil with a black horse that breathed fire and smoke.”
“And he came and went like the wind, Father!”
Even such honest men as these had imaginations wherewith to decorate an
experience. Grimbald’s face looked the colour of brown earth in the
darkness of the pit, and to Oswald and Peter his eyeballs seemed to
glare like two white pebbles at the bottom of a well.
“And you ran away from this devil?” he said. “Yes, you ran, my sons, as
fast as your legs could carry you. When shall I come by a Christian who
is not afraid to stand on his own feet, and to astonish us by making the
devil run?”
Though Grimbald scoffed at them, the two men knew his methods. No one
had anything to fear from Grimbald so long as he looked him straight in
the face and spoke the simple truth. But a liar or a fawner were likely
to be thrashed, since Grimbald’s chastening of souls was not wholly a
matter of the tongue. He used his hands like a Christian, and for the
love of their flesh he did not spare them.
“Assuredly, Father, it was the devil we saw in the beech wood. Night was
just falling——”
“So! And he was very black was he? Just as black as charcoal, and had
two live coals for eyes?”
The good man’s grim irony drove neither Oswald nor Peter from his
breastwork of conviction.
“We would take oath it was the devil, Father.”
“Oswald, Oswald, you seem too familiar with the face of Satan! You are
too fond of the mead-horn, my man.”
The accused one accepted the charge meekly, knowing that it was true in
the abstract, and that Father Grimbald knew it, for there had been an
occasion of second baptism in a somewhat dirty ditch. But Oswald was
stolidly sure of his innocence on the night in question, nor had he as
yet finished his confessions.
“I had no mead froth on my beard that day, Father,” said he. “Whether it
was the devil or no we saw, we saw him with these eyes of ours. And he
rode like a black north wind. But what is worse, Father, we have never
had sight of our saint since then.”
This was news that struck the irony out of Grimbald’s mouth. He laid the
yew bough aside on the heather, and became at once the demi-god, and the
seer.
“What is that you are saying, man Oswald? Why are you troubled for
Denise?”
Oswald looked like a wise dog that has come by kicks undeservedly, and
is now to be commended.
“The door of the cell is always shut,” he said, “and never a word or a
sound have we now from our lady. What is more, Father, the stuff we took
there two days ago was still by the wicket when one of the lads went up
this morning.”
Grimbald looked thoughtful.
“Have you tried the door?” he asked.
“We durst not, thinking she might be in a vision or in prayer.”
“Did you call to her?”
“Not above asking her blessing, Father, and telling of the food, and
news of you. And it was four days ago that her voice answered us, but
since then we have heard no sound.”
Grimbald stood up slowly on the bed, propping himself with his arms
against the walls of the pit.
“God helping me, I could sit a horse,” he said. “This must be looked to.
Oswald, my son, you had a fat pony. Bring the beast here to-morrow, at
dawn.”
“It shall be done, Father.”
And they departed with his blessing, but Grimbald was awake all that
night, troubled lest any harm should have befallen Denise.
“Devil!” thought he. “Oswald’s devil was one of good human kidney, or I
have no sense of smell. Satan need not heat himself with galloping in
these parts. We have enough of him in the flesh.”
Meanwhile at Pevensey, Aymery of Goldspur had thrown the preaching part
of himself aside, for that which Gaillard had thrust under his door had
stung the manhood in him, and left the poison of a great fear in his
blood. The hair was Denise’s hair; he could have sworn to that on the
relics of the Cross. How had they come by it, here in Pevensey? Was
Denise also a caged bird, and if not, what had happened in that beech
wood, where the great trees built dark winding ways with the sweep of
their mighty branches? Aymery’s thoughts plunged in amid those trees,
grimly and passionately, yet with the sheen of a woman’s hair luring him
on like the mystic light from the Holy Grael. Had evil befallen her
because of him? What devil’s mockery might there be in the way the truth
had been thrust into his ken! Had Gaillard any hand in it? And at the
thought of Gaillard, Aymery twisted Denise’s hair about his wrists, and
yearned to feel those hands of his leaping at the Gascon’s throat. God!
What did it avail him to pretend that he feared for Denise as he would
have feared for a sister? She was the ripe earth to him, the dawn of
dawns, the freshness of June woods after rain. He could cover his eyes
no longer as to what was in his heart.
To break out into the world, to gallop a horse, to feel his muscles in
their strength, that was the fever in him, the restless fever of a
chained hawk beating his wings upon a perch. To be out of this hole in a
stone tower, but how? He had no weapons, not so much as a piece of wood,
or the rag of a linen sheet. They had taken his leather belt, but left
him his shirt, tunic and shoes, and he laughed despite his grimness, for
they might as well have left him naked. The man who brought him bread
and water, filled a cracked flask for him, and took the water-pot away.
And what a weapon that great earthen jar would have made, swung with the
verve and sinew of a young man’s arm.
Impatient with his own impotence, he stood at the narrow window looking
seawards, drawing Denise’s hair to and fro between his fingers as he
would have drawn a swath of silk. A thought came to him, but at first he
revolted from it as from a piece of sacrilege. His sturdy sense saved
him, however, from being fooled by a shred of sentiment, and he twisted
the strands of hair till he had wound them into a fine and silken cord.
Wrapping the ends about his wrists he looped the cord over his bent
knee, tried the strength thereof, and smiled as though satisfied.
That evening there was the sound of a scuffle when the bread bringer
drew back the bolts and pushed the heavy door open with his foot. The
fellow had made light of his duty of late, for Aymery had seemed quiet
and tame, and still feeble after his wounds. He had marched in
perfunctorily while Aymery waited for him behind the door. There was the
crash of the pitcher on the stones. The jailer’s knees gave under him;
he sank sideways driving the door to with his weight.
Aymery had no wish to end the poor devil’s life, so he left him there to
get back breath and consciousness, after robbing him of his rough cloak
and the knife he carried at his girdle. Pushing the body aside, he swung
the door to cautiously, and shot the bolts. Almost instinctively he had
wound Denise’s hair about his wrist, and as he descended the winding
stair he tossed the man’s cloak over his shoulders, turned up the hood,
and kept the knife hidden but ready for any hazard. Going down boldly he
came out into the inner court, crossed it and reached the gate without
being challenged by any of the men who loitered there.
Aymery’s heels were itching for a gallop, but he held himself in hand,
and walked on coolly, whistling through his teeth. He was under the
gateway, through it, and crossing the bridge. Someone called to him, but
he laughed, crowed like a cock, and gave a wave of the hand.
The outer court with its great garden still lay before him, and he
followed the paved track, praying God to keep all officious fools at a
distance. Fifty paces, twenty paces, ten paces, and he was at the outer
gate, with the cypresses black behind him, and no betrayal as yet. The
gate still stood open, though it was closed at sunset, and to Aymery it
was an arch of gold, a dark tunnel way with a tympanum cut from the
evening sky.
He was half through it, when a lounger at the guard-room door lurched
forward and caught him roughly by the cloak. It may have been a mere
challenge to horse-play or the grip of a swift suspicion. Aymery did not
wait to decide the matter, but struck the man across the face with the
knife, broke loose, and ran.