They brought the Red Saint to Battle when the meadows were a sheet of
gold, and the thorn trees white above the lush green grass. Dom Silvius
and two of the Abbey servants came for her in the morning, bringing a
white palfrey to carry her on the way.
Denise had kept vigil all that night, praying, and striving to quiet a
heart that would not be quieted. And when the dawn had come she had gone
out into the garden and stood there silently, looking at the familiar
things that had mingled with her life. Yet very strange had garden,
hermitage, and woodland seemed to Denise that morning; the strangeness
of leave-taking was over them, and the sadness of farewell. Even the
rose trees that had been given her, and which she had cherished, had
seemed to catch her memory, with their thorns. Memories, memories! Some
infinitely dear; others, brutal and full of shame. The thatch would rot,
the walls crumble, the garden beckon back the wilderness. And a great
bitterness had fallen upon her, because of what she was losing, and of
what she had suffered, and yet might suffer. She had felt glad in
measure when she had heard the tinkling bells on Dom Silvius’s bridle as
he had come riding through the beech wood. Her love of the place had
hurt her. The very stones had cried out, and the pansies had scowled at
her as she went down the path.
At Battle there was joy that day, and a ringing of bells, for Abbot
Reginald had ordered it. And the song of the bells went over the
woodlands that gleamed or grew gloomy as the clouds drifted. The cuckoo
called; green herbs rose to the knees; the meadows rippled with gold;
the oaks were in leaf. Over the blue hills, and through slumbrous
valleys filled with haze, Silvius and Denise came to the Abbey lands.
Before her there, beside a wayside cross, Denise saw many people
gathered to welcome her, but her heart wished them away. She would have
come quietly to this new refuge, nor had she foreshadowed Dom Silvius’s
pageantry. Here were gathered the Abbey singing boys in white stoles,
the precentor with them; also a number of the Brethren, two and two,
solemn figures with hoods and hanging sleeves that seemed to catch the
shadows. All the townsfolk had streamed out from their boroughs, old and
young. Some carried green boughs, the girls had their bosoms full of
flowers, even toddling children had their posies.
Denise’s blood became as water in her when she saw all these people
gathered there, ready with their gaping awe, and their inquisitive
reverence. The bright colours of their clothes, the greens, blues, and
russets became a blur before eyes that felt hot with bitter tears. It
was all so much mockery to Denise. The precentor’s arms waved; the
singing boys moved off two and two to lead her, singing some quaint
chant. The people were down on their knees beside the road, all save the
girls who strewed their flowers before her. And Denise rode by on her
white palfrey, her eyes blind, her cheeks burning, a strangle of
humiliation in her throat, knowing what these people could not know, and
shamed to the heart because of it. She saw neither the silent faces
under the row of cowls, nor the green boughs that waved, nor the hands
that were stretched out to her by children and by women. Nor did she see
Dom Silvius’s subtle and happy face as he rode beside her, carrying a
wooden cross upon his shoulder.
So the white-stoled boys chanted, the bells rang and the slow and sombre
Brethren threaded their way between the green boughs and the colours.
The people followed on, and began to buzz and to chatter. “The Lady of
Miracles has come to dwell with us,” they said. Their mouths were full
of all manner of marvels, and each began to think of the advantage that
might be dreamed of.
“She shall keep the sheep rot from us,” quoth one.
“And cure the bone ache and the rheumatics,” said another.
A fat, pork butcher with a face the colour of swine’s flesh remembered
that his dame was to take to her bed in a month, and that he would have
her blessed by Denise. A charm against “the staggers” was the desire of
a carrier. Wuluric, a wax chandler, wondered whether his trade would be
increased. One old woman was eaten up with a sore that would not heal.
“I shall beg me a little of her spittle,” said she, “a holy virgin’s
spittle on a dock leaf is a wondrous cure.”
So they brought Denise to her cell near Mountjoye Hill, and from that
hour they began to call the little field below it “Virgin’s Croft.”
All this had happened the day before Oswald and Peter had told the Lord
of the Saw-pit the tale of the devil in the Goldspur beech wood.
According to Grimbald’s bidding they brought the pony to him at dawn,
helped him from his hiding-place, and set him upon the beast which bore
up bravely though Grimbald’s heels nearly ploughed the ground. They
started off through the woods, thinking to make Goldspur within two
hours, but their reckonings were without the sanction of heaven, for
Grimbald’s pony stumbled over a red ant’s mound, and threw the priest
heavily, for he was weak after his many days abed. And Grimbald lay on
his back with his arms spread out like the arms of a man crucified, and
Oswald and Peter stood and stared at him, and wondered whether he was
dead.
They knelt down and chafed his feet and hands until Grimbald came to his
senses again, and cheered them with the uttering of a few godly curses.
The men lifted him up, and for their clumsiness he cursed them further,
and bade them put him with his back against a tree. Grimbald, being a
heavy man, had broken his right collar-bone in the fall, and he was
still weak for such rough byplay.
“Give me a mouthful of water,” he said.
But neither Oswald nor Peter had water with them, nor was there a pool
near, nor a running brook. Grimbald looked at them with mighty disdain,
and Oswald, sneaking off, mounted his pony to get what he could. Five
miles rode Oswald that morning before he came to Burghersh village, and
begged a hornful of mead there, and a bottle of water. He bumped back
again at a rollicking canter, till his pony’s coat was as wet as if he
had swum a stream. Grimbald had been sick as a dog with the twist of the
fall, but the mead heartened him, and he bade Oswald splash the water on
his face. Then they bound his right arm to his body with their girdles,
and when he had rested awhile, he made them put him again upon the pony.
Nor was this mounting an easy matter, though approached in subtle and
backward fashion over the pony’s tail. Happily the beast had no kick in
him, being tired and subdued. So they had Grimbald astride, and started
off once more, the men walking one on either side, and steadying him as
they went.
What with the time wasted, and the slow travelling that they made,
evening was making the beech wood brilliant as they climbed up out of
the valley. The great sentinel trees that stood forward from the main
host cast purple shadows upon the grass. A small herd of red deer went
trotting into the green-wood, and there was a great silence save for the
sucking patter of their hoofs.
One corner of Denise’s glade was still steeped in sunlight when Grimbald
and his men came from under the beech trees. They could see that both
the wicket gate and the cell door stood open. Grimbald dismounted at the
wicket, and leaning on Oswald’s shoulder, went up the path towards the
cell. They were close to the threshold when a brownish thing flew forth
into their faces, screamed, and sped away on noiseless wings. It was
only a great owl, but Oswald had covered his face with his arm like one
who fears a blow.
“Assuredly it was the devil, Father!” said he, uncovering a pair of
round and credulous eyes.
Grimbald pushed on alone and entered the cell. One glance showed him
that it was empty. He saw the rough bed with the coverlet spread awry,
the wooden settle, the hutch where Denise had kept her clothes, the
great water-jar in the corner. In the cupboard he found nothing but a
dry loaf, a drinking horn, and the lamp that she had used. There seemed
no sign of violence, nor even of a hurried flight.
Grimbald stood there awhile considering, and then went out into the
gathering dusk. It seemed probable to him that Denise had not been in
the cell for some days, for was not the bread dry and the water-jar
empty? He walked about the garden, turning his beak of a nose this way
and that like an eagle, his weakness and his broken bone forgotten in
the unravelling of this coil. The little lodge built of faggots where
Denise had kept her tools and wood, enlightened him no further, and he
was ruffling his brows over it when he heard Oswald calling. The man had
caught all Grimbald’s spirit of unrest, just as a dog catches the moods
of his master, and searching the ground he had found hoof marks on the
grass.
Grimbald found him kneeling outside the wattle fence, pointing at
something that lay across a grass tussock, something that glistened like
a few shreds from a woman’s hair. Oswald went on his hands and knees
with his face close to the turf. He beat to and fro awhile, crawled
forward across the glade, lay almost flat a moment, and then started up
with an eager cry. He had found the fresh print of a horse’s hoofs in
the grass under the fringe of a tree whose boughs nearly touched the
ground.
Grimbald went to see what Oswald had to show him. Dusk was falling fast,
and they both stooped low over the marks in the grass. But Oswald
started up on his haunches and sniffed the air like a dog.
“Hist!”
His eyes dilated as he turned his head to and fro, staring into the
deepening gloom under the trees. Something was moving out yonder. They
heard one bough strike another, a dead branch crack, the faint brushing
of feet through leaves and grass. Oswald laid a hand on the knife at his
belt; his teeth showed between snarling lips.
But Grimbald caught him by the shoulder, and they turned back towards
the cell where Peter loitered at the wicket in the dusk, and the pony
stood with tired and drooping head. They were half across the glade when
a man came running after them, and they could see that he was armed.
Grimbald swung round instantly, and stood with head thrown back,
shoulders squared. A sword flashed not three paces from him before his
lion’s roar made the dusk quiver. The man’s sword dropped, and he came
to a dead pause.
“Grimbald!”
They caught each other as men do who love greatly, and for a moment
neither spoke. Then Aymery stood back, and picked up his sword.
“Denise? Is she here?”
Grimbald’s forehead became seamed with lines. His short silence betrayed
perhaps more than he could tell.
“We came to find her, brother,” he said.
“And she is gone?”
“The cell is empty.”
Aymery’s voice sounded harsh as the rasp of a saw. He swung his sword up
and let it rest upon his shoulder. Even in the dusk Grimbald saw that
glitter in the eyes, that fierce closure of the lips, that spreading of
the nostrils.
“The cell has been empty some days, I judge. I was troubled for the sake
of Denise, for I had heard a strange tale from Oswald here. We came, and
found nothing.”
Aymery swung to and fro with swift, sharp strides. Then his sword shot
out and pointed Oswald away.
“Go. Out of earshot.”
The man went. Aymery brought his sword back to his shoulder, stretched
out an arm, and showed Grimbald something coiled about his wrist.
“Look, a coil of her hair!”
Grimbald bent his head, and then straightened with a deep-drawn breath.
“This——?”
“They put it under my door at Pevensey, the dogs! Yesterday I broke out
and hid in the marshes. They gave chase, and I killed one of those who
followed, and took his horse and arms. That was to-day. Then I galloped
here.”
He tossed his head, shaking back his hair, his eyes hard as a frost.
Then he pointed towards the hermitage with his sword.
“What is there in yonder?”
He seemed to stiffen himself against the truth, challenging Grimbald to
tell him all.
“There is nothing, brother, but her bed, hutch and cupboard and the
like.”
“No more than that?”
“Nothing.”
Aymery bent forward slightly, and looked into Grimbald’s face. For a
moment they stared each other in the eyes as though asking and answering
silent questions. Then Aymery seemed to understand.
“There has been some devil’s work here,” he said, and Grimbald told him
Oswald’s tale, and showed where the hoof prints might be seen by
daylight.
“God knows the rest!” he said, smoothing his beard.
But Aymery was kneeling, and praying to the cross of his sword.