At Pevensey that June-tide Peter of Savoy discovered something that
concerned him, thanks to Gaillard’s foolhardiness, and the Gascon’s
boastful, passionate nature. There were bitter words between the Lady of
the Lute, and Peter of Savoy, though much of the bitterness was in
Etoile’s mouth, for the Count could be cold as a frost, when cheated.
“Madame,” said he, looking her coolly in the face, “it is every man’s
privilege to see that he is not fooled. Let us be merciful to one
another. You will find a horse at the gate.”
Now Etoile might have persuaded most men with her beauty, but in my Lord
Peter’s eyes there was a look that told her that he would use steel if
she made a mocking of his pride. She smothered her words, and dissembled
her wrath before him, for he was too cold and clever a man to be treated
as she would have treated Gaillard. “Go,” his eyes said to her, “and be
thankful in the going.” And Etoile hid her rage, and went, half
wondering the while whether some man had orders to stab her in the back.
Then Peter of Savoy sent for Messire Gaillard, but the Gascon had become
suddenly discreet, and betaken himself early to the stable.
His master snapped his fingers.
“Let the fool go,” he said. “Madame will need company on the road to the
devil.”
One of his gentlemen, a very young man, showed some concern for the Lady
of the Peacocks.
“Will you turn her out next to naked, sire?”
Peter of Savoy laughed in his face.
“Are you a fool, also, Raymond? Go with her if it pleases you, you will
have to fight the Gascon. God knows, I would prevent no man drinking
green wine.”
So they turned Etoile out of Pevensey, suffering her to take nothing
with her but the horse, the clothes she rode in, a little money, and
such jewels as were hers.
Peter of Savoy had not judged the case amiss, for if Raymond of the Easy
Heart had followed Dame Etoile some miles that morning, he would have
found Gaillard waiting for her under the shade of a beech wood near the
road. But at first Etoile would not look at the man, for her anger was
still hot in her because of all that had passed. She reviled Gaillard
without mercy, letting the whip of her tongue flay him as he rode along
beside her horse, half loving her and half hating her for her taunts and
for her fury.
Whether Gaillard spoke up well for himself, or whether Etoile began to
consider her necessity, it came about that she gave up mocking him, and
let him ride more peaceably beside her. Probably it was not what
Gaillard said, but what Etoile thought that brought them to softer
speaking. The woman looked at once to the future, and the future to her
was a forecasting of the importunities of self. Here was she, worse off
in pride than any beggar woman, she whom Peter of Savoy had brought with
pomp and homage out of the South. Gaillard had brought all this upon
her, and Gaillard seemed her necessity since she was set adrift in a
strange land. Perhaps she loved him a very little, with the treacherous,
transient love of a leopardess. For the present he must serve her. The
husk of to-day might be the gold shoe of the morrow.
Matters were so well mended between them that they halted to rest under
the shade of a tree. And there Gaillard knelt in his foolish, passionate
way, and swore many oaths on the cross of his sword. Etoile curled her
lip at him, and bade him save his breath. She was in no mood for such
philanderings, and had other thoughts in her head.
“Come, Messire Gaillard,” said she, “you and I must understand each
other if we are to travel the road together. Those who are turned out of
doors must learn to face rough weather.”
Gaillard showed his temper by pulling out a purse, and pouring the gold
in it at her feet.
“Such stuff is to be won. I will fight to win pay for you, my desire, as
never man fought before.”
Etoile touched the money contemptuously with her foot.
“Put it back again, you may need it.”
Gaillard shrugged, and humoured her. He spun one of the coins, caught
it, and balanced it on his thumb.
“A woman is made a wife for less,” he said.
“And kept, for less. Listen, fool, we are not a girl and a boy.”
She spoke to Gaillard a long while, looking in his eyes as she spoke. At
first Gaillard carried his head sulkily, but little pleased with what
she said. Presently his eyes began to glitter, he protruded his chin,
and once more his shoulders seemed ready to swagger. Before Etoile had
ended she had made him her man, ready to skip to the tune she piped.
“Splendour of God!” and he began to laugh. “That is a game after my own
heart. In a year the King shall give us the best of his castles. What
Fulk de Brauté did, I can do even better.”
He sprang up, happy, vain, and audacious, not thinking to read into the
deeps of Etoile’s eyes.
“You are a great man, my Gaillard,” she said. “You and I shall make our
fortunes without waiting for Peter’s pence.”
Hardly three leagues away from these two worldlings the Church took
cognizance of holier things, and sought to boast of a miracle at the
hands of Denise. More than a month had passed since the Lady of Healing,
as the folk called her, had knelt at midnight before the altar, and
offered her body to the glory of God. Dom Silvius, dreaming his dreams,
and chaffering over his ambitions, thought the time ripe for Denise to
prove her sanctity. For a month she had been left in solitude to commune
with the saints, save that an Abbey servant had daily brought her food
and drink. The thoughts of all the people turned to the thorn hedge and
the brown thatched cell that stood on the northern slope of Mountjoye
Hill; and human nature being self-seeking, especially in its prayers,
each soul had some hope of profiting by the miraculous hands of Denise.
While Etoile and Gaillard rode together in the course of adventure, Dom
Silvius came to Virgin’s Croft, and a servant with him bearing a young
child in his arms. Several women followed devoutly at the almoner’s
heels, keeping their distance because of Dom Silvius’s carefulness
towards the sex. The child was said to be possessed by a devil, and when
a fit took him he would fall down foaming, struggle awhile, and then lie
like one dead. The devil had brought him to such a pass, that he seemed
frailer and feebler after each seizure. The boy was the only son of his
mother, the brawny wife of a still more brawny smith, and they had great
hopes for the child now that Denise had come.
Silvius had the child laid before her door.
“A devil teareth him, Sister,” said he. “Your purity shall drive the
devil out.”
And they left the child with her, and went their way.
Now Denise was very miserable that day because of something in herself
that she had begun to fear, and she needed her own heart healing before
she might dream of healing others. The world remained with her, though
she was shut up as a saint, and the solitude and the loneliness had
preyed the more upon her mind. At Goldspur the wild woodland life and
the life of the people had been hers. Here she had only her own haunting
thoughts, and a voice that whispered that the virtue had gone out of
her, and that she no longer had the power to help and to heal.
It was with a kind of anguish that she watched over the child, taking
him to her bed, and praying that the devil of epilepsy might go forth.
All that day she watched and prayed, the boy lying in a stupor with wide
eyes and open mouth. So the night came, and Denise lit her taper, and
knelt down again beside the child. All that night she pleaded and strove
with God, beseeching Him to show His grace to her for her own sake and
the child’s.
Just before dawn the boy was taken with a strong seizure, crying out at
first, and then lying stiff and straight and silent as a stone image.
Denise took him into her lap, put her mouth to his mouth, and held him
against her bosom. As the dawn came, so the truth dawned also that the
boy was dead, dead in her lap despite her prayers. And a great horror
came upon her, as though God had deserted her, nor had the saints
listened to her prayers. A new shame chilled her heart. The virtue had
gone out of her, she felt alone with her own thoughts, and the dead.
When Dom Silvius and the women came some two hours after dawn they found
Denise seated upon the bed with the dead child in her lap. A kind of
stupor seemed upon her. She did not so much as move, but sat there with
vacant face.
“He is dead. Take him.”
That was all she said to Dom Silvius. The almoner took the boy, not able
to hide the mortification on his face as he carried the dead child to
his mother. Denise heard the woman’s cry, though the cry seemed far away
like a voice in a dream. Dom Silvius sought to comfort her, but comfort
her he could not, because she had hoped so much from Denise’s prayers.
And as is the way so often with the human heart, the woman went home in
bitterness and anger, holding the dead child to her breast, and
murmuring against Denise.
If Denise felt herself deserted of God, there was one Sussex man who did
not lack for inspiration, and whose heart was possessed by both God and
the devil. Aymery of Goldspur had ridden from the Thames to the Severn,
to join Earl Simon’s army that was on the march from the Welsh borders.
The great Earl was like a rock in a troubled sea, or a beacon that drew
all those who loved their land, and who strove for better things. The
King might call him a “turbulent schemer”; sneers never killed a man
like De Montfort. For the heart of England was full of turbulence, and
it seemed that England’s heart beat in Earl Simon’s breast.
Aymery, wild as a hawk, borne along by the storm-wind of his restless
manhood, grieving, exulting, torn by a great tenderness that could have
no hope, came within the ken of the People’s Earl. For it was Aymery’s
need that month to throw himself at the gallop into some cause, to live
in the midst of tumult, to let his face burn wherever the banners blew.
Perhaps fortune set her seal on him because he was ready to hazard his
life with the fierce carelessness of a man who had no traffic with the
future. Be that as it may, Simon’s host marched down from the West,
taking Hereford and Gloucester on its way, and Aymery had caught the
great Earl’s eye before they came to Reading Town.
Moreover, on the march from Reading to Guildford, over the heathlands
and wild wastes, there were skirmishes with the King’s men who had
pushed out from Windsor. Sharp tussles these, horsemen galloping each
other down, spear breaking on the hillsides, men slain on the purple
heather. Here the fiercer, bolder spirits were to be found, the young
eagles who would redden their talons. In one such skirmish Aymery
charged in, and rescued young John de Montfort who had been taken
prisoner through too much zeal and daring. At Reigate again there was
more fighting, though the place soon fell, yet Fortune pushed Aymery
into a lucky chance. Certain of the King’s men, hired ruffians most of
them, had barricaded themselves in a church, nor would they budge,
though an assault was given under the eyes of the Earl himself. Fortune
helped Aymery as she so often helps the man who is careless as to his
own end. He found the window of a side chapel unguarded, broke in, and
held his ground desperately till others followed, and the place was won.
Earl Simon himself came into the church, and knelt there before the
altar, close to where two of the King’s men lay dead in their blood.
When he had finished his prayer, he stood on the altar steps and called
for the man who had leaped down first into the church. And they put
Aymery forward, finding him standing behind a pillar, and so gave him
the glory.
Simon made ready to knight him there in the church, but Aymery begged
seven days to chasten himself, keep vigils, and be blessed with his
sword and shield. Simon looked at him steadily, for he was a man after
his own heart, grim, resourceful, dangerously quiet, and no boaster. He
granted Aymery the seven days, telling him to come to Tonbridge whither
the host went towards the siege of Dover.
“God first, man afterwards,” he said. “You have chosen as I would have
you choose.”
So Aymery slept that night at Guildford before the altar of the church.
When the dawn came he mounted his horse, and rode southwards, alone.