Denise kept watch in her room that night, sitting at her window that
overlooked the garden. She could hear old Fulcon moving restlessly to
and fro below, opening the door of the shop from time to time, and going
out into the street to listen. There was a full moon that night, and
though the town gleamed white under the chalk hills, the narrow
passage-ways and streets were in deep shadow.
About midnight a suggestion of secret stir and movement rose in the
town. Denise heard footsteps go stealthily by, as of people creeping
along under the shadow of the houses. Men stopped to whisper to one
another, and once she heard the sound of a sword dropped on the cobbles.
Fulcon had opened his shop door again, for she heard the creak of the
hinges. Then silence once more smothered the town, save for an
occasional flutter of sound, like the flicker of leaves on a still night
in summer.
Half an hour had passed, and Denise had begun to think that nothing was
to be done that night, when a burst of shouting rose in the very centre
of the town. So loud and sudden was it, that all the dead might have
risen with one great and exultant cry, a cry that set the moonlit night
vibrating with the thrill of a coming storm.
Then a bell began to ring, quickly, volubly, with an angry clashing to
and fro. Denise heard men go rushing by with a clatter of arms, laughter
and loud oaths. Soon, the whole town was in an uproar, and old Fulcon,
standing in the doorway of his shop, shouted and clapped his hands
together.
“Tear them, good lads, tear them.”
The wave of war had broken over the town, and went splashing and
plunging into every court and corner. Denise opened the door at the top
of the outside stair, and stood listening to the roar of the fight, the
wall of the next house throwing a black shadow across her and the stair.
She could hear shouts and rallying cries, and a sullen under-chant that
seemed made up of blows, curses, and the trampling of many feet.
Confused and shadowy figures went tearing hither and thither, appearing
and disappearing in the moonlight. A wounded and riderless horse
galloped by, screaming with terror. Presently the glow of a fire
coloured the sky with a blur of yellow light.
Denise was leaning against the jamb of the doorway when she saw a man
come running down the street, a naked sword in his hand, his shield held
up as though to hide his face. He stopped outside Fulcon’s shop,
dropping his shield arm, and looking about him cautiously, yet thanks to
the deep shadow he did not see Denise. She took him for Gaillard, and
was about to shut and bar the door, when she heard Fulcon’s voice shrill
and thin with an old man’s joy.
“Hervé, Hervé!”
The man had disappeared round the angle of the house, and Fulcon dropped
his voice to a cautious whisper. The door creaked and closed. Fulcon and
the soldier were together in the shop. Denise did not doubt that it was
Hervé his son who had come with the Londoners, and such of De Montfort’s
men who were with them that night.
Denise heard them talking together, the younger man’s voice loud and
rather aggressive, Fulcon’s a mere gentle and deprecating grumble. The
son seemed to be asking the father something, Fulcon to be putting Hervé
off with reasons and excuses. Before long the younger man’s voice
changed its tone. It began to plead and to persuade with an insinuating
light-heartedness that Denise did not trust. Old Fulcon’s grumble became
more persuadable. Denise heard a door opened, and then the sound of a
man’s voice singing.
The singing ceased. For some moments silence held, to be broken by a
sudden scuffling noise, and a voice, thick and choking, crying “Hervé,
Hervé!” A dog’s growl joined in, fierce and threatening, to end in a
piteous and wailing whimper. Something seemed to struggle to and fro
with inarticulate anguish and horror. Then silence fell. Nothing moved
in the room below.
Denise was caught by an impulse that took no account of self and of
fear. She went down the stairway and into the street, only to find the
door of the shop barred. Her hand was still on the latch when the door
opened. The man Hervé came out, huddling something under his surcoat,
his sword in the moonlight showing a shadowy smear. He stopped dead on
the threshold, staring at Denise, and then pushed past her roughly, and
fled up the street.
There was a light burning somewhere behind the shop, probably in the
bakehouse where Fulcon and dog Ban lived and slept. Denise went in,
wondering what she would find there, nor was she long in discovering
Messire Hervé’s handiwork. A candle was burning in a sconce on the wall,
and close to the great brick oven lay Fulcon, stretched upon his back,
one arm covering his face as though to shut out the sight of something,
or to break the force of a blow. Ban, in his death agony, had dragged
himself to his master, and crouched there with his forepaws on the
baker’s chest. They were dead, both of them, Fulcon and the dog. A black
hole in the wall showed above the place where Fulcon had fallen, and the
stone that had closed the hole lay close to the old man’s head. Fulcon
had hidden his hoard there, the money that he had scraped together with
infinite labour for the sake of Hervé his son. Denise could guess what
had happened. Fulcon had not been willing to part with the whole sum,
because of his dream that Hervé would need it when he came by
knighthood. And the son had watched the father go to the hiding-place in
the wall, and then had beaten him down, and taken all that he could
find.
A great horror of the place seized on Denise, with the two dead things
lying there, and the brutal violence of the deed making old Fulcon’s end
seem pitiful and ugly. The horror of it drew her out into the night, as
though to escape the sickly odour of freshly shed blood. Shuddering, she
went up to her room, put on her cloak, and tied such money as she had
left into a corner of her tunic. The grossness of the deed had shocked
her, so that she fled away like a child from a haunted wood, forgetting
such a thing as justice, and the fact that her tongue might drop a noose
over Master Hervé’s head.
Whither she was going, or what her plans were, Denise did not consider
for the moment. Blind panic carried her away from a thing that had
filled her with pity, and yet with disgust. She seemed hardly conscious
of the fact that fighting was still raging in the town. Houses were on
fire not fifty yards away, but the scattering sparks and the glare above
the house-tops seemed hardly to strike her senses. The burning houses
threw up a flare to match the horror that possessed her; such
surroundings seemed natural and to be expected after Hervé’s slaying and
robbing of his father.
Denise found herself at last in an open space where many people were
gathered, and torches threw up tawny light under the white face of the
moon. Here was much shouting, much running to and fro, much uproar and
exultation. Now and again a sword or axe flashed above the black mass of
humanity. As Denise came out of the darkness a party of men went
charging through, carrying ladders, hatchets, and iron bars. “Room,
room,” they shouted, for they were bent on stopping the spread of the
fire by pulling down some of the flimsy houses.
In the middle of the square sat a knight on horseback, a knot of torches
about him, and a pennon fluttering faintly above the smoke. The motion
of the crowd seemed towards the knight, as though he were Lord and King
of the Play. Denise was caught in the crowd and carried slowly towards
the knight on the horse.
He sat there bareheaded, calm and a little grim, the torchlight
flickering on his face, and on the harness that glittered under his
tawny surcoat. Men went to and fro carrying his commands, figures in
red, blue, and green, going and coming through the crowd. He spoke so
quietly that at a little distance no one heard his voice, but saw only
the lips move in his stern and watchful face.
It was Aymery, lord of Goldspur, Knight of the Hawk’s Claw, who had the
command of the Londoners who had rushed on Reigate. The crowd carried
Denise close to him, within an arm’s length of the circle of torches.
And with her nearness she seemed suddenly to awake with a great cry of
the heart that did not reach her lips.
“Aymery, Aymery!”
Her utter loneliness in the midst of that crowd seemed to her symbolical
of the past and of the future. She was just a child that moment, with
the passionate and pathetic longing of a child, touched with the deeper
instinct of the woman. And by chance Aymery looked straight at Denise,
so that it seemed to her that he was looking at her, and at her alone.
She did not realise that Aymery could see nothing but a moving mist of
faces because of the torch flare and the smoke. His face was so grim and
intense, and his eyes so hard, that Denise shrank back, believing that
he had recognised her, and that he looked at her as a thing of shame.
She hid her face from him with bitterness and humiliation, and crept
away into the thick of the crowd.
Of all that happened afterwards that night in Reigate town Denise had
but a confused memory. She remembered being hurried along by the crowd,
with shouting and tumult in the dark alleyways and streets. She had a
memory of being crushed against a group of panting and fiercely exultant
men who had blood upon their hot hands and faces. One of them had thrown
an arm round her and kissed her, laughing when she shuddered and broke
away. Once a couple of heads went dancing by on the points of spears,
heads that seemed to mock with dead, open mouths at the jeering crowd
below. Men were still fighting in one corner of the town, for Gaillard
had got the remnant of his followers together, and was struggling to
break through. Denise, still carried onwards, saw a black mass like the
mass of a town gate rising before her. She was pressed against a wall as
the crowd opened to let a file of mounted men ride through. She saw
Aymery in his surcoat of tawny gold go riding under the arch of the
gate, shield forward, sword swinging, his men crowding after him like
sheep through a gap. Then the rush of the people carried her through the
town gate into the space outside the barriers. And when the dawn came
she found herself a mile from Reigate town, sitting under a tree, with a
cold wind driving grey clouds across an April sky.