Denise soon found that the frost of Ursula’s displeasure had fallen on
her, and that she was to be humiliated and chilled into a proper state
of penitence. The temper of the nuns changed to her; they came and went
without speaking, their impassive faces making her feel like a child
that is in disgrace. It was Ursula’s wish that Denise should be
mortified in soul and body. Her food and drink were water and bread, and
lest the devil of comfort should remain to tempt her to be obstinate,
they took the straw and sheets from the bed, and let her lie upon the
boards.
Moral frost at such a season was like a severe night in the late spring.
Denise’s need was to lie in the sun, and to be smiled upon by kind eyes.
It was the warm humanism of life that she needed, sympathy, and a clasp
of the hand. The utter injustice of the humiliation that they thrust
upon her began to awake in her a spirit of revolt. Had she not suffered
because of her innocence, and borne what these women had never had to
bear?
Why should she fall at Ursula’s feet, and pretend to a penitence that
she did not feel? And Aymery, too, was she to believe that he had spoken
as Ursula had said? If that was the truth, and why should Ursula lie,
she, Denise, would pray that she should never be driven to look upon his
face again.
Yet her bodily strength increased despite her spiritual unhappiness. The
wound in the breast had healed, and she had been able to leave her bed,
and move slowly round the room, steadying herself against the wall. And
as her strength increased the instinct of revolt grew in her till she
began to understand the mocking spirit of Marpasse. To be reviled,
humiliated, made to crawl in the dust, to regain a little grudging
respect by cringing to her sister women, and by pretending to emotions
that she did not feel! These good souls seemed set upon making the
re-ascent to cleanliness hard and unlovely. And Denise, like Marpasse,
felt a passionate impatience carrying her away.
Meanwhile Ursula, magnanimous lady, had taken pains to spread Denise’s
story through the convent, and the two nuns who had nursed her had been
women enough to know that Denise had borne a child. Ursula had issued
her commands; the contumacious devil was to be driven out of Denise; she
was to be humbled, and taught to pray for penitence and grace. The nuns
who served Denise now opened their mouths once more, and became oracles
whose inspiration had been caught from Ursula’s lips.
One would enter with the water-jar, set it under the window, and retreat
without so much as glancing at Denise. She would pause at the door, and
let fall some pious platitude that might act like yeast upon the
perverse one’s apathy.
“Flames of fire shall subdue those who are stubborn in sin.”
“While the vile flesh lives, the soul is in peril. Mortify the body
therefore, that the soul may be saved.”
“A proud heart means death. Let your pride be trampled under your feet.”
“Live, repent, and sin no more.”
Such exhortations spaced out Denise’s day, but her obstinacy and her
bitterness of heart increased till she was nauseated by their piety, and
filled with a gradual scorn. Twice Ursula visited her, to depart with
the impatience of one whose words were wasted. Had Ursula suffered but
once in life, it might have been so humanly simple for her to understand
Denise. On the contrary, she found the victim less ductile than at
first. Nearly three weeks had passed, and Ursula decided that the woman
was well in body, but utterly diseased in heart. The Prioress began to
bethink herself of sharper measures. Ursula believed that she had the
devil in arms against her, and that the battle was for Denise’s soul.
It was the night of May-day, the day of green boughs and garlands, and
Denise had stood at her window and watched the sun go down, thinking of
the May a year ago, and of her cell in the beech wood above Goldspur
manor. The sun had set about an hour when Denise heard footsteps in the
gallery, and saw the light of a lamp shining under the door. Ursula came
in to the dusk of the room, shielding the lamp from the draught with the
hollow of her hand. Her austere face was hard and white, and from one
wrist hung a scourge set with burs of wire.
Ursula had brought two of her strongest nuns with her. She set the lamp
on a sconce, and was as abrupt and practical as any pedagogue. She bade
the women close the door, and commanded Denise to strip and stand naked
for a scourging.
“Since words will not move the evil spirit in you,” she said, “we must
try sharper measures.”
Denise put her back against the wall.
“Have a care how you touch me. I am not a dog to be whipped.”
Ursula told the two nuns to take her by force, and to strip her of her
clothes. But Denise was no longer the patient saint bowing her head
before her destiny. She did what Marpasse would have done in such a
storm, and taking the water-jar that stood by her, held Ursula and the
nuns at bay.
“Off!” she said, “I have some pride left in me. I have eaten your bread,
but I will not bear your blows.”
She was so tall and fierce, and untamable, that Ursula was the more
convinced that Denise had a devil in her, and a devil that was not to be
treated with disrespect. She called the nuns off, not relishing an
unseemly scuffle, and having some reverence for a stone water-pot that
was not to be softened by formulæ. It would be easier to catch Denise
asleep, tie her wrists, and scourge her till she showed some penitence.
“Woman,” she said, “the evil spirit is very strong in you. But God and
my Saint helping me, I will subdue it in due season.”
But Ursula, whose piety was given to stumbling rather ridiculously over
the hem of her own gown, had no second chance of scourging the devil out
of Denise. For Denise had suffered St. Helena’s hospitality
sufficiently, and she made her escape that night after losing herself in
dark passage-ways and listening at doors which she hardly dared to open.
She made her way into the court at last, and found the old portress
sleeping in her cell beside the gate. The key hung on a nail behind the
door, and Denise, who had brought a lighted taper that she had found
burning in the chapel, took the key and let herself out into the night.
Denise had made her escape not long before dawn, choosing the time when
she knew that the nuns would be in their cells between the chapel
services. She waited for the grey dusk of the coming day, sitting under
an oak tree on the hill above the convent. And when the birds awoke and
set the woodlands thrilling, Denise sat counting the last of the money
Abbot Reginald had thrown down at her that winter night, and which
Marpasse had sewn up for her in her tunic. Denise thought of Marpasse as
she broke the threads and counted out the money into her lap, for
Marpasse seemed the one human thing in the wide world that morning.
Life stirred everywhere when Denise started on her way with half a loaf,
some beggarly coins, and her old clothes for worldly gear. Brown things
darted and rustled in the underwood and grass. A herd of deer went by in
the dimness of the dawn, and melted like magic shapes into the woodland
as the great globe of fire came topping the eastern hills. The light
fell on a dewy world, a world of well-woven tapestry dyed with diverse
and rich colours. And Denise saw bluebells in the woods, and thought
again of Marpasse and her blue gown. Marpasse would understand. She
tried not to think of Aymery that morning.
Denise struck a track that came from nowhere, and led nowhere so far as
she was concerned. She went on aimlessly till noon, meeting a few
peasant folk who took her for a pilgrim or a beggar. And by noon her
body that had lain so many days in bed, cried loudly for a truce under
the May sun, and Denise, finding a pool by the roadside, knelt down
there and drank water from her palms. The sun had dried the grass, and
lying at full length she was soon asleep, with the brown bread held in
one white hand.
The bank hid Denise from anyone who passed along the road, and a knight
on a black horse came by as she slept. The sound of his horse’s hoofs
woke Denise. She raised herself upon one elbow, looked over the bank to
see who passed, and then sank down again out of sight. The clatter of
hoofs died in the distance, but Denise lay there and stared at the
clouds in the sky. It was Aymery who had ridden past to hear from Ursula
of Denise’s life or death. But Denise let him go, hardening her heart
against the thought of any man’s pity. She would not be beholden to
Aymery after the words that Ursula had spoken.
So the Knight of the Hawk’s Claw came to the convent that day in May,
hardening himself against all possible hope, and prepared to hear
nothing but the tale of Denise’s death. Ursula received him in her
parlour, Ursula who had set her final condemnation upon Denise because
of the perversity and ingratitude she had shown in escaping like a thief
in the night. And Ursula cursed Denise before Aymery’s face, pouring out
her indignation against the woman, as though Aymery would sympathise
with her over Denise’s “contumacy and corruption.”
Ursula had no eyes to see the change that had come over the face of the
man before her. She was so busy with her denunciations that she did not
mark the wrath rising like a cloud on the horizon. Aymery’s silence may
have deceived her, for he heard her to the end.
He looked hard at Ursula, and the gleam in his eyes would have made a
less confident woman wince.
“So you thought that she needed scourging!”
Ursula was very dense that day, refusing to see what a tangle she was
weaving.
“The scourge is an excellent weapon, messire,” she babbled, “my own back
has borne it often, and to the betterment of my soul. But this girl had
no gratitude, and no sense of shame. She was obstinately blind, and
would not see. I sought to move her by forcing your compassion upon her,
and showing her that it was your desire that she should mend her life.”
Aymery looked at Ursula as though tempted to strangle the consequential
voice in that thin, austere throat.
“You told her that, madame!”
“I held her shame before her eyes, for the tale of her innocence was not
to be believed. Her whole character contradicted it.”
“And she has fled from you.”
“With ingratitude, and cunning.”
“Before God, I do not blame her.”
He stood motionless a moment, looking down on Ursula with such fierce
contempt, that, like many stupid people, she wondered how the offence
had risen. Her eyes dilated when Aymery drew his sword. Her mouth opened
to call the nuns who waited in the passage, but his laugh reassured her,
the laugh that a man bestows on a thing beneath his strength.
“Madame,” he said, “you have nothing to fear from me but the truth. You
see this sword of mine”—and he held the hilt towards her, grasping it
by the blade.
Ursula stared at him as a timid gentlewoman might stare at a rat.
“That hilt is in the form of a cross, madame; I would beg you to look at
it. You may have heard that the Cross has some significance for
Christians.”
Ursula began to recover her dignity. It was borne in upon her suddenly
that this man had stern eyes, and an ironical, mocking mouth. And Ursula
began to dislike those eyes of his.
“Your words are beyond me, messire,” and her normal frostiness struggled
to pervade the atmosphere.
Aymery looked at her as a man might look at something that was very
repulsive and very ugly.
“Madame,” he said quietly, “if you have slain a soul, God forgive you;
there are so many fools in the world, and so many of them are godly.
There was no sin in Denise that called for the sponge full of vinegar,
the scourge, and the spear.”
Ursula opened her mouth, but no sound came. Aymery put up his sword, and
turned towards the door.
“I would rather have left her,” he said, “in the hands of the woman you
have called an harlot. Nor need your zeal have put lies into my mouth.
Suffer me, madame, to recommend you a saint. St. Magdalene might give
you the religion that you lack.”
And he went out from her, leaving Ursula speechless, and amazed at his
insolence.
Yet Aymery’s wrath was a greater and nobler wrath than Ursula’s as he
mounted his horse and rode out into the world, that world for which
Christ had bled upon the cross. Bitterly plain to him was Denise’s
spirit of revolt, and her passionate discontent with Ursula’s morality.
What was more, this woman had put her taunts and her homilies into his
mouth, and made him harangue and edify Denise! Aymery cursed Ursula for
a meddlesome, cold, and self-righteous fool. He would rather have left
Denise in Marpasse’s hands, for Marpasse had a heart, and no belief in
her own great godliness.
And Denise, what would befall her now that they had driven her like an
outcast into the world? He was gloomy and troubled because of her,
feeling that she had been wounded the more deeply than she had ever been
wounded by Marpasse’s knife. He remembered too how Denise had sought
death in the woods that day. The impulse now might be more powerful,
seeing that she had suffered more, and had no friend.
Ride after her into the blind chance of the unknown he could not yet,
for Aymery was pledged to Earl Simon and his brethren-in-arms. The
Barons’ host had gathered at London; they were on the eve of marching
southwards into Sussex, for the King was threatening the Cinque Port
towns which were loyal to Earl Simon. Aymery had seized these two days
to ride and discover the truth about Denise. His knighthood was pledged
to the man who had knighted him, nor could he break the pledge to chase
a wandering shadow.