Marpasse of the blue gown had fallen in with old friends on the way to
Tonbridge, where the King had taken the castle of Gilbert de Clare, and
these same friends, ragamuffins all of them, were following the
glittering chaos of the King’s host on the road to the sea. There would
be plunder to be had if St. Nicholas would only persuade King Henry to
take and sack the Cinque Port towns; and all the beggars, cut-throats
and strollers in the kingdom rolled in the wash of the King’s host,
terribly joyful over the happenings that might give them bones to pick.
The passing of fifty thousand armed men, to say nothing of the baggage
rabble, was no blessing to the country folk whom it concerned. Lords,
knights, men-at-arms, bowmen, scullions, horse-boys, and harlots went
pouring southwards in the May sunshine, ready to thieve whatever came to
hand. King Paunch ruled the multitude, for the host ate up the land, and
called like a hungry rookery “more, more!” And since a hungry mob is an
ill-tempered one when once its patience has leaked out of its tired
toes, the King’s followers began to grow very rough and cruel before
they had marched five leagues. Hunger does not stand on ceremony, and
such brutal things were done that the country folk took to the woods and
swore death to any straggler. Bludgeon, and axe, and bow took toll of
the King’s host, and many a rowdy was caught and left grinning at the
heavens, with his stiff toes in the air.
Now Marpasse and her friends were as hungry as the rest, and coming as
they did, like fowls late for feeding time, their genius for theft was
developed by necessity. Yet it is not so easy to steal when everything
eatable has been stolen, and when a crossbow bolt may come burring from
behind a wood-stack. None the less, Marpasse and her company were in
luck not ten miles from Tonbridge Town. They saw a sow feeding on the
edge of a beech wood close to the road. There was much pannage in the
neighbourhood, and Marpasse and her comrades tucked up their skirts, and
went a-hunting, and were blessed with the sight of the black backs of a
whole drove of swine.
Great and grotesque was the joy that hounded and hunted through the
beech wood, a mob of men-at-arms, beggars, boys, and women trampling the
bluebells and the brown and crackling bracken. They shouted, laughed,
and cursed as they rounded up the swine, and chased them hither and
thither amid the trees. God Pan and his minions went tumbling over tree
roots after the black beasts that bolted, and squealed, and flickered
like grotesque shadows under the boughs of the beeches.
Marpasse, her skirts tucked up, and her knife flashing, shouted and ran
with the lustiest till the sweat rolled into her eyes. As she stood to
get her breath, a fat sow came labouring by with a young pig close to
her haunches. Chasing them came a long, loose-limbed boy, his hair over
his face, his mouth a-gape, his thin legs bounding, striding, and
ripping through the bracken. He came up with the chase close to
Marpasse, and threw himself on the young porker as a leopard might leap
upon a deer. Brown boy and black hog rolled in a tangle into a clump of
rotting bracken, and Marpasse, holding her sides, laughed at the tussle,
and then ran on after the sow.
The sow, grunting and labouring, led Marpasse away from the rout, and
back towards the road. Marpasse, intent on bringing the dame to book for
supper, ran on till she came suddenly into a glade with a slant of
sunshine pouring through it, and the open land and the road showing at
one end thereof. Marpasse followed the sow no farther, for she had
stumbled on another adventure that showed more importunity.
Marpasse saw a woman in grey leaning against the trunk of a tree. Not
ten paces from her stood an old black boar, with the broken shaft of a
spear protruding from one shoulder, and a broad trickle of blood running
down his left fore-leg into the grass. The beast tottered as he stood,
swinging his head from side to side, his little eyes malevolent, his
wiry tail twisting with savage spite.
Marpasse gave a whistle, and looked like one who has run against a
ghost. She saw the boar make a dash at Denise, Denise, who was playing
hide-and-seek for her life with him round the tree. The beast missed
her, and came to earth, only to struggle up, lurch round, and charge
once more.
Marpasse clutched her knife, and made a dash for the tree. The boar had
missed his blow again, and stood, resting, still dangerous despite the
spear head in his side. Marpasse gained the tree with its roots clawing
the soil. She gasped out a few words to Denise like a breathless swimmer
joining a comrade on a rock in the thick of a boiling sea.
“May marvels never cease! You, child, you, as I shall live to kill pigs!
Lord, now, keep an eye on this limb of a black satan!”
She peered round the tree trunk, and pushed Denise round it as the boar
charged again, white tusks showing, snout bloody, his little eyes like
two live coals. He swerved and missed Marpasse, but she was on him
before he could recover and turn. The knife went home where six inches
of steel might reach the heart, and Marpasse, springing aside to escape
the mad side slash of the tusks, saw that the gentleman had the _coup de
grâce_. He rolled over, struggled up again on his belly, scraped the
earth with his fore trotters, and then wallowed amid the beech leaves.
Marpasse sat down at the foot of the tree, panting and laughing, her
brown face red and healthy. She threw the knife aside, caught Denise by
the skirt, and pulled her down lovingly into her lap.
“God alive,” she gasped, “what a girl it is! Am I always to be rescuing
you from Gascons, and from pigs?”
Marpasse was quite joyous. She kissed Denise on the mouth, and then held
her away from her, and looked at her with blue eyes that shone.
“Heart of mine, is it you in the flesh, my dear? Why, we left you for
dead, Sir Aymery and I! And mightily gloomy he was too, poor lording. To
think of it, that I should fall on you in the middle of a wood, while I
was chasing an old sow!”
Though she was very voluble, Marpasse’s eyes were scanning Denise as one
looks at a friend after a long sickness. Marpasse’s eyes were very
quick. She could have told the number of wrinkles on Denise’s face, had
there been any. But Marpasse saw something there much more sinister than
wrinkles.
“Well, sister,” said she, “here is indeed a miracle. But I am not so
strong as the lord on the black horse, so please to sit on the grass and
let me get my breath. Now for the story. How did St. Helena and all the
saints heal you, and how do you come to be here?”
Denise slipped aside from Marpasse, and sat down at the foot of the
tree. It was a hard, brooding look about her eyes that had struck
Marpasse. Things had not gone with pious facility. Marpasse could tell
that by Denise’s silence, and by the half-sullen expression of her face.
“Your knife turned between my ribs, Marpasse,” she said, “I was a fool
to bungle so easy a stroke; I had only to lie still, eat and sleep.”
Marpasse clapped her hands.
“This is gratitude, and I swaddled you up like a baby! How is it that
you are not still lying abed, and eating and sleeping? You look thin,
eh, and what does Sir Black Horse know about it all? Lord, but what a
lot of running away you have done in your life! So you fell out with the
pious folk, was that it? I could never abide the smell of a nun.”
She pinched Denise’s cheek, watching her narrowly, for Marpasse had
learnt to use her wits, and the philosophy that she had learnt upon the
road.
“Well, my dear, what happened?”
“I ran away.”
“What a soldier you would make! Madame Ursula was too good a woman. They
are all too good for us, my dear; that is where the mischief comes, they
tread on us, and expect us to be meek and grateful.”
Marpasse grew serious and intent. She looked steadily at Denise, and
then reached out and caught her hands.
“No more jesting,” she said, “look in my face, sister. I have learnt to
read a face.”
She held both Denise’s hands, and drew her a little towards her. For a
moment they were silent. Then Marpasse pressed Denise’s hands, sighed,
and allowed herself a bluff round oath.
“Curse them,” she said, “curse their godliness. So you told them the
whole tale.”
Denise hung her head.
“Messire Aymery told Ursula.”
“The fool! Too much in love to be wise, I warrant. Come now, my dear,
love is great of heart, but love is blind, and love talks when it should
shut its mouth. Show me the way out of the wood.”
She drew Denise close to her, so that her head was on her shoulder. Yet
for the moment Denise seemed cold and mute. Marpasse kissed her on the
mouth, and the one woman’s lips unsealed the other’s soul. Before long
Marpasse had drawn the whole tale from her, and Marpasse looked fierce
over it, and yet more fierce when Denise betrayed the bitterness that
had poisoned her heart.
“God in Heaven, child,” she broke in suddenly, “do you know what you are
saying?”
“I know what you are, Marpasse. They were ready to whip me; I had no
pity.”
Marpasse set her teeth.
“This life, the devil pity you! For me, yes, but you! I have a brazen
face, a conscience like leather, and talons that can tear. But you! Bah,
you would kill yourself in a month.”
She thrust Denise away from her, as though thrusting her from some
influence that was dangerous and to be feared. Denise did not resist
her, but sat hanging her head, mute and obstinate, her eyes sweeping up
now and again to the face of the woman beside her.
“I am weary of it all,” she said, “they made the soul sick and bitter in
me.”
Marpasse sat with her chin on her fists, her forehead one great frown.
“Ssh, and you thought of me, and the road! Am I such a damned witch as
that!”
“You do not curse, and preach.”
Marpasse turned on her with sudden, fierce sincerity.
“Yes, I do not preach, because I am down in the ditch, but I know what
the mud is like, and I do not want you with me. Bah, let me think. What
shall I tell you, that you had better be as dead as the black boar
there, before you take to the road.”
Marpasse hugged her knees with her arms, staring straight before her,
and working her teeth against her lower lip. Denise kept silence,
hanging her head, and flying in the face of her own bitterness like a
bird that dashes itself against a window at night.
Marpasse awoke suddenly from her musings, and caught Denise by the hood
of her cloak. She twisted her hand into the grey cloth, held Denise at
arm’s length, and threw one word straight into her face.
Denise’s eyes flashed. She reddened from throat to forehead, while
Marpasse watched her as a physician might watch the workings of some
violent drug. Presently the brown eyes faltered, and grew clouded with
the infinite consciousness of self. Marpasse burst into a loud, harsh
laugh. The next moment she had her arms about Denise.
“Soft fool, the word stings, eh? You are innocent enough; it is all
temper, and anger and discontent. Your conscience answered to the sting.
I throw your own word in your face, and you redden like an Agnes. No,
no, you are not made to be one of us, thank God!”
Denise felt this big woman’s brown arms tightly about her. A great spasm
of emotion had gathered in Marpasse’s throat. She held Denise with a
straining, inarticulate tenderness, as a mother might hold a child.
“Heart of mine,” said she, “God forgive me for throwing that word in
your face. It was the slap of a wet cloth on the cheek of one about to
faint. Look up, sister, listen to me, by the Holy Blood, I have the
truth to tell.”
Marpasse was trembling with the passion in her.
“Take my knife again, Denise, before that! Do I not know, stroller and
slut that I am! No, no, not that, not the dregs of other folks’ cups,
not the shame and the sneers, and the curses thrown back in defiance.
Why should these good folk drive us down to hell, why should their fat
faces make cowards of us? There, I have been the coward, take the truth
from me, and be warned, heart of mine. Better death, I say, before the
ditch, for it is death in a ditch that we wretches come to. Brave it
out, sister, and for God’s love keep your heart from bitterness, and
from poisoning its own good blood.”
She still held Denise close to her.
“What did the woman St. Aguecheek say? Bah, all lies, I tell you. Such
cow-eyed women lie for the sake of piety. The man say that of you? I
know better. Come, Denise, listen to me; I know a man when I have looked
him in the eyes.”
She turned Denise’s face to hers and kissed her.
“That was a clean kiss,” she said, “and by its cleanness I’ll swear that
beldam Ursula lied. What of Messire Aymery? A man, child, a rock man
with an arm that can smite. Grace be with me, but he would have given
you his own heart to mend your broken one. I spoke with him, and I
know.”
Denise lay at rest in Marpasse’s lap.
“Why should Ursula have lied?” she asked.
“Why do dogs eat grass, and vomit? What! I know the woman, eyes that see
the point of a pin and miss the moon, and a tongue like a clacker in a
cherry tree. Love is lord of all, my dear, and what does that beldam
know of love? Messire Aymery had his heart in his mouth that night. I
judge that he let the old crow peck at it, and she took the pieces and
poisoned them, and pushed them into your mouth. Go to now! Have a little
faith.”
She looked into Denise’s eyes and saw a change in them. A more dewy and
credulous April had followed a dry and stormy March. Marpasse’s hand had
stopped the former wound. She was healing the wound now in Denise’s
soul.
“God grant that you are right, Marpasse.”
“Better, my dear, better. Lie in my arms and think them a man’s, and
that man as honest as ever loved a woman. May I die in a ditch if I am
mistaken! And now, what’s to do, as the sluggard says when all the rest
have been three hours a-mowing.”
Denise slipped out of Marpasse’s lap, and sat down close to her, but not
so close that their bodies touched. This act of hers seemed to betray
that she had come by her stronger self again. Marpasse’s scolding had
set her upon her feet.
“I shall stay with you,” she said simply.
Marpasse opened her mouth wide, a black circle of mute expostulation.
Denise looked in her eyes.
“Why not both of us?” she asked.
Marpasse’s mouth still stood open as though to scoff at her own
redemption. Denise closed it with her own.
“There is a clean kiss,” she said, “let us keep it for each other.”
And Marpasse caught her to her, and was a long while silent.
Whatever these two women may have said to one another, the fact was
proven that Marpasse did not rejoin her band of vagabonds that night,
for she and Denise sat on under the tree, and counted up the money that
they could boast between them. They were like a couple of girls talking
over some new dress, their heads close together, and their hearts
lighter than they had been for many a day. But Marpasse had her whims.
She would not mix her money with Denise’s, but kept it apart with a sort
of scorn, handling it gingerly as though the coins were hot.
Moreover Marpasse had a practical nature, and an attitude towards the
ways and means of life that betokened that they were the accursed
riddles that gods put to men each inevitable day. In truth Marpasse’s
life had been one long riddle, and she had grown sick of seeking to
solve it, and had put the enigma out of her mind.
“Heart of mine,” said she, “we are very much on a dust heap, so far as I
can gather. My mouth was made to eat and drink! I cannot turn beast like
the king did and eat grass. I have a little bread here in my bag,” and
she brought out the small sack that she carried slung to her girdle
under her cloak.
Denise was drinking in new hope.
“We have the money,” she said, “we can buy food, and I have enough for
to-night.”
“Innocent, there is not a loaf to be bought for miles round. The King’s
paunch would have made short work of the very trees, only they are too
tough. And a word in your ear, treasure your money as though it were
your blood. For when a woman is starving, and her pocket is empty, the
devil comes in with a grin, and offers to pay for a meal.”
“How can we get more money?”
Marpasse grimaced.
“We must go as mendicants,” she said. “I will thieve an old cloak, and
cover up my colour. At all events, here is our Lord the Pig. We will
make some use of him. If you are dainty, go and sit on the far side of
the tree.”
Marpasse turned butcher that night, nor was it the first time that she
had used a knife on a carcase, for people who live by their wits go
poaching at times, even after the King’s deer. Marpasse had no intimate
knowledge of The Charter, or the Forest Laws, save that she had known
men who had been caught, and mutilated. Being strong and skilful she had
a good skinful of meat beside her before the dusk came down. Then she
cut a hazel stake, slung the skin with the meat on it, and going down to
a stream that crossed the road, washed the boar’s blood from her hands
and arms, and came back clean and smiling.
“Silver John will soon be up,” she said, nodding towards the east; “if
he would only drop us a few coins the colour of his face, I should feel
the happiest beggar in the kingdom. Come along with you. We will tramp a
little farther from my gossips. If you fell in with them you might not
like their tongues.”
Denise and Marpasse set out together, keeping a little distance from the
road, and walking under the shadows of the trees. Soon the moon came up,
and made the May woods magical, and full of a mystery that was clean and
pure. Nightingales sang in the thickets, and the scent of the dew on the
grass and dead leaves came with the perfume of wild flowers out of the
dusk.
Marpasse was in a happy mood despite a day’s tramp, and the adventure
with the boar.
“I have a feeling in me,” she said, “that Silver John looks at us kindly
out of the sky. Throw us a penny, good Lord Moon, or some hair out of
your silver beard. Hear how the birds are singing. They shall sing a
merry jingle into our pockets.”
Denise walked beside Marpasse with a smile of peace and of human
nearness stealing upon her heart. And the Moon who looked down on the
world must have been as wise as the breadth of his solemn face.
“Strange,” he may have thought, “here are a saint and a stroller hand in
hand, comforting one another, and making the night mellow!” But they
were both women who had suffered as only women suffer, and the wise Moon
may have understood life, and sped them on with a glimmer of good luck.
Marpasse’s sense of a blessing that was to be, saw its fulfilment as in
the magic of an Eastern tale. They had walked a mile or more, and were
looking about them for shelter for the night, when Marpasse stood still
to listen, with one hand at her ear.
“Ssh,” said she, “what’s in the wind?”
It was the sound of a bell that she and Denise heard, a faint melancholy
ripple like the sound of falling water in the stillness of the night.
Sometimes it ceased and then broke out again, coming no nearer, nor
dwindling into the distance.
“A chapel bell?”
Marpasse shook her head.
“No, nor a cow bell either. Poor soul, I know the sound of it. That bell
has a voice if ever a bell had.”
She listened awhile, and then touched Denise’s arm.
“It comes from yonder, there, by that black clump of yews. A leper’s
bell, or I have never been a sinner.”
They went towards the thicket of yews that stood there as though a black
cloud covered the face of the moon. The sound of the bell grew more
importunate and human. Marpasse whispered to Denise.
“It is the death toll,” she said, “I have heard such a sound before at
night. The poor souls do not like to die alone in the dark. And those
who hear the bell sometimes take pity.”
Stretched at the foot of the yew tree with the black plumes curving
overhead, Marpasse and Denise found an old man whose face was as white
as the cloak he wore. A hand was rocking to and fro ringing the leper
bell, whose melancholy sound seemed to die away with the moonlight into
the midnight of the yews.
Marpasse bent over him, she had seen too much of the rougher aspects of
life to be greatly afraid of a leper.
“Hallo, father,” she said, “here is company for you, you can stop your
ringing.”
The man’s arm fell like a snapped bough, and the bell came to the earth
with a dull, metallic rattle. The skull face, unmasked now that the end
was near, betrayed that the bell carrier had been starved by the famine
that the King’s host had left behind them in those parts. He was blind
and deaf with the death fog, nor did he know that Marpasse was near him
till she spoke.
“Good soul, have pity.”
He turned his blind face towards Marpasse.
“I am going yonder out of the world, and it is bad to be alone when the
evil spirits are abroad, and to hear no prayer spoken. I rang my bell,
good soul, for St. Chrysostom, he of the golden mouth, promised me that
I should not die alone in the dark.”
Marpasse sat down beside him, and beckoned Denise to her.
“Rest in peace, brother. What would comfort you?”
The man lay very still, with a face like ivory. He scarcely seemed to
breathe.
“A Pater Noster,” he said presently, “I cannot come by a prayer, for the
words run to and fro in my head like rabbits in a warren.”
Marpasse looked at Denise.
“Here is a Sister who knows all the prayers,” she said.
“Ah, there is the smell of good meat a-cooking in a prayer. I saw the
Host through a leper squint not a month ago. Pray, good souls, and I
will ask the Lord Christ to shrive me.”
Denise knelt in the grass, with Marpasse huddled close to her, and spoke
prayers for the leper’s lips, and found comfort and sweetness for her
own soul in the praying. Presently the man held up a shaking hand, and
made the sign of the Cross in the air.
“Good souls,” he asked them, speaking as though he had a bone in his
throat, “unfasten my girdle from about my body.”
Marpasse’s hands answered his desire. The girdle had a leather pouch
fastened to it, and the pouch was heavy. Marpasse gave it into his
hands, and he laid it against his mouth, and then held it towards
Denise.
“I would rather you had it, Sister, than some begging friar. There is
money in it, the alms of five years, and God bless the charitable. Take
it, good souls. Dead men want no gold, though you will have candles
burnt, and prayers put up for Peter the Leper.”
He felt for his bell and they heard a great sigh come out of his body
like the sound of a spirit soaring away on invisible wings. The bell
gave a last spasmodic tinkle that was muffled and smothered by the
grass. Then all was still, save for a light breeze that stirred the
black boughs of the yews.
Denise knelt there awhile in prayer. Marpasse had gone aside and had cut
down a yew bough with her knife, and was shaping the end thereof into
the shape of a narrow spade. She began to turn the sods up clear of the
roots of the trees, and Denise came and watched her, holding the dead
man’s girdle in her hands.
It took Marpasse till midnight to scratch a shallow grave. They laid the
leper in it, with his bell in his hand, and his staff beside him, and
covered him with sods and boughs.
Then Marpasse and Denise lay down under a tree and slept in each other’s
arms. They did not look into the pouch that night, for the nearness of
death and the infinite pathos thereof possessed them.
And when Denise opened the pouch next morning, a rattle of silver came
tumbling out, with here and there a piece of gold that shone like the
yellow flower of the silverweed in the midst of its dusty foliage.
Marpasse’s blue eyes stared hard at the money. Both she and Denise were
silent for a minute.
“Poor soul! We will put up prayers for him.”
Marpasse hugged her bosom.
“God see to it,” she said. “The tide turned when the old man’s ship put
out over the dark sea.”