The King and Richard the Roman were lodged that night at the Priory of
St. Pancras, Prince Edward with De Warenne in the castle of Lewes. Nor
would it have been easy to choose between St. Pancras Priory and Lewes
Town in the matter of furious and indiscriminate drinking. Some said
that the King’s host mustered sixty thousand men. One thing was certain,
that a very great number of them were drunk that night, and that the
lords and captains were no better than the men.
“The King will hunt swine to-morrow.”
Such was the night’s apothegm, and men flung it with variations and with
a liberal garnishing of oaths into each other’s faces. The metaphor was
acceptable to those who were in their cups, and much repetition piled
assurance upon assurance. The great army of the King had its head full
of drunken insolence. Its mouth uttered one huge oath. It would only
have to show itself on the morrow, and De Montfort’s dirty burghers
would take to their heels and run.
Bonfires had been lit everywhere, and round them were crowds of
grotesque faces that bawled, and gulped, and fed. There was no lack of
food and drink, sheep and oxen were roasted whole; men gorged themselves
like dogs about the carcases. Cressets flared upon the castle towers,
and Prince Edward had set twenty trumpeters to blow fanfares before the
gate. The Priory bells were jangling like fuddled men quarrelling with
one another. There was no discipline anywhere, no sign of a high
purpose, no forethought for the morrow. “The King will hunt swine!” Men
bellowed it to one another, and the superstition contented them.
When Denise and Marpasse came near the west gate of the town, they saw a
huge fire burning there, the flames lighting the black battlements
above. A great crowd had gathered about the fire, and the noise might
have equalled the noise at Barnet Fair. Men were running about half
naked like hairy-legged satyrs mad with wine. The platform of the town
gate was crowded with a roaring, squealing mob that amused itself by
emptying nature upon the equally repulsive mob below. Mounted upon a
tub, a man with one eye, dressed like a Franciscan, spouted indecent
skits on the clergy, pretending the while to be zealously in earnest.
Elsewhere a crowd of excited and contorted figures made a ring round two
women who, stripped to the waist, were wrestling, their faces smeared
with the blood of a dead ox. Drunken rascals were scrambling about on
all fours, and pretending to be dogs. If any mad whim came into a man’s
head, he acted on it, and did not stop to think.
Marpasse had taken Denise by the wrist, and they had melted back into
the darkness, holding their breath over the chance of being plunged into
that simmering human stew. Marpasse was no innocent, but her face went
hard and ugly with the sincerity of her disgust.
“Drunken swine! We will keep away from your sty, I warrant you.”
She spoke in a harsh whisper, her pupils contracting as she stared at
the gate and the bonfire that was half hidden by live things that
swarmed like beetles. Denise shuddered inwardly, and was silent. She
thought of the cool, dark woods over yonder, and of the grim and quiet
men who waited for the dawn.
Marpasse waved an arm towards the town.
“You see,” she seemed to say.
“They are like wild beasts.”
“What did you think to find, my dear; blessed banners and crosses, and
priests galore? Or perhaps so many Sir Tristans keeping watch under the
stars, and thinking of noble and great ladies. No, no, the King and Earl
Simon handle their hot coals differently. Come away, we shall do no good
yonder.”
They retreated along the road, and hearing loud squeals of laughter near
them, drew aside, and hid themselves in a ditch. Marpasse could feel
Denise shivering. When the laughter had gone by them towards the town,
Marpasse stood up and looked about her in the darkness.
“We were walking into the cattle market,” she said in an ironical
whisper. “The Priory lies yonder, most likely the King is lodged there.
Pick your feet up out of this mud.”
They scrambled out of the ditch, and leaving the road, went on
cautiously hand in hand. Marpasse’s eyes seemed like the eyes of a cat.
Sometimes they stopped to listen, standing close together as though for
comfort. The darkness, rendered more weird and baffling by the glare of
the watch fires, seemed to threaten them with all manner of evil shapes.
An overbearing desire to talk mastered Denise. The sound of her own
voice tended to smother the whisperings of panic. Marpasse let her run
on till the mass of the Priory began to blacken the clear sky.
“Ssh,” she said, “we shall need our ears now, more than our tongues. If
we are stopped by any of these gentry, leave the talking to me.”
Aymery’s face flashed up into Denise’s consciousness. Her hand
contracted convulsively upon Marpasse’s wrist.
“If Earl Simon could have fallen on them to-night,” she whispered.
“To-morrow will do, or I am no prophet,” answered Marpasse.
The Priory of St. Pancras was shut in by its great precinct wall, but
Marpasse and Denise found it only too easy to make their way within.
There was a guard at the Priory gate, but the men were drinking and
dicing, letting the night look after itself. People did what they
pleased, and St. Pancras had no heavenly say in the matter. The men of
the sword had pushed the good saint into a corner, his monks, too, were
exceeding meek and docile, holding to the Christian doctrine that one
must suffer in the spirit of patience. Yet their patience was largely a
matter of discretion and of necessity, for put power in a priest’s hands
and he is a tyrant among tyrants.
Booths had been set up inside the precinct wall, and there were clowns
who kept the crowd a-laughing, and minstrels who sang songs fit for the
lowest ear. Women in bright-coloured clothes went to and fro between the
bonfires, fierce, hawk-faced women who knew how to take care of their
own concerns. Marpasse and Denise kept in the shadow, though there were
things to stumble over in the darkness, as Marpasse found when she trod
on something that kicked out at her and cursed. They wandered into the
cloisters, and through the dark passage-ways and slypes; all doors were
open, and no one hindered them, for no one seemed to boast any authority
that night. Sometimes they stood in dark corners, and listened to what
was said by those who passed. St. Pancras might have stood with his
fingers in his ears, for the humour was very broad, and the language
primitive. “The King will hunt swine to-morrow.” The same snatch served
here as in Lewes town, and Marpasse understood the significance thereof.
The King meant to attack De Montfort on the morrow, and was letting his
men debauch themselves into reckless good humour.
The great church was full of tawny light, all the doors stood open, and
Marpasse and Denise gliding from buttress to buttress, looked in through
the door of the north transept. Torches had been stuck about the walls,
the smoke pouring up, and filling the dim distance of the vaulting with
drifting vapour. The church was full of men and women in cloths and
silks of the brightest colours, men and women who danced and drank, and
sprawled about the flagged floors. Nor were the men from the common
crowd of the King’s army; they were the lords, the knights, and the
esquires, wild captains of free-lances who held a debauch before
to-morrow’s battle. The high altar was like a rostrum in old Rome,
seized upon by a drunken crowd, and covered with creatures that laughed
and howled, and clung to one another. Some of the women had put on the
men’s helmets, others wore garlands of half-withered flowers. A party of
young nobles had broken open the sacristy, and dressed themselves in
precious embroidered vestments. The scene was a scramble of colour, a
scene of perpetual movement, of flux and reflux, of strong sensual life
throbbing in and out of half-darkened sanctuaries.
Marpasse had seen enough, and Denise too much. They were moving away,
when Marpasse started aside and drew Denise into the shadow of a
buttress. A blur of movement disentangled itself from the darkness, and
took shape in a knot of figures that approached the transept door. The
party halted, and the two women saw a man wearing a cloak of sables, and
a surcoat of some golden stuff, come forward alone and stand looking
into the church.
The glare from the torches fell upon the face of the man who wore the
sable cloak. It was a handsome face, yet weak and troubled, the face of
a man without great self-restraint, a man who would attempt to be
violent when he should be patient, and who would betray his weakness
when he needed strength. There was something tragic about the figure
standing there alone, and looking in upon the wild night before the dawn
of the morrow. It might have been the figure of a magician gazing upon
the fierce and elemental things that he had brought into being, and who
had lost the power of holding them under his spell.
Marpasse saw the man cross himself, and turn away with an air that
suggested foreshadowings of disaster. It was a figure full of infinite
significance, in that it had striven continually to strut upon the
world’s stage, and yet had never succeeded in being more than a puppet.
Marpasse had whispered in Denise’s ear.
“The King!”
And then:—
“The poor fool! He is not a shepherd like Earl Simon. Even his sheep
dogs are out of hand.”
As he had come out of the darkness, so he disappeared, silently, almost
furtively, with no blare of trumpets and no tossing of torches. Men who
were wise saw in him a thing that was sometimes a saint, sometimes a
mean, contriving Jew, often a firebrand, more often still a
beauty-loving fool. Brave enough in battle, and a clean liver, yet the
grim, animal energy of his father might have served him better than his
own flickering and inconstant brilliancy. Henry could delight in the
colour of a painted window, and he had the heart of a sentimental woman.
In one thing alone he may have been of use, for his follies taught the
stronger son to be warned by the mistakes of a weak father. Henry made
war against the spirit of liberty stirring in the heart of a great
people. Edward the Strong was wiser in knowing the nature of his own
strength.
Marpasse nudged Denise, and pulled her hood forward over her face.
“We have seen enough,” she said; “they are to hunt swine to-morrow!
Good, very good, let them beware of the boar’s tusks.”
They made their way back towards the gate, and St. Pancras, kind saint,
blessed them, for they escaped unscathed out of the place. And coming
out to the cool darkness that covered the downs, they sat down side by
side to wait for the dawn.