Aymery had searched the hillsides that day for a blue surcoat shining
with golden suns, but since Gaillard had charged among Prince Edward’s
spears, he was miles away on the heels of the Londoners while the men of
the White Cross were driving the King back in rout upon Lewes town.
But Simon had not forgotten to look for the return of the Prince. He had
gathered the pick of his knights and men-at-arms together, and when they
brought him news of the plundering of his camp, he smiled and bided his
time. Steady and motionless, a mass of steel half hidden by a rise in
the ground, De Montfort’s cavalry waited in the evening light for the
coming of the Prince.
And a riotous and disordered troop it was that marched back towards
Lewes after plundering the Barons’ camp. Edward and his lords seemed to
have accepted their victory as assured, and never doubted but that the
White Cross had been trodden into the dust. The scene that stretched
before them, flooded by the evening sunlight, was deceptive in the
extreme. De Warenne’s banner still flew from the castle, and that of the
King from the bell tower of St. Pancras. There were scattered bodies of
armed men moving over the slopes and about the town, and the dead
strewing the field made no confession of victory or defeat.
It was then that the most tragic thing of the day happened, for the mob
of fighting men under the Prince, marching as they pleased, had some
hundreds of women mingled with them, unfortunates who had thought of
nothing but making a joyous night of it after the great victory, and the
plunder that they had won. De Montfort’s mass of knights and
men-at-arms, rising suddenly like a grey sea out of the twilight, came
on at a gallop, fresh and lusty after a long rest. Isoult was one of
those gay queans, riding with Gaillard’s arm about her, chattering and
laughing to keep her man amused. Following these two, half as comrades,
half as prisoners, came Denise and Marpasse, mounted upon cart-horses,
that had been taken from the Barons’ camp. Luckily for them they were in
the rear of Prince Edward’s host or they would have been trampled down
at the first charge, as were many of the women.
Marpasse and Denise were riding close together, watching Gaillard as
sheep might watch a dangerous dog, and waiting their chance to break
away in the gathering darkness. Although he had an arm about Isoult’s
body, Gaillard’s eyes wandered round towards Denise, stealing
half-furtive glances at her, as though he were already tired of Isoult,
and suffered his passions to embrace a contrast. Marpasse saw how it was
with Gaillard, and hated him for Denise’s sake, and because she could
tell what manner of man he was, insolent, lustful, ever ready to throw
aside things that had sated him. He was like a great lean spider with
his long legs and his sinewy arms, and Marpasse could have stabbed him
for the way he held Isoult.
They were crowded together, and Marpasse and Denise saw nothing of the
storm that was tearing down upon the Prince’s following. A strange
silence fell suddenly on that mass of humanity, broken here and there by
a loud and querulous cry. A moment ago there had been nothing but
singing, shouting, and coarse jests.
A shudder seemed to pass through the whole mob. It wavered, stood still,
swayed to and fro. Marpasse heard women shrieking. Then a roar of voices
rose, the furious voices of men caught at a disadvantage with death
rushing upon them like a flood. Utter confusion spread, trumpets
screaming like frightened beasts, spears swaying this way and that. Then
the shock came. The bodies of men were thrown in the air like stones
torn from a sea wall by a furious wave.
Marpasse saw Gaillard rise in his stirrups, draw his sword, and turn a
bleak, wolf-like profile towards them. He caught his battle helmet from
the saddle bow, dipped his head into it, and came up a grotesque monster
with a face like a gaping frog. Marpasse had a vision of sloped spears
pouring down on them through the golden haze of the evening. Then chaos
seemed to come again, and the world crumbled with the rushing of many
waters and the rending of solid rock.
Marpasse had a glimpse of Denise clinging to her horse that had reared
in terror. Gaillard had left Isoult, and was trying to clear a path with
his sword, making his horse swerve to and fro in the press. Then
Marpasse had no sense left in her, but the sense of falling, of being
thrown hither and thither, of being trampled on and hurt. A horse
crashed to the ground close to her and lay still, and with the blind
instinct of the moment, Marpasse flung herself down and huddled close
under the beast’s body as an Arab shelters behind a camel when a dust
storm sweeps the desert. Yet with swiftness and tumult and fierce
anguish the storm passed, and was gone. Marpasse found herself peering
up over the horse’s body, and looking at a splendid sky against which
dark figures struggled together as on the edge of an abyss.
Marpasse scrambled up, wondering how she had come out of the storm so
easily, and stood and stared stupidly about her, dazed for the moment by
the violence of it all. A tempest of horsemen was rolling away over the
hillside like a grey cloud curling over a mountain. Broken bodies lay
everywhere, some still squirming like worms that have been trodden under
foot; others motionless, contorted, and grotesque, like bodies thrown at
random from a high tower. And where life and noise and movement had been
but a few minutes before, a slow silence seemed to ooze in and to
stagnate under the melancholy of the coming night.
Marpasse’s wits came back to her, and she looked round for any sign of
those who had been with her a few moments ago. Gaillard had gone, Denise
also, like people swept off a rock by an ocean wave.
Looking about her, Marpasse saw a white horse lying dead upon the
hillside, and something that moved half under and half beside it, with
the whimpering cry of a child. Marpasse stumbled forward, for one foot
had been bruised, and found Death sitting upon the carcase of the white
horse. Isoult lay there with the beast’s body upon her legs, and her
back broken. She could stretch out her hands to Marpasse, with a
shuddering spasm of cursing that was piteous and futile.
“Curse Simon, and his bulls, curse Gaillard, the great coward! I am done
for, and this white hog, this devil’s bitch lies on my legs like a rock.
Hold off, great fool. Do I want to be pulled about when my back’s
broken, and my ribs are pricking my liver.”
Marpasse tried to drag her clear of the horse, but Isoult’s screams and
curses sobered her. She saw that Isoult was near her end, crushed like a
wild cat in the steel jaws of a trap. The girl, too, had the spiteful
valour of a cat, and pushed Marpasse’s hands away when she tried to
fondle her.
“None of your spittle,” she said, biting her lips with the anguish in
her; “it is jolly, I tell you, to be trampled into the dirt! Just the
sort of end I was made for. Who cares? Oh, yes, I shall go straight to
hell.”
She chattered on at random, laughing, sneering, and biting her lips.
Marpasse sat by her, her heart full of inarticulate and half-angry pity.
“What are you sitting there for, great fool? There is that red-headed
Denise of yours; you left me for her; I know, Gaillard told me the
story. Oh yes, you had what you wanted, Messire Gaillard, you held me in
your arms, devil; you saw me trampled on, and rode after the red head.
God curse you, my Gaillard, you bundle of burning straw in a body of
clay. Tell me, Marpasse, are not we women accursed fools?”
She began to curse Gaillard bitterly under her breath. Marpasse saw a
change come over her, for she seemed to grow thinner and greyer in the
dusk. A great sob gathered in Marpasse’s throat. She fell a-weeping, and
hung dearly over Isoult.
“There, child, what does it avail? Lie in my arms now, and fall asleep.”
Isoult ceased her cursing suddenly, and shuddered a little as she felt
Marpasse’s tears falling upon her face. Her black eyes became dark, and
very wistful.
“What are you weeping for, great fool?”
Marpasse hung over her, and smoothed her hair.
“You were a little slip of a thing when we first were friends,” she
said, “and you often slept in my bosom. We had rough days and rough
weather together. All the roads were rough for us, and so is the last
track.”
Isoult lay very still, though her cold hands crept up, and rested in the
warmth between Marpasse’s breasts. She grew very grey and feeble, and
blood came into her mouth. Isoult spat it out, and looked up at
Marpasse.
“What a fool of a world,” she said hoarsely; “but if I could work a
miracle, I would just mend you, and set you on your feet. And if God and
His saints are harder hearted, let them keep their pride, I would rather
sup with the devil.”
Isoult gave a great sigh.
“How could I help it all,” she said; “I was branded when I was born, and
I was no man’s child. No one ever taught me prayers, or fed me on white
bread. And when I was kicked, I learnt to scratch back.”
Marpasse lay down beside her, and in a little while the end came. Nor
did Isoult die easily, but with pain and revolt, and blood choking her
throat. Marpasse put her arms about her, and held her till she died. And
with the passing of Isoult’s spirit, something seemed to break in the
heart of Marpasse.
The dusk deepened, and the living woman was sitting there with her head
between her hands, and staring at the dead woman’s face, when a gaunt
man in the dress of a priest came by, and seeing them, turned aside. He
had a wooden cross in his hand, an axe thrust into his girdle, and a
buckler at his back. If Grimbald had served the White Cross with his axe
that day down amid the windings of the Ouse, he had put the iron aside
now, and taken to compassion.
He spoke to Marpasse, but she did not hear him. Grimbald touched her on
the shoulder.
“Peace, sister,” he said.
Marpasse jumped up and looked Grimbald over in the dusk. Her glance
lighted on his cross.
“What is the use of that,” she said; “bah, take it away, my brother!”
Grimbald nodded his head. Marpasse spread her arms, and then pointed to
Isoult.
“See, there, what has God to say to such a thing? When we are born in a
ditch, and kept in a ditch, and kicked into a ditch at the end, what has
the Cross to do with it?”
Grimbald knelt down quite solemnly, and looked at Isoult.
“What a child! Who said that she had sinned, sister?”
Marpasse’s mouth was full of scoffing.
“We have stones thrown at us. We are too black for the good folk to soil
their hands in washing us.”
Grimbald turned his face to her, and his eyes shone.
“The Lord said ‘let those who are without sin cast the first stone.’
What do you make of those words, sister?”
“That the devil must put his tongue in his cheek when the good people go
to church,” said Marpasse.
Grimbald got up, and went and stood in front of Marpasse. They looked
each other in the eyes like two sturdy souls sure of hearing the truth.
“Do you see her in eternal flames, sister?” asked the man.
“On my oath, I do not. The child had good in her, when people did not
thrust thorns into her face.”
Grimbald nodded his head solemnly.
“I would have the flaying of all hypocrites,” he said, “as for such
lives, I would mend them in heaven.”
“You will put up a prayer, Father. I have money.”
Grimbald almost glowered at her.
“Will my tongue do any better for the stuff! Help me to pull the child
away. We can find her a clean grave somewhere. As for my prayers, God
knows the ways of the world.”
Marpasse had an impetuous heart. She took Grimbald by the girdle.
“I could kiss that mouth of yours, Father,” she said, “because it talks
out straight, and is the mouth of a man.”
The river Ouse took toll that evening from the King’s host, drawing many
a rider into its deeps, while the bogs and the morasses opened their
slimy mouths for food. The Prince had saved a portion of his following
from the rout upon the hillside, and breaking away he found the west
gate of Lewes held against him, and was compelled to gallop round the
town to join the King at the Priory of St. Pancras. The greater number
of the royalist leaders had fled, riding for the castle of Pevensey,
whence they could cross into France. The King’s brothers, William de
Valence and Guy de Lusignan, were galloping for their lives, and with
them a crowd of adventurers and free-lances who knew that they would be
hanged on the forest trees if the country folk could lay their hands on
them. Hugh Bigot and Earl de Warenne were with the fugitives. The King
of the Romans and his son, the Scotch nobles, many English lords, and a
crowd of lesser men had been taken by Earl Simon.
Meanwhile Denise had been saved by the terror of her horse from being
trampled and crushed like Black Isoult. The beast had broken through,
and fled at a gallop, with Denise lying out like a child along his neck.
There were other horses galloping about her, some with riders, many with
empty saddles, and one common instinct seemed to shepherd the beasts
together, so that Denise found herself swept along in the thick of the
herd.
Lying upon her nag’s neck, with her cheek laid against the coarse coat,
and her hair blowing in the wind, Denise became conscious at last of a
black horse galloping beside hers, stride for stride. At first she saw
only the beast’s head with its red nostrils, and ill-tempered ears laid
back, and the whites of its eyes showing. Then a man’s figure drew into
view, and she had a glimpse of a blue surcoat with a blur of gold
thereon, and a great iron helmet that gaped like a frog. Denise was no
longer a piece of wreckage carried along in the thick of the flood. The
black horse seemed to know his master’s mind, and began to guide
Denise’s nag as one beast will guide and rule another.
The man, who had been sitting stiffly in the saddle, bent forward and
caught the trailing halter of Denise’s horse.
“Hold fast, Sanctissima,” he said, “we shall soon be out of the mill
race.”
Denise knew that it was Gaillard, but fate carried her at the gallop,
and she was too conscious of the wind in her ears and the way the ground
rushed under her.
“If I can save you a broken neck,” he went on, shouting the words
through the black cleft in the great helmet, “I shall deserve your
forgiveness. The fools yonder are rushing like a drove of pigs for the
river. They will drown one another. We will take our own road.”
Denise felt like one falling and falling in a dream. There was no end to
it, and she had not enough breath in her to feel the finer, spiritual
fear. It was impossible to so much as think in the rush and welter of
all those flying, thundering shapes. Her body was taken up with holding
to the body of her horse.
They drew clear of the main torrent at last, and went cantering in the
dusk over the rolling grassland. Gaillard was sitting straight in the
saddle, and watching a gush of flame that had leapt up over Lewes town.
The King’s men who still held the castle, had thrown springalds of fire
down upon the houses, setting the thatch ablaze so that the houses
should not cover Simon’s men who were crowding to the assault. The glare
of the burning town seemed an echo from the red sunset above the western
hills. A distant uproar rose into the twilight, though the summits of
the downs were solemn and still. Denise felt her horse slacken under her
now that they had turned aside from the rush of the pursuit.
The power to think and to feel came back to her. She escaped from the
chaos of things to a consciousness of self, and of that other self
beside her. The blind life-instinct that had carried her over the hills
into the twilight, gave place to a quick, spiritual dread of the man at
her side. She had not seen Gaillard desert Isoult, and leave the girl to
be trampled under foot. But her own being had a passionate loathing for
the man, a loathing so great that it tempted her to throw herself from
her horse. Her broken and unconscious body would be nothing to Gaillard,
and he would leave her as a drunkard would leave a broken and empty jar.
Gaillard, alert and masterful, reined in suddenly as though to listen.
He had caught some sound following them out of the dusk, but the
trampling of their own horses had smothered it, and robbed it of
significance. Gaillard kept his hold of the halter of Denise’s horse,
and towered over her as he turned in the saddle to look back.
The ridge of a hill ran bleak and sharp against a stretch of yellow sky.
And outlined against this streak of gold came the figure of a man riding
a black horse. He was not two hundred paces away, and Gaillard saw him
shake his sword.
Denise also saw that solitary rider black against the sunset, and the
heart leapt in her, and beat more quickly.
Gaillard kicked in the spurs, dragging Denise’s rough nag after him.
“Hold fast,” he said, “if that fellow is after us, he will not rob a
Gascon of his supper.”
They were galloping again, rushing on into a vague and dolorous dusk.
The wind swept Denise’s hair, and once a shout followed after them, but
Gaillard kept her horse at the gallop, and Denise was at the mercy of
the two strong beasts, and of that yet stronger beast, man. A streak of
dull silver parted the darkness in front of them. Before Denise had
understood the nature of the thing before them, water was splashed over
her, and their horses were swimming the river.
Gaillard had not spoken a word. When they were out of the muddy shallows
and on the firm ground beyond, he reined in, turned the horses, and
looked back over the river. An indistinct figure loomed out of the dusk
with a scamper of hoofs, and the heavy breathing of a hard-ridden horse.
Gaillard had drawn his sword. He lifted his helmet, and putting it on
the point of his sword, stood in the stirrups, holding sword and helmet
high above his head. Denise was near enough to see his face in the dusk.
It was half fierce, and half amused, yet wholly confident, the face of a
strong man and a libertine whose strength made him take a bully’s joy in
cheating weaker men of their women.
“Hallo, there!”
The pursuer had drawn in on the farther bank, with his horse’s hoofs
sucking the spongy grass.
“Keep over there, my friend, if you value a sound skull. I am not to be
meddled with when I ride with a gay lady.”
There was a splashing of hoofs in the shallows, and a voice came over
the river.
“Denise!” it said, “is it Denise, yonder?”
Gaillard looked down at her, and opened his mouth scoffingly when she
answered the man’s call.
“Hallo, Golden-head, you would have a lover in your lap, eh! We will see
to it to-night, my desire. I promise you it shall not be the fool
yonder.”
The water had broken into fresh ripples that came lapping among the
sedges. Aymery’s horse was swimming the river.
Gaillard dropped his great helmet on to his shoulders, and holding the
halter in the same big hand as held his sword, turned the horses, and
rode off so close to Denise that his knee touched hers.
“Grace before meat,” he said, laughing under his helmet, “your man is
probably clumsy enough. I know how to deal with such a windmill.”
He dragged Denise’s horse to a canter, and turning in the saddle, saw
Aymery floundering up through the crackling shadows.
“Some people are in a great hurry to get to heaven,” said Gaillard; “it
is a pity, Sanctissima, that you have such a head of hair, and such a
body. They are things that make a man cut other men’s throats.”