Produced by Distributed Proofreaders
THE FOREST LOVERS
A ROMANCE
BY
MAURICE HEWLETT
TO
MRS. W. K. CLIFFORD
WITH
THE AUTHOR'S HOMAGE
CONTENTS
CHAPTERS
I. PROSPER LE GAI RIDES OUT
II. MORGRAUNT, AND A DEAD KNIGHT
III. HOLY THORN AND HOLY CHURCH
IV. DOM GALORS
V. LA DESIROUS
VI. THE VIRGIN MARRIAGE
VII. GALORS ABJURES
VIII. THE SALLY AT DAWN
IX. THE BLOOD-CHASE AND THE LOVE CHASE
X. FOREST ALMS
XI. SANCTUARY
XII. BROKEN SANCTUARY
XIII. HIGH MARCH, AND A GREAT LADY
XIV. A RECORDER
XV. THREE AT TORTSENTIER
XVI. BOY AND GIRL
XVII. ROY
XVIII. BOY'S LOVE
XIX. LADY'S LOVE
XX. HOW PROSPER HELD A REVIEW
XXI. HOW THE NARRATIVE SMACKS AGAIN OF THE SOIL
XXII GALORS CONQUAESTOR
XXIII. FALVE THE CHARCOAL-BURNER
XXIV. SECRET THINGS AT HAUTERIVE
XXV. THE ROAD TO GOLTRES
XXVI. GUESS-WORK AT GOLTRES
XXVII. GALORS RIDES HUNTING
XXVIII. MERCY WITH THE BEASTS.
XXIX. WANMEETING CRIES, 'HA! SAINT JAMES!'
XXX. THE CHAINED VIRGIN OF SAINT THORN
XXXI. 'ENTRA PER ME'
XXXII 'BIDE THE TIME'
XXXIII. SALOMON IS DRIVEN HOME
XXXIV. LA DESIRÉE
XXXV. FOREST LOVE
XXXVI. THE LADY PIETOSA DE BRÉAUTÉ
THE FOREST LOVERS
CHAPTER I
PROSPER LE GAI RIDES OUT
My story will take you into times and spaces alike rude and uncivil.
Blood will be spilt, virgins suffer distresses; the horn will sound
through woodland glades; dogs, wolves, deer, and men, Beauty and the
Beasts, will tumble each other, seeking life or death with their proper
tools. There should be mad work, not devoid of entertainment. When you
read the word _Explicit_, if you have laboured so far, you will know
something of Morgraunt Forest and the Countess Isabel; the Abbot of
Holy Thorn will have postured and schemed (with you behind the arras);
you will have wandered with Isoult and will know why she was called La
Desirous, with Prosper le Gai, and will understand how a man may fall
in love with his own wife. Finally, of Galors and his affairs, of the
great difference there may be between a Christian and the brutes, of
love and hate, grudging and open humour, faith and works, cloisters and
thoughts uncloistered--all in the green wood--you will know as much as
I do if you have cared to follow the argument. I hope you will not ask
me what it all means, or what the moral of it is. I rank myself with
the historian in this business of tale-telling, and consider that my
sole affair is to hunt the argument dispassionately. Your romancer must
be neither a lover of his heroine nor (as the fashion now sets) of his
chief rascal. He must affect a genial height, that of a jigger of
strings; and his attitude should be that of the Pulpiteer:--Heaven help
you, gentlemen, but I know what is best for you! Leave everything to me.
It is related of Prosper le Gai, that when his brother Malise, Baron of
Starning and Parrox, showed him the door of their father's house, and
showed it with a meaning not to be mistaken, he stuck a sprig of green
holly in his cap. He put on his armour; his horse and sword also he
took: he was for the wilds. Baron Jocelyn's soul, the priests reported,
was with God; his body lay indubitably under a black effigy in Starning
Church. Baron Malise was lord of the fee, with a twisted face for
Prosper whenever they met in the hall: had there been scores no deeper
this was enough. Prosper was a youth to whom life was a very pretty
thing; he could not afford to have tarnish on the glass; he must have
pleasant looks about him and a sweet air, or at least scope for the
making of them. Baron Malise blew like a miasma and cramped him like a
church-pew: then Adventure beaconed from far off, and his heart leapt
to greet the light. He left at dawn, and alone. Roy, his page, had
begged as hard as he dared for pillion or a donkey. He was his master's
only friend, but Prosper's temper needed no props. "Roy," said he,
"what I do I will do alone, nor will I imperil any man's bread. The
bread of my brother Malise may be a trifle over-salt to my taste, but
to you it is better than none at all. Season your tongue, Roy, enure
it. Drink water, dry your eyes, and forget me not."
He kissed him twice and went his way without any more farewells than
the boy's snivelling. He never looked behind at Starning demesne, where
he had been born and bred and might have followed his father to church,
nor sideways at the broad oaks, nor over to the well-tilled fields on
either side his road; but rather pricked forward at a nimble pace which
tuned to the running of his blood. The blood of a lad sings sharpest in
the early morning; the air tingles, the light thrills, all the great
day is to come. This lad therefore rode with a song towards the West,
following his own shadow, down the deep Starning lanes, through the
woods and pastures of Parrox, over the grassy spaces of the Downs,
topping the larks in thought, and shining beam for beam against the
new-risen sun. The time of his going-out was September of the harvest:
a fresh wet air was abroad. He looked at the thin blue of the sky, he
saw dew and gossamer lie heavy on the hedge-rows. All his heart
laughed. Prosper was merry.
Whither he should go, what find, how fare, he knew not at all.
Morgraunt was before him, and of Morgraunt all the country spoke in a
whisper. It as far, it was deep, it was dark as night, haunted with the
waving of perpetual woods; it lay between the mountains and the sea, a
mystery as inviolate as either. In it outlaws, men desperate and
hungry, ran wild. It was a den of thieves as well as of wolves. Men,
young men too, had ridden in, high-hearted, proud of their trappings,
horses, curls, and what not; none had ever seen them come out. They
might be roaming there yet, grown old with roaming, and gaunt with the
everlasting struggle to kill before they were killed: who could tell?
Or they might have struck upon the vein of savage life; they might go
roaring and loving and robbing with the beasts--why not? Morgraunt had
swallowed them up; who could guess to what wild uses she turned her
thralls? That was a place, pardieu! Prosper, very certain that at
twenty-three it is a great thing to be hale and astride a horse, felt
also that to grow old without having given Morgraunt a chance of
killing you young would be an insipid performance. "As soon be a
priest!" he would cry, "or, by the Rood, one of those flat-polled monks
kept there by the Countess Isabel." Morgraunt then for Prosper, and the
West; beyond that--"One thing at a time," thought he, for he was a wise
youth in his way, and held to the legend round his arms. Seeing that
south of him he could now smell the sea, and beyond him lay Morgraunt,
he would look no further till Morgraunt lay below him appeased or
subjugate.
A tall and lean youth was Prosper le Gai, fair-haired and sanguine,
square-built and square-chinned. He smiled at you; you saw two capital
rows of white teeth, two humorous blue eyes; you would think, what a
sweet-tempered lad! So in the main he was; but you would find out that
he could be dangerous, and that (curiously) the more dangerous he was,
the sweeter his temper seemed to be. If you crossed him once, he would
stare; twice, he would laugh; three times, you would swear he was your
humble servant; but before you could cross him again he would have
knocked you down. The next moment he would give you a hand up, and
apologize; after that, so far as he was concerned, you might count him
your friend for life. The fact is, that he was one of those men who,
like kings, require a nominal fealty before they can love you with a
whole heart: it is a mere nothing. But somebody, they think, must lead.
Prosper always felt so desperately sure it must be he. That was apt to
lend a frenzy to his stroke and a cool survey to his eye (as being able
to take so much for granted), which made him a good friend and a nasty
enemy.
It also made him, as you will have occasion to see, a born fighter. He
went, indeed, through those years of his life on tiptoe, as it were,
for a fight. He had a light and springing carriage of the head, enough
to set his forelock nodding; his eye roved like a sea-bird's; his lips
often parted company, for his breath was eager. He had a trick of
laughing to himself softly as he went about his business; or else he
sang, as he was now singing. These qualities, little habits,
affectations, whatever you choose to call them, sound immaterial, but
they really point to the one thing that made him remarkable--the
curious blend of opposites in him. He blent benevolence with savagery,
reflectiveness with activity. He could think best when thought and act
might jump together, laugh most quietly when the din of swords and
horses drowned the voice, love his neighbour most sincerely when about
to cut his throat. The smell of blood, the sight of wounds, or the
flicker of blades, made him drunk; but he was one of those who grow
steady in their cups. You might count upon him at a pinch. Lastly, he
was no fool, and was disposed to credit other people with a balance of
wit.
He disliked frippery, yet withal made a brave show in the sun. His
plain black mail was covered with a surcoat of white and green linen;
over this a narrow baldrick of red bore in gold stitches his device of
a hooded falcon, and his legend on a scroll, many times repeated and
intercrossed--_I bide my time_. In his helmet were three red feathers,
on his shield the blazon of his house of Gai--_On a field sable, a
fesse dancettée or_, with a mullet for difference. He carried no spear;
for a man of his light build the sword was the arm. Thus then, within
and without, was Messire Prosper le Gai, youngest son of old Baron
Jocelyn, deceased, riding into the heart of the noon, pleased with
himself and the world, light-minded, singing of the movement and the
road.
Labourers stayed their reaping to listen to him; but there was nothing
for them. He sang of adventure. Girls leaned at cottage doorways to
watch him down the way. There was nothing for them either, for all he
sang of love.
"She who now hath my heart
is so in every part;" etc., etc.
The words came tripping as a learnt lesson; but he had never loved a
girl, and fancied he never would. Women? Petticoats! For him there was
more than one adventure in life. Rather, my lady's chamber was the last
place in which he would have looked for adventure.
On the second day of his journey--in a country barren and stony, yet
with a hint of the leafy wildernesses to come in the ridges spiked with
pines, the cropping of heather here and there, and the ever-increasing
solitude of his way--he was set upon by four foot-pads, who thought to
beat the life out of his body as easily as boys that of a dog. He asked
nothing better than that they should begin; and he asked so civilly
that they very soon did. The fancy of glorious youth transformed them
into knights-at-arms, and their ashen cudgels into blades. The only
pity was that the end came so soon.
His sword dug its first sod, and might have carved four cowards instead
of one; but he was no vampire, so thereafter laid about him with the
flat of the tool. The three survivors claimed quarter. "Quarter, you
rogues!" cried he. "Kindly lend me one of your staves for the purpose."
He gave them a drubbing as one horsed his brother in turn, and dropped
them, a chapfallen trio, beside their dead. "Now," said he, "take that
languid gentleman with you, and be so good for the rest of your journey
as to imitate his indifference to strangers. Thus you will have a
prosperous passage. Good day to you."
He slept on the scene of his exploit, rose early, rode fast, and by
noon was plainly in the selvage of the great woods. The country was
split into bleak ravines, a pell-mell of rocks and boulders, and a
sturdy crop of black pines between them. An overgrowth of brambles and
briony ran riot over all. Prosper rode up a dry river-bed, keeping
steadily west, so far as it would serve him; found himself quagged ere
a dozen painful miles, floundered out as best he might, and by evening
was making good pace over a rolling bit of moorland through which ran a
sandy road. It was the highway from Wanmouth to Market Basing and the
north, if he had known. Ahead of him a solitary wayfarer, a brown bunch
of a friar, from whose hood rose a thin neck and a shag of black hair
round his tonsure--like storm-clouds gathering about a full
moon--struck manfully forward on a pair of bare feet.
"God be with you, brother gentleman," cried the friar, turning a
crab-apple face upwards.
"And with you, my brother, who carry your slippers," Prosper replied.
"Eh, eh, brother! They go softer than steel for a gouty toe."
"Poor gout, Master Friar, I hope, for Saint Francis' peace of mind."
"My gentleman," said the friar, "let me tell you the truth. I am a poor
devil out of Lucca, built for matrimony and the chimney corner, as
Grandfather Adam was before me. Brother Bonaccord of Outremer they call
me in religion, but ill-accord I am in temper, by reason of the air of
this accursed land, and a most tempestuous blood of my own. For why! I
go to the Dominicans of Wanmouth, supplicating that I am new landed,
and have no convent to my name and establishment in the Church. They
take me in. Ha! they do that. Look now. 'A sop of bread and wine,' I
cry, 'for the love of God.' It is a Catholic food, very comfortable for
the stomach. Ha! they give me beer. Beer? Wet death! I am by now as
gouty as a cardinal, and my eye is inflamed. I think of the
Lucchese--those shafts of joy miscalled women--when I should be
thinking of my profession. I am ready as ever to admit two vows, but
Saint Paul himself cannot reconcile me to the third. Beer, my friend,
beer."
"You will do well enough, friar, if you are going the forest road. You
will find no Lucchesan ladies thereabouts."
"I am none so sure, gentleman. There were tales told at the Wanmouth
hostel. Do you know anything of a very holy place in these parts, the
Abbey of Saint Giles of the Thorn? Black monks, my brother; black as
your stallion."
"I think they are white monks," said Prosper, "Bernardines."
"I spoke of the colour of their deeds, young sir," answered Brother
Bonaccord.
"I know as little of them as of any monks in Christendom, friar,"
Prosper said. "But I have seen the Abbot and spoken with him. Richard
Dieudonné is his name, well friended by the Countess."
"He is well friended by many ladies, some of account, and some of none
at all, by what I hear," said the friar, rather dryly for such a
twinkling spirit.
"Ah, with ladies," Prosper put in, "you have me again; for I know less
of them than of monks, save that both have petticoats. Your pardon,
brother."
"Not a bit, not a bit, brother again," replied the friar. "I admit the
hindrance; and could tell you of the advantages if I had the mind. But
as to the ladies, suffer me to predict that you will know more of them
before you have done."
"I think not," said Prosper. Brother Bonaccord began to laugh.
"They will give you no peace yet awhile," said he. "And let me tell you
this, from a man who knows what he is talking about, that if you think
to escape them by neglecting them, you are going the devil's way to
work. If you wish them to let you alone, speak them fair, drop easily
to your knee, be a hand-kisser, a cushion-disposer, a goer on your
toes. They will think you a lover and shrug you away. Never do a woman
a service as if to oblige her; do it as if to oblige yourself. Then she
will believe you her slave. Then you are safe. That is your game,
brother."
"You have studied ladies, friar?"
"Ah, ah! I have indeed. They are a wondrous fair book. I know no other.
Why should I?"
"Oh, why indeed?" Prosper assented. "For my part, I find other studies
more engrossing."
With such talk they went until they reached a little wood, and then
disposed of themselves for the night. When Prosper woke next morning
the good man had gone. He had left a written message to the effect
that, petticoats or none, he had stolen a march on steel, and might be
looked for at Malbank.
"I wonder how much stuff for his mind that student of ladies will win
at Malbank," laughed Prosper to himself, little knowing, indeed.