GALORS CONQUAESTOR
Prosper's aim on leaving High March after his gests of arms had been
Goltres, for there he had believed to find Galors. But Galors was a man
of affairs just now who had gone far since Isoult overheard his plans.
His troop of some sixty spears had grown like the avalanche it
resembled. For what the avalanche does not crush it turns to crushing.
Galors harrying had won harriers. In fact, he headed within a fortnight
of his coming into North Morgraunt a force which was the largest known
since Earl Roger of Bellesme had made a quietness like death over those
parts. By the time of Prosper's exodus, that is by mid-May, his
tactical situation was this--it is as well to be precise. He had
Hauterive and Waisford. Goltres was in the hollow of his hand. If he
could get Wanmeeting he would be master of the whole of the north
forest, west of Wan. Here would be enormous advantage. By a forced
march and a night surprise he might get Market Basing, on the east side
of the river; and if he did that he would cut the Countess of Hauterive
practically off the whole of Morgraunt. Going further, so far as to cut
her off March, whence she drew her supplies, she would be at his mercy.
He could pen her in High March like a sheep, and make such terms as a
sheep and a butcher were likely to arrange.
For, strategically, North Morgraunt would be his; with that to the good
South Morgraunt could await his leisure. The key will show how the
Hauterive saltire stood with the Galors pale.
Now the whole of this pretty scheming was based upon one simple
supposed fact, that the Countess's daughter was then actually in her
mother's castle. Galors knew quite well that he could not hold
Morgraunt indefinitely without the lady. Even Morgraunt was part of the
kingdom; and though rumour of the King's troubles came down, with wild
talk of Aquardente from the north and Bottetort from the south-west
combining to slaughter their sovereign, the King's writ would continue
to run though the king that writ it were under the earth: it was
unlikely that a shire would be let fall to a nameless outlaw when five
hundred men out of Kings-hold could keep it where it was. But a name
would come by marriage as well as by birth. All his terms with his
penned Countess would have been, amnesty and the heiress.
At first he prospered in everything he undertook. Waisford and
Hauterive were under-garrisoned, and fell. Goltres, very remote, was
unimportant except as a base. The Countess at this time, if not engaged
philandering with Prosper, was troubled on the northern borders. As a
matter of fact Galors had been able to secure that no messengers to
High March should cross Wan, and that none from it, having once
crossed, should ever re-cross. This was the state of affairs when
Prosper passed the edge of the High March demesnes and took the road
for Wanmeeting and Goltres.
He had not gone far out of the Countess's borders before he saw what
had happened. The country had been wasted by fire and sword: cottages
burnt out, trampled gardens, green cornlands black and
bruised--desolation everywhere, but no life. Death he did come upon. In
one cottage he saw two children dead and bound together in the doorway;
at a four-went way a man and woman hung from an ash-tree; of a
farmstead the four walls stood, with a fire yet burning in the
rick-yard; in the duck-pond before the house the bodies of the owners
were floating amid the scum of green weed. That night he slept by a
roadside shrine, and next morning betimes took the lonely track again.
Considering all this as he rode, he reached a sign-post which told him
that here the ways of Wanmeeting and Waisford parted company.
"Wanmeeting is my plain road," thought he, "but plainer still it is
that of Galors--and not of Galors alone. I think the longer going is
like to be my shorter. I will go to Waisford." He did so. After a patch
of woodland was a sandy stretch of road fringed with heather and a few
pines. A man was sitting here, by whose side lay his dead young wife
with a handkerchief over her face. Prosper asked him what all this
misery meant; for at High March, he added, they had no conception of it.
The man turned his gaunt eyes upon him. "We call it the hand of God,
sir."
"Do you though? I see only the hand of man or the devil," said Prosper.
"May be you are in the right, Messire. Only we think that if God is
Almighty He might stay all this havoc if He would. And since He stays
it not we say He winks at it, which is as good as a nod any day."
"You are out, sir," said Prosper. "As I read, God hath given men wits,
and suffers the devil in order that they may prove them. If they fail
in the test, and of two ways choose the wrong, is God to be blamed?"
"Some of us have no such choice. It is hard that the battle of the wits
should be over our acres, and that our skulls should be cracked to
prove which of them be the tougher."
"God is mighty enough to make laws and too mighty to break them, as I
understand the matter," said Prosper. "But who, under God or devil,
hath done this wrong?"
"Sir," said the man, "it is the Lord of Hauterive (so styled), who hath
taken Waisford and destroyed it with the country for ten miles round
about it, and killed all the women who could not run fast enough, and
such of the men as did not run to him. And this he did upon the
admirable conceit that the men, having no women of their own, would
take pains that they should not be singular in the country, but full of
lessons in butchery, would become butchers themselves. It seems that
there was ground for the opinion. As for me, I should certainly have
been killed had he found me, for butchering is not to my taste--or was
not then. But I was on a journey, and came back to find my house in
ashes and my new wife, what you see."
"But who," cried Prosper, "in the name of the true Lord, is your lord
of Hauterive? And how dare he take upon himself the style and fee of
the Countess of Hauterive, Bellesme, and March? I have no reason to
love that lady, but I thought all Morgraunt was hers."
"Morgraunt is hers, and Hauterive, and all the country from March unto
Wanmouth," said the countryman. "But this lord is an outlaw who was
once a monk down at Malbank in the south; and hath renounced his flock
and gathered together a crew as unholy as himself. And the story goes
that he did it all for the sake of a girl who scorned him. Now then he
holdeth Hauterive as his tower of strength, has harried Waisford, and
threatens Wanmeeting town, giving out that he will edge in the lady,
besiege High March itself, wed the Countess, and have the girl (when he
finds her) as his concubine. So he will be lord of all, and God of no
account so far as I can see. And the name of this almighty scamp,
Messire-"
"Is Galors de Born," put in Prosper.
The countryman got up and faced him.
"Are you a fellow of his?" he asked. "For, look you, though I must die
for it, I will die killing."
"Friend," Prosper said gently, "the man is my enemy whom I had thought
disabled longer by a split throat which he got of me. I see I have yet
to deal with him. Tell me now where he is."
"I can tell you no more," said the fellow, "than that his tower is in
Hauterive. He hath guards along the river and a post at Waisford. We
shall have trouble to cross the water. He is said to be for Wanmeeting;
but I know he has High March in his eye, because the girl he wants is
believed to be there. He has been here also, as you see, God damn him."
"God hath damned him," said Prosper, "but the work is in my hands."
"You will need more than your hands for the business, my gentleman. He
hath five hundred spears."
"The battle is between his and mine nevertheless."
"Then there is the Golden Knight, as they call him, come from hell
knows where; not a fighter but a schemer; and swift, my word! And cruel
as the cold. Will you tackle him?"
"I shall indeed," said Prosper. "Farewell, I am for my luck at
Waisford."
"I would come with you if I might," said the man slowly.
"Come then. Two go better than one against five hundred."
"Let me bury my pretty dead and I am yours, Messire."
"Ah, I will help you there if I may," Prosper replied.
They dug a shallow grave and laid in it the body of the young girl.
Prosper never saw her face, nor did her husband dare to look again on
what he had covered up. Prosper said the prayers; but the other lay on
his face on the grass, and got up tearless. Then they set off.
Five miles below Waisford they swam the river without any trouble from
Galors' outposts: a wary canter over turf brought them to the flank of
the hill; they climbed it, and from the top could see the Wan valley
and what should be the town. It was a heap of stones, scorched and
shapeless. The church tower still stood for a mockery, its conical cap
of shingles had fallen in, its vane stuck out at an angle. Prosper,
whose eyes were good, made out a flag-staff pointing the perpendicular.
It had a flag, _Party per pale argent and sable_. A dun smoke hung over
the litter.
"We shall do little good there," said he; "we are some days too late.
We will try Wanmeeting."
Agreed. They fetched a wide detour to the north-west, climbed the long
ridge of rock which binds Hauterive to the place of their election, and
made way along the overside of it, taking to cover as much as they
could. By six o'clock in the evening they were as near as they dared to
be until nightfall. As they stood they could see the ridge rear its
ragged head to watch over the cleft where-through the two Wans race to
be free. Upon the slope of this bluff was the town itself, a walled
town the colour of the bare rock, with towers and belfries. The
westering sun threw the whole into warmth and mellow light.
"The saltire still floats," cried Prosper; "we are not too late for
this time."
They were let in at dusk by the Martin Gate, not without some parley.
The only word Prosper would give had been, "Death to Galors de Born."
This did not happen to be the right word. Matters were not to be
adjusted either by "Life to the Countess," for Prosper did not happen
to wish it her.
The High Bailiff and the Jurats argued at some length whether what he
had said did not imply the other of necessity.
"If you talk of necessity, gentlemen," finally said the High Bailiff,
"in my advice it is written that our necessity is too fine for
dialectic. Our present need is to kill the common enemy. Here is a
gentleman who asks for no other pleasure. Let him in." And they did.
Prosper was in love at last; but he did not lose his head on that
account. It was not his way. The girl he had first pitied, next
desired, then respected, then learned, finally adored, was gone. Well,
he would find her no doubt. She had but two enemies, Galors and
Maulfry; who hunted in couple just now. She might be anywhere in the
world, but it was most likely that where she was they were also. If he
found them he should find her. That was why, without having any desire
to befriend the Countess, who had in his judgment made a fool of
herself first and an enemy of him afterwards, he undertook the defences
of Wanmeeting.
For it came to that. He found a thin garrison, a pompous bailiff, wordy
and precise, headboroughs without heads, and a panic-stricken horde of
shopkeepers with things to lose, who spent the day in crying "Danger,"
and the night in drinking beer. Outside, somewhere, was an enemy who
might be a rascal, but was certainly a man. Professional honour was
touched on a raw. Since he was in, in God's name let him do something.
After a day spent in observing the manners and customs of Wanmeeting in
a state of semi-siege, he got very precise ideas of what they were
likely to be in a whole one. He called on the High Bailiff and spoke
his mind.
"Bailiff," he said very quietly, "your defences are not good, but they
are too good to defend nothing. I am sorry I cannot put your citizens
at a higher figure. There does not seem to me to be a man among them.
They chatter like pies, they drink like fishes, they herd like sheep,
they scream like gulls. They love their wives and children, but so do
rabbits; they are snug at home, but so are pigs in a stye; they say
many prayers, they give alms to the poor. But no prayers will ever stay
Galors, and the alms your people want I spell with an 'r.' I know
Master Galors, and he me. If he comes here the town will be carried,
the men hanged, the women ravished, and I shall be killed like a rat in
a drain. Now I set little store by my life, but I and the man I have
brought with me intend to die in the open. Do what you choose, but
understand that unless things alter to my liking, I take myself, my
sword, and my head for affairs into the country."
"And who are you, Messire, and what do I know of your head for
affairs?" cried the High Bailiff, on his dignity.
"My name is Prosper le Gai, at your service," the youth replied; "and
as for my head, it becomes me not to speak."
"If you will not speak of it, why are you here?" asked the High
Bailiff, at the mercy of his logic.
"I am here, sir, for the purpose of killing Dom Galors de Born."
"You speak very confidently, young gentleman."
"There is no boasting where there is no doubt."
"Is there no doubt, pray, whether he might kill you?"
"I intend to remove that doubt," said Prosper.
"Pray how, sir?"
"By killing him first."
The end of it all was that the High Bailiff, in the presence of the
Jurats and citizens, solemnly girt on Prosper the sword of the borough,
and declared Messire Prosper le Gai of Starning to be generalissimo of
its forces. Prosper at once paraded the garrison.
He rated the men roundly, flogged two of them with his own hand for
some small insubordination, and made fast friends in all ranks. Having
established a pleasant relationship by these simple means, he spoke to
them as follows.
"Gentlemen," he said, "have the goodness to remark that I have taught
you how to parade. In time I doubt not you will follow me with as good
a will as you have hitherto followed your own devices. These, I take
leave to tell you, were very foolish. If you follow me I shall lead you
in the thick of the fighting, should there be any. If you leave me, or
if I have the honour to be killed, you will all have your throats cut.
I do not mean to be killed, gentlemen, and rely upon you in the
alternative which remains."
He took a guard and went the round of the defences. Wherever he went he
brought heart with him. As for the burgesses and the burgesses' wives,
they thought him a god. The result was, that in six weeks he had half
the place under arms, a fighting force of one thousand pikes and five
hundred archers, an outer wall of defence ten feet by six, and
provision to stand a two months' siege. This brought the time to July.
On July 14 one of his scouts brought home the news that Galors had
concentrated on Hauterive, while keeping close watch along Wan. He
himself was no one knew where, scouring the country for traces of the
girl Isoult la Desirous, who had escaped from High March. Meantime a
detached force under the Golden Knight had surprised Goltres, and put
the inhabitants to the sword. They held that stronghold, and were said
still to be there.
Prosper sent for his horse, and rode down to the council house to see
the High Bailiff.
"Bailiff," he said, "Galors will not be here yet awhile. If he comes
you will know what to do. But I do not think he will come just yet."
"Ah, Messire, will you desert us?" cried the good soul.
"If you put it so, yes."
"You are tired of warfare, Messire?"
"Warfare, pardieu! I am tired of no warfare. I am going to make some
for default of it."
"And leave us all here?"
"And leave you all here."
"Would you have us assume the offensive, sir?"
"By no means, Bailiff. I would have you mind your walls. But forgive
me, I must be off."
"Where are you going, Messire?"
"I am going to find Galors, or at least those who will save me the
trouble. Adieu, Bailiff."
Prosper galloped away as if the devil were in him. The High Bailiff
assumed command.