The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Saint, by Warwick Deeping This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Red Saint Author: Warwick Deeping Release Date: October 24, 2020 [EBook #63544] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RED SAINT *** Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net from page images generously made available by the Internet Archive (https://archive.org) THE RED SAINT TO CAPTAIN AND MRS. MERRILL I DEDICATE THIS BOOK WITH ALL FAITH AND AFFECTION THE RED SAINT By WARWICK DEEPING Author of “Sorrell and Son,” etc. CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney First Published April 1909 THE RED SAINT CHAPTER I When Denise of the Hermitage went down to draw water at the spring at the edge of the beech wood, she saw the light of a fire flashing out through the blue gloom of the April dusk. It was far away—that fire, almost on the horizon, a knot of tawny colour seen between the dark slopes of two high hills. Yet though it was so far away Denise could see the long flames moving, sometimes shooting upwards, or bending and sweeping towards the ground. Denise stood and watched these flames that waved and flickered yonder through the dusk where the smoke spread out between the hills into a kind of pearly haze. It was so still under the boughs of the great beeches that the distant fire seemed strange and ghostly, burning without a sound. The little pool where Denise had filled her pitcher was not more silent, the pool fed by an invisible spring, and believed to be miraculous and holy. Yet though those far flames were so silent, Denise could set a sound to them, a crackling roar that would be very real to those who looked on the thing as on a sacrifice. There would be many watchers on the hills that night, sullen and silent folk to whom that blaze would speak like a war cresset teased by the wind on some great lord’s tower. Peter of Savoy’s riders, those hired “spears” from over the sea, Gascons, Flemings, Bretons, were out to keep the King’s peace in the Rapes of Pevensey and of Hastings. Denise knew that private war had been let loose, for had she not heard from the priest of Goldspur, and from Aymery the manor lord, that many of the lesser gentry and the Cinque Port towns were calling for Earl Simon? The pot that had long been simmering, had boiled over of a sudden. And those who had scalded toes had only their own perversity to thank. In such a fashion began the Barons’ war in many a quiet corner of the land. Lawyers might orate and scribble, but when men quarrelled over a great issue, and the heart of a people was full of bitterness and discontent, the rush was towards the primitive ordeal of the sword. “God—and the King!”—“Earl Simon and the Charter!” These two rallying cries cut off brother from brother, and father from son. There had been years of verbiage, oath breaking, famine, peculation, and cynical corruption in high places. The law was no law, the King’s oath a byword in brothels and in taverns. The great Father—even the Pope—had had both fists in the English money pots. Poitevins, Provençals, and Italians had scrambled together. The country was sick of it. Men who were in grim earnest hastened to get to blows. As Denise, half hermitess, half saint, went back through the beech wood, the fire, like a great red brazier, still shone out on her, latticed by the black boughs, or hidden for a moment behind a tree bole. And though the wood was as still and solemn as a temple, it seemed full of a hushed and listening dread, waiting for the wind that should come roaring through the tops of the trees. Unrest was upon the hills, and in the deeps of the valleys. Denise felt it as she might have felt the nearness of thunder on a sultry night in June. But if no wind stirred in the wood that night, there were other sounds more human and more passionate than the voice of the wind. Denise had said her prayers in her cell when the dead leaves under the beech trees whispered with the moving of many feet. Indistinct figures went in and out among the tree boles, the muttering of voices mingling with the rustle of the leaves. A full moon had risen, and begun to throw long slants of light into the darkness of the wood, outlining the black branches, and splashing the trunks of the trees with silver. In and out, through the still moonlight and the shadows, came the moving figures whose feet filled the whole wood with the shiver of dead leaves. They straggled along by twos and threes, some silent and morose, others talking with the quick muttering intensity of men who have given and taken blows. A darker core moved along the woodland path in the midst of this scattered company. Men were carrying a litter of boughs piled upon the trunks of two young ash trees. The moonlight played intermittently upon the men about the litter, showing so many white faces, intent and silent, and a body that lay upon the bed of boughs with a shield covering its face. A breadth of clear sky in the thick of the wood showed them that they were close on the glade where Denise of the Forest had her cell. The place was sacred and full of mystery to the woodlanders of those parts, and the scattered figures drew together under a tree where the path came out of the wood into the glade. Only the litter of boughs and the men with it went forward into the moonlight; the rest held aloof like dogs left by their master at the door of a church. The men who carried the litter set it down outside the gate in the wattle fence that shut in Denise’s garden. There was some whispering, but the men’s voices were no longer harsh and angry. Grimbald, the parish priest, sent them back into the wood to wait. Two men remained beside the litter, one standing a little apart with a cloak wrapped round him, and a hood drawn forward over his face. Grimbald, the priest from Goldspur village, opened the gate, and went up the path paved with rough, flat stones that led to the cell. Denise had heard the sound of voices, and the rustling of the dead leaves in the wood. Grimbald’s voice warned her that they were friends. “Sancta Denise,” he said, crossing himself, “ora pro nobis.” The door opened, under the broad black eaves of the hermitage. Denise stood there on the threshold, wearing a grey cloak that shone white in the light of the moon. Her hair clouded past her shoulders to her knees. It was miraculous hair, red as rust in the shade, but burning in the sunlight with a sheen of gold. Denise herself was miraculous, and this beech wood of hers was said to be full of many marvels. People who came for holy water from her pool, or to be treated by her for sickness, swore that they had seen a moving radiance, like a marsh fire, in the wood, and heard the voices of angels and the murmur of their wings. Denise was famed for her powers of healing. She knew all the precious herbs, and the touch of her hands could bring a blessing. Grimbald told her the news. “It is Waleran de Monceaux’s lad,” he said. “Come and see, Sanctissima, whether God will be merciful.” She bent forward and looked into Grimbald’s face. “There is war with us—then?” Grimbald spread his arms. “Peter of Savoy sent out his free-lances from Pevensey. They were too strong for us. The lad was shot through the body when they drove us into the woods.” “I saw a fire—about dusk.” “Waleran’s hall—and outhouses! That was the end of it.” He stood aside, and Denise went down the path, her bare feet making no sound upon the stones. Aymery, lord of the manor of Goldspur, knelt in the grass beside the litter holding the lad’s cold hands. Waleran still stood aloof, his face hidden under his hood. No one spoke to him. They left him alone, knowing his mood, and the manner of man that he was. Denise went on her knees beside the litter, her two hands putting back the masses of her hair. Aymery lifted the shield from the lad’s face. The sleeve of his hauberk brushed against Denise’s cloak. She glanced round at him, and their eyes smiled faintly at one another. “We brought the boy to you. The arrow drove right through him. You can feel the point under his tunic.” Denise laid a hand over the lad’s heart. There was not a flicker of movement there, but she could feel the arrow’s head standing out a hand’s breadth beyond the ribs. The lad must have died very quickly. “He is dead,” she said to the man at her side. Aymery was staring at the boy’s face. He turned, and glanced meaningly at the figure that stood apart in silent isolation. “It is Waleran,” he said in a whisper, “he would not believe the worst.” Denise gave a little shudder of pity. Aymery turned, and met her eyes. “Pray for the boy, Denise. What is death, but a miracle! And an hour ago——” She spread her hands helplessly. “Lord, death is beyond me; I am not blessed with so much power. Someone must tell him.” “The pity of it!” And she echoed him. “The pity of it!” A compassionate humility made her bow her head over the rough litter, for there was no place for the smaller remembrance of self in the conscious awe of her own helplessness. Denise had healed sick people, but she who could play the lady of healing, knew herself human in the presence of death. “Tell him,” she said, “it is almost shame to me that you should have brought the boy here.” Aymery covered the lad’s face again with the shield. “Pray for Waleran,” he said. “For the living rather than the dead.” Aymery rose and joined Grimbald the priest, who was standing by the gate. Denise still knelt beside the litter, holding the dead boy’s hands. And if compassion could have given him life, compassion for that silent man who stood aloof, life might have flowed miraculously from Denise’s body, and spread like fire into the limbs of the dead. Grimbald left Aymery, and crossed the grass to where Waleran stood, Waleran that sturdy man with the fierce red shock of hair. Waleran had been the first mesne lord in those parts to bristle his mane against Count Peter of Savoy. This hardihood had lost him his only child, and made a bonfire of his home, though he would not believe at first that the boy was dead. Aymery of Goldspur turned again to Denise. He could see that she was praying, and his eyes, that were frosty with the cold anger of a strong man helpless in the face of death, flashed suddenly as he saw the moonlight touching Denise’s hair. Grimbald had Waleran by the shoulders. They heard a short, sharp oath scatter the priest’s whisperings as a puff of wind scatters a handful of feathers. “Dead!” There was the sound of heavy breathing. “Let me alone! Am I a fool of a girl?” “Patience, brother.” “Patience be cursed! What is the use of an idiot saint if an arrow between the ribs is too much for her?” Denise let the boy’s hands fall; Aymery saw her bow her head, and heard her whisper words that he could not catch. Then Waleran came forward, swinging his arms as though to keep off Grimbald who towered beside him like a great ship. Waleran stopped at the foot of the litter, and stood staring at the shield that covered the dead boy’s face. Some impulse drove him to his knees, and he began to feel for the arrow, breathing heavily through set teeth. Denise’s nearness seemed to come between him and the savage tenderness of a dog for its dead whelp. Her humility and her compassion were not tuned to the cry of nature. “Get up,” he said. “This is my affair.” He leant forward, and pushed her back with a rough thrust of the open hand. Aymery caught Denise, and drew her aside. “Forgive——” His arms lingered about her like the arms of a lover. “Lord, I understand.” “That arrow has stricken two hearts.” Her eyes looked into Aymery’s as he let her go. “God have pity,” she said. Waleran had broken off the head of the arrow. He held it up in the moonlight, and his hood fell back from his face. The three who watched him saw his face contorted with laughter, though no sound came from the open mouth. He ran the arrow’s head through his cloak, as a woman pins her tunic with a splinter of bone. “Here is a keepsake,” he said. “Lord, but I shall cherish it! They have lit a candle for the boy, yonder. Some day I shall hang a bell on a rope, and ring him a passing.” He scrambled up, swaggering, and shaking his shoulders. It was his way of carrying the burden that the night had laid on him. He shouted to the men, roughly, and they came out from the shadows of the trees. When they had lifted the litter, Waleran jerked himself on to it, and putting the shield aside, sat fingering his boy’s face. “A puff of wind, and the candle is out,” he said. The litter swayed under his weight. “Spill me, you fools, and I shall have something to say to you. Off with you. To-morrow we must put this poor pigeon under the grass.” The men moved away, and Grimbald would have followed them, but Waleran ordered him back. “Have I nothing better to do than to cut my own throat!” he said. “Shifts and cassocks are no good for me. The puppy is mine, by God! Let no one meddle between him and me.” Grimbald followed them no farther, and heard the swish of their feet die away through the dead leaves into the darkness. In an hour from their first coming the beech wood was silent and empty, and Denise’s cell lay with its dark thatch like an islet in the midst of a quiet mere. Not a ripple of sound played over the surface of the night. Aymery and Grimbald had gone to warn their own people that death was abroad on the White Horse. And Denise, sitting on her bed, wakeful, and filled with a great pity for Waleran and the lad, felt that the stealthy glamour of the moonlight was cold and unreal. If her compassion followed Waleran, a feeling more deep and more mysterious followed Aymery under the boughs of the beeches. Yet this feeling of Denise’s was as miraculous as the moonlight which she thought so cold and mute. The two men made their way through the wood by a broad green ride, and stood listening where the heathland began for any sound that might steal out of the vast silence of the night. Grimbald’s great head, with its gaunt, eagle face, the colour of smoked oak, had the full moon behind it for a halo. Aymery of Goldspur stood a little below him on the hillside, leaning on his sword. His thoughts were back among the trees about Denise’s glade, those towering trees whose boughs seemed hung with the stars. Below them stretched wastes of whin and heather, hills black with forests, valleys full of moonlit mist. They could see the sea shining in the distance, a whole land beneath them, ghostly, strange, and still. “It is all quiet yonder.” Grimbald’s head was like the head of a hawk, alert and very watchful. “They have done enough for one night,” he said. “To make us keep troth with the King!” Both were silent for a moment. Grimbald spoke the thought that was uppermost in Aymery’s mind. “It is no longer safe for the girl alone, yonder,” he said. Aymery, that man with the iron mouth and the square chin, and eyes the colour of the winter sea, spread his shoulders as an archer spreads them before drawing a six-foot bow. “I will see to it,” he said quietly. “Nothing must happen to Denise.” CHAPTER II The little red spider of a man who pattered along beside Gaillard’s horse, looked up from time to time into the Gascon’s face, and thought what a great pageant life must be to a soldier who had such a body and so much pay. For the little red spider was a cripple, and nothing more glorious than a spy, a thing that crawled like a harvest bug, and might have been squashed without ceremony under the Gascon’s fist. As for Gaillard he was a very great man, cock and captain of Count Peter’s chickens, those most meek birds who scratched up obstinate worms, and kept their lord’s land clean of grubs. They were marching back to Pevensey, bows and spears, along the flat road over the marshes, with the downs in the west a dull green against the April sky. Waleran de Monceaux had been chastened in proper fashion, a chastening that might calm the turbulent tempers of his neighbours. Of what use were such castles as Pevensey, Lewes, Arundel, and Bramber, to the King at such a crisis, if the great lords did not put pettifogging law aside and coerce as much of the country as they could cover with their swords? Men were tired of words and of charters. “Let us come to grips,” said they, “and not quarrel over parchment and seals.” And the great lords were wise in their necessity, kept—each in his castle —a dragon at his service, a dragon that could be sent out to scorch up those who had the temerity to threaten the King. The little red spider thought Messire Gaillard a fine fellow. He had such limbs on him, such a voice, such a cheerful way of bullying everyone. The Gascon might have been made of brown wire, he was so restless, so sinewy, so alert; a rust-coloured man with red and uneasy eyes, a harsh skin blotched with freckles, hair that curled like a negro’s, and a big mouth insolent under the aggressive tusks of its moustache. A vain man, too, as his dress and his harness showed, a man who put oil on his hair, wore many rings, and had a quick eye for a woman. He was just the lusty, headstrong animal, a born fighter, and a bully by instinct, inflammable, self-sufficient, a babbler, and a singer of love songs. The waters of the bay were covered with purple shadows, and the marshlands brilliant as green samite when Gaillard’s men came to the western gate of the castle, and rode two by two with drooped spears into the great outer bailey closed in by the old Roman walls. Gaillard came last, with the spy pattering beside his horse. The men went to their quarters, rough pent houses that had been built for them along the northern wall, for there was not room enough in Peter of Savoy’s new castle within a castle for all those hired men from over the sea. Pevensey would have astonished any rough Northumbrian baron, or the fiery Marcher Lords who fought the Welsh. For Peter of Savoy was a southerner, a compeer of the King’s in his love of colour and of music. To dig a moat and build white towers was not enough for him, and the spirit of Provence had emptied itself within the Roman wall. A great part of the space had become a garden, shut in with thickets of cypresses and bays. The roses of Provence bloomed there in June. Winding alley ways went in and out, short swarded, and overhung by rose trees. There were vines on trellises, and banks of fragrant herbs. In the thick of a knoll of cypresses Count Peter kept two leopards in a cage, yellow-eyed beasts which glided silently to and fro. Gaillard, skirting the cypresses of the pleasaunce, had his eyes on the window of the great tower where Peter of Savoy loved to sit playing chess with Dan Barnabo his chaplain, or listening to a woman singing to the lute. The lutanist sang to others as well as to Count Peter. Gaillard the Gascon knew the twitter of her strings, better perhaps, than Peter of Savoy himself. “Give me a red rose, my desire, And a kiss on the mouth for an Ave.” The words were those of Etoile of the Lute, and Gaillard hummed them under the shade of the cypresses as he rode towards the inner gate. But some hand threw a clod of turf at him that morning, and threw it so cleverly that the thing hit Gaillard on the ear, and spattered his blue surcoat over with soil. The Gascon turned sharply in the saddle, and saw a white hand showing between two cypress trees, and a wrist that betrayed the golden threads embroidering a woman’s sleeve. A voice laughed at him. “Throw me a clod of turf, my desire, Give me a blow on the ear for a greeting!” The arm put the boughs aside, and a face appeared, wreathed by the cypress sprays, a woman’s face, white, mischievous, and alluring. Her black hair was bound up in a golden net. She showed her teeth at Gaillard, and put out the tip of a red tongue. “Can I throw straight, dear lord?” He turned his horse, glanced at the window in the tower, and then laughed back at her, opening his mouth wide like the beak of a hungry bird. “Better at a man’s heart, than at his head, dear lady.” “A Gascon has more head than heart, my friend.” “And a long sword, and a longer tongue!” She tilted her chin, two black eyes laughing above a short, impudent nose, and a hard, red mouth. “Go and have your gossip with good Peter. Barnabo has beaten him twice at chess, and he was ready to throw the board at me. The leopards are better tempered.” Gaillard snapped his fingers. “I will be a leopard,” he said. “Wait till I have washed the dust off. Peter always plays until he wins.” The white face disappeared behind the cypress boughs, and Gaillard rode on to his quarters, ready to wash the dust of the road away with wine and water, and thinking of Etoile, Count Peter’s lutanist and lady. She was a Gascon also from the land of the Garonne. Etoile and Gaillard were excellent friends, especially when the Savoyard was playing chess. There were peacocks strutting in the garden, sunning their gorgeous tails, when Gaillard fresh from the bath and the hands of his man, went out to Etoile among the cypresses. At the window above Peter of Savoy had his head over the chess-board. The game was such a passion with him, that his people left him in the throes of it, not even Etoile being allowed to touch her lute. The Savoyard, chin on the palm of his left hand, with Barnabo opposite him, had not so much as noticed Gaillard’s return. The men had ridden to their quarters, but Peter’s long fingers loitered over the board, and his ears might have been stuffed with wool. Barnabo, who had won two games, had enough worldly wisdom behind his smooth, Italian face to know that the time had come to put his lord in a happier temper. Barnabo always rose from the board a loser. It was part of his policy to pique the great man by defeating him at first, that he might delight him the more with the inevitable revenge. “You are too subtle for me, sire,” he would confess. “I can begin by winning, that is easy. When I have beaten you, you laugh, and turn to show me what a child I am.” The chess-players were so intent above, that Gaillard and the lute girl Etoile, had the half hour safely to themselves. They were blood cousins—these two Gascons, and yet nearer of kin in the intimate ambition that had sent them hunting in a strange land. How the Lady of the Peacocks had persuaded Peter of Savoy into loving her would be a tale fit for a French song. She could do very much as she pleased with him so long as he was not hanging his dyed beard over the chess-board. As for her and Gaillard, they understood one another. The man was driven at times to be rash and impetuous. Etoile was strange and fierce enough at a crisis to keep Gaillard’s galloping passion from breaking its own neck. These two Gascons had a common enemy, Barnabo the Italian, who was as clever as Etoile, and far more clever than Gaillard. The chaplain was a smooth man, a man who smiled when he was snubbed, and put the insult carefully into the counting-house of his memory. There was sometimes a glitter in his eyes, like the gleam of a knife hidden in a sleeve. He hated Etoile, and Etoile the woman, knew why he hated her. Barnabo would have had her for an accomplice, the Queen on the chess-board to play against Count Peter. Etoile had struck Barnabo across the face, and the chess-board and the lute had been at feud with one another. Peter of Savoy knew nothing of all this. Both Barnabo and Etoile were too wise to throw soot at one another, unless the chance should come when one could be safely blackened without so much as a pinch of slander falling upon the other. It was of Barnabo they talked that morning, hidden by the cypresses, Etoile standing by the leopards’ cage, the great beasts fawning against the bars, and letting her stroke their heads. There seemed some sympathy between her and the two sleek, sinuous cats. The voice and the eyes of Etoile cast a spell upon them. They would purr and rub against the bars when she came near. The Lady of the Peacocks told Gaillard a piece of news that made the man’s eyes grow more hard and restless. “He had better not meddle,” he said; “or I will twist his neck.” Etoile snapped her fingers. “You are a great fool, my Gaillard, Barnabo is not so rough and clumsy. I know the man.” “But the rat is nibbling at our cheese!” “What else can he do, the Savoyard cannot go to bed with him. A man is at a disadvantage. He can only call names.” “Behind our backs, my desire!” “Over the chess-board, perhaps.” Gaillard put a hand through the bars, and scratched a leopard’s head. “It is a pity,” he said, “that we cannot shut Barnabo up with these two innocents when they are hungry. They would play a pretty game with him, a game of knucklebones, with nothing left afterwards but some rags, two sandals, and a brain box.” Etoile laughed, and then looked shrewd. “There are other people who would eat up Dan Barnabo, people in the woods—yonder. Every man has a foolish corner in his heart. If Barnabo asks you how the country seems, tell him the folk are as frightened as mice.” “Very lusty mice, my desire! Call them pole-cats.” “Pole-cats may serve as well as leopards. Be careful of that window in the tower; Barnabo has quick eyes. Go up now and see how the game goes.” Peter of Savoy and the chaplain still had the chess-board between them when Gaillard went up to the room in the tower. The window, widely splayed, had painted medallions in its frames. A song book and a lute lay on a red cushion, with a gaze-hound curled on the seat. The third game was nearly at an end, and Peter of Savoy was rubbing his pointed beard, and chuckling inwardly as he hung over the board. Barnabo brooded, his puzzled, hesitating hands flattering the strategy of his lord and opponent. Gaillard sat down on the window seat to wait. Peter of Savoy was to triumph. Therefore the world went well. A resigned sigh from Barnabo, the tap of a piece on the board, a shuffling of Count Peter’s feet, and the end came. The great man sat back, laughed in his chaplain’s face, and turned a sharp and self-satisfied profile to Gaillard. “So you are back, my Gascon. All our games have gone well, have they? See—I am about to steal his lady.” Gaillard leant forward to watch. “Since he is a priest, sire, you are saving him from great temptation.” Peter of Savoy laughed, but for some reason Barnabo looked up at the Gascon sharply. The game was lost and won, and Gaillard had told his news. Peter of Savoy had picked up the lute, and was twanging the strings complacently. Barnabo still pored over the chess-board as though to discover how and where he had been beaten. He was a clever artist in the conception of flattery, yet he was on the alert while Peter of Savoy and Gaillard talked. “Quiet as lambs, to be sure. That will be good news for our friend here. You smoked Waleran out like a fox out of a hole. Excellent Gascon! Fire purifies, so thought the Greeks. There are the folk at Goldspur to be seized—unless they come in with halters round their necks.” The great man hummed a passage from a favourite song. “Barnabo would not be persuaded,” he said, half-closing his eyes slyly. “You must know, my Gaillard, that Barnabo is a man with a hot conscience. He has learnt six words of English—what does that matter? So many benefices to be served —in Latin; so many women to be shrived! Even when the wolves are out—Barnabo will not neglect his duties!” The Italian was imperturbable and debonair. “I have a charm against all wolves,” he said, looking at Gaillard out of the corner of his eyes. “Your sanctity, Father, to be sure. Most excellent St. Francis, the hawks even perch on your shoulders. Barnabo will mount his mule and ride out to comfort the sick, whatever I, his lord, may say.” Gaillard took the gaze-hound up into his lap. “He will have nothing to fear there, now. I will answer for that.” Barnabo’s eyes were studying Gaillard’s face. He smiled, and began to gather up the chess-men. “After the sword come the Cross and the mass book,” he said. “You will not quarrel with my conscience, sire, if I ride out to-morrow.” “Who—in Christendom—is worth the labour of a quarrel? Command your friends, and tread upon your enemies. Go out, and heal the sick, when the husbands are not at home.” Etoile, who had been listening at the door, pulled Gaillard into a dark corner on the stairs when he came out to see to the guards. “So Barnabo is going a-love-making,” she said. “Good. Perhaps he will not come back again.” And she sang to Peter of Savoy that night, a desirable woman whose face betrayed no care. CHAPTER III Denise was so much the saint and the Lady of the Goldspur woods that the country folk had almost ceased to wonder whence she had come, and what her past had been. She was Sancta Denise to them, a woman to whom they went when they were sick or in trouble, who came and prayed for them, and smiled on their children with her miraculous eyes. All the woodland folk in the hundreds round looked on Denise as a saint, a child of mystery who dwelt up yonder amid the great beech trees under the clouds. Offerings were left before her gate, milk, bread, eggs, and herbs, the offerings of the poor. If there was digging to be done, or the grass to be scythed in the glade, some of Aymery’s villeins would be there at dawn, working like brown gnomes in the dusk of the breaking day. Four times a year a pedlar brought her the gold thread for her orfrays work, for Denise had wonderful hands, and her embroidery had been worn by queens. The money that she earned Denise spent among the poor, and she might have walked from Rye to Shoreham, and no Sussex man would have laid hands upon her, save to touch her gown for a blessing. Olivia, Aymery’s mother, alone had known Denise’s history, and Olivia was dead. Some had said that she was the “love child” of a great lady, others a “ward” who had fled from the King’s court rather than be married to some creature who had offered the King money. But Denise was Denise, and her past was of no account, though any hind could have sworn that she was no peasant’s child. The cell in the beech wood had been built for her by Dame Olivia, and the ground about it turned into a garden. Denise had become part of the woodland life, a tender and mysterious figure that threw a glamour over the hearts of all. Her coming had been soon after the great famine, when the crops had failed after a wet summer. Death had passed over the land like a plague, and in the towns the dead had lain for days unburied. The famine had left sickness behind it, sick women, and sick babes at the breast, as though the whole countryside had grown feeble for lack of bread. Denise had come down from her cell in the beech wood, a veritable Lady of Compassion. It was not the bread that she had given, but the pity and the tenderness that had enshrined her in the hearts of all the people. It was as though she had magic power, a glory given of God and the Virgin. Men soon spoke of miracles. Sick children were brought to her, and water taken from her holy spring. The abbots and priors of the south heard of her, and more than one “house” considered the value that might be set upon a saint. Perhaps Denise’s power lay largely in her youth, for she was no ulcerous and lean recluse, but a woman in the morning of her beauty, a beauty that was strange and elfin-like, rich as an autumn in red leaf. She had but to look at men, and they felt an awe of her; at children, and they came to her like birds to a witch. The hair under the grey hood had the colour of copper, with tinges of red and of gold. Her eyes were between amber and the brown of a woodland pool, her skin so clear and white, despite the sun and the wind, that men believed her heart could be seen shining like a red gem beneath. Denise was tall, and broad across the bosom. Her fingers were so long, and slim, and white, that the superstitious believed that pearls might drop from them, and that not even the brown soil of her garden could cling to those miraculous hands. Denise carried her pitcher to the spring the morning after they had brought Waleran’s boy to her with an arrow through his heart. She stripped herself at the pool, and washed her body, scooping up the water in her palms, her hair knotted over her neck. Denise’s naked figure might have stood as the symbol of her womanhood, clean, comely, unshadowed by self- consciousness. It was part of the infinite mystery of things, a mystery that dwelt in Denise’s heart, and gave her power over women and over men. Her brown eyes were sad that morning as she slipped on her white shift and her grey gown, and went back under the beech trees to her cell. With the fragrance of the wild flowers and the dew came the consciousness of the rougher world within that world of hers. She remembered the flames of the night before, Waleran’s dead boy, the savage anguish of the man breaking out into bitterness and laughter. What more might not happen in the deeps of the woods? Denise was no ignorant child, she had lived in another world before Olivia had built her the cell under the Goldspur beeches. Denise said her prayers, worked awhile in her garden, and then brought out her orfrays of gold, and sat in the doorway under the deep shade of the thatch. But though her fingers were busy with the threads, her mind was full of a spirit of watchfulness and of unrest. She felt as it were the stir and movement of another world beyond the towering domes of the trees. She had a premonition that someone would come through the wood that morning. It would be a man, and yet not Grimbald. Denise’s hands were idle awhile, and her brown eyes looked thoughtfully into the deeps of the wood. Nor was it very wonderful that Aymery’s thoughts should turn towards Denise as a man struggles through the thick of a crowd when he sees a beloved head in danger. He and Grimbald had been at the burying of Waleran’s boy, but Aymery had left Grimbald and the rest, and ridden back to Goldspur to see Denise. The trampling of his horse’s hoofs through the dead beech leaves came as no surprise to the woman who sat with the orfrays work of gold in her lap. She had watched her own mind, till, like a crystal, it had been full of the man’s coming. Often in her life Denise had been able to foresee the faces of those dear to her, and to feel friends near while they were still far distant. She had the gift of inward vision, though the power became lost to her later when she had suffered many humiliations. Aymery rode out into the sunlight of the glade, and Denise could see that he was armed. A surcoat of apple green covered the ringed hauberk, though the hood of mail was turned back between his shoulders. Aymery rode his big black destrier that day, and not the rough nag he used for hawking and cantering over his lands. He looped the bridle over the post at the gate, and came up the path with the air of a man who has more in his heart than his lips might utter. Denise let her work lie idle in her lap. She had had no fear of Aymery from the first, his face had become so familiar that it seemed part of the life round her, like the trees, or the hills, or the distant sea. Yet from the instant that he opened the wattle gate that morning, a sense of strangeness took hold of both of them. Each felt the change and wondered at it, so simple in its significance, and yet so strange. The shadow of a cloud lay over them for the first time. The more intimate hour had come when the man looked into the woman’s eyes and thought that thought which opens the eyes of the soul—“if any harm should befall her! If that dear head should suffer shame!” “We have buried the boy,” he said. “That will be the beginning of a long tale.” There was something satisfying about Aymery, a man who carried his head high, and looked fearlessly at the horizon. He had a quick yet quiet way with him had Aymery of Goldspur. Shirkers and cowards were afraid of those grey eyes of his, for they were not the eyes of a man to be trifled with or fooled. He spoke to Denise, resting his hands on his sword, and looking at the golden orfrays work in her lap. She was leaning against the door-post, her face in the shadow, thought and feeling as intimately one as the rose and the scent of the rose. “The woods are no longer safe. Peter of Savoy’s riders will be with us again. Waleran will see to that.” Denise’s brown eyes had a tremor of light in them. “Have you proved me a coward?” “We are cowards, Denise, where others are concerned. What do the days promise us? Waleran could not hold his house against those hired swarthies, nor can I mine; I am not fool enough to doubt it. A few arrows bearded with burning tow, the thatch alight, and the smoke and the flames would make us run like rats. It will be war in the woods where our bows can serve us, and where their men-at-arms cannot ride our peasants down.” Denise did not answer him for a moment. Her hands were turning over the embroidery in her lap. “I have lived with you all in the sunshine,” she said. “And now that trouble comes you would have me run away!” “What man would not wish it?” “But you——” “I—I am the worst of all.” She dropped her head suddenly as though hiding the light and colour that had rushed into her eyes and face. “I am not afraid,” she said. “I am”—and he shut his lips on the words—“it is human to be afraid. If you knew this scum of Gascons, Flemings, and what not, you would wish them well beyond the sea. Would to God that we could whip them out of the land. But what would you! We cannot pull down such a rock as Pevensey with our hands. These castles that the King’s men hold for him are too strong for us to meddle with. It is they who will do the meddling, and what do these hired men care for what we honour? You will be on the edge of a pit here. Women are best away when swords are out.” He bent towards her, looking down into her face, his manhood shining out on her, strong and honest, denying itself the right of a romantic beast. “Come with me, and I will guard you against all Christendom.” A weaker and vainer man might have spoken in such heroics. Aymery knew what he knew. Denise would be safer away from him when such men as Waleran were to be his brethren-in-arms. “I tell you the truth, Denise, because——” She looked up at him suddenly, and their eyes met. Denise saw the deeper truth, that great mystery of life that cannot hide itself from the eyes of a woman. “Lord, what shall I say to you?” He spread his arms. “Say nothing. Do what I, Grimbald, all, desire. I have good friends at Winchelsea. You will be safe there. The King wishes to win the Cinque Ports over. He will not be rough with them, as yet. They are too precious to be ravaged.” Denise looked at the sky beyond the boughs of the beech trees, letting her hands hang over her knees. “Lord,” she said, “I am still obstinate. I have lived among you all.” “Denise, I also am obstinate.” “I would not have you otherwise. And yet, how can I shirk the truth that I shall be deserting you all the moment trouble comes?” He smiled at her, and shook his head. “Should we be the happier if you fell into the hands of Peter of Savoy? No. That is unthinkable! I would rather see you —dead like Waleran’s boy—before they carried you into Pevensey! Good God, you, to be touched by such hands!” Denise understood all that was in his heart. She crossed herself as though against the evil things of the world. “Lord,” she said, “let there be this promise between us. If Goldspur is threatened, then—I will do what you desire. When the people take to the woods, I shall feel less of a coward. They shall not say that I fled from a shadow.” And thus it was agreed between them, Aymery riding back through the woods towards Goldspur, the face of Denise more wonderful to him than it had ever seemed before. Aymery had come by the truth that morning, and the world had a mystery—the mystery of the tenderness of spring. Close by Goldspur village, on the edge of the manor ploughlands, he met Grimbald, who had come in search of him. The priest’s face had the look of a stormy and ominous sky. He took Aymery’s bridle, and turned back with him towards the village. “Waleran has gone towards Pevensey,” he said. “We must be ready for a whirlwind when such storm-cocks are on the wing.” CHAPTER IV A poor rag of a man, with the pinched face of a sick girl, came limping on sore heels to the western gate of Pevensey. The man had a broken arrow through the flesh of his neck; his mouth was all awry, and his breath came in great heaves, for he had run ten miles that morning. When someone caught him round the middle as he tottered at the gate, he doubled up like a wet clout over a line, and emptied his very soul over the stones. The guards put him on his back awhile, rubbed his legs, and gave him a horn of mead to drink. One of them forced the back of the arrow through the skin, and whipped it out as a woman whips a broken bodkin out of a friend’s finger. The beer, and the blunt heroism of this barber surgeon brought Barnabo’s man briskly upon his haunches. He clapped his hand to his neck, saw that there was blood on it, and promptly began to whimper. “You’ve pulled the spiggot out,” he wailed. “Lord, did ever a hogshead gush faster! Linen—oil, and linen, for the love of the Saints.” The men laughed at him. One of them took a smock that hung on a nail outside the porter’s lodge, tore a strip from it, spat on the wound, and bandaged Barnabo’s man till he had a gorget and whimple fit for a nun. “Take a little more beer, comrade,” he said. “Never a rabbit ran more bravely.” The fugitive sulked under their attentive and jeering faces. “Go to perdition,” he retorted. “It was fifty to one, there, in the woods. Messire Gaillard must hear of it. You will all be very brave, sirs, when these devils begin to shoot at you from behind a hundred trees.” Gaillard heard of it soon enough, as did Etoile, and Peter of Savoy. Barnabo had been waylaid in the woods that morning, and the pole-cats had clawed him off his mule. For no man was more hated than Dan Barnabo in those parts, a hard, shrewd man who held many benefices, and saw that his steward ground out the dues. The Italian could not speak ten words in the vulgar tongue. His ministrations would have been ridiculous had he ever troubled his soul about the people. It was told that a woman had once waylaid Barnabo, and demanded to be shriven. The Italian had understood nothing of what she said to him, but since she was pretty and importunate, he had created a scandal by misunderstanding her whole desire, and by seeking to comfort her in a fashion that was not fatherly. The woman had scratched Barnabo’s face. There were many people who had lusted to scarify him more viciously. Barnabo baptised no children, sought out none of the sick, buried none of the dead. Twice a year perhaps he had said mass in the churches that belonged to him. Few of the people had come to hear Barnabo’s Roman voice. He was a better lute player and lap-dog than priest, and the people knew it. Gaillard had his orders from Peter of Savoy. Etoile laughed in his face when she met him upon the stairs. “Let the pole-cats play a little with Barnabo,” she said. “Do not ride furiously, dear lord! I can learn to serve at chess better than Barnabo.” Gaillard caught at her, but she slipped past him up the stairs. “There are two sorts of fools in the world, my Gaillard,” she said. “One is killed for the sake of a woman, the other through greed for a woman. Keep out of Barnabo’s path.” Both Peter of Savoy and the Gascon knew whither Barnabo had ridden that April day. It was notorious that the Italian had kept a focaria or hearth-ward at a priest’s house of his in a valley beyond the hill called Bright Ling because of the glory of its heathlands in the summer. The woman—a Norman—was more comely than was well for Dan Barnabo’s name, and she had kept the house for him, and rendered it to him sweet and garnished whenever he chose to ride that way. Gaillard and his men marched past Dallington, where Guillaume Sancto de Leodegario was lord of the manor, and on over Bright Ling with the furze in full bloom. The little red spy jogged along beside the Gascon’s horse. He led them into a deep valley, a valley full of the grey-green trunks of oak trees, and the brown wreckage of last year’s bracken. A stream dived and winked in the bottoms, and at the end of a piece of grassland the thatch of the priest’s house shelved under the very boughs of the oaks. No smoke rose from the place. It seemed silent and deserted as Gaillard and his men came trampling through the dead bracken. Gaillard’s eyes swept hillside and valley, for he was shrewd enough to guess that many an alert shadow had dogged them on the march that day. He dismounted, sent his archers into the woods as scouts, and taking the pick of his men-at- arms, marched up to the silent house, holding his shield ready to catch any treacherous arrow that might be shot from the dark squints. A wooden perch shadowed the main entry, and Gaillard saw that the door stood ajar, and that the flagstones paving the porch were littered with rushes, and caked with mud as though many feet had passed to and fro over the stones. Gaillard pushed the door open with the point of his sword. It gave to him innocently enough, and he crossed the threshold, and stood staring at something that the men behind him could not see. The place had the dimness of twilight, lit as it was by the narrow lancets cut in the thickness of the wall. Not three paces from Gaillard, their feet nearly touching the floor, two bodies dangled on ropes from the black beams of the roof. The face of the one was grey; of the other, black and turgid; for one had died by the sword, the other by the rope. The body with the black face was still twisting to and fro as a joint twists on a spit before the fire. The arms had been pinioned, and the man’s tongue been drawn out, and the head of an arrow thrust through it. The face could scarcely be recognised, but by the clothes Gaillard knew him for Dan Barnabo, the Italian, lutanist, lover, spoiler of the poor. Gaillard touched the body. It was still warm. His men were crowding in, peering over each other’s shoulders so that the doorway was full of faces, shields, and swords. Gaillard waved them back. He swung his sword, struck at the rope that held Barnabo, and cut it so cleanly that the body came down upon its feet. For a moment it stood, poised there, before falling forward to hide its black face in the rushes. Gaillard looked at it a little contemptuously, thinking of Etoile, and the rivalry between her and this thing that had been a man. “Only fools come by such a death,” he said. “A dog’s death. This man had a woman’s hands.” Dusk was falling, and Gaillard and his men settled themselves to pass the night in dead Barnabo’s house under the oak trees. Gaillard, who did not trouble himself about such a thing as a “crowner’s quest,” had the two bodies buried in the garden at the foot of a holly tree. Waleran de Monceaux had hanged Barnabo, and the priest was not pretty to look at with his black face and his swollen tongue. Nor was Gaillard going to quarrel with so convenient a coincidence. He called his archers back out of the woods, posted two sentinels, had the horses brought in and stabled in the hall. A fire was lit on the hearth, and the men gathered round it, and opened their wallets for supper. Gaillard kept the red-headed hunchback at his elbow, and questioned him narrowly as to the woodways, and the manor houses, and the gentry with whom he would have to deal. These Sussex rebels had hanged Barnabo, and in the hanging, thrown down the blood gauge to Peter of Savoy. War was Gaillard’s business. He had learnt the trade in Gascony, where neighbour went out against neighbour as for a day’s hunting. Nor was it Gaillard’s concern to trouble about the law of the land, and how far feudal faith bound this man or that. The King was the great over-lord, and Peter of Savoy stood as his champion in those parts. Hence if rebels popped their heads up, it was only necessary to strike with the sword. Night fell, and the men lay down to sleep in the long hall, crowding about the fire, for the horses were ranged along the walls. The air of the place was close and heavy with the smoke from the fire, the animal heat of the crowded bodies, and the pungent scent of horses’ dung. Faint flickers of light lost themselves in the black zenith of the timbered roof. Gaillard, sitting propped in a corner with his sword across his knees, could hear the wet murmur of the stream that ran close to the house. He could also hear the two sentinels answering each other, and since they seemed so whole-heartedly alert, Gaillard dozed off like a dog. About midnight Gaillard opened his eyes, and sat staring at the dying fire, and though he remained motionless, his face sharpened like the face of one who listens. His eyes moved slowly from figure to figure, to rest at last on the shutter closing a window. And Gaillard saw that the shutter was shaking ever so little, and he knew th...