Brother Geraint pulled his black cowl forward over his head, and stepped out into the porch. Some one thrust the door to behind him, and there was the sound of an oak bar being dropped into the slots.
A full moon stared at Brother Geraint over the top of a thorn hedge. He stood there for a while in the deep shadow, licking his lips, and listening.
Somewhere down the valley a dog was baying the moon, a little trickle of discord running through the supreme silence of the night. Brother Geraint tucked his hands into his sleeves, grinned at the moon, and started down the path with his shadow following at his heels. He loitered a moment at the gate, glancing back over his shoulder at the house that blinked never a light at him, but stood solid and black and silent in the thick of a smother of apple trees.
The man at the gate nodded his head gloatingly.
“Peace be with you.”
He gave a self-pleased, triumphant snuffle, swung the gate open, glanced up and down the path that crossed the meadows, and then turned homewards through the moonlight.
In Orchard Valley the dew lay like silver samite on the grass, and the boughs of the apple trees were white as snow. Between the willows the Rondel river ran toward the sea, sleek and still and glassy, save where it thundered over the weir beside the prior’s mill. The bell-tower of Paradise cut the northern sky into two steel-bright halves. Over yonder beyond the river the Forest held up a cloak of mystery across the west. Its great beech trees were glimmering into green splendor and lifting a thousand crowded domes against the brilliance of the moon.
Brother Geraint had no care for any of these things. He swung along toward Paradise like a dog returning from an adventure, his fat chin showing white under his cowl, his arms folded across his chest. The cluster of hovels and cottages that stretched between the river and the priory gate was discreetly dark and silent, with no Peeping Tom to watch the devout figure moving between the hedges and under the orchard trees. Paradise slept peacefully in its valley, and left the ordering of things spiritual to St. Benedict.
The priory, lying there in the midst of the smooth meadows, looked white and chaste and very beautiful. The night was so still that even the aspen trees that sheltered it on the north would not have fluttered their leaves had the month been June. The gold weathercock at the top of the flèche glittered in the moonlight. The bell-tower, with its four pinnacles, seemed up among the stars. Sanctity, calm, devout splendor! And yet the gargoyles ranged below the battlements of the gate opened their black mouths with a suggestion of obscene and gloating laughter. It was as though they hailed Brother Geraint as a boon comrade, a human hungry creature with wanton eyes and scoffing lips:
“Ho, you sly sinner! Hallo, you dog!”
The black holes in the stone masks up above mouthed at him in silent exultation.
Brother Geraint did not make his entry by the great gate. There was a door in the precinct wall that opened into the kitchen court, and this door served. The monk passed along the slope under the infirmary, and so into the cloisters. He had taken off his shoes, and went noiselessly on his stockinged feet.
Suddenly he paused like a big, black, listening bird, his head on one side. For some one was chanting in the priory church. Geraint knew the voice, and his teeth showed in the dark slit of his mouth.
“Brre—pious bastard!”
Hate gleamed under his black cowl. He crept noiselessly up the steps that led to the doorway, and along the transept, and craning his head around the pillar of the chancel arch, looked up into the choir. The great window was lit by the moon, its tracery dead black in a sheet of silver. The light shone on the lower half of Brother Geraint’s face, but his eyes were in the shadow.
A man was kneeling in one of the choir stalls, a young man with his hood turned back and his hair shining like golden wire. He knelt very straight and erect, his head thrown back, his arms folded over his chest. He had ceased his chanting, and his eyes seemed to be looking at something a long way off.
There was a grotesque and ferocious sneer on Brother Geraint’s face. Then his lips moved silently. He was speaking to his own heart.
“How bold the whelp is before God! A bladder of lard hung up in a shop could not look more innocent. Innocent! Damnation! This bit of green pork needs curing.”
He nodded his head significantly at the man in the choir, and crept back out of the church. In going from the cloisters toward the prior’s house he met a little old fellow carrying a leather bottle, and walking with his head thrust forward as though he were in a hurry.
“God’s speed, brother.”
They stood close together under the wall, leering at each other in the darkness.
“Is the prior abed yet?”
The little man held up the bottle.
“I have just been filling his jack for him.”
“Empty, is it?”
“Try, brother.”
Geraint took the bottle and drank.
“Burgundy.”
He licked his lips.
“Ale is all very well, Holt, but a stomachful of this red stuff is good after a night of prayer.”
The little man sniggered, and nodded his head.
“Warms up the blood again. Ssst—listen to that young dog yelping.”
They could hear Brother Martin chanting in the choir. Geraint’s hand shot out and gripped the cellarer’s shoulder.
“Assuredly you love him, friend Holt. Why, the young man is a saint; he brings us glory and reputation.”
“Stuffed glory and geese!”
Holt mouthed and jiggered like an angry ape.
“It was a bad day for us when old Valliant renounced the devil and dedicated his bastard to God. Why, the young hound is getting too big for his kennel.”
“Even preaches against the leather jack, my friend!”
“Aye, more than that. Sniffing at older men’s heels, hunting them when they go a-hunting.”
Geraint laughed.
“We’ll find a cure for that. He shall be one of us before Abbot Hilary comes poking his holy nose into Paradise. Why, the young fool is green as grass, but there must be some of old Valliant’s blood in him.”
“The blood of Simon Zelotes.”
“We shall see, Holt; we shall see.”
The prior’s parlor was a noble room carried upon arches, its three windows looking out on the prior’s garden and the fruit trees of the orchard. A roofed staircase, the roof carried by carved stone balustrades, led up to the vestibule. Geraint, still carrying his shoes, went up the stairway with the briskness of a man who did not vex his soul with ceremonious deliberations. Nor did he trouble to rap on the prior’s door, but thrust it open and walked in.
An old man was sitting in an oak chair before the fire, his paunch making a very visible outline, his feet cocked up so that their soles caught the blaze. His lower lip hung querulously. His bold, high forehead glistened in the fire-light, and his rather protuberant blue eyes had a bemused, dull look.
He turned, glanced at Brother Geraint, and grunted.
“So you are not abed.”
“No, I am here—as you see.”
“Shut the door, brother. What a man it is for draughts and windy adventures!”
Geraint closed the door, and throwing back his cowl, pulled a stool up to the fire. He was a lusty, lean, big-jawed creature, as unlike Prior Globulus as an eagle is unlike a fat farmyard cock. His eyes were restless and very shrewd. The backs of his hands were covered with black hair, and one guessed that his chest was like the chest of an ape. He had a trick of moistening his lower lip with his tongue, a big red lip that jutted out like the spout of a jug.
“It is passing cold, sir, when a man has to walk without his shoes.”
He thrust his gray-stockinged feet close to the fire.
“You observe, sir, I am a careful man. Our young house-dog is awake.”
He watched Prior Globulus with shrewd, sidelong attention; but the old man lay inert in his chair and blinked at the fire.
“Brother Martin is very careful for our reputation, sir. He has become the thorn in our mortal flesh. It is notorious that he eschews wine, fasts like a saint, and has no eyes or ears for anything that is carnal—save, sir, when he discovers such frailties in others.”
The prior turned on Geraint with peevish impatience.
“A pest on the fellow; he is no more than a vexatious fool. Let him be, brother.”
Geraint leaned forward and spread his hands before the fire.
“Brother Martin is no fool, sir; I am beginning to believe that the fellow is very sly. He watches and says but little, yet there is a something in those eyes of his. He lives like a fanatic, while we, sir, are but mortal men.”
He smiled and rubbed his hands together.
“As you know, sir, it was mooted that Abbot Hilary has his eyes on Paradise. Some one whispered shame of us, and Abbot Hilary is the devil.”
Prior Globulus sat up straight in his chair, his face full of querulous anger and dismay.
“Foul lies, brother.”
“Foul lies, sir.”
Geraint’s voice was ironical. His eyes met the older man’s, and Prior Globulus could not meet the look.
“Well, well,” and he grinned peevishly. “What does your wisdom say, my brother?”
Geraint edged his stool a little closer.
“Brother Martin must be taught to be mortal,” he said; “he must become one of us.”
“And how shall that befall?”
“I will tell you, sir. Is not the fellow old Valliant’s son—old Valliant whose blood was like Spanish wine? Brother Martin is a young man, and the spring is here.”
They talked together for a long while before the fire, their heads almost touching, their eyes watching the flames playing in the throat of the chimney.
White mist filled the valley, for there was no wind moving, and the night had been very still. The moon had sunk into the Forest, but though the sun had not yet climbed over the edge of the day a faint yellow radiance showed in the east. As for the birds, they had begun their piping, and the whole valley was filled with a mysterious exultation.
Into this world of white mist and of song walked Brother Martin, old Roger Valliant’s son—old Valliant, the soldier of fortune who had fought for pay under all manner of kings and captains, and had come back to take his peace in England with an iron box full of silver and gold. Old Valliant was dead, with the flavor of sundry rude romances still clinging to his memory, for even when his hair was gray he had caught the eyes of the women. Then in his later years a sudden devoutness had fallen upon him; there had been a toddling boy in his house and no mother to care for the child. Old Valliant had made great efforts to escape the devil; that was what his neighbors had said of him. At all events, he had left the child and his money to the monks of Paradise, and had made a most comely and tranquil end.
Brother Martin was three-and-twenty, and the tallest man in Orchard Valley. The women whispered that it was a pity that such a man should be a monk and take his state so seriously. There was a tinge of red in his hair; his blue eyes looked at life with a bold mildness; men said that he was built more finely than his father, and old Valliant had been a mighty man-at-arms. Yet Brother Martin often had the look of a dreamer, though his flesh was so rich and admirable in its youth. He loved the forest, he loved the soft meadows and the orchards, the path beside the river where the willows trailed their branches in the water, his stall in the choir, the mill where the wheel thundered. The children could not let him be when he walked through the village. As for the white pigeons in the priory dovecot, they would perch on his hands and shoulders. And yet there was a mild severity about the man, a clear-sighted and unfoolish chastity that brooked no meanness. He was awake even though he could dream. He had had his wrestling matches with the devil.
Brother Martin went down to the river that May morning, stripped himself, piled his clothes on the trunk of a fallen pollard willow, and took his swim. He let himself drift within ten yards of the weir, and then struck back against the swiftly gliding water. There had been heavy rains on the Forest ridge, and the Rondel was running fast—so fast that Martin had to fight hard to make headway against the stream. The youth in him had challenged the river; it was a favorite trick of his to let himself be carried close to the weir and then to fight back against the suck of the water.
And a woman was watching him. She had been standing all the while under a willow, leaning her body against the trunk of the tree, her gray cloak and hood part of the grayness of the dawn. Nothing could be seen of her face save the white curve of her chin. She kept absolutely still, so still that Martin did not notice her.
The Rondel river gave Martin a fair fight that morning. All his litheness and his strength were needed in the tussle; he conquered the river by inches, and drew away very slowly from the thundering weir. The woman hidden behind the willow leaned forward and watched him.
The sun had risen, a great yellow circle, when Martin reached the spot where he had left his clothes. The mist was rising, and long yellow slants of light struck the water and lined the scalloped ripples with gold. The water was very black under the near bank, and as Martin climbed out, holding to the trailing branches of a willow, he saw the dew-wet meadows shining like a sheet of silver. The birds were still exulting. The sunlight struck his dripping body and made it gleam like the body of a god.
Martin had frocked himself and was knotting his girdle when he heard the woman speak.
“Oh, Mother Mary, but I thought death had you!” She threw herself on her knees and seized one of his hands in both of hers. “The saints be thanked, holy father; but we in Paradise would be wrath with you for thinking so little of us.”
Martin stared at her, and in his astonishment he suffered her to keep a hold upon his hand. Her hood had fallen back, and showed her ripe, audacious face, and her black-brown eyes that were full of a seeming innocence. Her hair was the color of polished bronze, and her teeth very white behind her soft, red lips.
“What are you doing here, child?”
He was austere, yet gentle, and strangely unembarrassed. The girl was a ward of Widow Greensleeve’s, of Cherry Acre.
She made a show of confusion.
“I was out to gather herbs, holy father—herbs that must have the dew on them—and I saw you struggling in the river—and was afraid.”
He smiled at her, and withdrew his hand.
“I thank you for your fear, child.”
“Sir, you are so well loved in the valley.”
She stood up, smoothing her gown, and looking shyly at the grass.
“You are not angry with me, Father Martin?”
“How should I be angry?”
“In truth, but my fear for you ran away with me.”
She gave him a quick and eloquent flash of the eyes, and turned to go.
“I must gather my herbs, holy father.”
“Peace be with you,” he said simply.
Martin went on his way, as though nothing singular had happened. The girl loitered under the willows, looking back at him with mischievous curiosity. He was very innocent, but somehow she liked him none the less for that.
“Maybe it is very pleasant to be so saintly,” she said; “yet he is a fine figure of a man. I wonder how long it will be before Father Satan comes stalking across the meadows.”
Kate Succory made a pretense of searching for herbs, so ordering her steps that she found herself on the path that led to the house at Cherry Acre. The path ran between high hawthorn hedges that sheltered the orchards, and since the hedges were in green leaf, the way was like a narrow winding alley between high walls. She did not hurry herself, and presently she heard some one following her along the path.
“Good-morrow, Kate.”
She halted and turned a mock-demure face.
“Good-morrow, holy father.”
Geraint was grinning under his cowl.
“You are up betimes, sweeting.”
She walked on with a shrug of the shoulders.
“I have been gathering herbs, and I have the cow to milk.”
“Excellent maid. And nothing wonderful has happened to you?”
“Oh, I have fallen in love with some one,” she said tartly; “it is a girl’s business to fall in love.”
Geraint sniggered.
“I commend such humanity.”
“It is not with you, holy father. Do not flatter yourself as to that.”
She tossed her head, and walked daintily, swinging her shoulders. And Geraint looked at her brown neck, and opened and shut his hairy hands.
“Perhaps Dame Greensleeve will give me a cup of hot milk?” he said.
“Oh, to be sure.”
And she began to whistle like a boy.
Brother Martin was a mile away, brushing his feet through the dew of the upland meadows. He had crossed the footbridge at the mill, and spoken a few words with Gregory, the miller, who had thrust a shock of sandy hair out of an upper window. Rising like a black mound on the edge of the Forest purlieus stood a grove of yews, and it was toward these yews that Martin’s footsteps tended.
The yews were very ancient, with huge red-black trunks and dense green spires crowded together against the blue. No grass grew under them, for the great trees starved all other growth and cheated it of sunlight. A path cut its way through the solemn gloom, but the yew boughs met overhead.
And yet there was life in the midst of this black wood, life that was grotesque and piteous. The path broadened to a spacious glade, and in the glade stood a little rude stone house thatched with heather. The dwellers here labored with their hands, for a great part of the glade was cultivated, and about the house itself were borders of herbs, roses, and flowering plants. A couple of goats were browsing outside the wattle fence that closed in the garden, and a blue pigeon strutted and cooed to its mate on the roof ridge of the house.
Martin stopped at the swinging hurdle that served as a gate. A man was hoeing between the rows of broad beans, an old man to judge by the stoop of his shoulders and the slow and careful way he used the hoe. He wore a coarse white smock with a hood to it; a kind of linen mask covered his face.
“You are working early, Master Christopher.”
The man turned and straightened himself with curious deliberation. There was something ghastly about that white mask of his with its two black slits for eye-holes. He looked more like a piece of mummery than a man, a grotesque figure in some rustic play.
He lifted up a cracked voice and shouted:
“Giles, Peter—Brother Martin is at the gate.”
Two be-cowled and masked creatures came out of the house. All three were so alike and so much of a size that a stranger would not have told one from the other. They formed themselves into a kind of procession, and shuffling to the gate, knelt down on a patch of grass inside it.
Martin’s voice was very gentle.
“Shall I chant the Mass, brothers?”
The three lepers looked at him like lost souls gazing at Christ.
“The Lord be merciful to us and cast His blessing upon you,” said one of them.
So Martin chanted the Mass.
The three bowed their heads before him, as though it gave them joy to listen to the sound of his voice, for Martin chanted like a priest and a soldier and a woman all in one. He had no fear of these poor creatures, did not shrink from them and hold aloof. When he brought them the Sacrament he did not pass God’s body through a hole in the wall. The birds had ceased their singing, and the world was very still, and Martin’s voice went up to heaven with a strong and valiant tenderness.
When he had ended the Mass the three lepers got up off their knees and began to talk like children.
“Can you smell my gillyflowers, Brother Martin?”
“The speckled hen has hatched out twelve chicks.”
“You should see what Peter has been making; three maple cups all polished like glass.”
“If the Lord keeps the frosts away there will be a power of fruit on the trees.”
Martin opened the gate and walked into the garden, and the three followed him as though he had come straight out of heaven. No other living soul ever came nearer than the place where the path entered the yew wood. Alms were left there, and such goods as the lepers could buy. But Brother Martin had no fear of the horror that had fallen on them, and had such a fear shown itself he would have crushed it out of his heart. And so he had to see and smell Christopher’s gillyflowers, handle the speckled hen’s chicks, and admire the maple cups that Peter had made. Nature was beautiful and clean even though she had cast a foul blight upon these three poor creatures. They hung upon Martin’s words, watched him with a kind of timid devotion. God walked with them in that lonely place when Brother Martin came from Paradise and through the wood of yews.
Meanwhile, Brother Geraint had followed Kate Succory to Widow Greensleeve’s house in Cherry Acre, where the maze of high hedges and orchard trees hid his black frock completely. The girl had gone a-milking, and Brother Geraint had certain things to say to the widow. He sat on a settle in the kitchen, and she moved to and fro before him, a big breeze of a woman, plump, voluble, very rosy, with roguish eyes and an incipient double chin. She laughed a great deal, nodded her head at him, and snapped her fingers, for she and Brother Geraint understood each other.
“Kate will dance to that tune. Bless me, she’ll need no persuading.”
Geraint spoke very solemnly.
“If she can cure the young man of his self-righteousness she shall be well remembered by us all. See to it, dame.”
The widow curtsied, making a capacious lap.
“Your servant, holy father.”
And then she fell a-laughing in a sly, shrewd way.
“God be merciful to us, my friend; yet I do believe that it is more pleasant to live with sinners than with saints. The over-pious man rides the poor ass to death. Now you—my friend——”
She laughed so that her bosom shook.
“We would all confess to Brother Geraint. I know the kind of penance that you would set me, good sir.”
Geraint got up and kissed her, and her brown eyes challenged his.
“Leave it to me,” she said; “I will physic the young man for you.”
Martin had gone down the valley to watch the woodmen felling oaks in the Prior’s Wood when old Holt rode out on a mule in search of him. He found Martin stripped like the men and working with them, for he loved laboring with his hands.
“Brother Martin—Brother Martin!”
Old Holt squeaked at him imperiously.
“Brother Martin, a word with you.”
Martin passed the felling ax that he had been swinging to one of the men, and crossed over to Father Holt.
“The prior has been asking for you. Get you back at once. Brother Jude has been taken sick, and is lying in the infirmary.”
Martin glanced up at old Holt’s wrinkled, crab-apple of a face.
“Who has gone to the Black Moor in Jude’s place?”
“I did not ride here to gossip, brother. See to it that you make haste home.”
Martin let old Holt’s testiness fly over his shoulders, and went and put on his black frock. The cellarer pushed his mule deeper into the wood where the men were barking one of the fallen trees, and Martin left him there and started alone for Paradise. The great oaks were just coming into leaf, the golden buds opening against the blue of the sky. The young bracken fronds were uncurling themselves from the brown tangle of last year’s growth, and here and there masses of wild hyacinth made pools of blue. The gorse had begun to burn with a lessened splendor, but the broom had taken fire, and waved its yellow torches everywhere.
Martin found Prior Globulus in his parlor, sitting by a window with a book in his lap. The prior had been dozing; his eyes looked misty and dull.
“You have sent for me, sir.”
“Come you here, Brother Martin. Assuredly—I have been asleep. Yes—I remember. Brother Jude has been taken sick. He rode in two hours ago, with a sharp fever. I have chosen you to take his place, my son.”
His dull eyes watched Martin’s face.
“The chapel on the Black Moor must have a priest. There are people, my son, who would not pardon us if we left that altar unserved even for a day. Get you a mule and ride there. To-morrow I will send two pack mules with food and wine and new altar cloths and vestments. No cell of ours shall be served in niggardly fashion. And remember, my son, that it is part of our trust to serve all wayfarers with bread and wine, should they ask for bread and wine. Holy St. Florence so ordered it before she died. And there is the little hostelry where wayfarers may lodge themselves for the night. All these matters will be in your keeping.”
He groped in a gypsire that lay on the window seat.
“Here is the key of the chapel, Brother Martin. Now speed you, and bear my blessing.”
Martin kissed the ring on the old man’s hand, and went forth to take up his trust.
The Forest was the great lord of all those parts. From Gawdy Town, by the sea, to Merlin Water it stretched ten leagues or more, a green, rolling wilderness, very mysterious and very beautiful. There were castles, little towns and villages hidden in it, and a stranger might never have known of them but for the sound of their bells. In the north the Great Ridge bounded the Forest like a huge vallum, and on one of the chalk hills stood Troy Castle, its towers gray against the northern sky. Gawdy Town, where the Rondel river reached the sea, held itself in no small esteem. It was a free town, boasted its own mayor and jurats, appointed its own port reeve, sent out its own ships, and hoarded much rich merchandise in its storehouses and cellars.
The day had an April waywardness when Martin mounted his mule and set out for the Black Moor. Masses of cloud moved across the sky, some of them trailing rain showers from the edges, and letting in wet floods of sunlight when they had passed. The Forest was just breaking into leaf; the birch trees had clothed themselves; so had the hazels; the beeches were greener than the oaks, whose domes varied from yellow to bronze; the ash buds were still black, promising a good season. The wild cherries were in flower. The hollies glistened after the rain, and the warm, wet smell of the earth was the smell of spring.
Not till Martin reached Heron Hill did the Forest show itself to him in all its mystery. The Black Moor hung like a thunder-cloud ahead of him, splashed to the south with sunlight after the passing of a shower. He could see the sea, covered with purple shadows and patches of gold. Below him, and stretching for miles, the wet green of the woods lost itself in a blue gray haze, with the Rondel river a silver streak in the valleys. Here and there a wood of yews or firs made a blackness in the thick of the lighter foliage. Martin saw deer moving along the edge of Mogry Heath. Larks were in the air, and the green woodpecker laughed in the woods.
The sun was low in the west when the mule plodded up the sandy track that led over the Black Moor. The gorse had lost its freshness, but the yellow broom and the white of the stunted thorns lightened the heavy green of the heather. The chapelry stood on the top-most swell of the moor, marked by a big oak wayside cross, its heather-thatched roofs clustering close together like sheep in a pen. There were a chapel, a priest’s cell, a little guest-house, a stable, a small lodge or barn, and a stack of fagots standing together in a grassy space. Father Jude was a homely soul, a man of the soil; he had fought with the sour soil, made a small garden, and hedged it with thorns, though the apple trees that he had planted were all blown one way and looked stunted and grotesque. He had cut and stacked bracken for litter, and there was a small haystack in the hollow over the hill.
Martin stabled the mule, carried his saddle-bags into the cell, and took stock of his new home. He went first to the little chapel, unlocked the door, and saw that the holy vessels were safe in the aumbry beside the altar, and that no one had been tampering with the iron-bound alms-box that was fastened to the wall close to the holy water stoup. The chapel pleased him with its stone walls and the rough forest-hewn timber in its roof. He knelt down in front of the altar and prayed that in his lonely place he might not be found wanting.
There was the mule to be watered and fed, and Martin saw to the beast before he thought of his own supper. Father Jude’s larder suggested to him that hunger was an excellent necessity. He found a stale loaf of bread, a big earthen jar full of salted meat, half a bowl of herrings, a pot of honey, a paper of spices, and the remains of a rabbit pie. Obviously Father Jude had been something of a cook, and Martin stared reflectively at the brick oven in the corner of the cell. Cooking was an art that he had not studied, but on the top of the Black Moor a man had a chance of completing a thoroughly practical education. For instance, there was the question of bread. How much yeast went to how much flour, and how long had the loaves to be left in the oven? Martin saw that life was full of housewifely problems. A man’s body might be more importunate than his soul.
When he had made a meal and washed his hollywood cup and platter, he found that dusk was falling over the Forest like a purple veil. The wayside cross spread its black arms against a saffron afterglow. The world was very peaceful and very still, and a heavy dew was falling.
Martin went and sat at the foot of the cross, leaning his broad back against the massive post. His face grew dim in the dusk, and a kind of a sadness descended on him. There were times when a strange unrest stirred in him, when he yearned for something—he knew not what. The beauty of the earth, the wet scent of the woods, the singing of birds filled him with a vague emotion that was near to pain. It was like the spring stirring in his blood while a wind still blew keenly out of the north.
But Martin Valliant’s faith was very simple as yet, and crowned with a tender severity.
“The Devil goeth about cunningly to tempt men.”
His thoughts wandered back to Paradise, and set him frowning. He was not so young as not to know that all was not well with the world down yonder.
“Our Lord was tempted in the wilderness.”
He stared up at the stars, and then watched the yellow face of the moon rise over Heron Hill.
“It is good for a man to be alone, to keep watch and to know his own heart. God does nothing blindly. When we are alone we are both very weak and very strong. There are voices that speak in the wilderness.”
He felt comforted, and a great calm descended on him. Those taunting lights had died out of the western sky; the beauty of the earth no longer looked slantwise at him like a young girl whose eyes are tender and whose breasts are the breasts of a woman.
The pallet bed in the cell had a mattress of sacking filled with straw. It served Martin well enough. He slept soundly and without dreams.
But at Paradise Geraint had gone a-prowling through the orchards. He loitered outside Widow Greensleeve’s gate till some one came out with smothered laughter and spoke to him under the apple boughs.
“The pan is on the fire, dame. Brother Martin has gone to the Black Moor.”
“And the fat is ready for frying, my master.”
“A few pinches of spice—eh!”
“And a pretty dish fit for a king.”
A tall ship, the Rose, came footing it toward Gawdy Town with a wash of foam at her bluff bows, and the green seas lifting her poop. Gawdy Town was very proud of the Rose, for she was fit to be a king’s ship, and to carry an admiral’s flag if needs be. Her towering poop and forecastle had their walls pierced for guns, and their little turrets loopholed for archers, and all her top gear was painted to match her name. She carried three masts and a fine spread of canvas, and Master Hamden, her captain, loved to come into port with streamers flying and all the gilding of her vanes and bulwarks shining like gold.
The Rose struck her canvas and dropped her tow ropes when she was under the shelter of the high ground west of the harbor. A couple of galleys came out to tow her in, and she was berthed at the Great Wharf under the walls.
She carried merchandise and wine from Spain and Bordeaux, also a few passengers; but the passengers were of small account. Two of them, a girl and a young man, were leaning over the poop rail and watching the people on the wharf below. The young man’s face was yellow as a guinea; he was dressed like a strolling player, with bunches of ribbons at his elbows and bells in his cap. The girl looked the taller of the two, perhaps because the sea had not humbled her; she wore a light blue coat edged with fur, and a gown of apple green; her green hood had white strings tied under her chin.
“Holy saints, what an adventure!”
The man straightened himself, and managed to smile.
“I never knew what cowardice was like till I got aboard a ship. My courage came out of my mouth. And now an impudent tongue and a laughing eye are necessities——”
The girl’s dark eyes were on the alert.
“There’s old Adam Rick, or am I blind?”
“Master Port Reeve—so it is! The bridge is ashore. We had best be putting our fortune to the test. Have I anything of the gay devil left about me?”
He shook himself with the air of a bird that had been moping on a perch, but the girl did not laugh; she held her head high, and seemed to take life with fierce seriousness.
They climbed down to the waist of the ship where Master Hamden stood by the gangway, talking to some of the fathers of Gawdy Town who were gathered on the wharf.
“News, sirs, what would you with news? If Crookback is still king, I have no news for you.”
“There have been rumors of landings.”
“Rumors of old wives’ petticoats!”
The man and the girl were close at his elbow, ready to leave the ship. The man carried a leather-covered casket in one hand, and a viol under his arm, while the girl carried a lute. She kept her eyes fixed on the tower of the town church; they were very dark eyes, blue almost to blackness, her skin was softly browned like the skin of a Frenchwoman, but her lips were very red. The hair under her hood was the color of charcoal. Her attitude toward her neighbors seemed one of aloofness; men might have voted her a proud, fierce-tempered wench.
Master Hamden looked at the pair with his red-lidded, angry eyes. The man nodded to him.
“Good-day, master.”
“Give you good-day, Jack Jester. Go and get some wine in you, and wash the yellow out of your skin.”
He looked slantwise at the girl as she passed him, but he did not speak to her. Had she been all that she pretended to be she would not have left old Hamden’s ship without a coarse jest of some kind.
Her brother was pushing his way toward a handsome, ruddy man in a black camlet cloak, and the man in the cloak was eying him intently.
“Sir Adam, a word with you.”
The Port Reeve appeared lost in thought. He drew a quill from his girdle, and meditated while he picked his teeth. And very much at his leisure, he chose to notice the young man with the viol.
“Where have you come from, my friend?”
“France, sir. My sister and I are poor players, makers of music.”
The Port Reeve scanned the pair with intelligent brown eyes.
“Queer that such a Jack and Jill should come out of France.”
“We were in the service of my Lord of Dunster.”
“And he sent you packing? How are you called?”
The young man answered in a low voice:
“Lambert Lovel.”
The Port Reeve’s eyelids flickered curiously.
“You would lodge in Gawdy Town?”
“If it pleases you, sir.”
“Our laws are strict against vagabonds and strollers. Well, get you in, Lovel, my lad, and your sister with you. You make no tarrying, I gather.”
“But to make a little money for the road, sir.”
“Well, try the ‘Painted Lady,’ my man. It is the merchants’ tavern.”
He gave them something very like a solemn wink, and then turned aside to talk to a sea-captain who wanted to quarrel about the port dues.
The strolling singers entered Gawdy Town by the sea-gate, and chose a winding street that went up toward the castle. Lambert carried himself with a jaunty and half-insolent air, fluttering his ribbons and making grimaces at the people in the doorways.
“Do you remember your name, sweeting?”
“Am I a fool, Gilbert!”
“God save us,” and he glanced at her impatiently, “but you have forgotten mine! Lambert Lovel, brother to Kate Lovel. Be wary; the Crookback has spies in every port.”
“Why stay in the town—at all?”
“Oh, you wild falcon! Are there not things to be done here? Are we not hungry? Besides, the Forest is seven miles away.”
“I know—but it is home.”
Her brother laughed. He was built on lighter, gayer lines than the girl; he had not her strength. A sort of adventurous vanity carried him along, and life pleased him when it was not too grim.
“Robin, sweet Robin under the greenwood tree! A pile of stones and a few burnt beams! Scramble, you brats—scramble!”
With a lordly air he pretended to throw money to a number of children who seemed inclined to follow them.
“You will have to play your part, sweeting. Where the devil is that gaudy inn? Ha! we have it!”
A broad square paved with cobbles opened in front of them, its timber and plaster houses built out on brackets and pillars, many of them carrying painted signs hung out on poles. A stone cross stood in the center of the square, and above the lichened roof of the town hall the great round tower of the castle showed like a crown resting on a cushion. The “Inn of the Painted Lady” stood by the guild house of the Armourers’ Guild, a noisy, buxom, deep-chested house, its plaster-work painted green and red, its sign looking like a Roman mosaic. A white mule and a couple of palfreys were waiting outside the entry, and from an open window came the sound of some one singing:
“Cuckolds, cuckolds, list to my tale——”
It was a big, brawling voice that sang, the voice of a man who was hearty with liquor.
Lovel looked at the place a little doubtfully.
“Fat—and bountiful! I will go and beard my friend—the host.”
The girl turned aside.
“I shall be there—on the steps of the cross.”
“Be brave, sweeting.” And he went off humming a song.
He reappeared shortly with a certain whimsical look.
“You will be suffered to sleep with the sluts, Kate.”
“And you?”
“With the scullions! What men must stomach for the sake of—adventure!”
Her nostrils dilated.
“The Forest would be sweeter.”
“True, dear sister; but shall we be frightened by having to sleep on musty straw with fellow Christians who wash under the pump but once a week? I trust not. Besides, I have to see the Flemming to-night.”
Her pride was in revolt, the pride of a kestrel put to perch with flea-ridden hens.
“Had I known this I would have chosen to cross the sea in some other dress.”
Her brother shrugged his shoulders, and then sat down beside her on the stone steps of the cross.
“I’m sorry, Kate, but what would you? We have begun this game in cap and bells, and we must go through with it—or pay forfeit. And the forfeit may be our lives. Crooked Dick shows no mercy.”
He was right, and she knew it. There could be no turning back.
“What must be—must be. I shall not fail you, brother.”
“That’s brave; but one word more, Kate.”
“Speak out.”
“Your pride may be sorely touched in yonder, for you are a singing-girl, no more, no less. Take it not to heart, child, and do not let it anger you. I would stab the man who offered to do you harm, even though the dagger blow meant ruin for both of us. I, too, have my pride.”
“Those are a man’s words. You shall not be disappointed in me.”
Half an hour later Mellis Dale stood at an attic window overlooking the inn yard. She had liked the part she was playing still less when she had seen the attic, but for the moment it was empty; the wenches who were to be her bed-fellows were at their work below. She could see her brother Gilbert sitting on an overturned tub in the yard, twanging the strings of his viol, and making the ostlers and loiterers laugh with his whimsies. His color had come back to him; he was playing a man’s game, even though it brought his feet very close to the gutter.
She caught some of her brother’s spirit, some of his cynical and gay audacity. After all, they were not the sport of fools, but players who made the fools dance to their piping. Her pride caught a note of mockery. There were enemies to be outwitted; there was the thought of revenge.
The inn simmered with life like a kettle about to boil. She could feel the bubbling of its activities, the reverberations of its crude, animal energy. There was much clattering of pots and pans, and much loud talking in the kitchen. She could hear girls giggling, and a woman scolding somewhere with a voice that suggested the rending of linen. The gentleman with the big, brawling bass was still singing in the deeps of the house, and other voices took up the chorus. A knife-grinder appeared with his barrow and wheel and started to sharpen knives. Two dogs fell to fighting over a sheep’s foot that had been flung out of the kitchen. A man rolled out from the guest-room and was sick in the kennel.
Mellis saw her brother draw his bow from its case, and begin playing his viol, and the music brought six bouncing girls from somewhere, all ready to dance. They footed it up and down the yard, holding up their gowns, and laughing to each other, while the men stood around and made jests. The windows of the inn filled with faces; all sorts of unsuspected folk poked out their heads to watch the fun. This living picture-show included a little old lawyer, blue and wrinkled, with a dewdrop hanging at the end of his nose; a red-faced widow with a headdress like a steeple; a couple of priests; a vintner from London who munched something as though he were chewing the cud; a country squire with the eyes of an ox; a young bachelor who kept looking up at Mellis and showing off his slashed doublet and the jewel in his ear.
The members of one of the Merchant Guilds were supping together in the great guest-room, and servants began to go to and fro across the yard with dishes from the kitchen. Mellis saw a big man with a face as round and as sallow as a cream cheese come out and speak to her brother. Gilbert glanced up at her, and then beckoned her to come down.
She appeared in the yard, with her lute hanging from her shoulders by a cherry-colored ribbon. The man with the sallow face stared her over, and nodded his approval.
“If her voice prove as good as her face, my guests will have no cause to grumble. I will hire the two of you for the evening, for a silver groat and your suppers.”
Mellis had to suffer the insolence of the fat fellow’s eye. Her brother grimaced, and shook an empty gypsire.
“We shall not die of a surfeit of wealth.”
“Take it or leave it,” said the innkeeper roughly. “I have my choice of all the wastrels and wenches in Gawdy Town.”
Mellis’s face showed white and cold. The beast’s churlishness roused such scorn in her that she soared above such a thing as anger.
And so for two hours she stood in the guest-room of the “Painted Lady,” making music for men who over-ate and over-drank themselves, and who looked at her as none of them would have looked at their neighbors’ daughters or wives. Her scorn filled her with a kind of devilry. She sang to see what manner of swine these men were; sang to them as though each had the soul of a Dan Chaucer. And not a few of them grew very silent, and sat and stared at her with a brutish wonder. An oldish man sniveled and wept. Her brother Gilbert was kept busy scraping at the strings of his viol, and all the passage-ways were crowded with servants and scullions who crowded to listen.
“That was famous, Kate,” he said to her as he saw her safe to the stairs, “I passed around the cap and drew five pence out of the worthies.”
“I think I would sooner have sung to lost souls in Hell,” she answered him.
In the attic she stripped off her spencer and gown, and lay down on one of the straw pallets in her shift. Her bed-fellows came up anon, three rollicking girls who smelt of the kitchen.
Said one of them:
“That brother of thine is a pretty fellow. I warrant I’d tramp to Jerusalem with such a brother.”
They tittered, and squeaked like mice. Mellis sat up and looked at them by the glimmer of the rushlight.
“My dears,” she said, “I am very weary. Let me sleep. One may have to sing when one’s heart is heavy.”
And so she silenced them. They crept to bed as quietly as birds going to roost.
Brother Martin said matins to the sparrows who had built their nests in the thatch of the chapel, and having drunk a cup of spring water and eaten a crust of bread, he set out early to try to lose himself in the Forest.
For life on the Black Moor was not all that it had seemed, and a young man, however devout and determined he may be, cannot satisfy his soul with prayers and the planting of seeds in a garden. Martin had entered upon the life with methodical enthusiasm, tolled the chapel bell at matins and vespers, swept out his cell, set the little guest-house in order, and done to death all the weeds in Father Jude’s garden. But a man must be fed, and it was in a struggle with this prime necessity that Martin suffered his first defeat. He started out cheerfully to bake bread, but the Devil was in the business; the oven was either too hot or too cold, and there were mysteries about such a simple thing as dough that Martin had not fathomed. He tore a great hole in his cassock in climbing up the woodstack to throw down fagots, and then discovered that he had no needle and thread for the mending of the rent. These trivial domestic humiliations were discouraging. He conceived a most human hatred of salt meat, herrings, and the obstinate and adhesive pulp that he produced in the place of bread. Milk and eggs, fresh meat and honey! He was carnally minded with regard to such simple desires.
Moreover, he was most abominably lonely—the more so, perhaps, because he had not realized his own loneliness. Paradise appeared to have melted into the dim distance; there might have been a conspiracy against him; Martin had not seen a human face since Prior Globulus had sent a servant to fetch away the mule, on the plea that the beast was needed. And Martin had taken the loss of the mule most unkindly. It was a confession, but he had found the beast good company; it had been alive; it had needed food and drink; had given signs of friendship; had been a warm, live thing that he could touch. The birds were very well in their way; but he was not necessary to them, and they were wild. He saw deer moving in the distance, but they were no more than the figures of beasts worked in thread upon a tapestry.
This morning restlessness of his was a kind of impulsive pilgrimage in quest of something that he lacked—a flight from that part of himself that remained unsatisfied. He went striding over the heather toward the beech woods in the valley. They were very green, and soft, and beautiful and had seemed mysteriously alive when seen from the brow of the Black Moor, but even in the woods some essential thing was lacking. The great trees stood spaced at a distance, their branches rising from the huge gray trunks. The greenness and the listening gloom went on and on, promising him something that was never seen, never discovered.
More than once he came on an open glade where rabbits were feeding, and the little brown fellows went off at a scamper, showing the whites of their tails. Martin felt aggrieved, even like a child who wanted playmates. He leaned against a beech tree and consoled himself with asking ridiculous questions.
“Why should the beasts fear man?”
And yet he would have welcomed fresh venison!
“If the Lord Christ were here in my place, would not all the wild things come to Him?”
His simple faith could provide him with only one answer, and that was not flattering to his self-knowledge. He had not climbed to that state of complete purity; he was no St. Francis. Perhaps Original Sin was at the bottom of everything. And yet he had always mastered his own body.
Martin Valliant passed some hours in the woods before turning back across the heather of the Black Moor. A hawk, poised against the blue, took no more notice of him than if he had been a sheep, and for a while Martin stood watching the bird of prey. The hawk went boldly on with his hunting; he would have had no pity for a poor fool of a priest who was spending his powers in trying to contradict Nature.
A puzzled look came into Martin Valliant’s eyes as he neared the chapelry. A little tuft of smoke was drifting from the chimney of his cell, and he knew that he had lit no sticks under the oven that morning.
“They have sent a servant from Paradise.”
He quickened his steps, but saw no live thing moving about the place. He looked into the stable, and found it empty; but the garden hedge offered him his first surprise. Certainly the thing that he saw was nothing but a shirt spread on the hedge to dry, and looking as white and clean as one of the big clouds overhead.
His own cell offered further mysteries. The oven door stood open, and a couple of nicely browned loaves were waiting to be taken out. A meat pasty that smelled very fragrant had been left on the oven shelf. His cassock, neatly mended, hung over the back of Father Jude’s oak chair.
Martin could make nothing of these mysteries. The loaves and the pasty were real enough—so real that he remembered the cup of water and the crust of bread with which he had broken his fast soon after dawn.
He went and looked into the chapel and the guest-room, but there was no one there, nor could he see anything moving over the moor. The business puzzled him completely. It was possible that a servant had been sent from Paradise; but Paradise was three leagues away, and Martin would have expected to find a horse or a mule in the stable. Moreover it occurred to him that some one must have looked into the oven not so very long ago, lifted out the pasty, and put it on the shelf. The good creature might be hiding somewhere, but what need was there for such a game of hide-and-seek?
Martin returned to the cell, set the pasty on the table, took the loaves out of the oven, and his platter and cup from the shelf. Common sense suggested that the food was meant to be eaten. He pulled the stool up to the table, said grace, took the knife from the sheath at his girdle, and thrust the point of it through the pie-crust.
Then he sat rigid, listening, the blade of his knife still in the pie and his hand gripping the haft. Some one was singing on the moor among the yellow gorse and broom. The voice was a girl’s voice, gay and birdlike and challenging.
Martin sat there with a face like a ghost’s, his heart beating fast, his eyes staring through the open doorway. For the voice seemed to speak to him of all that he had sought in the Forest and had not found. It was youth calling to youth in the spring of the year.
The voice grew fainter and fainter; it seemed to be dying away over the moor. Martin Valliant’s eyes dilated, his knees shook together. He started up, knocking over the stool, and rushed out of the cell like a madman, his eyes full of a fanatical fire.
The voice had ceased singing. He climbed to the place where the wooden cross stood, and looked fiercely about him. But he saw nothing, nothing but the gorse and broom and heather. He went down among the green gorse banks, searched, and found nothing.
Sweat stood on his forehead, and his heart was hammering under his ribs.
Then he crossed himself, fell on his knees, and prayed. The first thing he did on reaching his cell was to take the loaves and the cooked meat and throw them into the fire under the oven.
When a man has done what he believes to be a good deed he is flushed for a while with a happy self-righteousness, and may forget the struggle he had with his own soul. So it was with Martin Valliant. He had no quarrel with himself or with his loneliness for the rest of that day. He had won a victory; he had been tempted of the Devil and had refused the meats that the Devil had cooked for him.
Strange—this fear of the white body or the lips of a woman, this naïve cowardice that dares not look into Nature’s eyes. In it one beholds the despair of saints who see no hope for man save in the crushing of the body to save the soul. The few struggle toward a cold triumph, maimed, but half human. With holy ferocity they run about to persuade humanity that God is without sex. Men may listen to them; the deserts become filled with monks; Nature is flouted for a while. Then the thing becomes no more than a rotten shell; men obey their impulses but still wear their vows; cynicism and a lewd hypocrisy are born; the great realities are glozed over. Then comes the day when a more youthful and noble generation wakes to the horror of such a superstition. Gates are torn off their hinges; walls battered down; the slime and the refuse exposed to the sunlight. The new generation runs to the woods and the fields like a flock of children released from some abominable pedantry. They are no longer afraid. The world grows young and beautiful again. There is no sin in the sunset, no shame in the singing of birds.
Martin Valliant felt himself uplifted all that day; but the old Pagan people had gathered out of the woods and were lying hidden in the gorse and heather. There was Pan with his pipes; there were girls and young men who had danced in the Bacchic dances; Orpheus with his lute. Even the pale Christ looked down with compassionate eyes, the Great Lover who was human till the fanatics covered His face with a veil of lies.
Evening came, and the birds began their singing down in the beech woods under the hill. They sang their way into Martin Valliant’s heart, made him hear again the voice of the girl singing on the moor. A great restlessness assailed him. He went forth and wandered under the stars, but there was no healing for him in their cold brightness. And that night he slept like a man in fear of the dawn.
Again, it was the birds which troubled him. He woke in the gray of the morning, to hear their faint orisons filling the valley. He arose, went to the chapel, and was long at his prayers. Moreover, he chose to fast that morning, contenting himself with a cup of cold water before he wandered out over the moor.
Yet in spite of all his carefulness Martin Valliant was not wholly his own master that morning. He made himself go forward, but a part of his soul kept looking back. There was a voice, too, that challenged him. “Of what are you afraid? Why are you trying to escape? A monk is a soldier. He should fight, and not hide himself.”
This voice would not be silenced. It was like a scourge striking him continually.
“Go back,” it said; “blind men are afraid of falling.”
At last he obeyed it, vaguely conscious of the nearness of some new ordeal. He did not guess that the all-wise Mater Mundi had him by the hand, that he was one of her chosen children. She would try him with fire, teach him to be great through the power of his own compassion, so that his soul might burn more gloriously when the purer flame touched it.
Martin Valliant found the door of his cell standing open, and from within came the sound of the snapping of dry wood. A girl was kneeling by the oven, with a fagot lying on the floor at her side, and she was busy laying the fire for the baking of bread. She was dressed in a gown of apple green, and from the collar thereof her firm white neck curved to meet the bronze of her hair. So intent was she on breaking up the fagot wood and building her fire that she had not discovered the man standing in the doorway.
Life had never yet posed Martin with such a problem as this. He stood and stared at the girl, wondering how to begin the attack. Her back was turned toward him, and the initiative was his.
Then he became inspired. He would assume blindness, deafness, refuse to recognize her existence. He would not so much as speak to her, and behold! the problem would solve itself.
Kate Succory turned sharply at the sound of a man’s footsteps. Her lashes half hid her roguish brown eyes; she held a hazel bough between her two hands; her green gown, cut low at the throat, showed the upper curves of her bosom.
She saw Martin Valliant take his Mass-book from the shelf, sit down in the chair, and begin to read. He was within two yards of her, but for all the notice he took of her she might have been less than a shadow.
She watched him for some moments and then went calmly on with her work, breaking the sticks to pieces and feeding the fire. Absolute silence reigned in the cell, save for the sound of the snapping of wood and the crackling of the flames in the oven.
Martin’s eyes remained fixed on his book, but he was most acutely conscious of what was happening so close to him. The situation had taken on a sudden, unforeseen complexity. He felt himself growing hot about the face.
Presently the fire appeared to be burning to the girl’s satisfaction. She rose, went to the larder, brought out the things that she required, and set them on the table. Then she turned up the sleeves of her gown, and her arms showed white and shapely.
Martin’s face was growing the color of fire. He tried not to see the girl, to anchor his whole consciousness to the square of parchment in front of him. The dilemma shocked him. Was it possible that this creature in the green gown took his silence to be consenting?
Meanwhile she went on calmly with her work, hardly looking in his direction, her red lips parting now and again in a smile. Martin raised his eyes very cautiously and looked at her. The solid and comely reality of her shape, her purposeful composure, appalled him. This problem would have to be attacked somehow, desperately, and without delay.
The girl’s intuition forestalled his gathering effort toward revolt.
“It was foolish of you to burn those loaves yesterday.”
He stared at her with sudden, frank astonishment, but said nothing.
“Good food should not be wasted like that. Besides, I had come all that way to see what a pair of hands might do for you, Father Martin. No bread could have been cleaner; I always wash before baking.”
Here was an amazing development! The girl was actually scolding him, reproving him for being wasteful, assuming control of the stores in his cupboard. He opened his mouth to speak, but again she forestalled him.
“Father Jude was a very careful soul. Rose Lorrimer had no trouble with him; she wept her eyes out when he had to go back to Paradise. She had just made him two new shirts. And she did not mind the loneliness up here, for Father Jude is an old man, and Rose has seen forty——”
Martin Valliant laid his Mass-book on the table. Kate Succory was talking so calmly and so naturally that he knew she was to be believed; yet here was a new and astonishing phase of monastic life thrust upon him without a moment’s warning. Martin was no innocent, though he had led a sheltered life; he knew that there were monks at Paradise who had broken their vows. But here was this girl coming all the way from Paradise village and turning up her sleeves to keep house for him as though she were doing the most natural thing in the world.
He floundered in the depths of his own simplicity.
“Who sent you here, child?” he asked her bluntly.
Kate’s brown eyes met his.
“I just mounted the gray donkey and came. No one could have bidden me sweep your hearth for you. Rose Lorrimer was hearth-ward to Father Jude, and before Father Jude Father Nicholas was here, and old Marjory cared for him; but she was not old Marjory then.”
She laughed, and began to mold the dough into shape, her arms all white with flour.
“Rose took Father Jude’s sheets away with her, but if we can come by some good linen I will soon have things as they should be. Of course, if I do not please you——”
She gave him a quick, sidelong glance, her teeth showing between her red lips.
Martin Valliant had gone as white as the dough she was kneading. His knees were trembling. He could not escape from the knowledge of her green gown, her shining hair, and the sleekness of her skin. And her voice was very pleasant, with a sly lilt of playfulness and of youth in its tones.
He gripped the arms of his chair and stood up.
“My child—” he began.
She gave him the full, challenging frankness of her brown eyes, and Martin knew that he could not pretend that she was a child.
“It is very lonely here,” she said, looking at her hands, “and a man cannot do a woman’s work. Rose told me that travelers passed no more than once a month. And—and I——”
He pushed his chair back, and groped with one hand for the cross that hung at his girdle.
“It is not good that you should be here.”
He saw her head droop a little. Her hands rested on the table. He strove with himself, and went on.
“But I thank you, my sister. What I bear must be borne for the sake of the vows I have taken. When I kneel in the chapel, you shall be in my prayers.”
All the sly, provoking roguery had gone from her face. She did not speak for a moment, did not move. Then she lifted her head and looked at him, and her brown eyes were like the eyes of an animal in pain.
“I am not a bad woman, Father Martin, not evil at heart. But——”
She caught her breath, and pressed her hands to her breasts.
“Yes, I will go.”
She turned suddenly and walked straight out of the cell into the glare of the sunlight. And Martin Valliant stood biting the sleeve of his frock, and thinking of the look her brown eyes had given him.
Kate Succory went no farther than the nearest cluster of gorse on the slope of the moor. She threw herself face downwards on a patch of short, sweet turf, where rabbits had been feeding, and plucked at the grass with her fingers, twisting her body to and fro with the lithe and supple movements of a restless animal. Her hair came loose, and she shook it down upon her shoulders.
There was rebellion in her eyes.
“He is a good man. Why should he not have what other men crave for? And I love him. There is not a man so tall and fine in all the Forest.”
She rested her elbows on the ground and her chin in her two hands, and stared at the gorse bushes.
“Geraint would not have hesitated. Pah! that black rat! How the girls would laugh at me! I don’t care. Why did God make him a priest?”
She frowned fiercely and bit at her lower lip, the elemental passion in her refusing to be dominated by the rules of the Church.
“He is a good man. No; I will not go away. Priestcraft is all wrong. The Lollards say so; I could argue it out with him. As if living down there in a priory made men good! Bah! what nonsense! Father Geraint is a black villain, and the rest of them are not much better. I wonder if he knows?”
A note of tenderness sounded in the turmoil of her brooding. She smiled and caressed the grass, stroking it with her open hand.
“Perhaps it would hurt him if he knew. And he was as frightened of me as though I had walked naked into the cell! Oh, my heart!”
Martin Valliant had been praying, little guessing that the days would come when he would trust to his own heart, and not be forever falling on his knees and asking strength from God. He had thrown Kate’s unbaked loaves into the fire, and made a meal from the scraps he had found in the cupboard. But he was in no mood to sit still and think. Father Jude’s spade offered itself as an honest companion, and Martin went forth into the garden to dig.
He had not turned two spadefuls of soil when Kate Succory began singing. She was sitting hidden by the gorse, her arms hugging her knees, and her voice had no note of wayward exultation. It was as though she sang to herself plaintively, like a bird bewailing its lost mate.
Martin frowned, and stood listening, but her singing did not die away into the distance as he had expected. She was hidden somewhere, and her voice remained to trouble him.
He began to dig with fierce determination, jaw set, eyes staring at the brown soil. And presently he stopped, and lifted up his head like a rabbit that has crouched hidden in a tuft of grass. What a chance for a jester to have thrown a clod at him! The girl’s singing had ceased.
Martin breathed hard, and lifted up his spade for a stroke, but the silence had fooled him.
“The moon shone full on my window
When Jock came down through the wood,
And I felt the wind in the trees blow
The springtime into my blood.”
She gave the words with a kind of passionate recklessness, and all her youth seemed to thrill in her throat. Martin bowed his head and went on digging as though by sheer physical effort he could save himself from being a man.
Presently he found himself up against the hedge, with no more ground that he could attack with the spade. The hedge was in leaf, and hid the open moor from him. He fancied he heard some one moving on the other side of the green wall.
“Martin—Martin Valliant.”
He started to walk toward the chapel, but the voice followed him along the hedge.
“Do not be angry with me, Martin Valliant; I want to speak with you. You are a good man and to be trusted; I am a grown woman and no fool.”
Martin hesitated.
“What would you say to me?”
“Many things. I have the wit to know that all is not well with the world. We are heretics, Father Martin, heretics in our hearts. We—in Paradise—no longer believe what the monks teach us, for they are bad men, who laugh in their sleeves at God.”
Martin’s eyes hardened.
“Such words should not come from your lips, child.”
She laughed recklessly.
“I speak of what I see. Is Father Geraint a holy man? Do the brothers keep their vows? And why should they—when they are but men? It is all a great mockery. And why did they send you away to this solitary place?”
He did not answer her at once, and his face was sad.
“No, it is no mockery,” he said at last, “nor is life easy for those who strive toward holiness. Get you gone, Kate. I will keep my faith with God.”
He could hear her plucking at the hedge with her fingers.
“I do not please you,” she said sullenly.
“God forgive you,” he answered her. “You are to me but a brown bird or a child. Shall I offend against God, and you, and my own soul because other men are base? No; and I will prove my faith.”
She heard him go to the cell, and a sudden awe of him awoke in her heart. She went and hid in the gorse and waited, expecting some strange and violent thing to happen. Presently she saw him come forth carrying an oak stool, a length of rope, and a knife. He went straight toward the great wooden cross on its mound, and for a moment panic seized her. Martin Valliant was going to hang himself!
She crouched, watching him, ready to rush out and strive with him for his life. She saw Martin set the oak stool at the foot of the cross, stand on it, cut the rope into two pieces, and fasten them to the two arms of the cross. He made a loop of each, and turning his back to the beam, thrust his hands through the loops. Then she understood.
Martin Valliant had only to thrust the stool away or take his feet from it, and he would hang by the arms—crucified. And that was what he did. He raised himself by drawing on the ropes, lifted his feet from the oak stool, and let himself drop so that he hung by the arms.
Kate knelt there, her arms folded across her bosom. Her brown eyes had grown big and solemn, more like the eyes of a child. She looked at Martin Valliant, and her awe of him was mingled with a strange, choking tenderness.
How long would he hang there? How long would he endure? He had only to place his feet upon the oak stool in order to rest himself to show some mercy to his body. But the soul of the man welcomed pain. His eyes looked steadily toward the sea with an obstinate tranquillity that made her marvel at his patience.
The day was far spent and the sun low in the west, and as the sun sank lower it fell behind the cross and showed like a halo about Martin Valliant’s head. The glare was in Kate’s eyes, so that the cross and the man hanging upon it were no more than a black outline.
How long would he endure? How would it end?
And then, of a sudden, the eyes of her soul were opened. She was no longer the laughing wench in love with the shape of a man. She saw something noble hanging there against the sunset, a figure that was like the figure of the Christ.
She flung herself on her face, and wept for Martin and her own heart. There was no escape from the truth. It was she who had crucified him, put him to this torment.
The sun had touched the hills and there was a wonderful golden radiance covering the earth as she rose up with wet eyes, and hastened toward the cross. She went on her knees, kissed the man’s feet, and wiped away the mark of her kisses with her hair.
“I will go,” she said, bowing her head. “If I have sinned against your holiness, Martin Valliant, forgive me—because I love you.”
He looked down at her and smiled, though his arms felt as though they were being torn from their sockets.
“Who am I that I should forgive you, sister? Sometimes it is good to suffer. Go back to Paradise.”
She rose up and left him, running wildly down the long slope of the moor, not daring to let herself look back.
“He shall suffer no more for my sake,” she kept saying to herself, and all the while she was weeping and wishing herself dead
Roger Bland, my Lord of Troy, rode back from hunting in the Forest. Dan Love, his huntsman, had sent word that morning that he had found the slot of a hart down by Darvel’s Holt, and that the beast lay close in one of the thickets. My Lord of Troy had gone out with his hounds and gentlemen, hunted the hart, and slain him. He was riding home in the cool of the evening, the sunlight shining on his doublet of green cloth of gold, its slashed sleeves puffed with crimson, as though striped with blood.
Troy Castle loomed up above at the top of a steep and grassy hill, throwing a huge shadow across the valley. It was the crown of Roger Bland’s pride, the sign and symbol of his greatness, for the Lord of Troy was a new man, a shrewd hound who had lapped up the blood of the old nobles butchered in the wars of Lancaster and York. Richard Crookback had been well served by Roger Bland. The fellow was a brain, an ear, a creature of the closet, bold in betraying, cautious in risking his own soul.
Yet the Lord of Troy had a presence, a certain lean dignity. His face narrowed to a long, outjutting chin. His mouth was very small, his pale eyes set somewhat close together. The man’s nostrils were cruel, his forehead high and serene. When he spoke it was with a dry and playful shrewdness; he could be very debonair; his tongue wore silk; there was nothing of the butcher about him.
Roger Bland was a man of the new age, half merchant, half scholar, with some of the pride of a prince. He had caught the spirit of the Italians. Subtlety pleased him; he despised the stupid English bull. And up in Troy Castle he lived magnificently, and kept a quiet eye on the country for leagues around, a hawk ready to pounce on any stir or trouble in the land. And the Forest hated him with an exceeding bitter hatred, for it had suffered grimly at his hands, seeing that it had chosen to wear the Red Rose when the White had proved more fortunate. The Lord of Troy had ridden into it, and left great silences behind him. There were houses empty and ruinous, and no man dared go near them. There were people who had fled across the sea. There were graves in the Forest, shallow holes in the earth into which bodies had been tumbled and left hidden in the green glooms.
As Roger Bland’s black horse lifted him out of the valley a man came down to meet him along the steep road that climbed the hill. It was Noble Vance, the Forest Warden, a thick, coarse stub of a man who dressed to his own red color. The Forest folk feared him, and mocked at his parents who had christened him so sententiously. “Noble, forsooth!” He wore a doublet of scarlet and hose of green. His red hat looked as big as the wheel of a cart, and the face under it was the color of raw meat, and all black about the jowl.
He swept his hat to the Lord of Troy.
“My lord has had good sport,” and he nodded toward the hart lying across the back of a horse.
“Excellent, Master Vance.”
“There is other game, my lord, beyond the purlieus. I have ridden over to speak to you.”
Roger Bland glanced back over either shoulder.
“A good gossip, my friend——”
“As you say, sir, a good gossip——”
“Is best kept for the closet, and a cup of wine. Ride here beside me. Yes, we have made an excellent day of it; we turned that beast out by Darvel’s Holt and ran him three miles. I love a beast with a good heart, Vance, and a man who fights to the death.”
The Forest Warden grinned.
“Such men are growing scarce, my lord, in these parts. A few green youngsters perhaps, and an old badger or two deep down in their earths.”
“Like old Jack Falconer, I shall draw that badger some day.”
Trumpets sounded as they crossed the bridge over the dry moat, for my Lord of Troy had a love of ceremony and spacious, opulent magnificence. The guards at the gate-house presented their pikes. In the main court grooms and servants came hurrying in my lord’s livery of silver and green. A page stood uncovered beside Roger Bland’s horse, with a cup of wine ready on a silver salver.
My lord waved him aside.
“Bring two cups, child, to my closet, and let it be known that I am not to be troubled. Now, Master Vance.”
They entered by a little door in an angle of the courtyard, and a staircase led them to the great solar above and at the end of the hall. From the solar a passage cut in the thickness of the wall linked up my lord’s state chamber with his closet in one of the towers. It was a richly garnished room, its hangings of cloth of gold, its floor covered with skins and velvets. There were books on the table. The open door of a great oak armoire showed ivory chessmen set ready on a board.
My lord chose one of the window-seats. He liked a stately perch, a noble view, and his back to the light. The subtler shades did not matter to Noble Vance; he let fate hang him where it pleased, like a joint of meat in a butcher’s shop.
“It is wondrous hot for May, sir.”
“The blood is hot in the spring, Vance. Here comes the wine.”
The page served them, and had his orders.
“Stay in the gallery, Walter, and see that we are not disturbed.”
The Forest Warden waited for my lord to raise his cup.
“Your good esteem, sir.”
“I think you hold it, Vance. Do things ever happen in the Forest?”
“But little, sir. You have left no man fit to quarrel with you. But I have come upon a little business in Gawdy Town.”
“Such places breed fleas—and adventures. What is it, Vance?”
“Young Gilbert Dale and the girl are there.”
“What—those cubs?”
“They came in the ship Rose. The lad is a grown man, and the girl a fine, black-browed wench. Pimp Odgers spied them out, though they played the part of strollers.”
“You are sure?”
“I have Odgers here, and another fellow who knew the Dales, and could swear to the son.”
Roger Bland turned in his seat and looked out over the Forest. It was as noble a view as a man could desire, a world of green valleys and distant hills blue on the horizon. The lord of Troy Castle smiled as he sat there high up in the tower, a sly, cynical smile of self-congratulation. The Forest lay at his feet; he was its master. Even the thought of the cruel strength he had shown in taming it pleased him, for, like many men who lack brute physical courage, he was cleverly and shrewdly cruel.
“How many years, Vance, is it since that day when we smoked the Dales out of Woodmere?”
“Seven, this June, sir.”
“Old Dale had sent his cubs away. What is the young gadfly doing in Gawdy Town?”
“Playing the viol and singing songs, with bells in his cap. He goes out of nights, I hear, but my men say that it is to Petticoat Lane.”
“Many things are hatched in a brothel, Vance. And the girl?”
“Plays the lute and sings. A haughty young madam, they say, with eyes quick to stab a man.”
“There is no whisper of secret work, no playing for Harry Richmond?”
Vance shook his big head solemnly.
“I keep my nose for that fox,” he said, “but have struck no scent as yet. What is your pleasure, sir?”
The Lord of Troy continued to gaze out over the Forest.
“Saw you ever anything more peaceful, Master Vance, than yon green country? It is I who have taught it to be peaceful, and much labor it gave me. I have cleared it of wolves; I have cowed its broken men. I choose that it shall remain at peace.”
The warden’s eyes glittered.
“The Dales were ever turbulent, hot-blooded folk. That young man might give us trouble.”
“Prevent it, Master Warden. You have a way of contriving these things. A quarrel in some low house, daggers, and a scuffle in the street.”
“My lord, it is as simple as eating pie. My men will manage it. And the girl?”
“Bring her here, Master Vance. We will question her. It is possible to learn things from a woman. Moreover, our good king loves a wildfire jade.”
The Forest Warden finished his wine, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
“By the rope that hanged Judas, sir,” he said, “it is a pleasure to serve a great man who knows his own mind!”