For a long while Martin Valliant neither moved nor spoke, and Mellis watched him in silence. His rage had passed, and a kind of wondering horror dulled his eyes. He was afraid of his own handiwork, this death that he had brought into the world, these bloody things at his feet. And yet they fascinated him, for there were two men struggling in Martin Valliant—the poor monk and the soldier.
The monk in him, being the elder, stood shocked to the heart, and most tragically dismayed. Such a bloody deed as this seemed the end of everything, even though it had been done in generous wrath. Martin’s monastic soul shrank away, horrified, covering its face with its hands. He had spilled blood, he was a murderer, he had sinned against the God Who had given him life.
For a while the monk in him possessed his whole consciousness, but there was a man stronger and fiercer than the monk waiting to be heard. The soul of old Valliant lived more nobly in his son, old Valliant who had looked on dead men with the pity of a soldier, but who would have had no pity for such a fellow as Noble Vance.
“Martin—Martin Valliant!”
He heard her voice, at first very soft and faint, like a voice from a distance. He had not looked at her since he had struck Vance down.
Slowly he seemed to drag himself from staring at his own handiwork. He turned his head, and her eyes met his.
Once more the soul of that tragic day astonished him, for there was a strange, shining light in Mellis’s eyes. Her lips seemed to tremble; her throat showed proud and triumphant. Here was no shame, no horror, but a something that gloried, an exultation that was near to tears.
He stared at her as though he had been dead and she had called him back to life.
Mellis stretched out her hands as though to crown him.
“Martin Valliant—Martin Valliant.”
Again the note of exultation sounded. He beheld a new and human glory in her eyes.
“God forgive me.”
He dropped on his knees, and covered his face with his right arm.
The woman in her rushed instantly to comfort him.
“Martin—Martin Valliant, take it not to heart. God slays men sometimes; it is right and good that they should be slain.”
She bent over him with infinite compassion.
“How can I lift this burden from you, you who have striven to love men?”
He dropped his arm and stared at the grass.
“What has happened to me? I do not understand. Yet that man there was an evil beast, and I struck him in clean wrath. What does God wish? I have lost the light in my soul.”
He got up and began to walk to and fro with great strides, his forehead all knotted, his mouth awry. And Mellis watched him, keeping silent, but with a great pity in her eyes. He was like a blind man, groping his way, lost in the confusion of his own soul.
“Martin——”
He turned to her with dull anguish in his eyes.
“God will not speak to me. I hear no voice but yours. I will go and surrender myself.”
“To whom?”
“What does it matter? There is blood on my hands. Let them do with me as they please.”
A new light flashed in her eyes. She seemed to feel the struggle that was coming, the fight for the soul of this strong man. Either he would dash himself to ruin, or she would save him as he had saved her.
“Is there no other voice but mine?”
“None.”
“Perhaps God is in my voice, speaking to you, Martin Valliant.”
He looked at her strangely.
“Those men died by my hand.”
“Good—very good—I grant it. There’s death, lying at our feet. Let us look at it boldly, without shrinking, without shame. What were those men? One was an evil beast, you say, and I know it to be true. He was one of those who slew my father; I would charge him, too, with my brother’s death, and by your hand I am avenged. There were three, and you were alone. There was God’s good wrath in your heart. And I call you proudly Martin Valliant. Yes, the song of the sword is yours.”
The blood rose to his face.
“Is my sin the less?”
“What if there be no sin in the killing of such enemies? Think, why did you strike the man down?”
He avoided her eyes.
“To save me. Because your heart told you that these men brought me death—perhaps things that are worse than death. You killed them, but I live and am free.”
She smiled bravely.
“Free—to be grateful—free to swear to you from my heart that the deed was done nobly. And now—what of the morrow?”
He could not rise to her rebel mood as yet; the old life still hung to him, though he realized that it was a thing of rags and tatters.
“To-morrow? I cannot think of a to-morrow. Life seems to end for me in a great cliff.”
She made herself look at the dead man, pointed at him with her finger.
“You know whom you have killed?”
“Vance, the Forest Warden.”
“Roger Bland’s watchdog. And you will hang for it, Martin Valliant, in spite of twenty St. Benedicts. The Lord of Troy is not gentle with those who flout him.”
He answered sullenly, “If I hang—I hang.”
Mellis went closer, and looked steadily into his face.
“And I, Martin Valliant, I shall hang on the same gibbet.”
He threw his head back, with a tightening of the mouth and a hardening of the eyes.
“God forbid!”
“Roger Bland of Troy will not forbid it. We shall hang, Martin Valliant, unless——”
He opened and shut his hands as though blindly striving to grip the truth.
“I am a broken man—but you——”
“Broken, say you? And before God—why? What are we but rebels, outlaws, so long as Crookback rules and such hounds as Bland hunt at his bidding? My troth is pledged to another king. Broken?—never! What, shall I not fight for my life against my enemies—aye, and with a good heart? And you, Martin Valliant?”
“I—fight—to save myself?”
“Would you let them lead you off like an ox to be pole-axed?”
“I have vowed——”
“God have pity on you, Martin Valliant. Where are your vows now? Blown to the winds. No, I’ll not suffer you to go with meek madness to your death. Answer me—will you not fight for your own life?”
He thought awhile, and then answered stubbornly, “No.”
Mellis drew a deep breath.
“Before God, then, will you fight for mine?”
He faltered, looked at her, and his face flamed to her challenge.
“For you? To save you?”
He bowed his head.
“Yes—to the death, so that you may live.”
She held out her hands to him, her eyes shining.
“Martin Valliant, let us be comrades, let us swear troth to each other.”
But he looked at her hands as though he dared not touch them.
“I am a priest no more,” he said, “but an outlaw. So be it, though God has dealt strangely with me.”
He turned his head and looked at the great cross.
“The shape of a sword!”
“There is a noble spirit in it, Martin Valliant.”
“It shall be a cross—and a sword,” he answered her.
So Martin Valliant became an outlaw, Nature being stronger than the ingenious folly of dead saints.
It was Mellis who captained the adventure, for she was quicker in thought than Martin, and the day’s happenings had stunned him not a little.
She had her eyes on Woodmere, and both heart and head justified the choice. It was nearer to Troy Castle than the Black Moor, but this disadvantage was overbalanced by many virtues. The place lay in the thick of the woods; its broad mere made it very safe; and with but little labor the house itself could be put into a good state for defense. Arms and stores were hidden there. Moreover, it lay in the Red Rose country, where the Forest folk were most bitter against the Lord of Troy. John Falconer held Badger Hill; the Blounts were at Bloody Rood, just south of the Rondel toward the west. Mellis counted on the Forest rallying to her when the secret word went forth that Richmond was crossing the seas.
“To horse, good comrade; or rather you and I will have to march and load the baggage on my horse. Have you much store of food?”
“Half a sack of flour, and some yeast.”
“Empty your cupboard into a couple of sacks. I will go and harness the horse.”
Martin Valliant was looking at the dead men. He loitered a moment, as though he could not decide what should be done with them.
“No, I’ll not touch them,” he said to himself. “I am a man of blood; let others do what is right and good.”
He locked up the chapel and left the key hanging on a nail in his cell, nor did he touch anything in the cell itself save the food in the cupboard and larder. A couple of sacks served for the stowing away of the flour, the yeast, a bottle or two of wine, a paper of dried herbs, and some salted meat. He tied up the mouths of the sacks and carried them down to the stable.
Mellis showed herself a very practical young woman.
“Fasten those two sacks together, and we can sling them like panniers. Now, what else would make useful plunder? A coil of rope, if you have such a thing.”
Martin remembered seeing a coil hanging in Father Jude’s tool-house.
“Wait—and a felling ax and a crowbar. I’ll come with you.”
They ransacked the tool-house, and Mellis blessed Father Jude.
“The rope, yes, and that felling ax. This is a treasury, good comrade. Take that saw, and the mattock and spade.”
“Here’s a crowbar.”
“Oh, brave man! We shall bless these tools to-morrow. That big maul, too, and the billhook, and that auger hanging there.”
“I can use the rope to lash them into a bundle.”
“Of course. Give me the saw, the auger, and the billhook.”
Martin laid the rest of the tools on the ground, and lashed them together by the handles. He tried the weight of the bundle.
“Your horse will not bless us. I could shoulder these things.”
“Seven miles?”
“It is not the weight, but an awkward bale to tie on a horse’s back.”
“Here’s a sack and some cord; wrap it around the handles; we can sling the food one side and the tools the other. The horse must make the best of it.”
Her word was law for the moment, both to Martin Valliant and the beast. She stood by while he loaded the things on to the horse’s back, watching him critically and the way he used his big brown hands.
“Can you ride a horse?” she asked him.
He smiled around at her gravely.
“I have broken in colts at Paradise.”
“Was that monk’s work?”
“I was young, and even a monk is none the worse for learning to handle an untamed thing and to keep his temper.”
She nodded approvingly.
“That may help us. Can you use a bow?”
“Passably. As a boy I used to carry a prodd and shoot at the crows.”
“The long bow for a forester; the arbalist is only for townsmen.”
“I could hit a sheaf of corn at fifty paces when I was younger.”
“You will have to grow young again. And traps—can you set a snare as a bird-trap?”
“No.”
“I am thinking of our larder,” she explained. “Outlaws are not fed by ravens.”
The sun had swung well into the west when they were ready to start upon their journey. Mellis went to the great cross, and from its knoll she scanned the moor, but could see no live thing moving anywhere. Martin stood by the horse, leaning on his hollywood staff and staring at the ground, trying to convince himself that he was not dreaming. He saw Mellis come back and turn her head so as not to see those dead things lying by the rest-house. Yes, the business was real enough. He had but to look at Mellis, and the knowledge leaped in him that the Martin Valliant of yesterday was dead.
“I can see no one moving. The sooner we are lost to view in the woods, the better it will be for us.”
His tragic face touched her, but she let him alone, and taking the horse’s bridle, started over the moor.
Martin followed her like a dog. He moved mechanically, watching her with a kind of sorrowful bewilderment, marching toward the new world with a heart that was very heavy. A man’s whole life cannot be overturned and broken in a day without the shock of it leaving him dazed and full of a dull distrust. To have become a murderer, to find himself tramping at the heels of a young woman whose eyes bewitched him, to know that there was a likelihood of both of them being hanged—these amazing realities hung heavy about Martin Valliant’s neck.
Once or twice Mellis glanced back over her shoulder. She had divined what was passing in Martin Valliant’s heart; she half expected to find herself alone, or to see him stalking away over the moor. Had she suffered less herself, she might have reasoned with him, tried to spur him against the world; but her own heart was full of sadness, and sorrow is a great teacher. She had fought to save him from his own fanaticism, and she had won a victory; but she was too full of pity for the man to torture him with more grim home-truths. Fate seemed to have tossed them together into the unknown. She chose to let Fate settle the matter. The man should be free to repent and go.
They crossed the moor and reached the beech woods without adventure, and Mellis’s heart beat with a lessened feeling of suspense when the green trees hid them. It was one of those soft, cloudy, windless days when the Forest seemed to gather an added mystery, and the great aisles looked more solemn, hiding strange secrets.
“It is good to be here.”
She breathed the words like a prayer.
“There is no cleaner thing than the Forest. The trees have no sins to remember.”
Martin did not answer her. He was gazing along the green aisles and up into the tops of the great trees where a vague shimmer of light played above the black branches. The stillness was miraculous; not a leaf was moving; the huge gray trunks looked strong enough to carry the world.
Then he fell to watching the figure of the girl in front of him, with its gown of green that seemed part of the woodland. She walked lightly, bravely, the horse plodding placidly at her heels as though he recognized in her a wise power that was to be trusted and obeyed. And in watching her Martin Valliant was led toward a new humility, and an unforeseen conquest of his own perplexities.
It was her loneliness, and her courage in bearing it, that routed the scandalized selfishness of the monk and stirred the deeper compassion of the man. He remembered yesterday’s despair in her eyes and the words of anguish he had heard her utter. She seemed to stand alone in this great wilderness, a wounded thing at the mercy of some brutal chance, a white martyr to be torn and ravished by such ruffians as Noble Vance. What were his own sorrows compared with hers? How much more grim and real the dangers that threatened her!
A sudden shame seized him; his eyes lost their sullen, doubting look; his face became transfigured. He had been worshiping self all the while, and, like a Pharisee, he had broken into pious wailings because blood had spotted his precious robe. Yes, he had made an idol of his own sinlessness, bowed down to it, thought of it as the one great thing in the world.
The soft green light under the trees seemed like the light of a sanctuary, and an awed look stole into Martin’s eyes. He followed Mellis in silence, nor did she speak to him, and all the while that great change was working in his soul. Here was something to serve, a thing of flesh and blood, nobler than any altar of stone. He felt that he could lay down his life for her, and that God Himself would not turn from such a sacrifice.
From that moment Martin Valliant’s soul felt strong and calm in him. His eyes no longer looked back at the old life; he set his face steadily toward the future.
Now Mellis knew nothing of all this, of the man’s uprising from the wounded horror of his blood-stained self. They had come to the high ground, above the Rondel, and could see the river glimmering in the green deeps below. It was time to eat and rest, and she called a halt.
“Are you footsore, comrade?”
“No; nor sore at heart.”
She gave him a quick, searching look, and his face surprised her. It was serene, steadfast, and its eyes were very gentle. All that tangle of doubt and self-horror had been wiped away.
She said nothing. He made a movement to take the horse’s bridle from her.
“I will unload the horse and let him feed. There is a patch of grass there. Sit down and rest.”
They looked into each other’s eyes.
“Pain wearies the heart,” she said.
“You shall ride the horse and I will carry the baggage.”
“No, but you shall not.”
“We will see,” he answered her.
It was Martin who served. He unbuckled the horse’s bridle and made a tether of it, so that the beast could feed. Then he unloaded the baggage, opened one of the sacks, and took out bread, meat, and some wine. Mellis had thrown herself down under a beech tree where the moss was like a green carpet, and Martin served her with wine and bread.
Her eyes met his with a new softness. Something had happened to Martin Valliant; he was a changed man. He offered her a new calm strength upon which she could lean, and in her loneliness her heart thanked him. She wanted to rest, to close her eyes for a moment, to let the burden of her fate lie for a moment on a man’s shoulders.
He watched her eat, and forgot that he was hungry. She had to chide him.
“No man is strong enough to go hungry. And there is much work to be done.”
They sat and looked at the river flowing in the valley at their feet. Martin’s memories of yesterday were growing sacred; he hoarded them in his heart.
“Yonder is the ford.”
She pointed with her poniard.
“It was wise of us to halt here. That might be a dangerous passage for us if enemies were near.”
But no hostile thing showed itself; the river was like a silver dream in the green slumber of the woods.
When they had finished their meal and rested awhile, Martin roped up the baggage and untethered the horse.
“You will ride for an hour.”
Mellis rebelled.
“No; you cannot shoulder all that gear.”
“Let us see.”
He slung the sacks over one shoulder, one in front and one behind, and hoisted the tools on to the other.
“I am younger than the horse.”
Something in his eyes persuaded her to humor him.
“It is good to be strong,” she said.
And Martin felt strangely happy.
She mounted, and they went down to the ford. Mellis rode in to show the way, and Martin splashed after her, planting his feet carefully, for the bottom was full of pebbles.
She looked back.
“Remember the flour.”
For the first time he saw a gleam of laughter in her eyes, a glimmer of sweet youthfulness.
“It shall come to no harm,” he answered, smiling back, and thinking her the most beautiful thing in the world.
The day was far spent when they came to the valley in the heart of the woods where the ruined house of the Dales stood on that white blossoming island in the midst of the water. Mellis had dismounted half a league from the ford, and had refused to go forward until Martin had loaded the baggage again on the horse’s back.
“I am rested,” she had said, “and your strength is precious. Let the beast bear the burden for which he was born.”
Martin Valliant had to hide the vivid memories of yesterday, but as he stood at Mellis’s side on the edge of the beech wood and looked down upon Woodmere, he could but marvel at the strangeness of life. Here was he beside her, her comrade in arms, an outlaw, a man who had thrown the future into the melting-pot of fate. And as he watched a world of tenderness and yearning swim into her eyes, his soul stood stoutly to its outlawry. His muscles were made to serve her, and he thanked God for his strength.
“That was our home.”
She looked long at it, her lips trembling, her bosom rising and falling with emotion.
“Gilbert will never see it again. We used to draw pictures in France, and in his fancy the apple trees were always pink and white, just as they are now.”
Martin could find no words to utter. He wanted to touch her, to make her feel that he understood.
But she broke loose from these sad thoughts, rallied herself to face the fiercer issue.
“The valley looks empty.”
They scanned it keenly.
“Not a soul.”
“They will not leave us in peace for very long, and the hours will be precious. Come.”
Martin shut his eyes for a moment. He could not forget that vision of her with her dark hair clouding about her body. But the vision was sacred.
“You see, the bridge is broken.”
He had to pretend his innocence.
“And there is no boat?”
“It is rotting in the mud.”
They went down to the water’s edge, and Martin tied the horse to one of the willows. He paid homage to her forethought in the bringing of those tools.
“We shall have to build a bridge.”
Already she was pushing her way through the scrub, and Martin followed her. There were two gaps to be dealt with, one where the arch had fallen, and a second where the drawbridge should have served.
“The trunks of a few young trees thrown across.”
“Yes—but the horse.”
“We could leave him on this side for the night.”
She stared at the gate-house.
“Perhaps. But we shall want a bridge that can be drawn in, to keep out chance visitors. The gate, too, is off its hinges, and broken. I know where a beam is hidden, but I doubt whether we can lift it.”
“There is the rope—and I am strong.”
Her eyes looked him over with critical praise.
“Yes, you are bigger than your father. If we could throw a couple of young ash trees across the first gulf. There is a thicket of ashes down yonder.”
Martin needed no second word from her. He had the tools off the horse’s back, and the ax on his shoulder.
“Which way?”
“Over there. I’ll take the billhook and lop off the boughs while you do the felling.”
They started away like a couple of children, full of the adventure, and Martin was soon at work in a thicket of ash trees that had been planted some twenty years before. He chose a tree and had it down with six clean, slanting blows of the ax, so that the cuts clove wedgewise into the trunk.
“Oh, brave man! That was woodman’s skill.”
She fell to clearing the trunk of its top and side branches while Martin threw a second tree. He felled four, and shouldered them one by one up to the bridge end, and here his great strength served. These ash spars were no broomsticks, and he had to spear them forward over the gap, and keep their ends from dropping into the water.
“Brave comrade! Well done!”
She cheered his triumph.
“And now a few willow withies.”
He took the bill, lopped off some willow boughs, and then, straddling his way along the ash trunks, lashed them together with the withies. The thing made a very passable bridge. Martin tested it, and was happy.
“A few more trees, and some earth rammed on the top, and the horse will be safe across.”
“Yes—to-morrow. It is growing late. Now for the beam I told you of.”
It was lying in the sluice ditch under a smother of brambles and young thorns, a great balk of timber all sodden with damp, fifteen feet long, six inches thick, and a foot in breadth. Two men might have shirked carrying it twenty yards; but Martin, in that springtime of his love, dragged it out upon the grass.
“Good saints, but you are strong!”
She tossed him the rope.
“Throw a noose around it. I can help at pulling.”
They got the beam to the bridge, across the platform of ash trees, and so to the place where the drawbridge should have been, and here the business baffled them. The thing was far too ponderous to be thrust across like a plank.
Martin solved the riddle. He had to fell two more small trees, lay them across, and straddle his way over. Then he climbed the stair to the broken gate-house and bade Mellis throw him the rope. The first two casts failed, but the third succeeded. They swung the great beam across between them, Martin keeping his end raised by straining the rope over the wall.
He saw Mellis run lightly across, and scrambling back along the wall and down the stone stairway built in the angle of the gate-house, he joined her in the courtyard. The sun hung low over the tops of the trees, and its level rays threw the blackened beams of the burned roof of the hall into grim relief. The whole place had been gutted, with the exception of the little octagonal tower to the south of the hall, and one or two outhouses lying beyond the garden. The gate-house was just a stone shell, the charred gate lying rotting in a bed of nettles.
The evening light played in Mellis’s eyes, and Martin Valliant held his peace for the moment. Her lips moved as though she were repeating some promise she had made. It crossed his mind that she might wish to be alone, so he went back across the bridge and carried the two sacks and the tools over.
She called to him.
“Martin—Martin!”
She had opened a door that led from the courtyard into the garden, and stood waiting for him.
“Let us look everywhere. I want to be sure that no one has been here before us.”
She wandered out into the garden, a sweet and tangled place, sloping toward the sunset. The walks had gone back to grass, and the rose bushes were smothered with brambles. The four clipped yews by the sundial had grown into shaggy trees, and the herbs in the borders lived the life of the woods. Wild flowers had taken possession, buttercups, ragged robin, purple vetches, and great white daisies. There was a nut walk that had grown into a green tunnel; and a stone seat on the terrace under the wall of the house was almost hidden by bushes that had sprung up between the stones.
“This was a garden, and that was my mother’s seat. Men are very cruel.”
“And yet the place is very beautiful,” he said.
“With the beauty of sadness and of pain.”
In one of the borders she found an old rose bush that was budding into bloom, and one red flower had opened its petals. Her eyes glimmered.
“Why—this is a miracle!”
She plucked the rose, kissed it, smelled its perfume.
“Red is our color.”
And then a thought struck her.
“Comrade in arms, you are for Lancaster; here is your badge.”
She gave him the rose, and Martin touched it with his lips as she passed on down the garden.
They had explored the whole island before the sun dropped below the trees. The only habitable place was the tower; it had escaped the fire, probably because the wind had been blowing from the south when Roger Bland’s men had thrown their torches into the hall. A newel staircase led to an upper room, and though there was nothing but the boarded floor, the place was dry and habitable.
Martin did not enter the room, but stood on the threshold, as though some finer instinct held him back.
“There is plenty of old bracken in the beech wood,” he said; “it would serve—for a night.”
She was leaning her hands on the window ledge and looking down on the sea of white apple blossom below. Martin left her there, and, crossing himself, went out to the woods to gather bracken.
When he returned he found her watering the horse at the edge of the mere.
“We can let him lodge in one of the thickets for the night,” she said, smiling at the great bundle of brown bracken on Martin’s back.
A blackbird was singing in the orchard, and bats were beginning to flit against the yellow sky. Martin carried the bracken to the tower, and threw the bundle down on the floor of her room. The door still hung on its hinges, and he nodded his head approvingly when he saw that it could be bolted on the inside. It was fitting and right that she should feel secure in her chamber, since she was the queen of the place and more sacred to him than any lady in the land.
Martin went for more bracken, and when he returned with it he left the bundle on the flagstones at the foot of the stairs. Mellis had found a sheltered woodland stall for the horse, and had tethered him there with several lapfuls of grass for his supper. Dusk was falling over the Forest, and a great stillness prevailed. The surface of the mere was black and smooth as a magician’s mirror.
Martin heard Mellis calling.
“Bread and wine—and then to bed.”
She had found a rickety, worm-eaten oak bench, and carried it out to the terrace above the garden. They sat one at each end of the bench, using the space between them as a table.
“To-morrow there will be much work for you, Martin Valliant,” she said, smiling.
“Work is the sap of life.”
“Oh, sententious man! You will build me an oven, and I will bake bread. There are plenty of fish in the mere, and some venison would help to stock our larder. You will be a slave to-morrow, Martin Valliant; we have to victual our stronghold and stop the gaps in its defenses. Every day may be precious.”
He could see that she was weary, and ready to yawn behind her hand.
“Go and sleep,” he said, when they had ended the meal; “I shall lie on guard, ready for an alarm.”
“Martin Valliant, man-at-arms!”
So Martin made his bed at the foot of the stairs, and slept across them, so that no one could pass save over his body.
Mellis woke on her bed of bracken soon after the birds had broken into song. She went to the window of the tower room and found the valley full of white mist and the whole world all wet with dew. The day promised gloriously, heralded by such a dawn.
As she had said to Martin Valliant, every hour was precious, for the Lord of Troy’s riders would be scouring the Forest, and Woodmere would not be forgotten. If she and Martin were to hold it as a strong rallying place for their friends of the Red Rose, then it behooved them to be up and doing before their ruinous stronghold was attacked.
She opened her door, and going softly down the stairs, found Martin Valliant still sleeping across them on his bed of fern. And for the moment she felt loth to rouse him, for he lay breathing as quietly as a child, one arm under his head.
“Martin Valliant——”
She touched him with her foot, and the result was miraculous. He sat up, clutching the billhook that lay on the step beside him, a most fierce and unpeaceful figure in the gray light of the dawn.
“Stand! Who’s there?”
Mellis retreated a step or two, laughing, for he was a dangerous gentleman with that bill of his.
“A friend, Martin Valliant.”
He got up, looking not a little angry with himself for having let her catch him asleep.
“What, daylight already!”
“I was loth to wake you, but there is much to be done.”
“It is I who should have been awake, not you.”
He looked in a temper that wanted to catch the day’s work by the throat and throttle it. Mellis stepped over the pile of bracken and stood in the doorway that opened on the courtyard.
“One does not work well hungry,” she said, “and we must talk over the day’s needs.”
Her hair hung loose, and she shook it down so that it fell like a black cloak about her green-sheathed body. The color and the richness of it thrilled Martin to the heart. Her throat looked as white as May blossom, and her eyes had all the mystery of the dawn. And of a sudden a swift exultation leaped in him at the thought that he was her man-at-arms, chosen to shield her with his body, her comrade in this great adventure.
“The day is ours,” he said; “I feel stronger than ten men.”
She turned her head, and her eyes held his.
“I think I am fortunate in you, comrade-in-arms.”
He could have taken the hem of her gown and kissed it.
Mellis served the meal, and they broke their fast in the garden, sitting on the oak bench and watching the white mist lift and melt from the valley. The woods grew green, the sky became blue above them, the mere flashed gold, the flowers glowed like wet gems in the grass. And Martin Valliant’s soul was full of the dawn, the mystery and freshness thereof; the smell of the sweet, wet world intoxicated him; the red rose that Mellis had given him lay over his heart. He looked at her with secret, tentative awe, and life seemed a strange and miraculous dream.
She began to speak of the day’s needs.
“That bridge does not please me, comrade. We want a thing that can be dropped and kept raised at our pleasure. And then there is the gate.”
“The hinges and nails are all that are left of it.”
“I have it. There is some good timber in those outhouses; we could build a new gate. The curtain walls are still strong and good. Then there is the gate leading into the kitchen court; we could wall that up with stones. We must hope to keep the Lord of Troy’s men from crossing the water, if they come before we have raised a garrison.”
She grew more mysterious.
“I shall have other things to show you, but they can keep till the evening. And now—as to the horse.”
The beast raised quite a debate between them, since he complicated the matter of the bridge. Martin was for leaving him tethered in one of the glades, and trusting to luck and to Roger Bland’s men not discovering him if they rode to Woodmere within the next few days. And in the end Mellis agreed with him, since he was to be responsible for the contriving of a drawbridge.
“Your plan has it,” she confessed. “I will go and tether Dobbin in one of the glades, and then come and serve as housewife. The man’s part shall be yours.”
Martin went to work with fierce enthusiasm. He had a scheme in his head as to how the thing might be done, and he set about it when Mellis had crossed the water. He bored a hole through one end of the big beam, ran the rope through the hole and knotted it. At the other end he contrived a rough hinge by driving four stout stakes criss-cross into the ground, with a crossbar under them which could be pegged to the butt-end of the beam. The pulley wheels for the chains of the old bridge were still in the two chain holes of the gate-house, about ten feet from the ground. Martin piled some stones against the wall, climbed on them, and ran the rope through one of the chain holes. The trick worked very prettily. He found that he could raise and lower the beam from inside the gate-house, and all that was needed was a stake to which he could fasten the rope when the bridge was up.
Mellis came back from the woods as he was driving the stake into the ground under the gateway. He had rolled his cassock over his girdle, and turned the sleeves up nearly to his shoulders, so that the muscles showed. And he looked hot and masterful and triumphant as he turned to show her how his bridge worked.
“Well done, Martin Valliant. Let the beam down and I will come over and see if I am strong enough to raise it.”
He lowered the beam, and she walked over to him.
“Now I understand why you did not want to build a bridge that would carry a horse. Let me see what I can do. I might have to play bridgeward some day.”
She found that she was strong enough to raise the beam, for she was tall and lithe, with a beautiful breadth across the bosom.
Martin’s eyes shone.
“Now I must build you a gate,” he said, “a gate that nothing but a cannon shot can shiver.”
It took him the rest of the morning to pull down one of the outhouses, sort out his timber, and get it cut to size and shape. He had dragged the charred mass of the old gate from its bed of nettles, and had stripped it of its great iron hinges when Mellis came to call him to dinner.
“I have done famously: hot meat, and new bread, and a dish of herbs. I found two old iron pots in the cellar, and I am quite kitchen proud.”
Martin was loth to leave the work. He was hunting for the smith’s nails that had fallen out of the burned wood of the old gate; they were more precious than pieces of gold. She pretended to be hurt by his lack of gratitude.
“I have cooked for my comrade in arms, and he will not eat what I have cooked.”
Martin straightened up, and left his hunting for nails among the trampled nettles.
“It was not churlishness on my part.”
“I know. You must do things fiercely, Martin Valliant, with your whole heart, or not at all.”
“My hunger is fierce,” he confessed, smiling gravely. “No food could be sweeter than what your hands have prepared.”
He was shy of her, and voiceless, all through that meal, and there was an answering silence in Mellis’s heart, for though so short a time had passed since their lives had been linked together, she was forgetting Martin the monk in regarding Martin Valliant the man. She began to look at him with a vivid and self-surprised curiosity; his shyness infected her; she became conscious of the deep wonder light in his eyes. Hitherto she had been a creature of impulses, a wild thing blown along by the wind of necessity; but of a sudden she saw the man as a man, and her heart seemed to cease beating for a moment, and her thoughts to stand still.
He was the very contrast of herself, with his tawny hair tinged with red, and his frank, steadfast, trusting eyes. Regarded as a woman, Mellis was a fine, lithe, white-skinned creature, and Martin Valliant matched her in the matter of bodily beauty. There was no gnarled uncouthness about his strength. He carried himself like a king’s son, and without any arrogance of conscious pride. The soul of the man seemed to show in his movements, a steady, gentle, unflurried soul, capable of great tendernesses, of great wraths, and of strange renunciations.
Her eyes grew wayward, more shadowy; they avoided his. A new subtlety of feeling stole into the hearts of both of them. The sun shone, the woods were green, the wild flowers were bright in the lush grass. When a blackbird sang Martin Valliant felt that the bird’s song and his heart were one.
He broke away, for the grosser hunger was soon satisfied.
“I shall not sleep till that gate is up.”
She brushed the crumbs from her lap.
“You will need me. I will come when you call.”
He was walking away when she uttered his name.
“Martin.”
Her voice had never sounded so strange and human in his ears.
“I have a secret to show you—presently—when the gate is up.”
He went off, wondering, his eyes full of his new exultation.
Martin worked like a giant, with a fever of love in his blood. In three hours he had the gate finished and ready to be hung, but the hanging of it was the devil. The thing was monstrously massive and cumbersome to lift, and too broad for him to get a grip of it with spread arms.
He went in search of Mellis.
“I can build my gate—but as to hanging it——”
She smiled at his grim, baffled face.
“Women are cunning!”
She went to help him, and spoke of wedges and the crowbar.
“I can steady the thing while you heave it up, little by little, till the hinge straps are over the bolts.”
He gave her a look from his blue eyes.
“A man rushes like a bull. While you——”
“Ah, as I told you, women are cunning.”
Between them they got the gate on its hinges, and though it groaned and moved reluctantly, it was as strong as a man could wish.
“No spear truncheon will prise that up in a hurry.”
She was flushed and breathing fast, and her quick beauty swept into Martin’s heart like the wind. He stood still, gazing at her, till she looked at him, and then his eyes fell.
“See how strong that is,” he said.
And his heart would have cried, “Strong as my love.”
The main gate of Woodmere was safe now from a surprise, and no enemies could attack the place save by swimming the mere. Martin had made a round of the walls; they stood twelve feet high and were strongly built. The only other openings in them were the gate leading from the kitchen court and the wicket opening on the garden. The garden wicket still hung on its hinges, a stout oak door studded and banded with iron, and easily barred in case of an attack. The kitchen gateway they had decided to wall up, and Martin set to work upon the wall, using the big stones that had fallen from the battlements of the hall. They were so heavy that they wedged and weighted each other in place, and stood as solidly as though they had been laid by a mason.
Martin had nearly closed the gap when Mellis called him.
“The sun is near the hills. You have done enough.”
In spite of his youth and his strength Martin Valliant was very weary. He looked at the wall that he had built, and saw that it was strong enough to stand against a surprise.
Her voice came nearer.
“Are you ever hungry?”
He went whither her voice lured him. She had made a table in the garden out of some stones and pieces of wood, set flowers on it, and laid supper thereon.
Her dark eyes seemed to him to be deep with a new mystery. They broke bread together and drank their wine, and the meal had the flavor of a sacrament.
“There is yet work to be done,” she had said to him, “before the daylight goes. And I shall show you a thing, Martin Valliant, that shall pledge me your honor.”
When they had ended the meal she rose and looked at him with great steadfastness.
“Martin Valliant, is your heart still set on this life of the sword? Tell me the truth, and keep nothing hidden. God knows that a man must make his choice.”
His eyes met hers without flinching.
“I have chosen,” he said; “there shall be no turning back.”
She went toward the tower, beckoning him to follow.
“I have not been idle, and here is my secret.”
It was her brother’s treasury that Mellis showed him, the vault at the base of the tower, filled with war gear and a store of food. She had raised the stone by thrusting a long pole through the iron ring. A stout leather sack lay on the ground beside the entry.
“There are bows and bills and war harness below there,” she told him. “We have fooled the Lord of Troy, who swore that there should not be so much as a boar-spear left in the Forest. Take that sack, Martin Valliant, and carry it for me into the garden.”
He shouldered the thing, and knew that he carried iron, both by the weight of it and by the way a sharp edge bit into his shoulder.
“Lay it on the grass—there.”
He obeyed her, wondering what was in her mind.
Mellis knelt and cut the leather thong that fastened the throat of the sack. The leather had kept out the damp, and her white hands drew out armor that was bright as the blade of her poniard. It was a suit of white mail beautifully wrought, yet noble in its clean simplicity. Salade, breast-plate, shoulder pieces, back-plate, tassets, loin-guard, vam-braces, rear-braces, elbow pieces, gauntlets, thigh plates, greaves, solerets and spurs, she laid them all upon the grass. And last of all she drew out a belt and sword, and a plain shield colored green.
She spread her hands, palms downwards, over them.
“This was to have been my brother’s harness.”
Martin Valliant was kneeling at her side.
“And now, God helping me, I have chosen the man who shall wear it—even you, Martin Valliant, my comrade in arms.”
Martin’s eyes seemed to catch the sunlight. He knelt for a while in silence, as though he were praying.
“May no shame come to it through me,” he said at last; “and though it may sit strange on me, my heart shall serve you to the death.”
She took the sword and rose from her knees.
“My hands shall gird you.”
He reached out, drew the pommel of the sword toward him, and kissed it.
“I swear troth to you, Mellis.”
He looked up, and her eyes held his.
“Martin Valliant you are called, and valiant shall you be. Stand, good comrade.”
She buckled the sword on him, knowing in her heart that he was her man.
Martin Valliant slept at the foot of the tower stairway with Mellis’s sword beside him. He fell asleep with one hand gripping the hilt, like a child clutching a toy.
Mellis did not have to wake him that morning, for he was up before the birds had begun their orisons, his heart full of the great adventure that life had thrust upon him. He had taken it solemnly, like a young man before his knighthood, or a soldier setting forth on a Crusade, and all that he did that morning in the gray of the dawn betrayed the symbolical passion of the lover. He was to enter upon a new state before he touched that white harness, and so he went to the mere, stripped off his clothes, and bathed in the water. Then he knelt awhile, grave-eyed and strong, watching the sun rise on the new day, while the birds were a choir invisible.
When Mellis came down from her chamber she found him in the garden with the harness spread out upon the leather sack, so that the wet grass should not tarnish it. He had cut his cassock short above the knees, and was holding the salade in his hands and staring at it like a crystal gazer.
He flushed, and glanced at her with an air of bafflement.
“These iron clothes are new to me.”
Mellis did not smile at his predicament, though she guessed that he had no knowledge of how to arm himself.
“You must try the feel of it,” she said, “for a man should test himself with the weight of his harness. Four hands are needed for such a toilet. When we have eaten I will play the page to you.”
She was as good as her word, and the arming of Martin Valliant was an event in the life of the garden. Mellis made him seat himself upon the bench, while she picked up the pieces one by one and taught him his lesson by buckling them on with her own hands. First came the breast- and back-plates, the pauldrons and gorget, the vam-braces and rear-braces. Then she made him stand up.
“You may call that half-harness; a man can move lightly and fight on foot, but when bowmen are about, a man-at-arms should be sheathed from top to toe.”
Next she buckled on tassets, loin-guard, cuishes, greaves and solerets, set the salade on his head, and slung the green shield by its strap about his neck.
“Now, man of the sword!”
She stood back and surveyed him.
“Yes, it is better than I had hoped. You are a bigger man than my poor brother, but the harness covers you. Of course you should be wearing a wadded coat to save all chafing, and hose of good wool.”
Her eyes lit up as she looked him over, and she held her head proudly.
“I have no spear to give you, though I doubt not that you will make a better beginning with the sword—if needs be. Try the joints, Martin.”
He walked up and down before her, raised his arms, spread them wide, folded them over his chest. He seemed made for such heavy harness; the strong, sweeping movements of his limbs were not crabbed or clogged by it.
“The thing is like an iron skin.”
“Ah! it was made by a fine armorer. The joints are perfect. And the weight of it?”
“I’ll swear I could run or leap.”
“You are fresh as yet. A man must wear such harness for a day to learn where it irks him. And so I am thinking that I will leave you to master it. There is work for me in the Forest.”
He unhelmed himself, and his blue eyes looked at her questioningly.
“What! You are venturing abroad?”
“Yes; I shall take the horse, and your wallet full of food.”
“Why must you go?”
“Why, brother-in-arms, because we are not the only people on God’s earth who thirst to humble the Lord of Troy. We have friends in the Forest, and I must see them—take counsel, and plan what can be done. They were waiting for friends from France, and for poor Gilbert to give the word.”
He answered her with sudden fire.
“I carry your brother’s sword and wear his harness. It is my right to go.”
She smiled at him with quiet eyes.
“Dear man, that would not help us; you could not prove, as yet, that you are in the secret. Besides, all the wheels of it are in my head. I shall ride to Badger Hill and see John Falconer; he holds the reins in the Forest.”
“But what of the Lord of Troy? Those dead men——”
“What does he know as yet? He may send out riders, but I know the Forest better than any man that Roger Bland can count on. I shall not be caught in a snare. Moreover, Martin Valliant, I leave you to guard our stronghold and the precious gear in that cellar.”
He was very loth to let her go alone, and bitterly against it, though he saw the wisdom of her argument.
“My heart mislikes this venture.”
“You run to meet a ghost,” she said. “I shall come to no harm, believe me.”
She had her way, and he went to open the gate and lower the bridge while she put on a cloak and hood, and filled the wallet with food. She joined him on the causeway, where he stood scanning the woods mistrustfully.
“I would to God I might go with you.”
Her eyes looked into his.
“Your heart goes with me. Bear with that harness, for your bones will ache not a little. And keep good guard.”
He watched her cross the grassland toward the thicket where they had hidden the horse. Woodmere seemed to lack sunlight of a sudden, and his heart felt heavy when the trees hid her.
Nor were Martin’s fears for her safety the mere idle qualms of a man in love. There was a saddling of horses at Troy Castle, and Fulk de Lisle, Roger Bland’s bravo, was shut up with him in my lord’s closet.
Vance’s archer man, who had escaped Martin Valliant’s spade, had come in the night before, after losing his way in the Forest. His tale lost nothing in the telling. Mellis Dale had stabbed the Forest Warden with her poniard, and her paramour, the priest, had then beaten him, and John Bunce, to death. If my lord doubted it, let him send men to the Black Moor, and they would find the bodies.
So Fulk de Lisle had his orders. He was a gay, swashbuckling devil, very handsome, very debonair, a great man with his weapons. He stood before the Lord of Troy, leaning on his sword, his black hair curled under his flat red hat, his sword belt bossed with gold. He wore no armor save a cuirass, and light greaves; the blue sleeves of his doublet were puffed with crimson; his hose were striped red and blue.
“Take thirty men; let them ride in three troops. Go yourself with one troop to the Black Moor; send Peter Rich with ten men to Badger Hill, and Swartz with the rest to Woodmere. I have sent messengers to Gawdy Town. I want the wench and the priest, both of them. And Vance’s body had better be brought in.”
Fulk de Lisle turned to go. This was work that pleased him. The Forest had been dull and law-abiding for many months.
“Wait!”
Fulk faced about.
“My lord?”
“How do you think to know the girl when you see her?”
“They say she is dark and vixenish, with eyes that bid a man stand back, a well-favored wench.”
“Tush! Any pretty jade would do for you, man!”
“Oldham, the archer, can recognize them both.”
“He cannot be in three places at once, Sir Fulk de Lisle.”
“He shall go with me. Swartz and Rich shall have orders to take and bring in any likely looking damsel.”
“Yes, leave it at that. Waste no time. I am not patient when such tricks are played me.”
So Fulk de Lisle and his men rode out from Troy Castle. They were lightly armed for fast riding, and ten of them shouldered cross-bows instead of spears. They kept together till they reached Red Heath, where Peter Rich and Swartz broke off with their two troops with guides for Woodmere and Badger Hill.
Meanwhile Mellis was on her way to John Falconer’s house at Badger Hill. She sighted it about nine o’clock, a great, low, black-beamed, white-plastered place, walled around with gray stone, on the side of a sandy hill. Fir woods, dark as midnight, climbed skywards behind it; the farm lands lay in the valley to the south, but elsewhere the soil was poor, and grew nothing but gorse and heather.
Mellis rode over the heath and up the hill to the house. A gawk of a boy, who was cleaning harness outside the stable doorway, stared at her with a face like sodden dough. She reined up in the courtyard and called to him.
“Is Master Falconer here?”
“Sure!”
The boy never budged.
“Tell Master Falconer that I am waiting.”
“Who be—I?”
“Run, you dolt, or I will get you a whipping.”
He vanished down a slope that led under one wing of the house, and in half a minute John Falconer came out to her. He was like the hill he lived on—a gray badger of a man, grim, reticent, yet kindly. His short neck made the breadth of his shoulders more apparent. His legs were bowed and immensely strong. John Falconer was a piece of the Forest. His hair and beard were the color of beech mast, sanded with gray.
“Do you know me?”
His eyes brightened like a dog’s.
“God’s death! Is it you?”
“My own and very self. And poor Gilbert—you have heard?”
He looked grim.
“God hearten you, child! But what has happened?”
The boy reappeared, and proceeded to stare at them, while he picked his teeth with a straw. Nor was John Falconer aware of the youngster’s presence until he saw Mellis’s eyes prompting him to turn his head.
The man of Badger Hill gave a kind of growl, and the child disappeared with a flutter of brown legs.
“I had to find you, John, but I am loth to be seen here by any stray fool.”
“The men are in the fields.”
“But that boy?”
“He has no tongue when it pleases me.”
She glanced at the pine woods.
“If your dinner can wait I will talk to you up there.”
He nodded.
“Wise wench!”
Mellis fastened her horse to a tree, and she and John Falconer walked to and fro along one of the black aisles. She had much to tell him, and he seemed to grow grimmer the longer he listened. His comments were short, gruff growls and an occasional terse judgment.
“Vance dead! May he burn like pitch! The priest turned outlaw! What next? You have made him your man? Nay—I mislike that. A black Benedictine! Lord, but we are in for a storm!”
John Falconer frightened most people, but he did not frighten Mellis. She had known him since she was a toddler of three, to be picked up and carried on his shoulder.
“Whether you like it or not, John, these things cannot be helped. Vance has made us run when we would have walked. As to Martin Valliant, I would stake my right hand on his keeping faith with us. And now—will you rally to us? We can hold Woodmere till the whole Forest flaunts the Red Rose.”
“I would we had word from France.”
“It cannot be helped. If our people are loth to move—well, I will disappear, go and live in one of those old quarry holes by the Rondel.”
He answered her doggedly.
“No. I am with you, if I lose my old head for it. I am not so young as I was, and I would get my blow in at Roger Bland before I am stiff in the back. I will ride out to-night and warn our friends, and by to-morrow we shall be able to throw a garrison into Woodmere.”
“Stubborn, trusty oak!”
Falconer smiled grimly.
“There are many men who lust to feel their poniards in Roger Bland’s throat. I pray that mine may have that honor.”
Mellis did not tarry there much longer. Her work was done for the day; she could leave the Forest folk to John Falconer. She chose a different track for her homeward ride—a way that plunged through the pine woods and turned south again by Witch’s Cross. And she was saved by her caution, for half an hour after she had left Badger Hill Peter Rich and his men came riding along the track she had used in the morning.
They found John Falconer at his dinner, and well warned as to their business. He was bluff and easy with Peter Rich, had ale drawn for the men and water for their horses.
Rich did not beat about his business.
“This is a hanging job for any fool who meddles. We are after old Dale’s daughter.”
“Tut, man! She has been in France these seven years.”
“That is a good bit of brag, John Falconer. Come, now; I have no wish to ride the high horse; the girl has been here; let us have the truth.”
Falconer told his lie with square-faced hardihood.
“I have not seen Mellis Dale for seven years. You can search the house.”
Rich had it searched to salve his conscience. His men found nothing—not even the stable boy, who was shut up in the venison hutch in a dark corner of the larder, and far too much in terror of John Falconer to betray himself.
Peter Rich drank ale while his men were at work. He took his failure philosophically, and got back into the saddle.
“It has saved me pulling you by the beard, John Falconer.”
“My beard may be at your service—some day.”
They grinned at each other like fierce dogs, and Peter Rich rode off. But he left two men in the woods to watch the place, which was a trick of no great moment, for John Falconer guessed that he would be watched.
“Thank God the girl left betimes, and by the other road. And God grant she may not find a trap at Woodmere House.”
Martin Valliant was as restless as a dog whose master had gone out and left him chained to his kennel.
His activities were various and many that morning. He took off his arm-plates, covered his breast-plate with a sack, and completed the walling up of the kitchen gateway. The defense of the causeway and the bridge exercised him still further, and he built a rough ladder and stage to one of the loopholes of the gate-house, so that a man with a bow could command the bridge. The matter of archery piqued him to try what skill he had left. He raised the roof stone of the cellar, searched out a bow and some arrows, and going up on the leads of the tower, tried shooting at a bush on the far side of the mere. Five arrows missed the mark, but the sixth got home. And this testing of his skill taught him something of value, in that he discovered the tower to be the right and proper place for a watchman. He could scan the woods, the whole of the valley, and the island, and see into nearly every corner of the ruined house itself. The battlements were breast high, and gave good cover for a man with a bow.
His armor was beginning to sit heavy on him, for he was raw to it; but as to humoring his body, that was a surrender that he refused to make. He returned to the courtyard, took his sword, and practiced striking and thrusting at an imaginary mark. It was a “hand and a half” sword, heavy, and long in the blade, but very finely balanced. To Martin it felt no heavier than a willow wand; he played with it half the morning, cutting off the heads of nettles, learning to judge his distances and the sweep of a full-armed blow. From time to time he climbed the tower and took a view of the woods and the valley.
The sun stood at noon when Martin Valliant caught his first glimpse of the Lord of Troy’s gentry. He was on the leads of the tower and looking toward the great beech wood when he saw a man skulking under the trees. The fellow wore the Troy livery of green and silver, and carried a cross-bow on his shoulder.
Martin kept very still, and the steel of his helmet may have toned with the gray stone of the battlements, for the man with the cross-bow did not appear to see him. He came out from the wood shade into the open, and stood awhile looking at the island and the house. Then he put a horn to his lips and blew a short blast.
Martin was still asking himself whether the man was an enemy or a friend, when Swartz and his troop came riding out of the beech wood. The sun flashed on their breast-plates and helmets, and on the points of their spears. Swartz, mounted on a roan horse, and wearing a tabard of green and silver, rode a little ahead of his men.
Martin crouched low, watching them. He had no doubt now as to whence these gentry had come and as to what their business was. They were from Troy Castle, adventurous rogues, the scum of the Yorkist armies, for Roger Bland had good cause to keep a crowd of bullies around him. He was no born lord; men had not served his father before him; the fealty sworn to him was lip service; he paid with gold for such faith as men would sell.
This bunch of spears came trotting across the grassland, their horses’ hoofs beating the golden pollen from the flowers. They reined in about a hundred paces from the mere, and sat in a half circle, scanning the newly built gate and the bridge, things that betrayed that Woodmere was not deserted.
Swartz gave an order, and two men pricked away and posted themselves at either end of the mere. The rest dismounted; two who carried cross-bows wound up the winches and stood with the bolts ready on the cord. One of them marked down Martin on the tower, and calling to Swartz, pointed out what he saw.
Swartz rode nearer, staring upwards under his hand. Nor did Martin play at hide-and-seek. The men had seen him; the game had begun.
“Hullo, there! Open, in the name of the King!”
Martin kept silent.
“Hullo! You on the tower, let the bridge down and open the gate, or we shall have to break it for you.”
Martin was not to be drawn. His eyes kept watch while his thought went racing through the woods toward Mellis. Had she been taken? And even if they had not taken her, her peril was still very desperate. She might come riding out of the beech wood and betray herself to these men. They were well mounted, and her old brown horse would stand no chance in such a chase. He sweated at the very thought of her being dragged down by this rough pack.
Swartz was still shouting, but his voice seemed a long way off. Martin caught the words, but they had no more significance than the scolding of a fish-wife. If he could only get to Mellis, warn her! But the futility of such a plan was self-apparent directly he considered it. If he swam the mere he would have to swim it naked; he would be seen, and either be killed or captured. No; salvation did not lie that way. He remembered her charge to him, “Keep good guard,” and the charge helped him to a decision. It was his affair to keep these men out of Woodmere, and to hold the place, if one man could hold it against ten.
Swartz had given over shouting. He shook his fist at the tower, and rode down boldly to examine the bridge. There was no passage that way without much labor; Swartz saw that plainly, and rode back again to his men.
But he was an old “free-lance,” and very determined. He meant to enter Woodmere before sunset, or know the reason why.
“Pounds and Littlejohn, you two men can swim. Off with your harness and clothing; take poniards with you, and see what is to be found over yonder.”
The men looked glum.
“Thunder, get to it, you dogs! Are you afraid of a girl and a monk? You can run fast enough naked, if the monk puts the fear of God into you.”
The two fellows began to strip, and Martin saw how the first assault threatened him. He had his bow and half a dozen arrows with him, and there was no hesitation in his eyes.
He saw the two men come haltingly toward the mere, while their fellows roared jests at them.
“Lord, but Jack Pounds has last year’s shirt on him.”
“Yoicks, see Littlejohn mincing like a girl! More spunk, Thomas!”
“Don’t frighten the lady, Jack! Be gentle.”
The men waded into the shallows, and took the water together, swimming side by side with their poniards between their teeth. Martin had his chance and took it, though he shot rather to discourage than to kill. The arrow struck the water a yard from Littlejohn’s head.
Shouts went up from the gentry who were watching. One of the cross-bowmen let fly, and the bolt struck the stone coping behind which Martin was sheltering himself.
He heard Swartz cursing, and shaking his fist, for the two swimmers had lost all stomach for so bald and naked an adventure. They had turned back, and were splashing toward the shallows.
Swartz met them on the bank, and threatened them with the flat of his sword.
“You craven swine!”
He was not loved because of his stern temper.
“Swim the foul pond yourself!” said one of them. “We are not paid to be speared like fish.”
Swartz’s blood was up and his ambition kindled. Roger Bland did not grudge gold to those who served him well, and Swartz saw that the luck was with him, and that he might capture the prize before De Lisle or Rich could come to share it. So he sat down before Woodmere, had the horses taken back into the shade, and posted his two cross-bowmen to mark the house. Swartz was an old campaigner, and always carried a hatchet slung to his saddle; it would serve in this crisis. He sent six of his men into the woods to fell trees, while he himself rode his horse at a walk around and around the mere, preferring to trust his own eyes when a trap had to be watched.
Martin could have shot at him, but he respected Swartz’s courage. These gentlemen were not to be scared away by a few arrows; they were taking the business in hand with methodical seriousness, and the outlook was not hopeful. Yet Martin was conscious of a feeling of grim elation; his wits were taut as a bow string; he had thrown himself with a cool head and steady eyes into the great game of war.
Swartz’s purpose soon explained itself. The men came down from the woods, carrying the trunks of young trees, till they had a dozen or more, stacked ready at the end of the causeway. They were going to throw a bridge across the gap, batter the gate down, and take the place by assault.
Martin knelt on the leads of the tower, rubbing his chin, and watching the menace taking shape. He was thinking hard, how he could best meet the attack; whether he should try to hold the gate against them, or make his stand in the tower.
Happening to glance at the great beech wood, he saw something that drove every other thought out of his head. Mellis was there, looking down on the place from behind the trunk of a beech tree. For a moment or two her white face and green gown remained in view, and then vanished into the wood’s gloom.
Martin felt his heart beating hard under his ribs. He looked at Swartz and the men. They were intent on the work they had in hand; they had not seen Mellis.
Martin Valliant did some mighty rapid thinking. That glimpse of Mellis’s face had stirred his manhood to a kind of Norse frenzy. Yet he kept his wits unclouded; and this was the way he reasoned the thing out.
“They will build that bridge of theirs. I might shoot one or two of them through the loophole, but they have cross-bows and will mark the loop. When they have built their bridge they will be able to batter down the gate, and while I am busy there, one or two of them might swim the mere and come at me from behind. They are in light harness. This armor of mine should turn a cross-bow bolt. I will try to shoot one or two of them, and then open the gate, let down my bridge, and give them battle there or on the causeway.”
The audacity of the plan pleased him, for Martin Valliant was discovering in himself the wit and daring of a great fighter. He hung his green shield about his neck, dropped the vizor of his salade, took the bow and arrows and his naked sword, and made straight for the gate-house. The ladder and stage he had built gave him command of the loophole. And his luck and his cunning shook hands, for he pinked two men, one in the body and the other in the throat, before a cross-bow bolt came stinging through the loophole.
“Two from ten leaves eight.”
He scrambled down the ladder, leaving his bow on the stage, and quite calmly and at his leisure unbarred and opened the gate.
Mellis, lying in a patch of young fern on the edge of the beech wood, held her breath and watched him in amazement. For one moment a wild doubt stabbed her; he was a craven, he was going to surrender Woodmere and shirk a fight. The next moment she thought him mad, but she had torn all doubt of him from her heart and thrown it from her with hot scorn. She saw Martin let down his bridge, and take his stand just outside the gate, with the point of his sword on the ground and his hands resting on the pommel. He was a white and challenging figure holding the bridge and the gate, daring Swartz and his men to come at him and try their fortune.
One of the cross-bowmen fired a shot; the bolt struck Martin’s pauldron and glanced harmlessly aside.
“drop that—drop that!”
Swartz roared at the fellow. He was a tough old rogue, but he had a soldier’s love of courage.
“One man against eight, and you want to fight him at fifty paces!”
He pushed his horse along the causeway, and looked curiously at Martin Valliant. The figure in white harness puzzled him; it did not seem to belong to a runaway monk.
“Who are you, my friend?”
Martin answered him.
“Come and see.”
Swartz grinned.
“By God—and we will! Bid that Dale wench drop her bow, and my fellows shall not use their arbalists. We will make a straight fight of it, Master Greenshield.”
The first man to try his luck was a little stunted fellow who had been a smith and was immensely strong in the arms and back, but a fool in the choice of his weapons. He came footing it cautiously along the narrow bridge, with his spear held pointed at Martin. He had some idea of feinting at Martin’s throat, of dropping the point and getting the shaft between the taller man’s legs and tripping him. The trick might have worked if Martin Valliant had not lopped off the spear-head with a sudden sweep of his sword, caught the staff in his left hand, and swung the fellow into the water. The smith could not swim, and was drowned; but Martin had no time to think of being merciful.
A tall fellow charged him while he was still on the beam, and it was a question of which man gave the bigger blow and knocked the other into the mere. Martin’s sword had that honor. Swartz’s second gentleman fell across the beam with a red wound in his throat, struggled for a few seconds, and then slipped dying into the mere.
Swartz was biting his beard.
“What—there is no man here who can stand up to a monk! Big Harry, there: have a swash at him with your pole-ax.”
Big Harry had the face and temper of a bull. He made a rush along the bridge, swung his pole-ax, and struck at Martin’s head. The salade threw the point aside, and the shaft struck Martin’s shoulder. He had shortened his sword and thrust hard at the big man. The point went through Big Harry’s midriff, and the mere hid a third victim.
Swartz rolled out of the saddle and drew his sword.
“Stand back! This fellow is too good for such raw cattle. I have fought many fights in my time.”
Then Martin did a knightly thing. He went to meet Swartz, crossing the beam, so that they met on the broad causeway where neither man could claim any advantage.
Swartz saluted him.
“I take that to heart, my friend. It was gallantly thought of. One word before we fight it out like gentlemen. Who the devil are you?”
Martin kept silent.
“You will not tell me? I must find it out for myself. Good. And so—to business.”
Swartz was lightly armed, and he trusted to his swordsmanship, for he was very clever with the sword. But his swashbuckling craftiness proved useless against a man harnessed as Martin Valliant was harnessed, and who fought like a young madman. It was like aiming delicate and cunning blows at a man of iron, a man who struck back furiously without troubling to defend himself. Swartz, with blood in his eyes, plunged to escape that whistling sword, closed with Martin, and tried to throw him; but Martin’s gadded fist beat him off and sent him heavily to the ground.
Swartz lay still, while the five men who had stood to watch this battle royal fumbled with their weapons and looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes.
“Try the cross-bow on him, Jack.”
“Shoot, man, and we’ll push at him with our spears.”
But Martin Valliant did not leave them the right to choose how and when they would attack him. His blood was on fire. He came leaping along the causeway, a white figure of shining wrath, and those five men turned tail and fled incontinently toward the woods. Martin did not follow them, but went back to the place where Swartz was lying. The old swashbuckler was sitting up, dazed, ghastly, trying to wipe the blood out of his eyes with his knuckles.
The man in Martin leaped out to the man he had wounded. This fellow with the black beard was made of finer stuff than the lousels who had taken to their heels. He grinned at Martin Valliant, and tried to rise.
“Lord, my friend; but am I also to feed the fishes?”
Martin helped him to his feet.
“That blood must be staunched. Those rogues should have stood and fought for you.”
“Let them run. Master Greenshield, methinks you have broken my brain pan with that blow of yours. Let me lie down on something soft. I feel sick as a dog that has eaten grass.”
Martin sheathed his sword, picked up Swartz in his arms, and carried him over the footbridge. He remembered his own bed of bracken at the foot of the stairs, and he bore the wounded man there and laid him on the fern.
“Thanks, Greenshield. My head’s full of molten metal. No—let me lie. I’ll just curse and burrow into the fern, I have had worse wounds than this in my time.”
He stretched out a hand suddenly.
“No bad blood—no grudges! I’m your prisoner; I play fair.”
Martin gripped his hand hard and went back to the gate.
Mellis had been lying in the bracken, listening to the rout of Swartz’s gentry in the wood behind her. For five men they made a fine noise and flutter in getting to horse, and it was like the flight of a small army, what with their shouting and their quarreling as to what should be done. She heard them galloping away into the Forest, for they were in frank agreement upon the main issue, and that was to have nothing more to do with that devil of a man in white harness who held the bridge at Woodmere.
Mellis rose up, and went down toward the mere, her heart full of Martin’s victory. He came out through the gate as she reached the causeway and crossed the footbridge to meet her. He had taken off his salade, and so came to her bare-headed, flushed, brave-eyed, and triumphant.
The sheen of her eyes opened the gates of heaven. She was exultant, glorious, a woman whose love had taken fire.
“Martin Valliant—oh, brave heart! What a fight was that! I thought you mad when you came out on the bridge.”
He could find nothing to say to her, but his eyes gave her an answer.
“You little thought that I was watching you.”
This made him smile.
“Yes, I knew that you were up yonder. I saw you looking down from behind a tree. I think I could have beaten twenty men—because you were watching me.”
“Am I so fierce?”
“No, it is not that,” he said, quite simply.
Mellis knew what was in his heart, and the cry that echoed to it in her own. She looked at him with a sudden, tremulous light in her eyes.
“I would have a man brave and staunch—for my sake. It is very sweet to a woman when she is lonely.”
Martin dared not look at her for a moment. He was her man so utterly that he could have kissed the dust from her feet, for the love in him was great and passionate and holy.
“I did what my heart bade me,” he said, “and not to shame this sword.”
“Yes, give me the sword.”
“It is all bloody.”
“What matter. It is but a christening.”
He drew the sword from its scabbard and gave it into her hands. And Mellis kissed the cross of the hilt, and held it for him to take.
“That is a second sacrament,” he said; “I shall need no other crucifix.”
They entered Woodmere, and Martin raised the bridge and closed the gate.
“You took a prisoner.”
He remembered Swartz, brain-sick and groaning.
“Their captain! A good fighter—and a generous. I must wash his wound; and if I could find linen——”
“You shall have linen. I love that softness in you, comrade; good soldiers are made so.”
She turned aside through the postern into the garden, and Martin went to look at Swartz. He was sitting up, holding his head between his hands, but the blood had ceased flowing.
“Ah, Brother Greenshield, get me out into the sunlight. I would rather lie on the green grass—under those apple trees. This place smells of the coffin.”
Martin helped him up.
“That wound of yours must be dressed. Mistress Mellis is finding me linen.”
Swartz put an arm around him.
“Deo gratias, but I guess I owe this crack of the poll to her. Well, I bear her no ill-will. And I have a liking for you, Greenshield, a man after my own heart.”
“We were trying to kill each other half an hour ago.”
“Lord, man, are we the worse for that?”
Martin helped Swartz out into the orchard and propped him against a tree. And there Mellis found them like brethren in arms when she brought linen and red wine.
“I have found you linen, Martin Valliant.”
But she did not tell him that she had torn it from her own shift.
Swartz had a look at her as she turned to go.
“Saints, brother, but some things are well lost for a woman.”
Martin’s eyes grew grim.
“Tush, man, I did not speak lightly. Never flare out at Peter Swartz; he is too old a ruffian.”
Martin fetched water from the mere in his salade and washed and dressed Swartz’s head for him. He gave him wine to drink, and Swartz was glad of it.
“Zounds, that’s good. Now, by my soul, I think I will spend the night here, out of the dew, and with the stars blinking above. I have a love of the green earth, Martin Valliant; I was not bred in a city. And look you here, man——”
Martin gazed at him steadily.
“You took me in fair fight, and here I shall stay, so long as you hold the place. I swear to keep faith, and to play no tricks on you. And here’s the hand of a soldier.”
Martin accepted the pledge.
“My heart trusts you,” he said.
“One word, lad: never trust the man I serve—or did serve—Roger Bland, if you have him as you have me now. I am a war-dog, but he is a cold snake. Put your heel on his head, and spare no weight.”
The sun sank low in the west, and the whole world was very still. Peter Swartz had fallen asleep under his apple tree in the orchard, and the white blossom scattered itself on him as he slept.
A great wonder had overtaken Martin Valliant. He had eased himself of his harness and gone down to a little grassy place where willows cast a net of shadows over the brown water. He stood there, leaning against the trunk of a willow tree, listening to the birds singing in the valley that shone like a great bowl of magic gold. The west was all afire, and throwing a strange glory over the woods, so that the tall trees seemed topped with flame. Not a breath of wind stirred in the leaves or grasses.
And Martin Valliant’s heart was full of a strange, listening awe. He looked at the still water, the burning trees, the glimmering meadows, and there seemed no sadness anywhere, but only deep exultation and a sob of wonder in the throat. His face shone under the soft green of the willows. This place was the new Paradise, and a woman’s eyes looked out of the window of Heaven.
A voice called to him.
“Martin, Martin!”
A spasm of emotion shook Martin Valliant’s soul. He spread his arms, and raised his face to the sunset. If to love a woman was sin, then God was a devil, and the Lord Christ had never walked the earth.
He heard Mellis come singing through the orchard where Peter Swartz slept under the apple trees. The sound of her voice quickened his love almost to anguish. He dared not go to her for the moment or meet those dark eyes of hers.
“Martin Valliant!”
She came out from the shadows of the orchard, and saw him standing there, his right arm covering his face. Her heart faltered for a beat or two, and then quickened with a rush of wonder and awe.
Mellis went toward him, her eyes mysterious and full of soft, tremulous light. Martin heard her footsteps and her gown sweeping the grass. He uncovered his face, and it was all white and strange and radiant.
For a moment they looked at each other with mute timidity. There seemed nothing that could be said, for the great mystery of life had touched them.
Then Mellis spoke, and her words were no louder than a light wind moving in the trees.
“I do not know what the day has done to me. But I could sit in the long grass and listen to the birds singing, and watch the sunset on the water, and never speak nor move.”
“It is very wonderful,” he said, “for all the joy of the world seems in this valley.”
“I could touch no food to-night but honey and white bread, and moisten my lips with the dew.”
She heard Martin draw in his breath.
“And presently the soft dusk will come, and the day will die. But there will be the stars, and a silver sheen on the water, and a silence that waits—and listens——”
Her face dreamed.
“Come.”
He followed her, found himself at her side, moving through the long grass that rustled under their feet. He was no more a body, but a soul that burned with yearning and a great white glory. And Mellis’s hair was as black as the night.
She led him into the garden, and there he saw their table strewn with flowers. She had set out bread, and wine, and honey. His helmet lay in the midst on a cushion of green leaves, and she had bound it about with a spray of red roses taken from the old rose bush.
Mellis pointed a finger.
“Even the roses bloomed for us to-day. And there is your crown of victory.”
He stretched out a hand and touched hers timidly, as though he were afraid.
“Mellis——”
Her hand closed on his with a sudden thrill of tenderness.
“Is not life good? Do you fear to look at me, Martin?”
“You have stepped out of heaven,” he said, “and the great light of you blinds my eyes.”
They sat down at the board, but though the bread was white and the honey sweet, little of either passed their lips. It fell to old Swartz to make an end of the loaf, and to sweeten his black beard with the honey.
“Deo gratias,” he said when Martin brought him his supper; “but I have been asleep and dreaming, and in my dreams I thought I heard a woman singing. You can leave me the wine bottle. I shall not play the swine with it.”
He looked shrewdly at Martin Valliant’s face, and saw that the green island had become a place of enchantment.
“Get you gone, Sir Greenshield. I shall be ready to sleep again, and this apple tree will serve as a tent. Black beards are not for such as you, and perhaps I was not dreaming when I slept.”
He cut himself a great hunch of bread.
“Think of the blood I have to make good! Take your youth, man, and thank God for it. You are welcome to any glory you have got out of the bloodying of my poll!”
Swartz watched Martin Valliant walk back toward the garden.
“His head is in Paradise,” he said to himself, “but he had the heart to remember my supper. May the wench be kind to him. It is all a midsummer madness—this love. Well, give me the madness, say I; good wine and a comely woman. The worms can have me when a wench will no longer give me a glint of the eye.”
Mellis had brought her lute with her from the Black Moor, and she had not touched its strings since she had sung to the burgher revelers in the tavern at Gawdy Town. And somehow all her grief and travail and yearning seemed to melt into an exultation that was like the beauty of an April day, a race of sunlight and of shadow.
As the sunset reddened, and the black bats began to flutter around on noiseless wings, the sound of her lute went over the water. Old Swartz heard it, and then her voice, deep, and strange, and very sweet, warming the heart like wine.
She looked down at Martin lying in the grass at her feet.
“Is there sin in my singing—when my brother is dead? Am I forgetting because my mouth is not silent?”
The sunset lit up Martin’s face. His eyes were gazing into the distance, eyes that questioned the earth and heaven—and life and the hypocrisies of men. It was as though the gates of a new wisdom had been opened to him. A man may think himself into hell, and feel himself into heaven.
“What is sin?”
She smiled at him.
“Such words from your lips!”
“I see a vision,” he said slowly, “of the beauty of the earth and the mystery thereof. Shall I quarrel with the apple because it comes from the bloom of the tree? Do not the beasts fight for their mates, and is there not a nobleness in valor? The good knight rides out, and his strength is for the service of those who are oppressed. As for hiding in a cell and starving one’s body—such a life begins to smell of cowardice.”
She raised her head proudly.
“We are rebels, Master Valliant, you and I. Say, have I lost you your soul?”
“No, by God; but you have found it for me, and set it free. I am no longer afraid of the shadows of sick thoughts.”
She swept her fingers over the strings, and began to sing to him as the dusk gathered. The woods melted into a cloud of blackness; the red of the sky changed to amber; moths came to feed from the white flowers in the grasses of the wild garden.
Between the snatches of song she leaned toward him, and he knelt to meet her.
“What if we die to-morrow? What can the Lord of Troy take from us?”
“No man shall take you while I live.”
“And in the Forest the birds sing at dawn.”
“And in the night I lie before your door to guard it with my body.”
They looked long into each other’s eyes.
“Martin Valliant,” she said very softly, “Martin Valliant.”
And he bowed himself and kissed her feet.