The Forest had sounded its war-horn, and the woods and heaths and leaf-hidden hamlets gave up their men. They gathered in Woodmere valley, foresters, laborers, charcoal burners, breeders of horses, swineherds, and a scattering of broken men. The gentry and their tenants were passably horsed and harnessed; the foresters had their bows; but there was many a fellow who had no more than an oak cudgel or a scythe blade lashed to a pole.
They brought cattle and sheep with them and tumbrils laden with sacks of flour. Booths were built, fires lit, scouts sent to watch the woodland ways and the gray menace of Troy Castle. The vault at Woodmere was emptied of its arms, and a new bridge built in place of Martin’s single beam.
As for Martin Valliant, he held aloof from the mesne lords and slept at night across Mellis’s door.
Now the Forest was superstitious, and devout with the devoutness of ignorance. There was no wild thing that could not happen, no marvel that might not be believed. God, the Virgin and the Saints, the devil and his progeny were part of the Forest life, mysterious beings to be prayed to and to be feared. There were holy wells, wonder-working images in more than one of the churches, places that were accursed, goblin stones, devil’s hounds that ran by night, headless horsemen, ghosts, fairies, haunted trees. The people of the Forest were obstinate, credulous children. They believed all that the Church taught them, even though many a priest spat at his own conscience.
Martin Valliant had been a priest. He had shed blood, and he slept at night outside the door of a woman’s bed-chamber. The facts were flagrant, fiercely honest. Your pious savage does not love honesty; he lives in a world of make-believe; he will not quarrel with imperfections that spue their slime in dark and hidden corners. He will even laugh and delight in the lewd tales that are told of priests. But let some priest be honest, shake off his vows, and declare himself a clean man, then he has committed the unforgivable sin, and any foul sot or filthy hag may sit in judgment upon him.
So it proved with these rough Forest gentry. Martin Valliant had sensed things truly. That sudden shadowy foreboding had heralded a real darkness that was spreading toward him from the mistrusts and prejudices of these common men. They looked at the facts baldly as they would have looked at pigs in a sty. The strange, tragic, sacrificial beauty of the thing was lost on them. To them love was a giggling scrimmage. Their religion was so much bogey worship, a rude mysticism that was shaped to suit their lives.
Before a day had passed Martin Valliant found himself outlawed by a vague and reticent distrust. He cast a shadow. The common men looked askance at him and held aloof. The gentry were more open, and more brutal in their displeasure; with them it was not a mere matter of superstition; there were young men among them, and Mellis was very comely. And this fellow had the insolence to sleep across her door.
Falconer was the only man who spoke to Martin Valliant, and it was done grudgingly and with an ill grace.
The rest looked through him, over him, at his feet. There was no place for Martin at the table that had been set up under a shelter of boughs in the hall. Even Peter Swartz was better treated; he was half prisoner, half comrade, but he drank and ate with them, diced with them, told tales.
Martin took his meals on the leads of the tower or in the garden. His heart grew heavy in him, and a kind of fierce sadness showed in his eyes.
These English worthies were ready with their judgments as they sat at table.
“The wench is mad.”
“The fellow is wearing her brother Gilbert’s harness.”
“Such a thing cannot be stomached, sirs. We lack godliness if we carry such an unclean vagabond with us. My men are grumbling already, and seeing a curse in the fellow.”
“Send him back to Paradise.”
“The prior will thank you for nothing. One kicks a mangy dog out of the gate, and that’s the end of it.”
Swartz listened and said nothing. He was a rough god compared with these boors; he had seen the world and tasted the wine of many countries, and he knew that it is mere foolishness to step in between a clown and his drink.
Falconer tried to speak up, but they were against him to a man.
“I choose to live with honest men, sir, not with vermin.”
Such was the Forest’s verdict.
On the second day the gentlemen of the Rose marched into Woodmere, Sir Gregory at their head. There was much cheering, much shaking of hands. “The King was upon the sea.” That night they drank much ale. And women had come from Gawdy Town, bold-eyed wenches dressed as men. Some of the wilder spirits made a rough night of it, shouting, quarreling, and singing songs, and Mellis was kept awake by their clowning. Nor did Martin Valliant get much sleep, for he had to take more than one drunken man by the shoulders and prove to him that the threshold of Mellis’s chamber was sacred ground.
The coming of Sir Gregory and the gentlemen from France made matters more sinister for Martin Valliant. Sir Gregory was a man of violent self-pride, obstinate as sin, and far more cruel.
He bearded John Falconer.
“A pretty chaplain you have found us! This fellow must go, or I’ll not answer for the men.”
“We owe him some gratitude.”
“And for what? Bloodying our game for us? Dale was a fool in the beginning, and you have been little better than his shadow. I’ll have no women picking and choosing in my company.”
Falconer owned as rough a temper as this crop-headed bully, but he knew that Sir Gregory had the crowd at his back.
“There is no harm done yet. I will speak to the girl.”
“What claim has the wench to be considered?”
“The claim of courtesy—and compassion, sir. Look to it, Gregory, I will have none of the bully in you; my fist is as heavy as ever it was.”
And there the matter rested for a while.
John Falconer did not deceive himself; these mesne lords and squirelings were no children of romance. The wars had bred a savage spirit in the land; the middle age was dying, cruel and brutish in its decadence, and the strong man was not there as yet to smite it down forever with his kingly club. Martin Valliant would have to go; these men of the Forest would not hesitate to sacrifice him.
But Mellis?
He hardened his heart, and went in search of her, and finding her in the tower room, he shut the door and spoke out.
“Child, this man cannot stay with us; he will bring us evil luck.”
“Who sent you with that message, John?”
“The whole place is whispering it. It might have been born with the men, but our friends will have none of him.”
She stood at her full height, calmly scorning him and them all.
“What an amazing thing is life! You come to me, and bid me turn on this man, and hound him out as an outcast. Am I so vile and heartless a thing, and are men so afraid of the devil that they must throw a sop to him?”
Falconer stood his ground.
“You should know the Forest, Mellis.”
“I know the trees and the glades, the blown leaves and the sunlight, the little streams and the deer—but its men! If these are they, I know them not!”
“Valliant has blackened himself in their eyes.”
She flung out her hands.
“And for whom, and for what purpose? I tell you that man has the heart of a child. I was in peril, and he succored me; I was lost, and he gave me his all. Nay, more than his all, for in saving me he lost the good will of God’s noble men. And you—you come to me and tell me to spurn him, desert him, because these fools are afraid of the devil. I would rather die than stoop to such shame.”
His face was clouded and stubborn.
“Your heart is too kind, because——”
“Ah! Speak out.”
She went nearer, her eyes dangerously shining.
“I am not afraid, John Falconer. Tell me I love this man. I do most dearly love him, with all my heart and soul. And who shall cast a reproach at me, or make me believe that there is any man who would have treated me with such sweet, strong faith? I care not what men say. God shall judge. If there is beauty and tenderness and truth in our poor hearts, will He throw us to the dogs?”
“You are mad!” he said miserably.
“Mad! Then I would that all the world were mad! And if your law is God’s law, then I am a rebel against God. Yes, and I would glory in it. I have no more to say to you, John Falconer.”
He left her, ashamed, angry, feeling that tragic things were about to happen.
As for Martin Valliant, he knew what he knew, and his heart was heavy. He thought of the lepers in the wood of yews at Paradise, and his lot seemed like unto theirs. Love had made him an outcast, a thing of evil omen to be thrust away into the darkness. No one was ready to call him brother or comrade in arms, or to pity him because the man had been stronger than the monk.
He strove bitterly with himself and with his love, but the truth showed him no mercy. It was like the great wooden cross on the Black Moor, standing bleak and clear against the sunset, bidding mortals remember that Christ suffered. He understood why these men hated and mistrusted him, and grudged him the right of guarding Mellis.
Words were spoken that were meant for his ears.
“The monks of Paradise have earned a foul name.”
“They have reared a fine, upstanding rogue in that fellow.”
“Old Valliant’s son. A pretty mate for Mellis Dale! What shame for the woman!”
Martin Valliant could bear no more. If his homage meant shame for her, then it had better end.
He went in search of Mellis, but for a long time he could not find her, and the house and island seemed full of fools who stared at him. Martin Valliant’s humility was in the dust. Had he been a fiercer and more carnal man, a strong and striving selfishness might have carried him through; but the rebel spirit faltered in him when voices whispered that the woman suffered shame because he loved her. Generous souls are always at the mercy of the meaner and more cunning spirits. A clever lie, like a snake crawling from the mouth of a sorcerer, has bitten many a strong man’s heel.
Martin found his love in a far corner of the orchard where an old tree had been blown down, but still lived and threw out green leaves. Mellis was seated on the trunk and half among the boughs, so that she was hidden like a bird, and discoverable only by some one who came quite near, for the weeds and grass were rank and tall, and melted into the green of the tree.
He stood before her, sorrowful and heavy-eyed, and she knew why he had come to her and what was in his heart.
“Martin!”
Her eyes loved him.
“So these clowns have been pulling ugly faces.”
He answered her simply and sadly.
“It may be that the clowns are right. We live our lives among clowns; we must not live too finely, or the clowns will be displeased. Is it not a sin to offend even against fools?”
She left her seat on the tree and stood facing him.
“So they would drive you out—send you to beggary or death.”
“They think me accursed.”
Her hands went to his shoulders, but his arms remained rigid, and he did not move.
“Martin Valliant, the rebel in me fights for you. Why should we truckle to this clowns’ world? What does it know of my heart or of yours? Why, we could go on living to the mean level of the beasts, throwing our pearls in the troughs, forever and ever.”
“But what I was—and what I am!”
“Man, man, I love you! Is there shame or sin in my eyes? Why, there was no true beauty in the world till we began to love each other. And am I to disown you, send you back to your death, because these lords and gentlemen have unclean, grudging hearts? No—by my God, I will not let you go.”
He stood rigid, opening and shutting his hands. His eyes looked into hers appealingly.
“But, child, they speak shameful things.”
“Let them call me all the foul names that ever were. Am I touched by them? It is for me to choose. And I say to you that they shall not part us. For if you love me, Martin——”
She gripped his arms, and her face lay close to his, her lips open, her eyes full of soft gleams. Her voice was quick, passionate, and challenging.
“For if you love me, dear——”
He stared at her, head thrown back, his eyes filling with a strange, wild light.
“Mellis!”
“Death—what would death be? But here is life and desire—and beauty. Oh, my heart, play me not false! They shall not take you from me!”
“Mellis—dear heart!”
He held her at arm’s length, his face transfigured.
“God help me! If this is sin—then let them write it down against me. Why, all that I hold here, the most adorable thing in all the world——”
“Martin!”
“The beauty, the mystery of you, the white light in my soul!”
“Ah! ah! Can mortal men harm us? We will hold to each other, you and I. Is not the whole world open, and can these so-called comrades say us nay? Where you go, I go also.”
“So be it, child,” he said.
About dusk that day, as Martin was passing through the courtyard, some one touched him on the shoulder. He turned, and found himself looking into Peter Swartz’s face. The soldier gave a significant jerk of the head, closed one eye, and lounged casually in the direction of the doorway opening on the garden. The courtyard was full of men who had been cooking and eating their supper; one side of it had been turned into a stable; the south-east corner had become a kitchen where a huge fire blazed. The men lay about on piles of bracken, their arms hanging from wooden pegs that had been driven into the wall. There seemed to be an abundance of ale. One of the women from Gawdy Town was sitting on a saddle and singing to the men, while she thrummed her lute. Martin had to pass close to her, and she looked at him insolently and laughed.
Martin followed Swartz into the garden. The place was so wild and overgrown and tangled that no one troubled to enter it, save when there was a reason for lying concealed. Swartz was waiting by the yews near the sundial, and Martin joined him.
“A word with you, man.”
His eyes were restless and alert.
“Come this way, under the nut trees. Those sluts are still at supper, and not looking for dark corners.”
They pushed into the tunnel of leaves and stood listening. Then Swartz began.
“The Forest is full of swine, and I go elsewhere. Look to yourself.”
He jerked a thumb toward the house.
“Swine! I know the nature of the beasts. If I stayed here a day longer I should have my throat slit, just to make matters certain. Dead men need not be watched.”
He drew Martin close to him.
“Guard yourself, my friend; the pigs do not love you. If you are wise you will come with me and leave these gentry to be hunted by my Lord of Troy. Thunder, but what a man-at-arms I could make of you! In France and in Italy a good sword wins much gold; they offer you a gay life, plenty of wine, and honor to be won. These English have no souls; they are all butchers and brewers.”
He looked into Martin’s face.
“What say you? Would she come also? Three comrades in arms! I have money on me; you can buy any ship-master, and he will sail you to hell or heaven. Come—what do you say?”
Martin’s answer showed on his face.
“Swartz, no man has been more brotherly to me——”
“Damnation, man, I have a sort of foolish liking for you. Good men are rare, men who can fight, and throw the whole world over for a bit of honor. And here they are ready to play some foul trick on you.”
“Swartz—I cannot come.”
“And why not, man? If——”
“I have a doom here to work out; I feel it in my blood. Nor would she go—as yet.”
“Try her.”
“No; the word would come from her—if it ever came. I stay here, on guard, her man-at-arms. I have set myself on this path, and I shall not leave it.”
Swartz knew his man, and that he was not to be persuaded.
“One word. I shall make for Gawdy Town; I shall lie there for seven days; if your mind changes you will find Swartz at a tavern near the harbor, at the sign of the ‘Crossed Keys.’ Much may happen in seven days.”
They gripped hands.
“Look to yourself, Martin.”
“There are things a man never forgets.”
“Tush! I have the soul of a soldier. Remember the ‘Crossed Keys.’ ”
When Martin Valliant went to his post that night outside the door of Mellis’s room he found a drunken man trying to open her door. It was barred on the inside, but the fellow was fumbling with the latch, sottishly enraged and babbling oaths. Martin took him by the shoulder, sent him rolling down the stairs, and followed to see whether he betrayed any desire to return. The man went down the newel stairway with absurd contortions, like a beetle rolling over and over and kicking as he rolled. He gathered himself up at the bottom, clasped his head between his hands, and disappeared unsteadily through the doorway.
Martin returned to the landing outside Mellis’s room, and stood listening.
“Mellis!”
Her voice answered him from the other side of the door.
“I am here. What has happened?”
“Nothing. A clown had lost his way, and I showed it to him with some briskness. These knights and gentlemen keep but poor order among their men.”
He heard her sigh.
“Martin!”
“Dear lady!”
“I have a feeling of strange restlessness to-night. I know not what ails me.”
“What is there to fear?”
He spoke with calmness, but her voice had made him think of a wind blowing sadly in the distant woods at night, plaintive and forlorn. His own heart was heavy in him with deep foreboding, though he would not confess to it before her.
“Is John Falconer in the house?”
“I saw him an hour ago.”
“One friend, please God. Where is Swartz?”
Martin hesitated, and then gave her the truth.
“Escaped—or on the verge of it. He does not trust to promises—fears to be treated as a traitor.”
“Ah! he is right. Martin, I have come by a most evil fear of my own people; their eyes do not look straight into mine. That man, Sir Gregory, is no friend of ours. Oh, I know; we women are quick. I feel a shadow over us.”
He heard her move the bar that closed the door, and the rustling of her dress.
“The shadow is mine,” he said.
“No—no.”
There was passion in her voice.
“It is the evil in the hearts of other men. I feel it—feel it like a fog creeping into my window. And I loved this place; we were so happy, even though death was near; I was not afraid. But now—a dread of something seizes me.”
The bar was in her hands, and the door moved so that Martin saw a little streak of light. His heart seemed to stand still, and then beat like the heart of a man who is afraid.
“Martin!”
He did not answer her.
“There is danger for you—there. They might creep up while you are sleeping. Oh! what am I saying, what is this dread that makes me a coward? But I am not a coward, and I love you. See—you can sleep here, across my door, so that no one can touch you.”
She threw the door open, and the gray light from her room fell upon his face. She was all shadow, wrapped in a cloak that had been found for her—a vague, soft outline that seemed to yearn toward him, a dream begotten of the night, tender, mysterious.
He covered his face with his hands.
“Mellis!”
“Is there pride between us, and no sweet faith? Am I asking you to do a shameful thing? Why, this is no more than a simple room, where I breathe and move—and sleep. I have a great fear for you to-night; I want you near me.”
He was silent.
“Martin, would you shame me, hold aloof as though I had tempted you?”
She caught his hands, and drew them from his face.
“Oh! I am wounded—if you have no faith!”
“Mellis!”
“Yes—wounded, to the heart! Oh! my dear love!”
He lifted her hands and kissed them almost fiercely.
“It shall be as you wish. This room is a chapel, its altar—where you sleep.”
He was over the threshold, and freeing a hand, she softly closed the door. Her breath came quickly, with a flutter of exultation.
“Oh, my dear lord, my man, is this not a great sacrament between us? Now—you have made me happy; is it not strange? See—you will lie here; there is bracken, and I will spread it; and here—is a wallet for a pillow.”
She glided about the room with innocent joy.
“Set your sword there. Now, we are in our castle, and I have no fear. Shall we pray, kneel down like children?”
She caught his hand, and they knelt down side by side. Their prayers were said in silence, such prayers as save this world of ours from the doom that it has earned.
She started up suddenly, took his face between her hands, and kissed him.
“Dear heart, good-night!”
Mellis stretched herself on the bed, and Martin went to his couch of bracken by the door. Neither of them spoke again, but they lay awake for a long while, listening to each other’s breathing.
Martin Valliant was asleep when a man crawled up the stairs, groped his way to the closed door, lay there a moment listening, and then crawled back by the way he had come.
A number of figures showed black about a fire that had been lit in the center of the roofless hall. John Falconer was there, sullen, heavy-eyed—a man who found no pleasure in looking at his own thoughts; also Sir Gregory, skull-faced and ominous, with blue eyes that stared. A hot posset was going around in a big tankard. These gentlemen had but little to say to one another; they were waiting; the case had been heard, and judgment given.
The man who had gone a-spying up the tower came and stood before Sir Gregory.
“The priest is not this side of the door, lording.”
John Falconer’s sullen eyes seemed to catch the light of the fire.
“You lie!”
“See for yourself, Master Falconer. What’s more, he is asleep across the door, for I could hear a sound of breathing.”
A grim laugh went around the fire. Ironical looks were thrown at Falconer, who was frowning and biting his beard.
Sir Gregory spoke.
“Such insolence must be chastened; we must be rid of this bastard. Hallo, there! Axes for the breaking of a door.”
A little man with a sallow face and bright black eyes stood forward.
“The room has a window, sir.”
“Well?”
“Breaking the door is a clumsy device, and this Valliant is desperate strong. Why not use the window, gentlemen, and crawl in upon him while he is asleep?”
“Most excellent! But will God give us a ladder twenty feet long?”
“There is no need for a ladder. Strain a stout rope over the battlement so that it runs in front of the window, and men can slide down the rope.”
“Well thought of.”
John Falconer appeared to rouse himself from a sort of stupor.
“Wait, gentlemen. Let no violence be done this man. He has served us, and will suffer for it.”
“What would you, John Falconer?”
“Let him be taken, mastered, stripped of his harness and his arms, and turned out into the woods. His blood should not be upon our hands.”
“Plausible, very plausible!”
“I stand for that—or nothing.”
Sir Gregory chuckled.
“By my soul, such a punishment is better than blows. There is a certain subtlety about it. I put my seal to the document. Some one fetch the rope.”
The work was done noiselessly by men who crept about on bare feet, and without as much as a whisper. John Falconer and a dozen of his own fellows were ready on the stairs. Four men were to slide down the rope, enter by the window, and while three of them fell upon Martin Valliant, the fourth was to unbar the door.
Nature willed it that Mellis and her man should sleep heavily that night, solaced by the innocent sweetness of being so near each other, so full of a happy faith in their great love. They slept like children, Mellis on her bed, Martin lying across the door, his arms folded, his naked sword beside him.
He woke to a cry from Mellis.
“Martin—Martin! Guard yourself!”
The last man to enter by the window had slipped on the sill, and blundered against the man in front of him; and Mellis, opening her eyes, had seen him outlined dimly against the window.
Her warning came too late. The fellows had thrown themselves on Martin before he could rise, and had dragged him from the door. One of them pulled out the bar, and threw the door open.
He shouted to those on the stairs, and Falconer’s voice took up the cry.
“Torches—torches! Forward! Up with you, and follow me.”
Mellis had slipped out of bed and was trying to find the sword that Martin had brought her out of the vault. She could hear men struggling in the room, but the light was too dim for her to see what was passing. A horror of helplessness seized her; she shrank back against the wall, with her hands pressed to her ears.
“Help, there—help!”
Martin had broken free and was on his feet. One man lay writhing with a bone in his throat broken; another had been thrown against the wall and stunned. Martin had another fellow lying bent across his knees and was choking him, while the fourth man clung to his feet.
Then Falconer and his torches came up the stairs; the doorway filled with smoke and glare and steel.
A sudden palsy seemed to strike all the players in that tragedy. Valliant let go of the man whom he was throttling, while the fellow who had been clinging to Martin’s ankles squirmed away toward the door. Martin stood motionless, like a wrestler touched by enchantment and turned into a statue; Mellis, her hands to her ears, her eyes two great black circles, leaned against the wall; Falconer, with torch and sword in the doorway, held back the men who were behind him.
Martin’s sword lay close to Mellis’s bed. His eyes looked at it, but he did not move.
Then Falconer spoke.
“Martin Valliant, no harm is meant you. Leave the sword lying there; it will not avail.”
Mellis’s lips moved, but no sound came from them. She moved forward into the room, and her eyes were on John Falconer’s face.
“Traitor!”
His mouth twitched; he looked at Martin, and passed her over.
“Valliant, we captains have sworn not to keep you as one of us. It is our right to choose; we have our reasons. No harm shall be done you; you shall go out into the Forest—as you came from it. Take your life, man; this room is no place for you, and no place for brawls and violence.”
Martin’s face was gray and haggard. The muscles stood out like cords in his throat, and he drew his breath heavily. He gave one glance at Mellis, and moved suddenly toward the door.
“Explicit,” he said, crossing his hands upon his chest. “God have mercy on us all, John Falconer.”
The men seized him and hurried him down the stairway, nor did he resist. In the courtyard they stripped him of his armor, leaving him nothing but his old cassock, a girdle and a knife. He was taken across the bridge and through the camp to the beech wood. A knight in black harness was waiting there, leaning on his sword. One of the men gave Martin a wallet full of food.
The knight—it was Sir Gregory—went close to Martin, and stared into his face.
“Let us not see you again,” he said. “Go—and take your shame and your sin away from us.”
He pointed with his sword into the gloom of the beeches.
“Show your face again, and there shall be no mercy for you, you thing of evil omen. Go!”
And Martin Valliant went from them into the darkness like a broken man carrying a curse.
John Falconer had cleared the men from the room, and set his torch in a rusty bracket on the wall, where it threw a wayward, draughty flare upon his face. Mellis stood by the window with her back turned to him, rigid, motionless, her hands at her throat.
“There will come a time when you will thank me for this.”
She was struggling for self-mastery, and against the bitter shame that they had thrust upon her, while her heart had gone out into the darkness with Martin Valliant, and in a way she was desperate, robbed of her love. She might have come through her anguish in silence had John Falconer been less of a dull and jealous fool.
“Now get you to bed, child; there will be peace in this house.”
“Peace!”
She flashed around on him with generous fury.
“Peace—for me, when you have treated me as though I were a harlot? Oh, you blind fools, you souls full of foul imaginings! That man was a saint, white as God’s own self. And you have robbed me of such a love as a man but seldom gives to a woman. Yes, he could have taken that sword and given death to many of your curs, but there was a nobleness, a humility, that did not touch you. He knew what was in your hearts, that you hated him, were jealous, breathed foul lies. He besought me to let him go. And I—I bade him stay. I would that he had taken all that a woman has to give; yes, my very body and soul. There is the truth; I fling it in your face, John Falconer, you sour and godly and grudging hound!”
Her anger scorched him like a flame. He answered her hoarsely.
“It was for your sake I did it. For you are precious to us.”
“My sake! Ye gods! Is a woman’s love to be put in pawn by gray fools and wiseacres? I tell you I am his; I shall die his; I would that he had taken all that I had to give. And I am precious to you? Never, by my soul! I cast you off! I am your enemy henceforth, and every man here is my mortal foe. May disaster befall you all! May you be cut off, slain, trampled into the earth! Get you gone out of this room; my love has slept here, and you do foul it.”
She advanced on him, and he went back before her, covering his face with his arm.
“You will thank me—yet,” he said.
“Nay, I shall die before I thank you,” and she closed the door on him as he went out.
Martin Valliant had fallen into great darkness of soul.
The Forest lay about him, vast, silent, and mysterious; the sky was overclouded, and the moon obscured; and life seemed like the Forest, all black and without a purpose, a wilderness where wild beasts wandered and outcast men hid themselves from the law.
For a while he wandered about among the beech trees like a blind man who had lost his way, for in very truth he was blind of soul, so smitten through with anguish that he could neither think nor pray. A stupor gripped him, a stupor of misery and helplessness. It was as though a great hand had swept down and put out the white light that had burned within him; blackness, nothingness, remained.
As he went to and fro under the great trees, Martin Valliant struggled to break through this human anguish and all this coil and tumult of loving and being loved. He tried to stand as his old self, calm, patient, gentle, a watcher of other men’s lives. Things had been so quietly ordered in the old days; nothing had been able to master him, to send him like a blown leaf whirling with the wind.
But now—what had happened? Was God mocking him, or had he been cheated by the devil? Who was God, and who was the devil? What was this thing that men called sin? Was life only a huge fable, a piece of tapestry, behind which lay the burning, passionate reality, the being and becoming, the great glowing flux of fire?
He fell on his knees and clasped his head between his hands.
Who was calling him, and why did his heart answer?
“Mellis! Mellis! Mellis!”
She was in the darkness, she was among the stars, in the leaves of the trees, in the stillness of the night. She was light and shadow, sound and silence, colors and perfumes; she held the round world in her hands, and heaven was behind her eyes. He loved her, and her love was his. Where was the sin? Where was the shame?
Martin made a cloister of the beech wood all that night, pacing up and down between the black boles, sometimes lying prone in the dead leaves or the bracken. He saw nothing but Mellis—Mellis white and speechless, stretching out her hands to him, looking at him with eyes of anguish. She was a white flame burning in the darkness, and he could see nothing, think of nothing but her.
So Dame Nature, Mother of all the gods, led Martin to the deep waters and showed him in their blackness the image of a woman. And into these waters a man must cast himself naked, madman and rebel, leaving his manifold hypocrisies behind him, stripped of the shreds and the patchwork and the cap of the moral fool. Before dawn came Martin Valliant had taken that great plunge. He was a rebel, naked and unashamed, most bitterly refusing to surrender the great thing that was his, and ready to fight for it with savage fierceness against saints and devils, priests and men.
With the first grayness of the dawn Martin turned his face toward Woodmere, and stealing from tree to tree, worked his way slowly through the beech wood. There were no more than three or four great trees left between him and the open sky, and he could see the mere lying in the valley and the tower where Mellis had slept; the birds were singing; the camp still seemed asleep.
Something whirred past him and struck the trunk of a tree away on his left, and Martin threw himself flat, for he knew that a cross-bow bolt had been loosed at him. Though he raised his head cautiously, and peered about him, he could see nothing but the bracken below, the green gloom of the branches above, the great gray trunks standing like the pillars of a church. But the man who had fired the shot could still see Martin. A second bolt whizzed over his head and buried itself in the ground.
“Run, you dog! Off with you, or the next shot shall be in your body.”
The voice came from the fork of a tree, and Martin was shrewd enough to believe in the man’s sincerity. He sprang up, and dashed back into the deeps of the wood, furious at the thought that Falconer had set men to watch for him. He tried another part of the wood, but with no better luck. This time an arrow from a long bow drove into the ground within a yard of his feet, warning him that he was shadowed and that the Forest’s eyes were wide awake.
Martin took the lesson to heart, and turned back sullenly into the deeps of the wood. His wits were at work, offering him all manner of wild hazards, and the more desperate and foolish they seemed, the more bitter and dogged grew his resolution. He passed through the beech wood, crossed a stretch of open grassland, and plunged into a thicket of hollies that trailed down from the slopes of an oak-covered hill. Once under cover, he stood at gaze to see if he had been followed, and his shrewdness had its reward. A man in a doublet of Lincoln green showed himself for a moment on the edge of the beech wood, scanned the grassland, and then turned back into the woodshade as though he had no liking for following such a wild dog any farther.
Martin cut northwards into the oak wood where the trees stood well apart, with no scrub growing between them, their trunks rising from the green turf. He went at the double, keeping well in among the trees, bearing westwards along the hill that bounded Woodmere valley in the north. His need of a weapon asserted itself, for he had nothing but his knife, and coming across a young holly growing straight and clean, he felled it after five minutes’ hacking with his knife. With its boughs and top trimmed off, it made a heavy and notable club, and he went on with it on his shoulder, and in a temper that boded ill for any man who should give him battle.
It took Martin Valliant the best part of an hour to cast a half circle around Woodmere valley and approach it from the other side. A hazel copse proved friendly; he crawled into it, and plowed his way cautiously through the green cloud of branches. The copse ended in a great bank of furze that poured down the hillside like a flood.
Martin Valliant had the whole valley spread before him, all wet and washed with the morning’s dew, the sunlight slanting down on it with the calm beauty of a summer morning. Smoke rose straight and blue from the camp fires; the mere shone like glass; the tower, with its lichen-stained walls, was the color of gold. But if the woods and the valley breathed peace, man plotted war, and all the green hill beyond the water was astir with men running to arms.
Falconer and the Forest lords were preparing to march. Each captain was rallying his company, and there was much shouting and hurrying to and fro. The swarm of figures in their reds and greens, russets and blues, sorted themselves and gathered to their pennons and banners like a pattern of flowers. There were the archers, with bows on their backs, and bills in their hands; the common crowd of footmen with their pikes, partisans, scythes, axes, and oak cudgels; the gentry and their servants mounted and sheathed in steel, their lances rising straight and close together like pine trees in a wood.
Martin Valliant marked a little group of riders sitting their horses apart from the rest. They numbered about twenty lances, and a man in the midst of them carried a banner of blue and green. The sunlight splintered itself on their harness; they looked big men and stoutly armed, chosen for a purpose.
Two riders were crossing the grassland from the direction of the mere, and Martin Valliant’s eyes filled with a hungry, yearning light as he watched them. One was a woman, the other a man. The woman was distinguishable by her hair, that hung loose upon the suit of light harness that she wore, and by the cloak or apron of green fastened about her waist. She rode a white horse. The man, John Falconer, had her bridle over his arm. She was a prisoner. The twenty lances were to serve as her guard.
Martin Valliant knelt and watched her, leaning on his holly staff, his eyes shining like steel.
The trumpets blew. A swarm of archers and mounted men went scattering into the beech wood and were swallowed up by its shadows. The massed “foot” began to move in columns, like fat, brightly colored caterpillars crawling up the hill. The gentlemen and men-at-arms followed, with jogging spears and a glittering of harness. Last of all rode John Falconer, Mellis, and her guard.
Martin Valliant sprang up, and held his staff aloft as though challenging them. Then he turned back into the woods, a divine madman hunting an army.
CHAPTER 37
Sir Gregory’s scouts had been watching Troy Castle, and my Lord of Troy’s spies had had their eyes on Woodmere. Both parties were kept well victualed with news; but Sir Gregory was no better than a round-headed butcher, a mere bullying, blasting Englishman, ever ready to think his enemy a fool; whereas Roger Bland had an Italian shrewdness and an imagination that made him something of a coward. A clever coward is worth any number of bull-headed fools. And in this game of hide-and-seek my Lord of Troy was too subtle and too cunning for the Foresters. He saw to it that they had false news, and no real knowledge of the power that he could bring against them.
Scouts had galloped back to Woodmere, greatly exulting.
“Troy is on the march. Fifty archers and a hundred men-at-arms. They have cannon with them. We can eat them up, lordings all.”
Such was the news, and the Forest captains rose to it, and set their trumpets blowing. But Roger Bland was no such facile fool. Sir Gregory’s scouts had watched Troy Castle, and the roads leading to it; they had reported faithfully, counted their men with honest precision, accurately judged the enemy’s strength. Yet no one appeared to remember that there might be another cloud in the sky, hidden from them by the tree-tops and the hills. My Lord of Troy had blundered, belittled the forces against him! He had marched out and camped for the night on Bracknell Plain with his cannon and a hundred and fifty men. That was how Sir Gregory and his captains viewed it, and they rushed out to attack my Lord of Troy, meaning to catch him on the march.
Roger Bland had not hurried himself. He was still camped on Bracknell Plain, though the sun had been up some hours. And that camp of his was very cunningly placed, with three great open woods sending out leafy capes within a quarter of a mile of it, good cover for an ambuscade. His camp had a rampart of brushwood and sharp stakes; his cannon were loaded and ready, the gunners lying beside them; his archers squatted behind the brushwood; gentlemen and men-at-arms were in full harness and ready to mass their spears. The horses were tethered outside the camp, half a furlong away; a sharp look-out was being kept. My Lord of Troy had baited his trap and sat down to wait for his prey.
It was a league and a half from Woodmere to the edge of Bracknell Plain, and Sir Gregory had halted his companies under cover of a heathy hill and waited for his riders to come in. John Falconer had the rear-guard, and Sir Gregory jogged back to speak with him, and to look with lustful eyes at a woman who was very beautiful.
“We should have good news, John. And how doth our sweet Mistress like the morning?”
Mellis had dismounted and was sitting in the heather, white, dark-eyed, and sullen, holding herself proudly because of these men and of the shame they had put upon her.
She did not look at Sir Gregory, or answer him.
“Tut, tut! Our sweet comrade is still wroth with us, John. Women are unreasonable.”
Falconer growled at him.
“Let the wench be! We have flayed her pride, and she hates us.”
A squire, very hot and dusty, came cantering down on them.
“News, sir—news!”
“Out with it.”
“My Lord of Troy is still camped on Bracknell Plain. They have not stirred, sir. Their horses are unharnessed, their sentries pushed out no farther than a furlong.”
“Ye gods! This Roger Bland was never a soldier. Why, we shall be on them before they can get to horse. Come, sirs, come.”
Away in the woods Martin Valliant was seeing strange things. He had followed the march of Sir Gregory’s men from Woodmere, and when they had reached the rolling heaths that led up to Bracknell Plain, he had drawn away among the pine thickets so that he could watch them without being seen. His course had led him toward one of those strips of woodland that jutted out into the plain toward my Lord of Troy’s camp, an open wood of beeches and Scots firs. The place seemed silent and empty, full of deep shadows and splashes of sunlight that played on the bracken and the trunks of the trees.
Then of a sudden he saw something that made him drop down in the bracken like a bird when a hawk is hovering overhead. A knight in armor was riding his horse through the wood. He reined in and remained motionless, spear on thigh, red plume trailing under the branches. He wore a red tabard embroidered with gold; his horse’s harness was of red leather studded with brass; his spear was painted black, and a bunch of white roses had been tied to its throat.
Martin, lying flat on his belly, grew aware of a strange, tremulous stirring in the deeps of the wood. It was as though some great monster were moving, ponderous and slow, the earth and the trees quivering as it moved. There was a shrilling of steel and the snorting of horses. The knight in the red tabard held up his spear, and the wood seemed to grow silent.
Martin had blundered into the midst of a mystery. He crawled backwards through the bracken, keeping his eyes on the knight in the red tabard; but that gentleman was staring through a woodland window out upon Bracknell Plain, and Martin Valliant escaped unseen.
He lay for a while in a little dell, resting his chin on his hands, and staring at the seed pods of the wild hyacinths that had carpeted the ground. The wood remained silent, save for the screaming of a couple of jays, yet Martin guessed that the red knight was no solitary adventurer, but the leader of a great company that was lying hidden among the trees.
What of Sir Gregory and the men of the Red Rose? Were they pushing blindly into an ambush, and if so—what would come of it? A grim impartiality guided Martin’s thoughts; he cared not which beast devoured the other, provided Mellis was not harmed; he was a thief ready to snatch the precious plunder while these gentry fought. The inspiration was obvious, and stirred him to action. He crawled to the edge of the wood, followed it southwards for a short distance, chose a tall fir, and swarmed up it, leaving his club lying in the grass.
The tree forked above thirty feet from the ground, and Martin wriggled up and out along one of the limbs till he was part of the pine needles, like a crow in its nest. The fir gave him a superb view. He could see nearly the whole of Bracknell Plain, my Lord of Troy’s camp, even Sir Gregory’s troops massed in the hollow behind the hill. This live map puzzled him for a moment; he was thinking of the red knight in the wood, a sinister figure, the wizard who could conjure forth a dragon of steel.
Martin had his eyes on Sir Gregory’s forces, when he saw one of the columns push forward up the hill with a scattering of dark figures running on ahead. Sir Gregory was sending on his archers to sow arrows and disorder in my lord’s sluggish camp. The gentry and men-at-arms followed at a walk, moving on the farther side of the footmen, and ready to break into a charge when the archers had done their work. Last of all came Mellis’s guard, a knot of steel-clad figures with Falconer and Mellis in the midst.
Martin turned his eyes on my Lord of Troy’s camp. It looked amazingly still and unconcerned, the sentries standing to their arms in the midst of the heather. This carelessness seemed astonishing to the man who was watching those armed masses surging up the blind side of the hill. But the very foolishness of that seemingly casual camp flashed the meaning of it all into Martin Valliant’s mind. It was not my Lord of Troy who was in dire peril, but those hot heads who were streaming to the attack.
For many a year the Forest had good cause to remember the battle of Bracknell Plain. It began with the rush of Sir Gregory’s archers over the hill, and a rattling shower of arrows into my Lord of Troy’s camp. Yet these arrows did but little damage, for the White Rose bowmen had thrown up a wall of sods behind the line of brushwood and were lying under cover, while the heavily armed knights and gentry could trust in their harness. The foresters fired flight after flight of arrows into the camp, shouting and leaping like madmen, for not an arrow shot came in return.
Sir Gregory, who rode over the hill with his men-at-arms, saw his archers shooting furiously, and heard them cheering as though the victory were won. He did not pause to consider the question, but thinking my Lord of Troy’s men too panic-stricken even to run to their horses, he set his riders at the gallop and charged down upon the camp. His footmen were to follow and to end the business when he and his “spears” had broken in and scattered the enemy.
Then Martin saw puffs of blue smoke belch out from behind the brushwood, and heard the roar of my lord’s cannon. The archers sprang to their feet and poured a flight of arrows into the charging “horse.” The cannon shot tore into the mass; the arrows struck the horses. A great confusion followed, as of a wave of water meeting a wall; horses and men were down; the whole company faltered, broke, tangled itself into a whirl of disorder. Arrows came stinging down on them, for the shooting was fast and easy so far as my Lord of Troy’s archers were concerned.
A thunder of hoofs in the wood behind him, a screaming of trumpets, and out galloped the red knight with a torrent of steel at his back. The charge was superb, terrible, carried out like a whirlwind. It bore down on Sir Gregory’s disorder, crashed through and over it, wheeled, and headed for the mass of footmen who had halted in a palsied crowd on the edge of the plain. My lord’s archers and footmen were running out to complete the overthrow of Sir Gregory’s horse, to cut throats and to take prisoners.
The battle was over in twenty minutes; it became a wild slaughter, a scattering of death and despair over Bracknell Plain. Sir Gregory’s “foot” had turned and run, throwing down their weapons as they fled over the heather. And Martin Valliant had come swarming down his tree, picked up his club, and started to run toward the rout as though he had lost his senses.
He had seen John Falconer and his men-at-arms halt on the open plain and stand watching the battle as though it was neither their business to fight nor to fly. None the less, the disastrous issue had pricked their consciences; they had moved forward tentatively, faltered, and thought better of such heroism; moreover, they had a prize to guard, and John Falconer had kept his head. But fate and Fulk de Lisle did not will it that they should escape the slaughter on Bracknell Plain, and Martin had seen the red knight and some fifty of his lances wheel and gallop down on Mellis’s guards. De Lisle’s men opened out and enveloped the little group before it could escape over the edge of the plain.
That was the reason of Martin Valliant’s madness and his wild dash across the heather. Fortune was with him in a sense, for he came through the butchery and the turmoil without being struck down by my Lord of Troy’s men. There was a space of calmness between the main rout and the fight that was going on between John Falconer and De Lisle, but the tussle was over before Martin drew near. Falconer lay dying from a spear thrust through the body; his men were down or had surrendered; De Lisle’s riders tossed their spears and cheered.
Then Martin saw a sight that made him stand stone still and set his teeth. The group of steel-coated figures parted, and from the midst of them came riding the red knight, leading a white horse by the bridle. Martin Valliant saw Mellis drooping in the saddle, her hair falling over her face, her hands hanging as though she despaired.
The red knight did not turn toward my lord’s camp, but rode calmly away over the plain toward the woods in the distance. No one followed him or the woman on the white horse. His men knew that Fulk de Lisle was not to be meddled with when he followed the chase and the game was a stag or a woman.
Martin Valliant started running again, his face all white and twisted. But a certain cunning saved him from throwing his life and his hope away. He doubled sharply under the brow of the hill, caught a riderless horse that was standing nosing the heather, mounted, and urged the beast to a canter, keeping to the lower ground out of sight of the riders from Troy.
When he was well clear he turned upwards on to Bracknell Plain, the reins in one hand, his hollywood staff in the other. The white horse and the red tabard showed a mile away over the heather, and Martin followed them with the grimness of death.
CHAPTER 38
Fulk de Lisle rode for a mile without troubling to glance back. He was in great good humor, and trying to raise some color in the face of the girl beside him. She looked dazed, beaten, her eyes empty of all light, her hands gripping the pommel of her saddle.
“Why so sad, sweet mistress? Am I not as good a man as any fellow yonder, and better than our friend the monk? I have won you on a fair field.”
Her eyes glanced at him with furtive dread.
“I know not who you are.”
He put up his vizor and she knew him by his eyes, bold, brown, and merciless.
“Ah!”
Her frank horror angered him, and he reached out and twisted his hand into her hair.
“What! Shall I have to tame you, teach you what manner of man I am? What others have had I will have also.”
“Beast!”
Her pride rose at his challenge.
“Let me go, or I will throw myself out of the saddle.”
“And be dragged by the hair, my shrew! No, no; such tricks will not serve. I have taken my prize, and this time I shall not be balked of it.”
She knew her own helplessness, and constrained herself to try other weapons.
“Let me go. You are hurting.”
“Is the fault mine? Smile at me, you jade, and look not so sick and passionless.”
She contrived to smile, hating him the more for it.
“That’s better—much better. Why, I have taught many women to love me, but love does not last, wench; that is why men should marry for a month and no more.”
He let her go, and glancing back over his shoulder, he reined in with sudden fierceness. The white horse, checked so roughly, swerved and showed temper.
“Stand still, you beast! Hallo! what have we here?”
Mellis saw what Fulk de Lisle saw, and her face flamed like a sunset. Martin Valliant had drawn up to within a quarter of a mile of them, but he was holding his horse in and following them with a certain grim leisureliness. This eastern part of Bracknell Plain was an utter wilderness; they had left victory and defeat far behind; nothing moved over the heather.
Fulk de Lisle caught a glimpse of Mellis’s face with its shining eyes and its rich rush of tenderness. The droop had gone out of her figure, and her throat had regained its pride.
He laughed with malicious insolence.
“What is this, my lady? A beggar in a black smock? I am in no temper to give alms to-day.”
He spurred on his horse, and jerked Mellis along with him. It was his spear that had broken itself in John Falconer’s body, and he felt to see that his sword was loose in its scabbard. Mellis noticed the act, and smiled strangely. Ahead of them towered the fir woods of Amber Holt, dark and silent, like a great green cloud across the blue. Dense gloom lay behind the tall straight trunks, and bracken foamed at their feet.
She glanced back over her shoulder, and realized that Martin had no harness. He had drawn nearer, and she could see that he carried some sort of weapon on his shoulder. Fear for him darkened her eyes. What chance had he, a naked man, against this steel-coated swashbuckler with his sword and dagger?
She hated Fulk de Lisle—hated him with such intensity that he turned his head sharply and met her eyes. Even his vanity could not misread the look in them.
“So! Madame has a tender heart? You white-bosomed jade!”
He drew the white horse in, hooked an arm around her neck, and forced her face close to his helmet.
“Look in my eyes, wench. Yes, our friend can see this pretty picture. If he meddles with me I shall kill him; somewhere over yonder in the fir woods. Then we shall be alone together, you and I, and you will give me all that I desire.”
She strained away from him.
“Beast! Be not so sure!”
He laughed.
“What—a fool of a monk with a club! I know that sort of clumsy savage. It will be mere murder.”
But she would not betray her fear.
“Have it so. Strange things happen—even to kings.”
Martin saw all this, and his wrath blew like a north wind. He had guessed the name of the red knight and knew the man with whom he had to deal. It would be no easy business, setting about this notable sworder and captain with nothing but a green holly stake, but somehow Martin had no doubts as to how the battle would end. His cold fury was so intense and so fanatical that it resembled a fate that was not to be stayed or turned back.
Fulk de Lisle and Mellis were nearing the fir woods, and Martin put his horse at a canter and drew up within fifty yards. De Lisle had no spear; that was something in Martin’s favor, though his long sword would be deadly enough in so strong and cunning a hand. Martin had a shrewd notion as to how he ought to fight the man; if he could dismount him and get to close grips De Lisle’s heavy armor would make him clumsy and slow.
The shadows of the firs swept over them, and they were in among the crowded trunks, riding down a narrow track that seemed to lose itself in the distant gloom. Martin drew closer, teeth set, his heavy truncheon ready on his shoulder.
Fulk de Lisle turned in the saddle and looked back at him. He had drawn his sword.
“My friend, be warned in time. Turn back, or I shall kill you.”
Martin said never a word, but drew closer, his eyes shining in a dead-white face.
De Lisle had every advantage, but there was a woman at his side, and he did not respect her courage or her hatred as he should have done. The white horse was close to his, and of a sudden Mellis twisted sideways, threw her arms about De Lisle’s body, and held to him desperately.
“Martin—Martin!”
Martin kicked his heels into his horse’s flanks, leaning forward and swinging his club. De Lisle had got an arm around Mellis’s body. He dragged her around on to his knees, struck her savagely in the breast with the pommel of his sword, and flung her down under her horse’s feet. He brought his horse around just as Martin charged him, and gave his enemy the point; but Martin had been waiting for such a trick, and slipping down under his horse’s flank, he let Fulk’s blade gash his shoulder.
His own horse blundered into De Lisle’s and staggered the other beast. Martin slipped clear, and got in a blow that made the swashbuckler reel in the saddle. De Lisle struck back at him, and Martin, guarding, had his staff cut clean in two. He sprang in and up, got a grip of Fulk’s swordbelt and wrist, and dragged him out of the saddle.
De Lisle’s sword flew out of his hand, and the two men lay struggling like wild beasts under the horses’ hoofs. De Lisle’s harness bit into Martin’s flesh, his spurs gashed him, but Martin felt no pain. The fight was for the swashbuckler’s poniard, already half drawn from its sheath. Martin came uppermost, one hand gripping De Lisle’s wrist, the other thrust under the vizor of his helmet. De Lisle struck at him furiously with his gadded glove, and then tried to tear Martin’s hand away from his eyes.
But Martin was too strong for him; he had lived a cleaner life, and his muscles won in the tense balance of such a struggle. Neither man seemed to move for half a minute, both bodies rigid, straining against each other. Then De Lisle’s hand was jerked from the handle of his poniard, and Martin had clutched it and drawn it from its sheath.
Fulk de Lisle knew what was coming. He rolled to and fro, lashed out with his mailed fists, tore at Martin with his spurs; but his heavy harness cumbered him, and his breath was gone. Martin struck three times at the man’s gorget before the plates gave, and the poniard drove deep into the swashbuckler’s throat.
Two more such blows, and Fulk de Lisle twitched, gave a wet cry, and lay still.
Martin struggled up, panting, battered, running with blood. He looked around for Mellis. She had been leaning against a tree trunk, her hands clasping her bruised bosom, watching that death struggle with eyes that saw love and life fighting for her and for her honor. Her man was wounded. He would need her now.
She ran to him, eyes full of soft lights and shadows, pitying his wounds, and not shrinking from his bloodiness.
“Martin! Oh, brave heart!”
She caught his face between her hands and kissed him.
“Mellis!”
“Was there ever so fine a man as mine? And your wounds, your poor shoulder! Now it is that my hands can be of use.”
She made him lie down at the foot of a tree, spreading her own cloak for him. Her horse carried saddle-bags, so did Fulk de Lisle’s, and the two beasts were nosing each other as though to protest that a man’s quarrel was not theirs. Mellis took them by the bridles and tied them to a tree, unstrapped the bags, and laid them on the grass. In her own she found some clean linen, in Fulk de Lisle’s a bottle of wine.
Martin Valliant lay on his back, white and faint, his eyes staring dreamily at the flickering sunlight in the fir boughs overhead. A great lassitude had fallen on him—a sweet indolence. His manhood surrendered itself into the hands of a woman.
She came and knelt by him.
“Now—your shoulder. That must be mended.”
She had drawn the wooden spigot out of the stone bottle.
“Wine is clean and good. Lie still.”
The wound was washed with red Bordeaux, wiped clean, and swathed in the bandages torn from her piece of linen. Then she raised Martin’s head and made him drink, looking at him with eyes that glimmered mystery.
He caught a strand of her hair and laid it against his lips.
“What more could a man ask of life?”
She smiled, and brushed her cheek against his hand.
Presently Martin sat up and looked about him, at the dead man, the horses, his own ragged cassock, and his spur-torn legs. They were burning as though he had fallen into the fire, and he knew that his face had been cut by the gads on De Lisle’s gloves. A pretty object he must look to her, and yet her love was like a soft light around him.
“A swim in the Rondel would not come amiss.”
“To-night, perhaps.”
He took the wine and the rest of the linen from her, and rising, went away among the trees. He bathed his face with the wine, swathed his legs with the linen, and put his hands ruefully through the rents in his cassock. It seemed to be hanging by shreds, and his skin showed in a dozen places.
“Martin!”
He rejoined her, looking very solemn, but she was holding up a rich red cloak that she had unstrapped from De Lisle’s saddle.
“This will serve.”
She tossed it to him, and he flung it over his shoulders and tied the laces.
“A new color.”
“And no ill color either.”
Mellis picked up her own green cloak and fastened it so that it made her look more of a woman. She blushed, and gave Martin a shy, laughing glance.
“This man’s gear does not please me. I shall have to thieve or borrow. And, alas! all the world has gone against us.”
De Lisle’s red figure lying there stark and still made them remember the peril that threatened them. The Red Rose was in the dust; the Forest was but a hunting ground for my Lord of Troy and his riders; the gallows at Troy Castle would bear deadly fruit.
Mellis’s eyes darkened, and her face lost some of its soft, rounded light.
“God help us! This has been an ill day for the Forest. And yet—they were my enemies!”
She stole a glance at Fulk’s body.
“Let us go, dear comrade. We have no friends now—save each other. How dark this wood is!”
“Where would you go?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Ah! what a question! Where? Into the deep woods with the wild things, and so somewhere where our faces are not known. I would live a little while yet, Martin, for life can be sweet—now.”
He looked at her strangely.
“Yes; you are too beautiful to die.”
The horse that Martin had ridden had wandered off into the wood, but Fulk de Lisle’s was at his service. Moreover, the dead man’s sword and dagger might have their uses, and for the better carrying of them Martin took Fulk’s belt and buckled it about him.
“I like it not,” he said; “but necessity is our master.”
He helped Mellis to her saddle, unfastened the horses, and mounted Fulk de Lisle’s. Then he hesitated, looking into Mellis’s eyes, for he knew not where to turn.
“Which way?”
“On through the wood. Thanks be to God, I was born in the Forest.”
CHAPTER 39
Mellis knew the ways, and through all the heat of the day she guided Martin southwards toward the Rondel river, picking up the wild tracks and never faltering in her choice. They kept to the woods, and avoided the open heaths, sometimes following a brown stream that flickered under the green shadows and leaving it when it left the woods. Not a living creature did they see save a few deer far down a deep glade, a hawk searching for food, and once, a gray-green snake basking on a bank in the sun.
A gloom seemed to have fallen on the Forest, and even the young foliage looked darker, heavier, less bright with the freshness of spring. The open woods were full of a listening sadness, a mysterious expectancy; for Death was out, Death and the Lord of Troy. Yet Mellis was touched by no such melancholy, no sinister forebodings; her man’s life was in her hands, her eyes were keen and watchful; danger gave a sparkle to her beauty; the day’s need steadied her heart.
Martin Valliant watched her, and marveled. He forgot his wounds in looking at her forest-shaded face with its clean, clear comeliness, its alert, proud self-trust. There was nothing more wonderful than her eyes and the way they filled with light when meeting his. Their color seemed so elusive, changing from blue to black, and sometimes they were all a-glimmer like water touched by the sun. He looked at her lips, her white throat, her hair, the hands that held the reins, and had to tell himself that she was his. Every part of her seemed a piece of enchantment. She was so fair in his eyes that the thought of touching her seemed sacrilege.
He found her smiling at him shyly.
“Have we lost our tongues, dear man?”
“So much has happened, and you——”
“And I?”
“Sometimes I think that you do not belong to this world, that you will vanish away.”
She looked at him intently, curiously, for it seemed to her that his mood foreshadowed some solemn and subtle fancy that was working in his heart. He desired her, and yet did not desire her. The glamour of a mystical self-renunciation was not dead in Martin Valliant.
“I am flesh and blood, God be thanked for it.”
He half closed his eyes.
“I see more than that.”
She colored.
“See the woman in me. For it is the man in you that has made me dream dreams.”
They rode in silence for a while, but both were conscious of a listening tenderness, a mysterious and unsolved unrest.
“Martin?”
He glanced at her gravely.
“Life and Death march on either side of us. We have to take thought for to-morrow and to-morrow’s morrow. It will not be easy.”
She saw his eyes grow dark and deep.
“Nor is life easy, child. I hold your soul in pledge, and this place is full of our enemies. And what am I but a broken man, an outcast?”
“You are my love,” she said simply.
He did not speak for a moment, and there were lines on his forehead.
“Is God satisfied? Does He look on us as two children? I could show Him my heart—without fear—and yet——”
“Well?”
“I could die and not be afraid. But life is yours, and the beauty and the sweetness thereof, and where is the chalice for such wine? Are my hands fit to carry it?”
“I ask for no other hands. Let God judge.”
Martin rode at her side, sunk in deep thought. He had not forgotten Peter Swartz and the inn of the Crossed Keys at Gawdy Town. Life and liberty might lie that way, escape from the vengeance of my Lord of Troy, and from the curses of the brethren of Paradise; but it would be at the cost of exile, of wanderings in a strange land. Was Mellis made for such a life? Was not her very beauty too rich and perilous? Moreover, all hope had not vanished for her out of England; Richmond was on the seas; the Red Rose might yet out-flower the White.
Mellis was waiting on his meditations. Her mind was most obstinately made up; she was no green child or the victim of fanciful tenors; life had taught her much; the rough wisdom begotten of her adventures had been wedded to the sure instincts of the woman. Martin Valliant was her man; he was strong, and could keep her from the hands of other men, for she had no waywardness, no wish to change her lovers. Some women are born to be courtesans, but Mellis was not one of them.
“Still thinking, Martin?”
He hesitated, and then told her of Swartz, and the inn at Gawdy Town. Her eyes brightened.
“Good Swartz! Good comrade! Why, that is a plan worth trying when matters look so desperate. The men of Gawdy Town have no great love for my Lord of Troy.”
Martin looked at her in astonishment, for the brave adventurousness of her face betrayed no fear of the future.
“Mellis. Have you considered?”
“Everything. More than you can guess, dear lad. Why, I am wiser than you are, and tougher in the ways of the world. We should find ourselves in France, taking the open road, sleeping in all manner of odd places, sometimes begging, sometimes singing for pay. The great vagabond life! But Swartz was right. Strong men soon jostle free, get a higher seat than their fellows. I have wandered; I know what can be done. Martin Valliant was born to fight and to rule.”
But she had not won him yet. His mystical love still glimpsed self-sacrifice, renunciation.
It was before they came to the Rondel river that they sighted a forester’s cottage in a deep hollow under the woods. Mellis knew the place, and after scanning it awhile turned her horse toward it.
“Jeremy Marvel lived there—a good fellow. He may sell us what we need.”
She smiled at Martin’s blank face.
“Yes. I have a little money. I am quite shrewd, good sir. I kept it under my bed at Woodmere, and a little money is the best friend in the world.”
They rode down to the cottage and found it deserted, for Jeremy Marvel had sent his wife and babes across the river before marching to Woodmere with his bow. Martin had to force the door, and Mellis abetted him.
“The place will be burned or plundered, so let your conscience be easy. And Jeremy had many a good thing from my father.”
Their needs were simple, food and raiment, and they found both. Mellis went smiling into the little bed-chamber, and the great cupboard there gave a plain russet gown, a hooded cloak, rough hose, and a pair of shoes. She flung a green doublet and gray woolen hose out to Martin, and shut herself into the good folks’ room. Fulk de Lisle’s red cloak was stuffed up the stone chimney, and Martin found one of brown kersey to replace it, hanging on a nail beside an oak press.
When Mellis came out to him she was the laughing country wench in russet, her hair tied with a green ribbon, her feet in rough shoes. Martin’s raiment kept hers company. He had discovered a green cloth cap with a raven’s feather stuck into it, and the thing hid that still too obvious tonsure of his.
“Good-day to you, Goodman Martin.”
He looked at her dearly.
“Fine clothes do not make the woman.”
“That is rank heresy, dear man; but if it contents you, I will not complain.”
The larder gave them bread and honey, and Martin went with a pitcher to the well. They sat down at Jeremy Marvel’s table, and when they had ended the meal, Mellis left a piece of silver there to quiet her own conscience.
“I doubt whether it will ever reach the poor clown’s pocket.”
Which was true, for Jeremy Marvel lay dead on Bracknell Plain.
Before they sallied Mellis took some linen from the press for the dressing of Martin’s wounds. Moreover, a loaf of bread was useful plunder, though Martin had found bread and meat and half a spiced cake in Fulk de Lisle’s saddle-bag. Mellis also insisted on his taking the pitcher.
“Sling it to your saddle. We may bless it to-night.”
The sun was low in the west when they struck the Rondel flowing between two broad stretches of wild grassland—grassland that was all white with ox-eyed daisies. They had to follow the river for a while, searching for a ford where ruffled water marked the shallows. Mellis’s eyes were watching for a cairn of stones that had been built by a hermit a century ago to show the depth of the river in winter.
She pointed it out at last.
“I thought that I had not strayed.”
The stretch of sand below the bank was smooth and unscarred; no one had crossed by that ford for many days, and Mellis uttered a cry of relief.
“This is the nearest way to Gawdy Town, and we are the first over. We shall be there before the news of Bracknell Plain. That comes of being bred in these parts.”
They splashed across, and let their horses drink before climbing the farther bank. The grassland south of the river rose in great green sweeps to touch the wild woods east of Bloody Rood. A soft breeze sent patches of wavering green moving over the silver of the feathered grass tops and the flowers. Here and there a lark rose from its nest, or a plover went wheeling and complaining.
A gradual silence had fallen on Martin Valliant. As the sun sank low and the light grew more mysterious, his mood seemed to deepen toward a passionate and wondering mysticism. He saw Mellis in a glamor of gold, and his love bent toward a solemn sadness. A deep pity for her touched him—an infinite tenderness. She became for him a symbol, a beautiful pure child too wonderful to be sacrificed to the common life of the world. A new awe of her stole over him, and he was afraid. What was he that he should take her and her love? What could he offer her? What had he to give? Surely she was not made for the rough pilgrimage that might be his, and he could not trade upon her generous courage.
Moreover, Martin Valliant fell to a sudden stroke of superstition. Would he not carry a curse? And would not Mellis be entangled in it? He might bring her a great unhappiness, dim all the radiance of her youth and desire. What right had he to join her life to his? There was such a thing as “right of sanctuary”; he could lodge here in some religious house where she would be safe till the times proved themselves, and the land turned again to peace. He would have been honest with her and with himself; bitter wounds would heal; God could not say that he had sinned against her.
The green half-light of the woods seemed in sympathy with this mood of his. He would not let himself look at Mellis, for he was afraid to meet her eyes.
“My man is weary?”
She challenged his silence, watching him with steady eyes. But he would not confess to her, and she had to puzzle out the meaning of his sudden melancholy. Mellis asked no questions, grew silent in turn, nor was she long in discovering to herself the thoughts and emotions that troubled him.
Perhaps she had foreseen this generous obstinacy of his, counted on having to combat it, for women fly from hill to hill while men labor through the valleys.
The woods thinned about them, and they found themselves in a soft, green glade on the brow of a high hill, with the sunset shining in on them, and bits of blue forest visible in the distance. Mellis reined in. She was beginning to gather the subtle threads of life into her own hands.
“Here is our camping ground. It will serve us for to-night. We passed a spring five minutes ago, a spring of clear water.”
She dismounted.
“To-morrow night we shall be in Gawdy Town, if no one says us nay.”
CHAPTER 40
Martin Valliant unsaddled and unbridled the horses while Mellis took the pitcher and went down to the spring.
She did not hurry herself, but walked slowly through the bracken and under the full shade of the trees, her eyes looking into the distance as though she were deep in thought. Once or twice she smiled, and pressed her hand over her heart. Her face had a soft white radiance, a mysterious glow beneath the skin.
The spring was the beginning of one of the forest streams, a brown pool that overflowed and trickled in a green and oozy dampness down the hillside. The clear water lay like a mirror, reflecting the branches and the fragments of blue sky overhead. Mellis knelt down and gazed at herself in the pool. She was very fair, with dark and desirous eyes, and she loved herself for Martin’s sake. Her hair came falling from under her hood, and one strand touched the water, stirring a faint and transient ripple.
Mellis filled her pitcher and went back to the glade. The west was a glory of gold, the light smiting the trees and spreading a yellow glow upon the grass. The distant forest vistas were all purple, shading into a violet horizon. Somewhere a blackbird was singing to his mate.
She saw Martin Valliant sitting at the foot of a great oak, and staring at the sunset. The slanting light touched his face and made it shine with a strange yet somber fire. So absorbed was he that he did not see Mellis coming through the bracken. The two horses were cropping the grass; saddles, harness, and saddle-bags lay piled under Martin’s oak tree.
Mellis caught a deep breath, and laid a hand upon her bosom.
“Martin—Martin Valliant!”
Her voice was very soft and challenging. Martin turned, looked at her strangely, and stood up.
“Dreams!”
Her eyes were full of light.
“Yet men must live by bread.”
She set the pitcher on the grass, opened the saddle-bags, and spread their supper on the grass. Martin stood and watched her, mute, frowning, like a man breathless from a sudden pain at the heart.
“Mellis!”
“Dear lad?”
“I have been thinking.”
She went on calmly with her work, cutting the bread with a knife she had brought from Marvel’s cottage, and spreading honey upon the slices.
“What troubles you, Martin?”
He did not answer for a moment. She knelt, looking up at him; the obstinate anguish in his eyes betrayed to her all that was in his heart.
“Come, you are tired; you shall eat and sleep.”
She spread a cloak and made a rest of one of the saddles, talking the while as though no love-crisis threatened them.
“I know what it is to be weary, to feel that death might take you, and you would not care. Then one falls down under a haystack and sleeps, and in the morning the sun is shining, and the world seems young again. Wine and water, cooked meat, bread and honey and a spiced cake! Let us be thankful.”
He lay down some two paces from her, propping himself on one elbow and not using the saddle that she had fetched to serve as a rest. His eyes avoided hers. Mellis had spread the slices of meat on a great green dock leaf, and she held out the dish with both hands.
“Eat, and then you shall talk to me.”
It was a silent meal, but Mellis had her way. She did not trouble him with words, or by watching him with questioning eyes. He was like a restive horse, or a thing in pain, to be soothed and calmed and rescued from its own restlessness. Her mood seemed as calm and as tranquil as the brown dusk that was beginning to fill the woods while the western sky still blazed.
When they had ended their meal she knelt up and drew the linen out of her saddle-bag.
“The light is going. Come here to me, Martin.”
He looked at her almost with fear.
“What would you?”
“That wounded shoulder must be cared for. You will carry the mark of it, always, for my sake.”
He did not move, and she went to him on her knees, reaching for the pitcher and the wine. He raised a hand as though to repulse her, but she put it gently aside.
Yet all the while that she was busy with his shoulder he sat with bowed head, silent, brooding, not even wincing when she cleaned the raw wound, and poured in wine. His eyes stared at the grass; the only pain he felt was the mystical anguish that her soft hands caused him.
“There!”
She knelt facing him of a sudden, her eyes looking steadily into his face.
“Now, you may speak to me, Martin Valliant. There can be no silence between us. Tell me all that is in your heart.”
His head seemed to sink lower.
“Are you afraid of me, Martin—you who would fear no man? What am I but a woman?”
“It is the woman I fear.”
“Oh! man—man!”
He answered her sullenly.
“I was on the way to sin against you. What am I but an outcast? What can I give you?”
“What do I ask of life?”
“It is I who must ask for you, think for you, face God for you.”
She caught his hands.
“Martin, look into my eyes.”
He obeyed her.
“Tell me, what do you see in them?”
His face shone with a strange light.
“I see—something—something that is too good and great for me, a sacred thing that I must not touch.”
She drew her breath deeply.
“Oh, my man, what has come to you? Will you not think of me as the woman, the woman to be saved from other men?”
“Mellis!”
His voice was hoarse, and she felt the muscles in his arms quivering.
“Yes, you cannot shirk that truth. But what is in your mind? You spoke of Swartz and Gawdy Town.”
He steadied himself.
“That is ended. Is there no right of sanctuary in the land?”
“Sanctuary?”
She had begun to tremble a little.
“The nuns of Lilburn Minster are good women; you could take sanctuary there—till the times mended. No man could harm you.”
“Martin, you are offering me death!”
“Death?”
“Oh, man—man! Have we not suffered enough together? Are you turning to stone? Is it for my sake? I would rather die than do this thing! My heart will have none of it!”
He bowed his head over her hands.
“May I be strong—for your sake!”
“Strong—to wound me—to the death.”
She let go of his hands, drew aside, and knelt staring at the grass.
Presently she spoke, and her voice accused him.
“Are you but a child, Martin, soul blinded, the fool of visions? Life cannot go back. Things happen; it is like the dawn of the day, the birth of a flower. You cannot stay the sun from rising, or bid the sap not flow in the tree. And you have made me love you. I have spoken. Would you put the truth in me to shame?”
He rose up, leaving her kneeling there, and his face was a mist of pain.
“Mellis!”
“It is the truth. It is in your hands.”
He stood staring at the fading west.
“God, speak to me! Let me listen for a voice. Give me strength—strength.”
CHAPTER 41
He began to walk up and down the glade as though he were in the cloisters at Paradise, and Mellis did not hinder him or try to persuade him any further.
She rose up, put the food that was left back into the saddle-bags, and took the horses down to the spring to drink. When she returned to the glade Martin Valliant was still walking up and down, his hands gripping the bosom of his smock. He did not look at her, and his face had grown gray in the dusk.
Mellis fastened the two horses to a tree for the night, and taking Fulk de Lisle’s sword, she set about gathering bracken. The western sky was streaked with amber, and the light was growing dim; yet as Mellis used the sword a faint glimmer shone from it, like the glimmer of a star. The bracken was all feathery blackness under the great trees, falling to the sharp blade as she swung it from right to left. The sweet, wild scent of the fern was like a plaintive memory. The sword made hardly a sound as it cut through the tall stems.
Martin had paused, and was watching her. She showed as a dim figure in the dusk, with white face and hands. And even this strange labor of hers seemed part of the mystery of the Forest and of life, so much so that he felt enveloped by it, caught in some enchantment. What was she doing? And why did every act of hers take on a strange significance?
He saw Mellis set the sword in the ground, and gather up a bosomful of bracken. She came past him as he stood, and her eyes were dark and inscrutable. She threw the bracken down under the oak tree, and went back for more. Then Martin understood.
A shiver of emotion went through him; he found himself trembling at the knees. What a silence was this about them! What a falling of the night! What secrecy! What enchantment! The sunset had died on the hills; nothing but a faint afterglow remained, and above the trees the stars were beginning to shine.
Martin moved to and fro, but all his thoughts were with Mellis, and her gathering of the fern. She had taken the sword and had cut more bracken. The thick green riding-cloak that had been strapped behind her saddle served to carry the stuff; she spread the cloak on the ground, piled bracken on it, drew the two ends together, and carried the bundle to the oak tree. Mellis made a dozen such journeys to and fro, till she had built up a deep bed of the soft green fronds.
Martin saw her spread her cloak on the bracken and set Fulk de Lisle’s sword in the ground at the head thereof.
He turned away, and as he turned she called to him.
“Martin, are you still thinking?”
“Yes.”
“And it is all so simple!”
He heard her sigh, and his heart smote him.
Then she said:
“I am lonely. And I still have a fear that in the night men will break in and take you away.”
“If God wills it, it will be so,” he answered her with obstinate sententiousness.
She sat down on the bracken, untied her hair, shook it free, and began to comb it with a little ivory comb that she took from her gypsire. It was growing very dark now, and the stars were bright between the trees. Martin strode up and down, discovering a new torment in her silence, and in the darkness that seemed to be taking her from him. He could see her white hands moving, but her face was hidden by her hair.
“Mellis!”
He spoke to her at last, but she did not answer him.
Martin went nearer, trying not to be troubled by her silence.
“Mellis!”
A passionate whisper came back to him.
“You are breaking my heart. What does it matter? You shall not hear me humble myself again.”
He slunk away, threw himself flat on the grass, utterly shaken and distraught. The silence of the Forest seemed heavy in his ears, for he was listening for some sound from Mellis, and he could not even hear her breathing. A kind of fury seized him. He tore up handfuls of grass, pressed his mouth against the earth. Why was this agony being thrust upon him? Had he not tried to deal honestly with his own heart? And he had wounded Mellis, humbled her, turned away from her love as though it were a poor thing easily abandoned. She was beginning to hate him; or perhaps her pride would never forgive.
What could he say to her? Should he leave her while she slept? But that would be cowardly; he could not desert her till she was in the midst of friends.
He sat up, staring toward where she was, for he thought he had heard a rustling of the bracken. But it was so dark now that he could not see Mellis, only the vague outline of the great tree with the stars studding the sky over it.
Of a sudden Martin stopped breathing, every fiber of him tense and strained. It was not the rustling of the bracken that he had heard. The sound grew louder, less smothered, as though it was too bitter and poignant to be stifled. Mellis was weeping—weeping as though the pain could not be borne.
Martin began to tremble. All his blood seemed to be rising to his throat.
Then he uttered a strange, sharp cry, and went blindly through the darkness.
“Mellis!”
He was on his knees beside her. She was lying on her face, her arms spread out.
“Mellis, I can’t bear it. Oh! my love!”
She twisted around, threw her arms around him, and cried:
“My man! My most dear!”
CHAPTER 42
A brisk breeze blew from the sea over the marshes north of Gawdy Town, turning the willows that grew by the banks of the Rondel a soft gray, and making a great flutter among the aspen leaves. The reeds bowed and swayed in the dykes. The purple shadows of the clouds raced over the marshland meadows where the red cattle stood knee-deep in the lush grass. Gawdy Town itself spread its ruddy roofs to the evening sunlight, and flashed its vanes and flèches against a summer sky.
Along the road between the dykes came Mellis and Martin Valliant, trudging it on foot, their horses left wandering in the Forest. They looked like a country couple, Mellis in her rough shoes and russet gown, Martin in Lincoln green, a cudgel on his shoulder, and a couple of saddle-bags slung from it. He had thrown Fulk de Lisle’s sword and dagger into the Rondel, for such fine gear did not suit the cut of his clothes.
Mellis’s face seemed to shine with an inward light, and when Martin looked at her it was with eyes that said that she was the most wonderful thing in the wide world. He marched with a slight swing of the shoulders and a more adventurous carriage of the head. His manhood had lost its monkish distemper. Mellis had rescued him, and made him the lord of his own youth.
So they came to Gawdy Town, just before sunset and the closing of the gates. Women and children were coming in from the meadows and gardens without the walls, carrying baskets of flowers and herbs; there were wenches, too, who had been out milking, stepping along with pails of milk hanging from the yoke chains. Old gaffers toddled along the road, gossiping about swine and the hay crop. Not a soul had heard a whisper of the battle of Bracknell Plain.
Mellis and her man entered the north gate with this stream of milkmaids, children, gardeners, and farmer folk, and no one said them nay. The porter had his face buried in a black jack as they passed, and Mellis laughed and glimmered her eyes at Martin.
“That fellow is a good Christian. He sees only that which God meant him to see.”
Bells were ringing in Gawdy Town, bells great and small, for the people of Gawdy Town loved their bells. They were a folk, too, who delighted in color, on the fronts of their houses, in their signs, and in their clothes, and there was not a richer town in all the south. The great street between the gates looked as though it had been garnished for a pageant; the plaster fronts of the houses were painted in reds and blues and greens and yellows; many of the barge-boards of the gables were gilded; the people who filled the streets were a chequer of moving color, a gay and buxom crowd delighting in scarlets and bright greens and blues. Women leaned out of the windows and gossiped across the street, showing off their stomachers and the sleeves of their gowns.
Martin Valliant had never seen such a sight before. He shouldered a way for Mellis, trying not to stare at all these strange people, and at the quaint signs, and the rich stuffs in the shops. Some one blundered against his wounded shoulder, and he was not so meek over it as he would have been a month ago.
“Are they holding a fair in Gawdy Town?”
Mellis glanced at him mischievously.
“I sent a herald forward, dear lad, and they are looking for us. This is but an ant-heap after all. Some day I will show you Rouen and Paris.”
“A quieter street would please me. Where is this Inn of the ‘Crossed Keys’?”
“I know it, down by the harbor. This way.”
She turned aside into a dark and narrow lane, where the gables of the houses nearly met overhead. Lines festooned the alley, carrying all manner of garments hung out to dry. It was a lane of slatterns, and of dirty children playing in the gutters, and the smell of it was not sweet.
“How does this please my lord?”
“I would sooner sleep in the woods.”
She drew close in under his arm.
“And so say I. A clean attic at the ‘Crossed Keys’ will serve. Pray God old Swartz is there.”
The lane led them down toward the harbor, where the painted masts and tops of the ships showed above the town wall. Here were the shops of the ships’ chandlers, and the place began to smell of tar and the sea. There were yards full of timber, spars, anchors, casks, old iron, chains, oars, gratings, lanterns, and pumps. A rope-walk ran along the town wall, with pent-roofs for the storage of cables. The taverns and inns were for the men of the sea, boisterous houses full of strong liquor and loose women and foreign ship-men who were handy with their knives.
The Inn of the “Crossed Keys” lay a little way from the harbor and next to “Little Spain.” It was a solid and orderly inn, and no “stew” house; men of substance and many merchants lodged there in their comings and goings, and for the ordering of their affairs. No man had ever been found stabbed in the “Crossed Keys,” nor had a robbery ever been committed there within the memory of any living gossip.
Dusk was falling when Martin walked into the inn yard and asked for the master. An old fellow with white hair and a lame leg came out of the parlor, buttoned up in a sober black cloak, and with a black velvet cap on his head. He looked more like an Oxford clerk than an innkeeper, but his eyes were shrewd enough in his smooth, debonair face.
Mellis was waiting in the shadow of the stairway leading to the gallery around the yard. The old man’s eyes did not fail to see her. He looked straight at Martin as though he had weighed him from shoe-latchet to cap.
“Next door, my lad. ‘Little Spain’ is the place for you, I gather.”
Martin knew nothing of “Little Spain,” and his soul took no offense.
“This is the ‘Crossed Keys’?”
“It has been called that these fifty years.”
“Is there a Peter Swartz in the house?”
The old man blinked his bright eyes, glanced right and left, and poked his nose into Martin’s face.
“Of the name of Valliant?”
“I am Valliant.”
“Tsst! Not so loud! I am at your service. Come this way, Master Valliant, and you, madam. Up the stairway; yes—yes—the gentleman is here; to the right, if you please, and down that passage. Let me pass, sir; I know the door.”
The room into which he showed them was a private chamber, hung with green arras and lit by a couple of candles set in tall pewter sticks on the oak table. A man sat at supper, with a meat pasty, a jug of wine, bread, cheese, and fresh fruit heaped up in a bowl before him. He was making himself a salad of herbs when the door opened and the old man poked his head into the room.
“Master Valliant, sir!”
Swartz threw the wooden spoon and fork on the table and stood up.
“Ye gods, this is magnificent!”
The old man closed the door on Mellis and Martin Valliant, and they stood before Peter Swartz like a couple of shy children. Then Martin’s arm crept over Mellis’s shoulders. She was red as a rose, but her eyes looked proudly at Peter Swartz.
That most magnanimous soldier of fortune scanned the faces of the pair before him, smiled, gave a wag of the head, and filled a glass with wine. He bowed to Mellis, raised the glass, and drank to her.
“Madam, I pledge you my homage. I am, and shall always be, your devoted servant. As for this fellow——”
He stepped up to Martin, smiling, and gave him a blow on the chest.
“Here is a man who has learned the greater wisdom. Good comrade, shake hands with me; the whole world is ours.”
Swartz went to the door, and shouted for the old gentleman in the black gown.
“Mine host, mine ancient and most sweet angel, more wine here, and platters, and more light.”
The wine came, also two more candles, and a rush-seated chair for Mellis. Swartz was in a joyous mood, and the shy yet exultant faces of these two young people filled him with an amused delight.
“Come—sit you down. The place of honor for Madam Mellis. Russet and green, two good colors; friend Martin there has been fighting, a sword-thrust through the shoulder—eh? Take off your cap, man; there are no spies here. And now for the news; I’ll tell mine afterwards.”
It was Mellis who told the tale of their adventures as far as the slaying of Fulk de Lisle, Martin watching her with a rapt look, and forgetting that there was food on his plate. She had nothing to say of the journey to Gawdy Town, but Swartz had but to look at their faces to know that Martin had played the man.
“So the old Fox of Troy was too cunning for your friends. Well, well—what is it to be—France and the open road, service with some fine Frenchman or a rich Italian, and our friend Martin here becoming a great captain with a helmet full of gold pieces? This wet island has wearied me. I can show you sunny lands and a world of adventure.”
Martin’s eyes watched Mellis’s face.
“I am but a beggar,” he said simply.
She looked at him dearly, and then at Swartz.
“We have twenty gold pieces, Martin and I. I carried them about with me, and hid them while we were at Woodmere. They are here—in a leather purse.”
“Shrewd wench—and great lady! Martin, my man, you may do the fighting, but you should leave all else to your wife. She will be wiser than any Lombard. Well, old Swartz can put his hand on fifty gold pieces, and I brought a little plunder away with me that night I left the island. These English drink too much, and some one must have missed a suit of harness and a couple of horses. Old Master Hilary here has bought the horses, and Martin can have the harness. Why, we are ripe and ready for sword-hire, and there is a ship sailing to-morrow for France.”
He leaned over and filled the drinking cups.
“Here’s to our good fortune, and the Knave of Hearts. Give me the gay, vagabond, generous, fighting life. Here’s to you, madam, and here’s to Martin Valliant, and here’s to old Peter Swartz! Martin, my lad, I’ll make you the finest sworder and swashbuckler this side of Rome.”
He grew quiet when he had had his jest with them, and it was Mellis who spoke for Martin and herself.
“The life will be rough, but I do not fear it. My man will guard me, and I shall be his mate. What are riches, and acres—and a lordly house? The sun and the green earth are for all, and youth goes where it pleases. Let the old folk count their cattle, and warm their hands at the fire.”
She looked at Martin, and he nodded.
“I will do good deeds—with the sword,” he said; “let us go out into the world and see the great cities. A man was given eyes to see with.”
Swartz raised his cup.
“And a heart—to love with! Oh, brave youth, never to grow old in the same bed, and to cross the same dull doorstep day by day! Here’s to the wander life—here’s to adventure! Assuredly I must get me a wife, and there shall be four of us. Peter Swartz is young again; God be praised!”