The king stag smelt her over, beginning at her feet. He snuffed for a long time at the nape of her neck, blew in her hair so as to spray it out like a fountain scattered to the wind; then he fell to licking her cheek. She, made bold, put a hand and laid it on his mane. Shyly she stood thus, waiting events. The great beast lifted his head high and gave a loud bellow; all the deer chorused him; the forest rang. So Isoult was made free of the herd.
Belvisee and Mellifont lay beside her on the gra.s.s. Isoult lay on her face, while Mellifont coiled and knotted up her hair.
"If love is giving, and you are a lover, Isoult," said she, "you would give your hair."
"I have given it," said Isoult, and told them her story as they all lay there together.
"And to think that you have endured all this from men, and yet love a man!" cried flushed Mellifont, when she had made an end.
But Isoult smiled wisely at her.
"Ah, Mellifont," she said, "the more you saw of men, the more you would find to love in him."
"Indeed, I should do no such thing," said Mellifont, firing up again.
"You could not help it. Everyone must love him."
"That might not suit you, Isoult," said Belvisee.
"Why should it not? Would it prevent my love to know him loved? I should love him all the more."
"Hark!" cried Mellifont on a sudden. She laid her ear to the ground, then jumped to her feet.
"Come to the herd, come to the herd," she whispered.
Belvisee was on her feet also in a trice. Both girls were hot and bright.
"What disturbs you?" asked Isoult, who had heard nothing.
"Hors.e.m.e.n! quick, quick." They all ran between the trees to regain the deer. Isoult could hear no horses; but the sisters had, and now she saw that the deer had. Every head was up, every ear still, every nostril on the stretch. Listening now intently, faint and far she did hear a m.u.f.fled knocking--it was like a beating heart, she thought.
Whatever it was, the deer guessed an enemy. Upon a sudden stamp, the whole herd was in motion. Led by the hart-royal, they trotted noiselessly down the wood, till in the thick fern they lay still. The girls lay down with them.
The sound gained rapidly upon them. Soon they heard the crackling of twigs, then the swish of swept brushwood, then the creaking of girths.
Isoult hid her face, lying p.r.o.ne on her breast.
Galors and his men came thundering through the wood. Their horses were reeking, dripping from the flanks. The riders, four of them, looking neither right nor left, past over the open ground, where a few minutes before she whom they desperately sought had been lying at their mercy.
But Galors, fled by all things living in Morgraunt, scourged on like a destroying wind and was gone. Isoult little knew how near she had been to the unclean thing. If she had seen him she would have run straight to him without a thought, for he bore the red feathers in his helmet, and behind him, on the shield, danced in the glory of new gilt the _fesse dancettee_.
It may be doubted if the instincts of the earth-born can ever pierce the trappings of a knight-at-arms. They trust in emotions which such gear is designed to hide or transfigure. Isoult, observe, had caught Prosper out of his harness, when before the face of the sky she had thrilled him to pity. But when once he had stooped to her, for the very fact, she made haste to set him up on high in her heart, and in more seemly guise. There and thenceforward he stood on his pedestal figured, not as a pitiful saviour (whom a girl must be taught to worship), but as an armed G.o.d who suffered her homage. She was no better (or no worse, if you will) than the rest of her s.e.x in this, that she loved to love, and was bewildered to be loved. So she would never get him out of armour again. Her G.o.d might not stoop.
CHAPTER XXIX
WANMEETING CRIES, "HA! SAINT JAMES!"
The story returns to Prosper le Gai and his broken head. The blow had been sharp, but Peering Pool was sharper. It brought him to consciousness, of a sort sufficient to give him a disrelish for drowning. Lucky for him he was unarmed. He found himself swimming, paddling, rolling at random; he swallowed quant.i.ties of water, and liked drowning none the better. By the little light there was he could make out the line of the dark hull of Goltres, by the little wit he had he remembered that the water-gate was midway the building or thereabouts. He turned his face to the wall and, half clinging, half swimming, edged along it till he reached port. The last ebb of his strength sufficed to drag him up the stair; then he floated off into blankness again.
When he stirred he was stiff, and near blind with fever. A cold light silvered the pool; it was not yet dawn. His plight was pitiable. He ached and shivered and burned, he drowsed and muttered, dreamed horribly, sweated and was cold, shuddered and was hot. One of his arms he could not lift at all; at one of his sides, there was a great stiff cake of cloth and blood and water. He became light-headed, sang, shouted, raved, swore, prayed.
"To me, to me, Isoult! Ah, dogs of the devil, this to a young maid!
Yes, madam, the Lady Isoult, and my wife. Love her! O G.o.d, I love her at last. Hounded, hounded, hounded out! Love of Christ, how I love her! Bailiff, Galors will come--a white-faced, sullen dog. Cut him down, bailiff, without mercy, for he hath shown no mercy. The man in the wood--ha! dead--Salomon de Born. Green froth on his lips--fie, poison! She has killed Galors" only son. Galors, she has poisoned him --oh, mercy, mercy, Lord, must I die?" And then with tears, and the whining of a child--"Isoult, Isoult, Isoult!"
In tears his delirium spent itself, and again he was still, in a broken sleep. The sun rose, the sky warmed itself and glowed, the crispy waves of Peering Pool glittered, the white burden it bore floated face upwards, an object of interest and suspicion for the coots; soon a ray of generous heat shot obliquely down upon the sleeper on the stairs. Prosper woke again, stretched, and yawned. Most of his pains seemed now to centre in the pit of his stomach, a familiar grief. Prosper was hungry.
"Pest!" said the youth, "how hungry I am. I can do nothing till I have eaten."
He tried to get up, and did succeed in raising himself on all fours.
But for the life of him he could do no more. He sat down again and thought about eating. He remembered the bread and olives, the not unkindly red wine of the night before. Then he remembered Spiridion, dispenser of meat and many questions.
"That poor doubting rogue!" he laughed. But he sobered himself. "I do ill to laugh, G.o.d knows! The man must be dead by now, and all his doubts with him. I must go find him. But I must eat some of his bread and olives first."
Once more he got on all fours, and this time he crawled to the stop of the stairway. Clinging to the lintel and hoisting himself by degrees, he at last stood fairly on his feet--but with a spinning head, and a sickness as unto death. He tottered and flickered; but he stuck to his door-post.
"Bread and olives!" he cried. "I am to die, it seems, but by the Lord I will eat first."
He made a rush for it, gained so the great hall, dizzied through it somehow, and out into the corridor. He flung himself at the stone stairs with the desperation of his last agony, half crawled, half swarmed up to the top (dragging his legs after him at the end, like a hare shot in the back), and finished his course to Spiridion"s chamber on hands and knees. He had probably never in his life before worked so hard for a breakfast. He was dripping with sweat, shaking like gossamer; but his fever had left him. Bread and a bottle of wine did wonders for him. He felt very drunk when he had done, and was conscious that pot-valiancy only gave him the heart to tear off his clothes. A flask of sweet oil from Spiridion"s shelf helped him here.
Next he probed the rents. He found a deepish wound in the groin, a sword-cut in the fleshy part of his left arm; then there was his head!
He a.s.sured himself that the skull was whole.
"I never respected my ancestors before," he cried. "Such a headpiece is worthy of a Crusader."
He kindled a fire, heated water, washed out his hurts, oiled them and bound them up with one of Spiridion"s bed-sheets.
"Now," he reflected, "by rights I should go and hunt for my poor host.
But I am still drunk unfortunately. Let me consider. Spiridion must pa.s.s for a man. If he is dead he will wait for me. If he is not dead he is no worse off than I am. Good. I will sleep." And he slept round the clock.
Next morning when he awoke he was stiff and sore, but himself. He finished the bread, drank another bottle of wine, and looked about for his armour. It was not there. Instead, the white wicket-gates gleamed at him from a black shield, white plumes from a black headpiece, and the rest of a concatenation.
"_Entra per me_," he read. "Enter I will," said Prosper, "and by you. This device," he went on, as he fitted the _cuisses_, "this device is not very worthy of Dom Galors. It speaks of hurry. It speaks, even, of precipitation, for if he must needs wear my harness, at least he might have carried his own. Galors was flurried. If he was flurried he must have had news. If, having news, he took my arms, it must have been news of Isoult. He intended to deceive her by pa.s.sing for me. Good; I will deceive his allies by pa.s.sing for himself. But first I must find Spiridion."
He had too much respect for his enemy, as you will observe if I have made anything of Galors. Galors was no refiner, not subtle; he was direct. When he had to think he held his tongue, so that you should believe him profound. When he got a thought he made haste to act upon it, because it really embarra.s.sed him. None of Prosper"s imaginings were correct. If the monk had been capable of harbouring two thoughts at a time, there would not have been a shred of mail in the room.
That sodden thing lipped by the restless water was Spiridion. He lay on his back, thinner and more peaked than ever in life; his yellow hair made him an aureole. He looked like some martyred ascetic, with his tightened smile and the gash half-way through his neck.
Prosper leaned upon his punt-pole looking sorrowfully at him.
"Alas, my brother," he said half whimsically, "do you smile? Even so I think G.o.d should smile that He had let such a thing be made. And if, as I believe, you know the truth at last, that is why you also smile.
But shut your eyes, my brother," he added, stooping to do the office, "shut your eyes, for you wore them thin with searching and now can see without them. Let them rest."
Very tenderly he pulled him out of the water, very reverently took him to land. He buried him before his own gates, and over him set the crucifix, which in the end he had found grace to see. He was too good a Christian not to pray over the grave, and not sufficient of a hero to be frank about his tears. At the end of all this business he found his horse. Then he rode off at a canter for Hauterive.
It is one thing to kindle military fires in the breast of a High Bailiff, quite another to bid them out. Prosper had overstepped his authority. The High Bailiff of Wanmeeting held himself in check for the better part of a week after his generalissimo"s departure; at the end of five days he could endure it no more. His harness clamoured, his sword tarnished for blood; he had fifteen hundred men in steel.
That would mean fifteen hundred and one tarnishing blades, and the unvoiced reproaches of fifteen hundred and one suits of mail. In a word, the High Bailiff itched to try a fall with the redoubtable Galors de Born.