'They are too late,' said Richard. 'Tell me what message you have from the Fair-Girdled.'

'Wed or unwed, she is yours. But she is kept in a tower until Palm Sunday. Then they bring her out and marry her to what remains of a black Normandy pig. Not very much remains, but (they tell me) enough for the purpose.'

'Spine of G.o.d,' said Richard, examining his finger-nails.

'Swear by His heart, rather, my Count,' Gaston said, 'for you have a red heart in your keeping. Eh, eh, what a beautiful person is there! She leaned her body out of the window--what a shape that girdle confines!

Bowered roses! Dian and the Nymphs! Bosomed familiars of old Pan! And what emerald fires! What molten hair! The words came shortly from her, and brokenly, as if her carved lips disdained such coa.r.s.e uses! Richard, her words were so: "Take a message to my lord," quoth she. "I am his in life or death. I seek to do him service. Wed or unwed, what is that to me? I am still Jehane." Thus she--but I? Well, well, my sword spake for me when I carved that beef-bone bare.' The Bearnais pulled his goatee, and looked at the ends of it for split hairs. But Richard sat very still.

'Do you know, Gaston, whom you have seen?' he said presently, in a trembling whisper.

'Perfectly well,' said the other. 'I have seen a pale flower ripe for the sun.'

'You have seen the Countess of Poictou, Gaston,' said Richard, and took to his prayers.

Through these means, for the time, he was held off his father's throat.

But for Jehane and her urgent affairs these two had grappled at Le Mans.

As it was, not Richard's hand was to fire the cradle-city which had seen King Henry at the breast. Before nightfall he had made his dispositions for a very risky business. He set aside the Viscount of Beziers, Bertram Count of Roussillon, Gaston of Bearn, to go with him, not because they were the best men by any means, but so that he might leave the best men in charge. These were certainly the Dauphin, the Viscount of Limoges, and the Count of Angoulesme, each of whom he had proved as an enemy in his day. 'Gentlemen,' he said to these three, 'I am about to go upon a journey. Of you I shall require a little attention, certain patience, exact obedience. It will be necessary that you be before the walls of Le Mans in three days. Invest them, my lords, keep up your communications, and wait for the French King. Give no battle, offer no provocation, let hunger do your affair. I know where the King of England is, and shall be with you before him.' He went on to be more precise, but I omit the details. It was difficult for them to go wrong, but if the truth is to be known, he was in a mood which made him careless about that. He was free. He was going on insensate adventure; but he saw his road before him once again, like a long avenue of light, which Jehane made for him with a torch uplifted. Before it was day, armed from head to foot in chain mail, with a plain shield, and a double-bladed Norman axe in his saddle-bucket, he and his three companions set out on their journey.

They rode leisurely, with loose reins and much turning in the saddle to talk, as if for a meet of the hounds.

Now was that vernal season of the year when winds are boon, the gentle rain never far off, the stars in heaven (like the flowers on earth) washed momently to a freshness which urges men to be pure. Riding day and night through the green breadth of France, though he had been plucked from the roaring pit of war, Richard (I know) went with a single aim before him--to see Jehane again. Nothing else in his heart, I say.

Whatever purpose may have lurked in his mind, in heart he went clean, single in desire, chanting the canticles of Mary and the Virgin Saints.

It was so. He had been seethed in wicked doings from his boyhood--I give him you no better than he was: wild work in Poictou, the scour of hot blood; devil's work in Touraine, riotous work in Paris, tyrannous in Aquitaine. He had been blown upon by every ill report; hatred against blood, blasphemy against G.o.d's appointment, violence, clamour, scandal against charitable dealing: all these were laid to his name. He had behind him a file of dead ancestors, cut-throats and worse. He had faced unnameable sin and not blenched, laughed where he should have wept, promised and broken his promise; to be short, he had been a creature of his house and time, too young acquainted with pride and too proud himself to deny it. But now, with eyes alight like a boy's because his heart was uplift, he was riding between the new-budded woods, the melodies of a singing-boy on his lips, and swaying before his heart's eye the figure of a tall girl with green eyes and a sulky, beautiful mouth. 'Lord, what is man?' cried the Psalmist in dejection. 'Lord, what is man not?' cry we, who know more of him.

His traverse took him four days and nights. He rested at La Ferte, at Nogent-le-Rotrou, outside Dreux, and at Rosny. Here he stayed a day, the Vigil of the Feast of Palms. He had it in his mind not to see Jehane again until the very moment when he might lose her.

CHAPTER IX

WILD WORK IN THE CHURCH OF GISORS

When in March the chase is up, and the hunting wind searches out the fallow places of the earth, love also comes questing, desire is awake; man seeks maid, and maid seeks to be sought. If man or maid have loved already the case is worse; we hear love crying, but cannot tell where he is, how or with what honesty to let him in. All those ranging days Jehane--whether in bed cuddling her letters, or at the window of her tower, watching with brimmed eyes the pairing of the birds--showed a proud front of sufferance, while inly her heart played a wild tune. Not a crying girl, nor one capable of any easy utterance, she could do no more than stand still, and wonder why she was most glad when most wretched. She ought to have felt the taint, to love the man who had slain her brother; she might have known despair: she did neither. She sat or stood, or lay in her bed, and pressed to her heart with both hands the words that said, 'Never doubt me, Jehane,' or 'Ma mye, I shall come to you.' When he came, as he surely would, he would find her a wife--ah, let him come, let him come in his time, so only she saw him again!

March went out in dusty squalls, and April came in to the sound of the young lamb's bleat. Willow-palm was golden in the hedges when the King of England's men filled Normandy, and Gilles de Gurdun, having been healed of his wounds, rode towards Rouen at the head of his levy. He went not without an understanding with Saint-Pol that he should have his sister on Palm Sunday in the church of Gisors. They could not marry at Saint-Pol-la-Marche, because Gilles was on his service and might not win so far; nor could they have married before he went, because of his ill-treatment at the hands of the Bearnais. Of this Gilles had made light. 'He got worse than he gave,' he told Saint-Pol. 'I left him dead in the wood.'

'Would you see Jehane, Gilles?' Saint-Pol had asked him before he went out. 'She is in her turret as meek as a mouse.'

'Time enough for that,' said Gilles quietly. 'She loves me not. But I, Eustace, love her so hot that I have fear of myself. I think I will not see her.'

'As you will,' said Saint-Pol. 'Farewell.'

In Gisors, then a walled town, trembling like a captive at the knees of a huge castle, there was a long grey church which called Saint Sulpice lord. It stood in a little square midway between the South Gate and the citadel, a narrow oblong place where they held the cattle market on Tuesdays, flagged and planted with pollard-limes. The west door of Saint Sulpice, resting on a stepped foundation, formed a solemn end to this humble s.p.a.ce, and the great gable flanked by turrets threatened the huddled tenements of the craftsmen. On this morning of Palm Sunday the shaven crowns of the limes were budded gold and pink, the sky a fair sea-blue over Gisors, with a scurrying fleece of clouds like foam; the poplars about the meadows were in their first flush, all the quicksets veiled in green. The town was early afoot, for the wedding party of the Sieur de Gurdun was to come in; and Gurdun belonged to the Archbishop, and the Archbishop to the Duke. The bride also was reported unwilling, which added zest to the public appet.i.te for her known beauty. Some knew for truth that she was the cast-off mistress of a very great man, driven into Gurdun's arms to dispose of scandal and of her. 'Eh, the minion!'

said certain sn.i.g.g.e.ring old women to whom this was told, 'she'll not find so soft a lap at Gurdun!' But others said, 'Gurdun is the Duke's, and will one day be the Duke's son's. What will Sieur Gilles do then with his straining wife? You cannot keep your hawk on the cadge for ever--ah, nor hood her for ever!' And so on.

All this points to some public excitement. The town gate was opened full early, the booths about it did a great trade; at a quarter before seven Sir Gilles de Gurdun rode in, with his father on his right hand, the prior of Rouen on his left, and half a dozen of his kindred, fair and solid men all. They were lightly armed, clothed in soft leather, without shields or any heavy war-furniture: old Gurdun a squarely built, red-faced man like his son, but with a bush of white hair all about his face, and eyebrows like curved snowdrifts; the prior (old Gurdun's brother's son) with a big nose, long and pendulous; Gilles' brother Bartholomew, and others whom it would be tedious to mention. Gilles himself looked well knit for the business in hand; all the old women agreed that he would make a masterful husband. They stabled their horses in the inn-yard, and went into the church porch to await the bride's party.

A trumpet at the gate announced her coming. She rode on a little ambling horse beside her brother Saint-Pol. With them were the portentous old lady, Dame Gudule, William des Barres, a very fine French knight, Nicholas d'Eu, and a young boy called Eloy de Mont-Luc, a cousin of Jehane's, to bear her train. The gossips at the gate called her a wooden bride; others said she was like a doll, a big doll; and others that they read in her eyes the scorn of death. She took no notice of anything or anybody, but looked straight before her and followed where she was led.

This was straightway into the church by her brother, who had her by the hand and seemed in a great hurry. The marriage was to be made in the Lady Chapel, behind the high altar.

Twenty minutes later yet, or maybe a little less, there was another surging to the gate about the arrival of four knights, who came posting in, spattered with mud and the sweat and lather of their horses. They were quite unknown to the people of Gisors, but seen for great men, as indeed they were. Richard of Anjou was the first of them, a young man of inches incredible to Gisors. 'He had a face like King Arthur's of Britain,' says one: 'A red face, a tawny beard, eyes like stones.'

Behind him were three abreast: Roussillon, a grim, dark, heavy-eyed man, bearded like a Turk; Beziers, sanguine and loose-limbed, a man with a sharp tongue; Gaston of Bearn, airy hunter of fine phrases, looking now like the prince of a fairy-tale, with roving eyes all a-scare for adventure. The warders of the gate received them with a flourish. They knew nothing of them, but were certain of their degree.

By preconcerted action they separated there. Roussillon and Beziers sat like statues within the gate, one on each side of the way, actually upon the bridge; and so remained, the admired of all the booths. Gaston, like a yeoman-p.r.i.c.ker in this hunting of the roe, went with Richard to the edge of the covert, that is, to the steps of Saint Sulpice, and stood there holding his master's horse. What remained to be done was done with extreme swiftness. Richard alone, craning his head forward, stooping a little, swaying his scabbarded sword in his hand, went with long soft strides into the church.

At the entry he kneeled on one knee, and looked about him from under his brows. Three or four ma.s.ses were proceeding; out of the semi-darkness shone the little twinkling lights, and illuminated faintly the kneeling people, a priest's vestment, a silver chalice. But here was neither marriage nor Jehane. He got up presently, and padded down the nave, kneeling to every altar as he went. Many an eye followed him as he pushed on and past the curtain of the ambulatory. They guessed him for the wedding, and so (G.o.d knows) he was. In the shadow of a great pillar he stopped short, and again went down on his knee; from here he could see the business in train.

He saw Jehane at prayer, in green and white, kneeling at her faldstool like a painted lady on an altar tomb; he just saw the pure curve of her cheek, the coiled ma.s.ses of her hair, which seemed to burn it. All the world with the lords thereof was at his feet, but this treasure which he had held and put away was denied him. By his own act she was denied. He had said Yea, when Nay had been the voice of heart and head, of honour and love and reason at once; and now (close up against her) he knew that he was to forbid his own grant. He knew it, I say; but until he saw her there he had not clearly known it. Go on, I will show you the deeps of the man for good or bad. Not l.u.s.t of flesh, but of dominion, ravened in him. This woman, this Jehane Saint-Pol, this hot-haired slip of a girl was his. The leopard had laid his paw upon her shoulder, the mark was still there; he could not suffer any other beast of the forest to touch that which he had printed with his own mark, for himself.

Twi-form is the leopard; twi-natured was Richard of Anjou, dog and cat.

Now here was all cat. Not the wolf's l.u.s.t, but the lion's jealous rage spurred him to the act. He could see this beautiful thing of flesh without any longing to lick or tear; he could have seen the frail soul of it, but half-born, sink back into the earth out of sight; he could have killed Jehane or made her as his mother to him. But he could not see one other get that which was his. His by all heaven she was. When Gurdun squared himself and puffed his cheeks, and stood up; when Jehane, touched by Saint-Pol on the shoulder, shivered and left staring, and stood up in turn, swaying a little, and held out her thin hand; when the priest had the ring on his book, and the two hands, the red and the white, trembled to the touch--Richard rose from his knee and stole forward with his long, soft, crouching stride.

So softly he trod that the priest, old and blear-eyed as he was, saw him first: the others had heard nothing. With Jehane's hand in his own, the priest stopped and blinked. Who was this prowler, afoot when all else were on their knees? His jaw dropped; you saw that he was toothless.

Inarticulate sounds, crackling and dry, came from his throat. Richard had stopped too, tense, quivering for a spring. The priest gave a prodigious sniff, turned to his book, looked up again: the crouching man was still there--but imminent. 'Wine of Jesus!' said the priest, and dropped Jehane's hand. Then she turned. She gave a short cry; the whole a.s.sembly started and huddled together as the mailed man made his spring.

It was done in a flash. From his crouched att.i.tude he went, as it seemed, at one bound. That same shock drove Gilles de Gurdun back among his people, and the same found Jehane caged in a hoop of steel. So he affronting and she caught up stood together, for a moment. With one mailed hand he held her fast under the armpit, with the other he held a fidgety sword. His head was thrown back; through glimmering eyelids he watched them--as one who says, What next?--breathing short through his nose. It was the att.i.tude of the s.n.a.t.c.hing lion, sudden, arrogant, shockingly swift; a gross deed, done in a flash which was its wonderful beauty. While the company was panting at the shock--for barely a minute--he stood thus; and Jehane, quiet under so fierce a hold, leaned not upon him, but stood her own feet fairly, her calm brows upon a level with his chin. Shameful if it was, at that moment of rude conquest she had no shame, and he no thought of shame.

Nor was there much time for thought at all. Gurdun cried on the name of G.o.d and started forward; at the same instant Saint-Pol made a rush, and with him Des Barres. Richard, with Jehane held close, went backwards on the way he had come in. His long arm and long sword kept his distance; he worked them like a scythe. None tackled him there, though they followed him up as dogs a boar in the forest; but old Gurdun, the father, ran round the other way to hold the west door. Richard, having gained the nave and open country (as it were), went swiftly down it, carrying Jehane with ease; he found the strenuous old man before the door. 'Out of my way, De Gurdun,' he cried in a high singing voice, 'or I shall do that which I shall be sorry for.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y thief,' shouted old Gurdun, 'add murder to the rest!' Richard stretched his sword arm stiffly and swept him aside. He tumbled back; the crowd received him--priests, choristers, peasants, knights, all huddled together, baying like dogs. Count Richard strode down the steps.

'Alavi! Alavia!' sang Gaston, 'this is a swift marriage!' Richard, cooler than circ.u.mstances warranted, set Jehane on his saddle, vaulted up behind her, and as his pursuers were tumbling down the steps, cantered over the flags into the street. Roussillon and Beziers, holding the bridge, saw him come. 'He has s.n.a.t.c.hed his Sabine woman,' said Beziers. 'Humph,' said Roussillon; 'now for beastly war.' Richard rode straight between them at a hand-gallop; Gaston followed close, cheering his beast like a maniac. Then the iron pair turned inwards and rode out together, taking the way he led them, the way of the Dark Tower.

The wonder of Gisors was all dismay when it was learned who this tall stranger was. The Count of Poictou had ridden into his father's country and robbed his father's man of his wife. We are ruled by devils in Normandy, then! There was no immediate pursuit. Saint-Pol knew where to find him; but (as he told William des Barres) it was useless to go there without some force.

CHAPTER X

NIGHT-WORK BY THE DARK TOWER

I chronicle wild doings in this place, and have no time for the sweets of love long denied. But strange as the bridal had been, so the nuptials were strange, one like the other played to a steel undertone. When Richard had his Jehane, at first he could not enjoy her. He rode away with her like a storm; the way was long, the pace furious. Not a word had pa.s.sed between them, at least not a reasoned word. Once or twice at first he leaned forward over her shoulder and set his cheek to her glowing cheek. Then she, as if swayed by a tide, strained back to him, and felt his kisses hot and eager, his few and pelting words, 'My bride--at last--my bride!' and the pressure of his hand upon her heart.

That hand knows what tune the heart drummed out. Mostly she sat up before him stiff as a sapling, with eyes and ears wide for any hint of pursuit. But he felt her tremble, and knew she would be glad of him yet.

After all, they had six burning days for a honeymoon, days which made those three who with them held the tower wonder how such a match could continue. Richard's love rushed through him like a river in flood, that brims its banks and carries down bridges by its turbid ma.s.s; but hers was like the sea, unresting, ebbing, flowing, without aim or sure direction. As is usual with reserved persons, Jehane's transports, far from a.s.suaging, tormented her, or seemed a torment. She loved uneasily, by hot and cold fits; now melting, now dry, now fierce in demand, next pa.s.sionate in refusal. To s.n.a.t.c.h of love succeeded repulsion of love.

She would fling herself headlong into Richard's arms, and sob there, feverish; then, as suddenly, struggle for release, as one who longs to hide herself, and finding that refused, lie motionless like a woman of wax. Whether embraced or not, out of touch with him she was desperate.

She could not bear that, but sought (unknown to him) to have hold of some part of him--the edge of his tunic, the tip of his sword, his glove--something she must have. Without it she sat quivering, throbbing all over, looking at him from under her brows and biting her dumb lips.

If at such a time as this some other addressed her the word (as, to free her from her anguish, one would sometimes do), she would perhaps answer him, Yes or No, but nothing more. Usually she would shake her head impatiently, as if all the world and its affairs (like a cloud of flies) were buzzing about her, shutting out sound or sight of her Richard. Love like this, so deep, outwardly still, inwardly ravening (because insatiable), is a dreadful thing. No one who saw Jehane with Richard in those days could hope for the poor girl's happiness. As for him, he was more expansive, not at all tortured by love, master of that as of everything else. He teased her after the first day, pinched her ear, held her by the chin. He used his strange powers against her; stole up on his noiseless feet, caught her hands behind her, held her fast, and pulled her back to be kissed. Once he lifted her up, a sure prisoner, to the top shelf of a cupboard, whence there was no escape but by the way she had gone. She stayed there quite silent, and when he opened the cupboard doors was found in the same tremulous, expectant state, her eyes still fixed upon him. Neither he nor she, publicly at least, discussed the past, the present or future; but it was known that he meant to make her his Countess as soon as he could reach Poictiers. To the onlookers, at any rate to one of them, it seemed that this could never be, and that she knew very well that the hours of this sharp, sweet, piercing intercourse were numbered. How could it last? How could she find either reason or courage to hope it? It seemed to Beziers, on the watch, that she was awaiting the end already. One is fretted to a rag by waiting. So Jehane dared not lose a moment of Richard, yet could enjoy not one, knowing that she must soon lose all.

Those six clear days of theirs had been wiselier spent upon the west road; but Richard's desire outmastered every thought. Having s.n.a.t.c.hed Jehane from the very horns of the altar, he must hold her, make her his irrevocably at the first breathing place. Dealing with any but Normans, he had never had his six days. But the Norman people, as Abbot Milo says, 'slime-blooded, slow-bellies, are withal great eaters of beef, which breeds in them, as well as a heaviness of motion, a certain slumbrous rage very dangerous to mankind. They crop grief after grief, chewing the cud of grievance; for when they are full of it they disgorge and regorge the abhorred sum, and have stuff for their spleens for many a year.' Even more than this smouldering nursed hate they love a punctilio; they walk by forms, whether the road is to a lady's heart or an enemy's throat. And so Saint-Pol found, and so Des Barres, Frenchmen both and fiery young men, who shook their fists in the faces of the Gurduns and the dust of such blockish hospitallers off their feet, when they saw the course affairs were to run. Gilles de Gurdun, if you will believe it, with the advice of his father and the countenance of his young brother Bartholomew, would not budge an inch towards the recovery of his wife or her ravisher's punishment until he had drawn out his injury fair on parchment. This he then proposed to carry to his Duke, old King Henry. 'Thus,' said the swart youth, 'I shall be within the law of my land, and gain the engines of the law on my side.' He seemed to think this important.

'With your accursed scruples,' cried Saint-Pol, smiting the table, 'you will gain nothing else. Within your country's law, blockhead! Why, my sister is within the Count's country by this time!'

'Oh, leave him, leave him, Eustace,' said Des Barres, 'and come with me.

We shall meet him in the fair way yet, you and I together.' So the Frenchmen rode away, and Gilles, with his father and his parchments and his square forehead, went to Evreux, where King Henry then was.

Kneeling before their Duke, expounding their gravamens as if they were suing out a writ of _Mort d'Ancestor_, they very soon found out that he was no more a Norman than Saint-Pol. The old King made short work of their '_ut predictum ests_' and '_Quaesumus igiturs_.'