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- Herausgeber: e-artnow
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
The Forest Lovers is a historical romance novel written by Maurice Hewlett. It is set in medieval France and tells the story of Prosper le Gai and his experiences in the mysterious forest of Morgraunt. The hero of the novel meets Isoult la Desireé, a poor servant girl, on his way and marries her out of pity. It soon turns out that Isoult is the missing daughter of the countess, and Prosper's feelings of pity turn into ideal and noble love.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Forest Lover
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
PROSPER LE GAI RIDES OUT
My story will take you into times and spaces alike rude and uncivil. Blood will be spilt, virgins suffer distresses; the horn will sound through woodland glades; dogs, wolves, deer, and men, Beauty and the Beasts, will tumble each other, seeking life or death with their proper tools. There should be mad work, not devoid of entertainment. When you read the word Explicit, if you have laboured so far, you will know something of Morgraunt Forest and the Countess Isabel; the Abbot of Holy Thorn will have postured and schemed (with you behind the arras); you will have wandered with Isoult and will know why she was called La Desirous, with Prosper le Gai, and will understand how a man may fall in love with his own wife. Finally, of Galors and his affairs, of the great difference there may be between a Christian and the brutes, of love and hate, grudging and open humour, faith and works, cloisters and thoughts uncloistered—all in the green wood—you will know as much as I do if you have cared to follow the argument. I hope you will not ask me what it all means, or what the moral of it is. I rank myself with the historian in this business of tale-telling, and consider that my sole affair is to hunt the argument dispassionately. Your romancer must be neither a lover of his heroine nor (as the fashion now sets) of his chief rascal. He must affect a genial height, that of a jigger of strings; and his attitude should be that of the Pulpiteer:—Heaven help you, gentlemen, but I know what is best for you! Leave everything to me.
It is related of Prosper le Gai, that when his brother Malise, Baron of Starning and Parrox, showed him the door of their father's house, and showed it with a meaning not to be mistaken, he stuck a sprig of green holly in his cap. He put on his armour; his horse and sword also he took: he was for the wilds. Baron Jocelyn's soul, the priests reported, was with God; his body lay indubitably under a black effigy in Starning Church. Baron Malise was lord of the fee, with a twisted face for Prosper whenever they met in the hall: had there been scores no deeper this was enough. Prosper was a youth to whom life was a very pretty thing; he could not afford to have tarnish on the glass; he must have pleasant looks about him and a sweet air, or at least scope for the making of them. Baron Malise blew like a miasma and cramped him like a church-pew: then Adventure beaconed from far off, and his heart leapt to greet the light. He left at dawn, and alone. Roy, his page, had begged as hard as he dared for pillion or a donkey. He was his master's only friend, but Prosper's temper needed no props. "Roy," said he, "what I do I will do alone, nor will I imperil any man's bread. The bread of my brother Malise may be a trifle over-salt to my taste, but to you it is better than none at all. Season your tongue, Roy, enure it. Drink water, dry your eyes, and forget me not."
He kissed him twice and went his way without any more farewells than the boy's snivelling. He never looked behind at Starning demesne, where he had been born and bred and might have followed his father to church, nor sideways at the broad oaks, nor over to the well-tilled fields on either side his road; but rather pricked forward at a nimble pace which tuned to the running of his blood. The blood of a lad sings sharpest in the early morning; the air tingles, the light thrills, all the great day is to come. This lad therefore rode with a song towards the West, following his own shadow, down the deep Starning lanes, through the woods and pastures of Parrox, over the grassy spaces of the Downs, topping the larks in thought, and shining beam for beam against the new-risen sun. The time of his going-out was September of the harvest: a fresh wet air was abroad. He looked at the thin blue of the sky, he saw dew and gossamer lie heavy on the hedge-rows. All his heart laughed. Prosper was merry.
Whither he should go, what find, how fare, he knew not at all. Morgraunt was before him, and of Morgraunt all the country spoke in a whisper. It as far, it was deep, it was dark as night, haunted with the waving of perpetual woods; it lay between the mountains and the sea, a mystery as inviolate as either. In it outlaws, men desperate and hungry, ran wild. It was a den of thieves as well as of wolves. Men, young men too, had ridden in, high-hearted, proud of their trappings, horses, curls, and what not; none had ever seen them come out. They might be roaming there yet, grown old with roaming, and gaunt with the everlasting struggle to kill before they were killed: who could tell? Or they might have struck upon the vein of savage life; they might go roaring and loving and robbing with the beasts—why not? Morgraunt had swallowed them up; who could guess to what wild uses she turned her thralls? That was a place, pardieu! Prosper, very certain that at twenty-three it is a great thing to be hale and astride a horse, felt also that to grow old without having given Morgraunt a chance of killing you young would be an insipid performance. "As soon be a priest!" he would cry, "or, by the Rood, one of those flat-polled monks kept there by the Countess Isabel." Morgraunt then for Prosper, and the West; beyond that—"One thing at a time," thought he, for he was a wise youth in his way, and held to the legend round his arms. Seeing that south of him he could now smell the sea, and beyond him lay Morgraunt, he would look no further till Morgraunt lay below him appeased or subjugate.
A tall and lean youth was Prosper le Gai, fair-haired and sanguine, square-built and square-chinned. He smiled at you; you saw two capital rows of white teeth, two humorous blue eyes; you would think, what a sweet-tempered lad! So in the main he was; but you would find out that he could be dangerous, and that (curiously) the more dangerous he was, the sweeter his temper seemed to be. If you crossed him once, he would stare; twice, he would laugh; three times, you would swear he was your humble servant; but before you could cross him again he would have knocked you down. The next moment he would give you a hand up, and apologize; after that, so far as he was concerned, you might count him your friend for life. The fact is, that he was one of those men who, like kings, require a nominal fealty before they can love you with a whole heart: it is a mere nothing. But somebody, they think, must lead. Prosper always felt so desperately sure it must be he. That was apt to lend a frenzy to his stroke and a cool survey to his eye (as being able to take so much for granted), which made him a good friend and a nasty enemy.
It also made him, as you will have occasion to see, a born fighter. He went, indeed, through those years of his life on tiptoe, as it were, for a fight. He had a light and springing carriage of the head, enough to set his forelock nodding; his eye roved like a sea-bird's; his lips often parted company, for his breath was eager. He had a trick of laughing to himself softly as he went about his business; or else he sang, as he was now singing. These qualities, little habits, affectations, whatever you choose to call them, sound immaterial, but they really point to the one thing that made him remarkable—the curious blend of opposites in him. He blent benevolence with savagery, reflectiveness with activity. He could think best when thought and act might jump together, laugh most quietly when the din of swords and horses drowned the voice, love his neighbour most sincerely when about to cut his throat. The smell of blood, the sight of wounds, or the flicker of blades, made him drunk; but he was one of those who grow steady in their cups. You might count upon him at a pinch. Lastly, he was no fool, and was disposed to credit other people with a balance of wit.
He disliked frippery, yet withal made a brave show in the sun. His plain black mail was covered with a surcoat of white and green linen; over this a narrow baldrick of red bore in gold stitches his device of a hooded falcon, and his legend on a scroll, many times repeated and intercrossed—I bide my time. In his helmet were three red feathers, on his shield the blazon of his house of Gai—On a field sable, a fesse dancettée or, with a mullet for difference. He carried no spear; for a man of his light build the sword was the arm. Thus then, within and without, was Messire Prosper le Gai, youngest son of old Baron Jocelyn, deceased, riding into the heart of the noon, pleased with himself and the world, light-minded, singing of the movement and the road.
Labourers stayed their reaping to listen to him; but there was nothing for them. He sang of adventure. Girls leaned at cottage doorways to watch him down the way. There was nothing for them either, for all he sang of love.
"She who now hath my heart is so in every part;" etc., etc.
The words came tripping as a learnt lesson; but he had never loved a girl, and fancied he never would. Women? Petticoats! For him there was more than one adventure in life. Rather, my lady's chamber was the last place in which he would have looked for adventure.
On the second day of his journey—in a country barren and stony, yet with a hint of the leafy wildernesses to come in the ridges spiked with pines, the cropping of heather here and there, and the ever-increasing solitude of his way—he was set upon by four foot-pads, who thought to beat the life out of his body as easily as boys that of a dog. He asked nothing better than that they should begin; and he asked so civilly that they very soon did. The fancy of glorious youth transformed them into knights-at-arms, and their ashen cudgels into blades. The only pity was that the end came so soon.
His sword dug its first sod, and might have carved four cowards instead of one; but he was no vampire, so thereafter laid about him with the flat of the tool. The three survivors claimed quarter. "Quarter, you rogues!" cried he. "Kindly lend me one of your staves for the purpose." He gave them a drubbing as one horsed his brother in turn, and dropped them, a chapfallen trio, beside their dead. "Now," said he, "take that languid gentleman with you, and be so good for the rest of your journey as to imitate his indifference to strangers. Thus you will have a prosperous passage. Good day to you."
He slept on the scene of his exploit, rose early, rode fast, and by noon was plainly in the selvage of the great woods. The country was split into bleak ravines, a pell-mell of rocks and boulders, and a sturdy crop of black pines between them. An overgrowth of brambles and briony ran riot over all. Prosper rode up a dry river-bed, keeping steadily west, so far as it would serve him; found himself quagged ere a dozen painful miles, floundered out as best he might, and by evening was making good pace over a rolling bit of moorland through which ran a sandy road. It was the highway from Wanmouth to Market Basing and the north, if he had known. Ahead of him a solitary wayfarer, a brown bunch of a friar, from whose hood rose a thin neck and a shag of black hair round his tonsure—like storm-clouds gathering about a full moon—struck manfully forward on a pair of bare feet.
"God be with you, brother gentleman," cried the friar, turning a crab-apple face upwards.
"And with you, my brother, who carry your slippers," Prosper replied.
"Eh, eh, brother! They go softer than steel for a gouty toe."
"Poor gout, Master Friar, I hope, for Saint Francis' peace of mind."
"My gentleman," said the friar, "let me tell you the truth. I am a poor devil out of Lucca, built for matrimony and the chimney corner, as Grandfather Adam was before me. Brother Bonaccord of Outremer they call me in religion, but ill-accord I am in temper, by reason of the air of this accursed land, and a most tempestuous blood of my own. For why! I go to the Dominicans of Wanmouth, supplicating that I am new landed, and have no convent to my name and establishment in the Church. They take me in. Ha! they do that. Look now. 'A sop of bread and wine,' I cry, 'for the love of God.' It is a Catholic food, very comfortable for the stomach. Ha! they give me beer. Beer? Wet death! I am by now as gouty as a cardinal, and my eye is inflamed. I think of the Lucchese—those shafts of joy miscalled women—when I should be thinking of my profession. I am ready as ever to admit two vows, but Saint Paul himself cannot reconcile me to the third. Beer, my friend, beer."
"You will do well enough, friar, if you are going the forest road. You will find no Lucchesan ladies thereabouts."
"I am none so sure, gentleman. There were tales told at the Wanmouth hostel. Do you know anything of a very holy place in these parts, the Abbey of Saint Giles of the Thorn? Black monks, my brother; black as your stallion."
"I think they are white monks," said Prosper, "Bernardines."
"I spoke of the colour of their deeds, young sir," answered Brother Bonaccord.
"I know as little of them as of any monks in Christendom, friar," Prosper said. "But I have seen the Abbot and spoken with him. Richard Dieudonné is his name, well friended by the Countess."
"He is well friended by many ladies, some of account, and some of none at all, by what I hear," said the friar, rather dryly for such a twinkling spirit.
"Ah, with ladies," Prosper put in, "you have me again; for I know less of them than of monks, save that both have petticoats. Your pardon, brother."
"Not a bit, not a bit, brother again," replied the friar. "I admit the hindrance; and could tell you of the advantages if I had the mind. But as to the ladies, suffer me to predict that you will know more of them before you have done."
"I think not," said Prosper. Brother Bonaccord began to laugh.
"They will give you no peace yet awhile," said he. "And let me tell you this, from a man who knows what he is talking about, that if you think to escape them by neglecting them, you are going the devil's way to work. If you wish them to let you alone, speak them fair, drop easily to your knee, be a hand-kisser, a cushion-disposer, a goer on your toes. They will think you a lover and shrug you away. Never do a woman a service as if to oblige her; do it as if to oblige yourself. Then she will believe you her slave. Then you are safe. That is your game, brother."
"You have studied ladies, friar?"
"Ah, ah! I have indeed. They are a wondrous fair book. I know no other. Why should I?"
"Oh, why indeed?" Prosper assented. "For my part, I find other studies more engrossing."
With such talk they went until they reached a little wood, and then disposed of themselves for the night. When Prosper woke next morning the good man had gone. He had left a written message to the effect that, petticoats or none, he had stolen a march on steel, and might be looked for at Malbank.
"I wonder how much stuff for his mind that student of ladies will win at Malbank," laughed Prosper to himself, little knowing, indeed.
CHAPTER II
MORGRAUNT, AND A DEAD KNIGHT
Leaving the high road on his right hand, Prosper struck over the heath towards a solemn beech-wood, which he took to be the very threshold of Morgraunt. As a fact it was no more than an outstretched finger of its hand, by name Cadnam Thicket. He skirted this place, seeking an entry, but found nothing to suit him for an hour or more. Then at last he came to a gap in the sandy bank, and saw that a little mossy ride ran straight in among the trees. He put his horse at the gap, and was soon cantering happily through the wood. Thus he came short upon an adventure. The path ran ahead of him in a tapering vista, but just where it should meet in a point it broadened out suddenly so as to make a double bay. The light fell splashing upon this cleared space, and he saw what he saw.
This was a tall lady, richly dressed in some gauzy purple stuff, dragging a dead man by the heels, and making a very bad business of it. She was dainty to view, her hands and arms shone like white marble; but apart from all this it was clear to Prosper that she lacked the mere strength for the office she had proposed herself. The dead man was not very tall, but he was too tall for the lady. The roughness of the ground, the resistance of the underwood, the incapacity of the performers, made the procession unseemly.
Prosper, forgetting Brother Bonaccord, quickened his horse to a gallop, and was soon up with the toiling lady. She stopped when she heard him coming, stood up to wait for him, quick-breathing and a little flushed, and never took her eyes off him.
It was clearly a time for discretion: so much she signalled from her brown eyes, which were watchful, but by no means timid. He remembered afterwards that they had been apt to fall easily into set stares, and thus to give her a bold look which seemed to invite you to be bold also. But though he could not see this now, and though he had no taste for women, it was certain she was handsome in a profuse way. She had a broad full bust; her skin, dazzling white at the neck, ran into golden russet before it reached the burnt splendour of her cheeks; her mouth, rather long and curved up at the corners, had lips rich and crimson; of which, however, the upper was short to a fault, and so curled back as to give her, a pettish or fretful look. Her dark hair, which was plentiful and drawn low over her ears into a heavy knot at the nape of her neck, was dressed within a fine gold net. Her arms were bare to the elbow, large and snowy white; from her fingers gems and gold flashed at him. Prosper, who knew nothing whatever about it, judged her midway between thirty and forty. Such was the lady; the man he had no chance of overlooking, for the other had dropped her handkerchief upon his face before she left him. "Sir," she now said, in a smooth and distinguishable voice, when Prosper had saluted her, "you may do me a great service if you will, which is to carry this dead man to his grave in the wood."
"By the faith I have," Prosper replied, "I will help you all I can. But when we have buried him you shall tell me how he came by his death, and how it is that his grave is waiting for him."
"I can tell you that at once," she said quickly; "I have but just dug it with a mattock I was so lucky as to find by a stopped earth on the bank yonder. The rest I will gladly acquaint you with by and by. But first let us be rid of him."
Prosper dismounted and went to take up his burden. First of all, however, he deliberately removed the handkerchief and looked it in the face. The dead man lay stiff and staring, with open eyes and a wry mouth. Hands and face were livid, a light froth had gathered on his lips. He looked to have suffered horribly—as much in mind as body: the agony must have bitten deep into him for the final peace of death never to have come. Now Prosper knew very little of death as yet, save that he had an idea that he himself would never come to endure it; but he knew enough to be sure that neither battle nor honour had had any part here. The man had been well-dressed in brown and tawny velvet, was probably handsome in a sharp, foreign sort. There was a ring upon his finger, a torn badge upon his left breast, with traces of a device in white threads which could not be well made out. Puzzling over it, Prosper thought to read three white forms on it—water-bougets, perhaps, or billets—he could not be sure. The whole affair seemed to him to hold some shameful secret behind: he thought of poison, or the just visitation of God; but then he thought of the handsome lady, and was ashamed to see that such a conclusion must involve her in the mess. Pitying, since he could not judge, he lifted the body in his arms and followed the lady's lead through the brushwood. At the end of some two hundred yards or more of battling with the boughs, she stopped, and pointed to a pit, with a mattock lying on the heaped earth close by. "There is the grave," she said.
"The grave is a shallow grave," said Prosper.
"It is deeper than he was," quoth the lady. There was a ring in this rather ugly to hear, as all scorn is out of tune with a dead presence. You might as well be contemptuous of a baby. But Prosper was no fool, to think at the wrong time. He laid the body down in the grave, and busied himself to compose it into some semblance of the rest there should be in that bed at least. This was hard to be done, since it was as stiff as a board, and took time. The lady grew impatient, fidgeted about, walked up and down, could not stand for a moment: but she said nothing. At last Prosper stood up by the side of the grave, having done his best.
"I am no priest," says he, "God knows; but I cannot put a man's body into the earth without in some sort commending his soul. I must do what I can, and you must pardon an indifferent advocate, as God will."
"If you are advised by me," said the lady, "you will leave that affair where it is. The man was worthless."
"We cannot measure his worth, madam: we have no tools for that. The utmost we can do is to bury part of him, and pray for the other part."
"You speak as a priest whom I had thought a soldier," said she with some asperity. "If you are what you now seem, I will remind you of a saying which should be familiar—Let the dead bury their dead."
"As I live by bread," Prosper cried out, "I will commend this man's soul whither it is going."
"Then I will not listen to you, sir," she answered in a pale fume. "I cannot listen to you."
Prosper grew extremely polite. "Madam, there is surely no need," he said. "If you cannot you will not. Moreover, I should in any case address myself elsewhere."
He had folded the dead man's arms over his breast, and shut his eyes. He had wiped his lips. The thing seemed more at peace. So he crossed himself and began, In nomine patris, etc., and then recited the Paternoster. This almost exhausted his stock, though it did not satisfy his aspirations. His words burst from him. "O thou pitiful dead!" he cried out, "go thou where Pity is, in the hope some morsels may be justly thine. Rest thou there, who wast not restful in thine end, and quitted not willingly thy tenement; rest thou there till thou art called. And when thou art called to give an account of thyself and thine own works, may that which men owe thee be remembered with that which thou dost owe! Per Christum dominum," etc.
He bowed his head, crossed himself very piously; then stood still, smiling gently upon the man he knew nothing of, save that he had been young and had lost his race. He did not see the lady; she was, however, near by, not looking at the man at the grave, but first at Prosper and then at the ground. Her fingers were twisting and tangling together, and her bosom, restless as the sea, rose and fell fitfully. She was pale, save at the lips; like Prosper she smiled, but the smile was stiff. Prosper set to work with the shovel and soon filled up the grave. Then he turned to the lady.
"And now, madam, we will talk a little, if you please." He had a cool and level voice; yet it came upon her as if it could have but one answer.
She looked at him for some seconds without reply. For his part, Prosper had kept his eyes fixed equally on her; hers fell first.
She coloured a little as she said-"Very willingly. You have done me a service for which I am very much in your debt. You shall command me as you will, and find me ready to recompense you with what I have." She stopped as if to judge the weight of her words, then went on slowly—"I know not, indeed, how could I deny you anything."
Prosper could have seen, if he would, the quickened play of her breath.
"Let us go into the open," said he, "and find my horse. Then you shall tell me whence you are, and whither I may speed you, and how safeliest—with other things proper to be known."
They went together. "My lord," said she then, "my lodging is far from here and ill to come by. Nevertheless, I know of a hermitage hard at hand where we could rest a little, and thereafter we could find the way to my house. Will you come with me thither?"
"Whither?" asked Prosper.
"Ah, the hermitage, or wheresoever you will."
Prosper looked steadily at her.
"Tell me the name and condition of the dead man," said he.
"Ranulf de Genlis, a knight of Brittany."
"The badge on his breast was of our blazonry," said Prosper, half to himself, "and he looked to have been of this side the Southern Sea."
"Do you doubt my word, Sir Knight?"
"Madam, I do not question it. Will you tell, me how he came by his death?"
"I was hunting very early in the morning with my esquires and ladies, and by ill-hap lost them and my way. After many wanderings in search of either, I encountered this man now dead, and inquired news of him. He held me some time in talk, delayed me with sham diligence, and at last and, suddenly professed an ardent love for me. I was frightened, for I was alone in the wood with him, in a glade not far from here. And it seemed that I had reason, since from words he went on to force and clamour and violence. I had almost succumbed—I know not how to hint at the fate which threatened me, or guess how long I could have struggled against it. He had closed with me, he held me in a vice; then all at once he loosed hold of me and shuddered. Some seizure or sudden stroke of judgment overtook him, I suppose, so that he fell and lay writhing, with a foam on his lips, as you saw. You may judge," she added, after waiting for some comment from Prosper, which did not come, "you may judge whether this is a pleasant tale for me to tell, and whether I should tell it willingly to any man. For what one attempted against me another might also try—and not fail."
She stopped and glanced at her companion. The manner in each of them was changed; the lady was not the scornful beauty she had seemed, while Prosper's youth was dry within him. She seemed a suppliant, he a judge, deliberate. Such a story from such an one would have set him on fire an hour ago; but now his words came sharply from him, whistling like a shrill wind.
"The grave was dug overnight," was what he said.
The lady started and paled. Then she drew a deep breath, and said—"Do you again doubt my word, sir?"
"I do not question it," he replied as before. It is a fact that he had noticed the turned earth by the pit. There was gossamer upon it, but that said little. Rabbits had been there also, and that said everything.
The lady said nothing more, and in silence they went on until they reached a fork in the path. Prosper stopped here. One path led north, the other west.
"Here is my road," said he, pointing to the west.
"The hermitage is close by, my lord," urged the lady in a low voice. "I pray my lord to rest him there."
"That I cannot do," says he.
She affected indignation. "Is it then in the honour of a knight to desert a lonely lady? I am learning strange doctrine, strange chivalry! Farewell, sir. You are young. Maybe you will learn with years that when a lady stoops to beg it is more courtly to forestall her."
Prosper stood leaning on his shield. "The knight's honour," he said, "is in divers holds—in his lady's, in God's, and in the king's. These three fly not always the same flag, but two at least of them should be in pact."
"Ah," said she slyly, "ah, Sir Discreet, I see that you have the lady first."
Prosper grew graver. "I said 'his lady,'" he repeated.
"And could not I, for such service as yours, be your lady, fair sir?" she asked in a very low and troubled voice. "At least I am here—alone—in the wood—and at your mercy."
Prosper looked straight in front of him, grave, working his mouth. Those who knew him would have gone by the set of his chin. He may have been thinking of Brother Bonaccord's prediction, or of the not very veiled provocation of the lady's remarkable candour. There grew to be a rather bleak look in his face, something blenched his blue eyes. He turned sharply upon the woman, and his voice was like a frost.
"Having slain one man this day," he said, "I should recommend you to be wary how you tread with another."
She stared open-mouthed at him for a full minute and a half. Then, seeing he never winked or budged, she grew frightened and piteous, threw her arms up, turned, and fled up the north path, squealing like a wounded rabbit.
Prosper clapped-to his spurs and made after her with his teeth grinding together. Very soon, however, he pulled up short. "The man is dead. Let her go for this present. And I am not quite sure. I will bide my time."
That was the motto of the Gais—"I bide my time." He was, nevertheless, perfectly sure in his private mind; but then he was always perfectly sure, and recognized that it was a weakness of his. So the woman went her way, and he his for that turn …
Riding forward carelessly, with a loose rein, he slept that night in the woods. Next day he rode fast and long without meeting a living soul, and so came at last into Morgraunt Forest, where the trees shut out the light of the day, and very few birds sing. He entered the east purlieus in the evening of his fifth day from Starning, and slept in a rocky valley. Tall black trees stood all round him, the vanguards of the forest host.
CHAPTER III
HOLY THORN AND HOLY CHURCH
In South Morgraunt stands Holy Thorn, more properly the Abbey of Saint Giles of Holy Thorn, a broad and fair foundation, one of the two set up in the forest by the Countess Isabel, Dowager of March and Bellesme, Countess of Hauterive and Lady of Morgraunt in her own right. Where the Wan river makes a great loop, running east for three miles, and west again for as many before it drives its final surge towards the Southern Sea, there stands Holy Thorn, Church and Convent, watching over the red roofs of Malbank hamlet huddled together across the flood. Here are green water-meadows and good corn-lands, the abbey demesne; here also are the strips of tillage which the tenants hold; here the sluices which head up the river for the Abbey mills, make thunderous music all day long. Over this cleared space and over some leagues of the virgin forest, the Abbot of Saint Thorn has sac and soc, tholl and theam, catch-a-thief-in, catch-a-thief-out, as well as other sovereign prerogatives, all of which he owes to the regret and remorse of the Countess Isabel over the death of her first husband and only lover, Fulk de Bréauté. Further north, in Mid-Morgraunt, is Gracedieu, her other foundation—equally endowed, but holding white nuns instead of white monks.
Now it so happened that as Prosper le Gai entered the purlieus of Morgraunt, the Countess Isabel sat in the Abbey parlour of Saint Thorn, knitting her fine brows over a business of the Abbot's, no less than the granting of a new charter of pit and gallows, pillory and tumbril to him and his house over the villeins of Malbank, and the whole fee and soke. The death of these unfortunates, or the manner of it, was of little moment; but the Countess, having much power, was jealous how she lent it. She sat now, therefore, in the Abbot's great chair, and before her stood the Abbot himself, holding in his hands the charter fairly written out on parchment, with the twisted silk of three colours ready to receive her seal. It was exactly this which she was not very ready to give, for though she knew nothing of his villeins, she knew much of the Abbot, and was of many minds concerning him. There was yet time; their colloquy was in secret; but now she tapped with her foot upon the stool, and the Abbot watched her narrowly. He was a tall and personable man, famous for his smile, stout and smooth, his skin soft as a woman's, his robe, his ring, his cross and mere slippers all in accord.
At length, says he, "Madam, for the love of the Saints, but chiefly for Mary's love; to the glory of God and of Saint Giles of Holy Thorn; to the ease of his monks and the honour of the Church, I beseech your Ladyship this small boon."
The clear-cold eyes of the Countess Isabel looked long at him before she said—"Do I then show love to the Saints and give God honour, Lord Abbot, by helping you swing your villeins? Pit and gallows, pillory and tumbril! You go too far."
"Dear lady," said he, "I go no further, if I have them, than my Sisters of Gracedieu. That hedged community of Christ's brides hath all these commodities and more, even the paramount privilege of Sanctuary, which is an appanage of the very highest in the Holy Fold. And I must consider it as scarcely decent, as (by the Mass) not seemly at all, that your Holy Thorn, this sainted sprig of your planting, should lack the power to prick. Our people, madam, do indeed expect it. It is not much. Nay!"—for he saw his Lady frown and heard her toe-taps again—"indeed, it is not much. A little pit for your female thief to swim at large, for your witch and bringer-in of hell's ordinances; a decent gallows a-top for your proper male rascal; a pillory for your tenderer blossom of sin while he qualify for an airy crown, or find space for repentance and the fruits of true contrition; lastly, a persuasive tumbril, a close lover for your incorrigible wanton girls—homely chastisement such as a father Abbot may bestow, and yet wear a comely face, and yet be loved by those he chasteneth. Madam, is this too much for so great a charge as ours? We of Holy Thorn nurture the good seed with scant fortune, being ridden down by evil livers, deer-stealers, notorious persons, scandalous persons. A little pit, therefore! a little limber gallows!"
But the Countess mused with her hand to her chin, by no means persuaded. She was still a young woman, and a very lonely one; her great prerogatives (which she took seriously) tired her to death, but the need of exercising them through other people was worst of all. Now she said doubtfully, "I have no reason in especial to trust you, Abbot."
The Abbot, who knew better than she how true this was, bit his lip and remained silent. He was a very comely man and leaned much to persuasion, particularly with women. He was always his own audience: the check, therefore, amounted to exposure, almost put him to open shame. The Countess went on to ask, who in particular of his villeins he had dread of, who was turbulent, who a deer-stealer, who notorious as a witch or wise woman, who wanton and a scandalous liver? And here the Abbot was apt with his names. There was Red Sweyn, half an outlaw already, and by far too handy with his hunting-knife; there was Pinwell, as merry a little rogue as ever spoiled for a cord. There were Rogerson and Cutlaw; there was Tom Sibby, the procuress. Mald also, a withered malignant old wife, who had once blighted a year's increase by her dealing with the devil. Here was stuff for gallows, pit and pillory, all dropping-ripe for the trick. For tumbril, he went on (watching his adversary like a cat), "who so proper as black-haired Isoult, witch, and daughter of a witch, called by men Isoult la Desirous—and a gaunt, half-starved, loose-legged baggage she is," he went on; "reputed of vile conversation for all the slimness of her years—witch, and a witch's brat."
He looked sideways at the great lady as he spoke of this creature, and saw that all was going exactly as he would wish it. He had not been the Countess' confessor for nothing, nor had he learnt in vain the story of her secret marriage with Fulk de Bréauté, and of the murder of this youth on Spurnt Heath one blowy Bartlemy Eve. And for this reason he had dared to bring the name of Isoult into his catalogue of rogues, that he knew his woman, and all woman-kind; how they hate most in their neighbours that which they are tenderest of in themselves. Let there be no mistake here. The Countess had been no luxurious liver, though a most unhappy one. The truth is that, beautiful woman as she still was, she had been a yet more beautiful girl, Countess of Hauterive in her own right, and as such betrothed to the great Earl Roger of March and Bellesme. Earl Roger, who was more than double her age, went out to fight; she stayed at home, in the nursery or near it, and Fulk de Bréauté came to make eyes. These he made with such efficacy that Isabel lost her heart first and her head afterwards, wedded Fulk in secret, bore him a child, and was the indirect means of his stabbing by the Earl's men as he was riding through the dark over Spurnt Heath. The child was given to the Abbot's keeping (whence it promptly and conveniently vanished), the Countess was married to the Earl; then the Earl died. Whereupon she, still young, childless so far as she could learn, and possessed of so much, founded her twin abbeys in Morgraunt to secure peace for the soul of Fulk and her own conscience. This will suffice to prove that the Abbot had some grounds for his manoeuvring. The breaking of her troth to the Earl she held to make her an adulteress; the stabbing of Fulk by the Earl to prove her a murderess. There was neither mercy nor discernment in these reproaches. She believed herself a wanton when she had been but a lover. For no sin, therefore, had she so little charity as for that which the Abbot had imputed to his candidate for the tumbril. Isoult la Desirous it was who won the charter, as the Abbot had intended she should, to serve his end and secure her own according to his liking.
For the charter was sealed and seisin delivered in the presence of Dom Galors, almoner of the Abbey, of Master Porges, seneschal of High March, and of one or two mesne lords of those parts. Then the Countess went to bed; and at this time Prosper le Gai was also lying in the fringes of Morgraunt, asleep on his shield with his red cloak over him, having learned from a hind whom he met on the hill that at Malbank Saint Thorn he would find hospitality, and that his course must lie in such and such a direction.
CHAPTER IV
DOM GALORS
Next day, as soon as the Countess had departed for High March, the Abbot Richard called Dom Galors, his almoner, into the parlour and treated him in a very friendly manner, making him sit down in his presence, and putting fruit and wine before him. This Galors, who I think merits some scrutiny, was a bullet-headed, low-browed fellow, too burly for his monkish frock (which gave him the look of a big boy in a pinafore), with the jowl of a master-butcher, and a sullen slack mouth. His look at you, when he raised his eyes from the ground, had the hint of brutality—as if he were naming a price—which women mistake for mastery, and adore. But he very rarely crossed eyes with any one; and with the Abbot he had gained a reputation for astuteness by seldom opening his lips and never shutting his ears. He was therefore a most valuable book of reference, which told nothing except to his owner. With all this he was a great rider and loved hunting. His Sursum Corda was like a view-holloa, and when he said, Ite missa est, you would have sworn he was crying a stag's death instead of his Saviour's. In matters of gallantry his reputation was risky: it was certain that he had more than a monk, and suspected that he had less than a gentleman should have. The women of Malbank asseverated that venison was not his only game. That may or may not have been. The man loved power, and may have warred against women for lack of something more difficult of assault. He was hardly the man to squander himself at the bidding of mere appetite; he was certainly no glutton for anything but office. Still, he was not one to deny himself the flutter of the caught bird in the hand. He had, like most men who make themselves monks by calculation, a keen eye for a girl's shape, carriage, turn of the head, and other allies of the game she loves and always loses: such things tickled his fancy when they came over his path; he stooped to take them, and let them dangle for remembrances, as you string a coin on your chain to remind you at need of a fortunate voyage. At this particular moment he was tempted, for instance, to catch and let dangle. The chance light of some shy eye had touched and then eluded him. I believe he loved the chase more than the quarry. He knew he must go a-hunting from that moment in which the light began to play will-o'-the-wisp; for action was his meat and dominion what he breathed. If you wanted to make Galors dangerous you had to set him on a vanishing trail. The girl had been a fool to run, but how was she to know that?
To him now spoke the Abbot Richard after this fashion. "Galors," he said, "I will speak to you now as to my very self, for if you are not myself you may be where I sit some day. A young monk who is almoner already may go far, especially when he is young in religion, but in years ripe. If you prove to be my other self, you shall go as far as myself can push you, Galors. Rest assured that the road need not stop at a mitred abbey. In the hope, then, that you may go further, and I with you, it is time that I speak my full mind. We have our charter, as you have seen—and at what cost of sweat and urgency, who can tell so surely as I? But there, we have it: a great weapon, a lever whereby we may raise Holy Thorn to a height undreamed of by the abbots of this realm, and our two selves (perched on the top of Holy Thorn) yet higher. Yet this charter, gotten for God's greater glory (as He knoweth who readeth hearts!), may not work its appointed way without an application which poor and frail men might scarcely dare for any less object. There is abroad, Galors, dear brother, a most malignant viper, lurking, as I may say, in the very bosom of Holy Church; warmed there, nesting there, yet fouling the nest, and grinding her tooth that she may strike at the heart of us, and shiver what hath been so long a-building up. Of that viper you, Galors, are the chosen instrument—you and the charter—to draw the tooth."
The Abbot spoke in a low voice, and was breathless; it was not hard to see that he was uncommonly in earnest. Galors turned over in his mind all possible plots against an Abbey's peaceful being—tale-bearing to the Archbishop, a petition for a Papal Legate, a foreshore trouble, a riot among the fishermen of Wanmouth, some encroachment by the ragged brethren of Francis and Dominic—and dismissed them all as not serious enough to lose breath about.
"Who is your viper, father?" was what he said.
"It is the girl Isoult of Matt-o'-the-Moor; Isoult whom they call La Desirous," replied his spiritual father. The heart of Galors gave a hot jump; he knew the girl well enough—too well for her, not well enough yet for himself. It was precisely to win the woeful beauty of her that he had set his snares and unleashed his dogs. Did the Abbot know anything? Impossible; his reference forbad the fear. Was the girl something more than a dark woodland elf, a fairy, haggard and dishevelled, whose white shape shining through rags had made his blood stir? The mask of his face safeguarded him through this maze of surmise; nothing out of the depths of him was ever let to ruffle that dead surface. He commanded his voice to ask, How should he find such a girl? "For," said he, "in Malbank girls and boys swarm like dies on a sunny wall." The deceit implied was gross, yet the Abbot took it in his haste.
"Thus you shall know her, Galors," he said. "A slim girl, somewhat under the common size of the country, and overburdened with a curtain of black hair; and a sullen, brooding girl who says little, and that nakedly and askance; and in a pale face two grey eyes a-burning."
All this Galors knew better than his Abbot. Now he asked, "But what is her offence, father? For even with power of life and member the law of the land has force, that neither man nor maid, witch nor devil, may be put lightly away."
For this "put away" the Abbot thanked him with a look, and added, that she was suspected of witchcraft, seeing Mald her mother was a notorious witch, and the wench herself the byword and scorn of all the country-side. Sorcery, therefore, or incontinence—"whichever you will," said he. "Any stick will do to beat a dog with."
Galors had much to say, but said nothing. There was something behind all this, he was sure, knowing his man by heart. He judged the Abbot to be bursting with news, and watched him pace the parlour now struggling with it. Sure enough the murder was out before he had taken a dozen turns. "Now, Galors," he said, in a new and short vein, "listen to me. I intend to do what I should have done fourteen years ago, when I held this girl in my two hands. I let slip my chance, and blame myself for it; but having slipt it indeed, it was gone until this charter of ours brought it back fresh. You know how we stand here, you and I and the Convent-all of us at the disposition of her ladyship. A great lady, my friend, and a young one, childless, it is said, without heir of her own. Morgraunt may go to the Crown or Holy Thorn and Gracedieu may divide it."
"She may marry again," put in Galors.
"She is twice a widow," the Abbot snapped him up, and gave his first shock. "She is twice a widow, once against her will. She will never marry again."
"Then, my father," said Galors, "we should be safe as against the Crown, which the Countess probably loves as little as the rest of her kind."
"The Countess Isabel," said the Abbot, speaking like an oracle, "is not childless."
Galors understood.
"Do not misunderstand me in this, Brother Galors," said the Abbot. "We will do the girl no unnecessary harm. We will slip her out of the country if we can get any one to take her. Put it she shall be married or hanged." Galors again thought that he understood. The Abbot went on. "There shall be no burning, though that were deserved; not even tumbril, though that were little harm to so hot a piece. There shall be, indeed, that which the Countess believes to have been already-a sally at dawn and a flitting. There will then be no harm done. The tithing will be free of a sucking witch, and the heart of our benefactress turned from the child of her sin (for such it was to break troth to the earl, and sin she deems it) to the child of her spiritual adoption, to wit, our Holy Thorn." He added "You are in my obedience, Galors. I love you much, and will see to your advancement. You have a great future. But, my brother, remember this. Between a woman's heart and her conscience there can be no fight. There is, rather, a triumph, wherein the most glorious of the' victor's spoils is that same conscience, shackled and haled behind the car. That you should know, and on that you must act. Remember you are fighting for Saint Giles of Holy Thorn, and be speedy while the new tool still burns in your hand."
So with his blessing he dismissed Dom Galors for the day.
