The Forest Lovers

M >> Maurice Hewlett >> The Forest Lovers

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The argument, which, holding as I do steadfastly with Socrates, I must
follow whithersoever it runs, assures me that charcoal-burning is a
grimy trade, and the charcoal-burners' Jack the blackest of the party;
for if he be not black with coal-smoke, he will be black and blue with
his drubbings. Isoult, in the shreds of Roy, grew, you may judge, as
black and uncombed as any of the crew. She had not a three-weeks'
beard, but her hair began to grow faster; the roses in her cheek were
in flower under the soot. Her hair curled and waved about her neck,
her eyes shone and were limpid, her roses bloomed unawares; she grew
sinewy and healthy in the kind forest airs. She worked very hard, ate
very little, was as often beaten as not. All this made for health; in
addition, she nursed a gentle thought in her heart, which probably
accounted for as much as the open air. This was the news of Prosper's
return to High March, and of the fine works he performed there in the
hall. It came to her in a roundabout way through some pony drovers,
who had it from Market Basing. The pietist at March, who made the
image of Saint Isolda, may have spread the news. At any rate it came,
it seeded in her heart, and as she felt the creeping of the little
flower she blushed. It told her that Prosper had avenged her--more,
had owned her for his. This last grain of news it was which held her
seed. If he owned her abroad--amazing thought!--it must be that he
loved her. As she so concluded, a delicate, throbbing fire fluttered
in her side, and stole up to burn unreproved and undetected in her
cheeks. Her reasoning was no reasoning, of course; but she knew
nothing of knightly honour or the dramatic sense, so it seemed
incontrovertible. At this discovery she was as full of shame as if she
had done a sin. A sin indeed it seemed almost to be in her, that one
so high should stoop to one so low, and she not die at once.
Sacrilege--should not one die rather than suffer a sacrilege to be
thrust upon one? So Clytie may have felt, and Oreithyia, when they
discerned the God in the sun, or wild embraces of the wind.

Yet the certainty--for that it was--coincided with her lurking
suspicion of the virtue lying in her own strong love. It made that
suspicion hardy; it budded, as I have said, and bore a flower. She
could feel and fondle her ring again, and talk to it at night. "Lie
snug," she would say, "lie close. He will come again and put thee in
place, for such love as mine, which endureth all things, is not to be
gainsaid." Thus she grew healthy as she grew full of heart, and gained
sleek looks for any who had had eyes to see them.

Luckily for her, at present there was none. It is providence for the
earth-born that their mother's lap soon takes furrows in which they
may run. The charcoal-burners' life was no exception: hard work from
dawn to dusk, food your only recreation, sleep your only solace. The
weather is no new thing to you, to gape at and talk about. As well
might the gentry talk about the joys of their daily bath. You have no
quarrels, do no sins, for you have neither women nor strong waters in
your forest tents. And if you knew how, you would thank God that you
are incapable of thought, since a thinking vegetable were a lost
vegetable. To think is to hope, and to hope is to sin against
religion, which says, God saw that it was good. More than any
reflecting man your earth-born believes in God, or the devil. It comes
to much the same, if you will but work it out. He is a deist, his God
an autocrat.

Isoult, the demure little freethinker, had another secret god--him of
the iris wings. She loved, she was loved; she dared hope to be happy.
So far of the earth as to be humble, so far from it as to hope, she
grew in the image of her god and was lovely; she remembered the
precepts of her mother earth and was patient. Whenever she could she
washed herself in the forest brooks; so woods and running water saw in
her the blossoming rod. At these times she could have hymned her god
had she known how; but Prosper had only taught her what his priests
had taught him, that this was a world where every one is for himself,
and to him that asks shall be given. To him that asks twice should be
twice given. The consequence is that life is a great hunting, with no
time for thanksgiving unalloyed. You must end your _Gloria_ in a
whining petition. Having, however, nothing to ask, she sat at these
times in ecstasy inarticulate, her rags laid by for a season, looking
long and far through the green lattice towards the blue, bent upon
exploration of the joyful mysteries. A beam of the sun would fall upon
her to warm her pale beauty and make it glow, the wind of mid-June
play softly in her hair, and fold her in a child's embrace. Then again
she would toy with her ring. "Ring, ring, he will come again, and put
thee where thou shouldest be. Meantime lie still until he lie there
instead of thee."

July heats stilled the forest leaves; the coal-stacks grew apace. The
charcoal-burners' Jack had hair to his waist and had to hide it in his
cap; the charcoal-burners' beards were six weeks old. There was talk
of nights of a market in Hauterive, where Falve's mother kept a
huckster's shop.

CHAPTER XXII

GALORS CONQUAESTOR

Prosper's aim on leaving High March after his gests of arms had been
Goltres, for there he had believed to find Galors. But Galors was a
man of affairs just now who had gone far since Isoult overheard his
plans. His troop of some sixty spears had grown like the avalanche it
resembled. For what the avalanche does not crush it turns to crushing.
Galors harrying had won harriers. In fact, he headed within a
fortnight of his coming into North Morgraunt a force which was the
largest known since Earl Roger of Bellesme had made a quietness like
death over those parts. By the time of Prosper's exodus, that is by
mid-May, his tactical situation was this--it is as well to be precise.
He had Hauterive and Waisford. Goltres was in the hollow of his hand.
If he could get Wanmeeting he would be master of the whole of the
north forest, west of Wan. Here would be enormous advantage. By a
forced march and a night surprise he might get Market Basing, on the
east side of the river; and if he did that he would cut the Countess
of Hauterive practically off the whole of Morgraunt. Going further, so
far as to cut her off March, whence she drew her supplies, she would
be at his mercy. He could pen her in High March like a sheep, and make
such terms as a sheep and a butcher were likely to arrange.

For, strategically, North Morgraunt would be his; with that to the
good South Morgraunt could await his leisure. The key will show how
the Hauterive saltire stood with the Galors pale.

Now the whole of this pretty scheming was based upon one simple
supposed fact, that the Countess's daughter was then actually in her
mother's castle. Galors knew quite well that he could not hold
Morgraunt indefinitely without the lady. Even Morgraunt was part of
the kingdom; and though rumour of the King's troubles came down, with
wild talk of Aquardente from the north and Bottetort from the south-
west combining to slaughter their sovereign, the King's writ would
continue to run though the king that writ it were under the earth: it
was unlikely that a shire would be let fall to a nameless outlaw when
five hundred men out of Kings-hold could keep it where it was. But a
name would come by marriage as well as by birth. All his terms with
his penned Countess would have been, amnesty and the heiress.

At first he prospered in everything he undertook. Waisford and
Hauterive were under-garrisoned, and fell. Goltres, very remote, was
unimportant except as a base. The Countess at this time, if not
engaged philandering with Prosper, was troubled on the northern
borders. As a matter of fact Galors had been able to secure that no
messengers to High March should cross Wan, and that none from it,
having once crossed, should ever re-cross. This was the state of
affairs when Prosper passed the edge of the High March demesnes and
took the road for Wanmeeting and Goltres.

He had not gone far out of the Countess's borders before he saw what
had happened. The country had been wasted by fire and sword: cottages
burnt out, trampled gardens, green cornlands black and bruised--
desolation everywhere, but no life. Death he did come upon. In one
cottage he saw two children dead and bound together in the doorway; at
a four-went way a man and woman hung from an ash-tree; of a farmstead
the four walls stood, with a fire yet burning in the rick-yard; in the
duck-pond before the house the bodies of the owners were floating amid
the scum of green weed. That night he slept by a roadside shrine, and
next morning betimes took the lonely track again. Considering all this
as he rode, he reached a sign-post which told him that here the ways
of Wanmeeting and Waisford parted company. "Wanmeeting is my plain
road," thought he, "but plainer still it is that of Galors--and not of
Galors alone. I think the longer going is like to be my shorter. I
will go to Waisford." He did so. After a patch of woodland was a sandy
stretch of road fringed with heather and a few pines. A man was
sitting here, by whose side lay his dead young wife with a
handkerchief over her face. Prosper asked him what all this misery
meant; for at High March, he added, they had no conception of it.

The man turned his gaunt eyes upon him. "We call it the hand of God,
sir."

"Do you though? I see only the hand of man or the devil," said
Prosper.

"May be you are in the right, Messire. Only we think that if God is
Almighty He might stay all this havoc if He would. And since He stays
it not we say He winks at it, which is as good as a nod any day."

"You are out, sir," said Prosper. "As I read, God hath given men wits,
and suffers the devil in order that they may prove them. If they fail
in the test, and of two ways choose the wrong, is God to be blamed?"

"Some of us have no such choice. It is hard that the battle of the
wits should be over our acres, and that our skulls should be cracked
to prove which of them be the tougher."

"God is mighty enough to make laws and too mighty to break them, as I
understand the matter," said Prosper. "But who, under God or devil,
hath done this wrong?"

"Sir," said the man, "it is the Lord of Hauterive (so styled), who
hath taken Waisford and destroyed it with the country for ten miles
round about it, and killed all the women who could not run fast
enough, and such of the men as did not run to him. And this he did
upon the admirable conceit that the men, having no women of their own,
would take pains that they should not be singular in the country, but
full of lessons in butchery, would become butchers themselves. It
seems that there was ground for the opinion. As for me, I should
certainly have been killed had he found me, for butchering is not to
my taste--or was not then. But I was on a journey, and came back to
find my house in ashes and my new wife, what you see."

"But who," cried Prosper, "in the name of the true Lord, is your lord
of Hauterive? And how dare he take upon himself the style and fee of
the Countess of Hauterive, Bellesme, and March? I have no reason to
love that lady, but I thought all Morgraunt was hers."

"Morgraunt is hers, and Hauterive, and all the country from March unto
Wanmouth," said the countryman. "But this lord is an outlaw who was
once a monk down at Malbank in the south; and hath renounced his flock
and gathered together a crew as unholy as himself. And the story goes
that he did it all for the sake of a girl who scorned him. Now then he
holdeth Hauterive as his tower of strength, has harried Waisford, and
threatens Wanmeeting town, giving out that he will edge in the lady,
besiege High March itself, wed the Countess, and have the girl (when
he finds her) as his concubine. So he will be lord of all, and God of
no account so far as I can see. And the name of this almighty scamp,
Messire-"

"Is Galors de Born," put in Prosper.

The countryman got up and faced him.

"Are you a fellow of his?" he asked. "For, look you, though I must die
for it, I will die killing."

"Friend," Prosper said gently, "the man is my enemy whom I had thought
disabled longer by a split throat which he got of me. I see I have yet
to deal with him. Tell me now where he is."

"I can tell you no more," said the fellow, "than that his tower is in
Hauterive. He hath guards along the river and a post at Waisford. We
shall have trouble to cross the water. He is said to be for
Wanmeeting; but I know he has High March in his eye, because the girl
he wants is believed to be there. He has been here also, as you see,
God damn him."

"God hath damned him," said Prosper, "but the work is in my hands."

"You will need more than your hands for the business, my gentleman. He
hath five hundred spears."

"The battle is between his and mine nevertheless."

"Then there is the Golden Knight, as they call him, come from hell
knows where; not a fighter but a schemer; and swift, my word! And
cruel as the cold. Will you tackle him?"

"I shall indeed," said Prosper. "Farewell, I am for my luck at
Waisford."

"I would come with you if I might," said the man slowly.

"Come then. Two go better than one against five hundred."

"Let me bury my pretty dead and I am yours, Messire."

"Ah, I will help you there if I may," Prosper replied.

They dug a shallow grave and laid in it the body of the young girl.
Prosper never saw her face, nor did her husband dare to look again on
what he had covered up. Prosper said the prayers; but the other lay on
his face on the grass, and got up tearless. Then they set off.

Five miles below Waisford they swam the river without any trouble from
Galors' outposts: a wary canter over turf brought them to the flank of
the hill; they climbed it, and from the top could see the Wan valley
and what should be the town. It was a heap of stones, scorched and
shapeless. The church tower still stood for a mockery, its conical cap
of shingles had fallen in, its vane stuck out at an angle. Prosper,
whose eyes were good, made out a flag-staff pointing the
perpendicular. It had a flag, _Party per pale argent and sable_.
A dun smoke hung over the litter.

"We shall do little good there," said he; "we are some days too late.
We will try Wanmeeting."

Agreed. They fetched a wide detour to the north-west, climbed the long
ridge of rock which binds Hauterive to the place of their election,
and made way along the overside of it, taking to cover as much as they
could. By six o'clock in the evening they were as near as they dared
to be until nightfall. As they stood they could see the ridge rear its
ragged head to watch over the cleft where-through the two Wans race to
be free. Upon the slope of this bluff was the town itself, a walled
town the colour of the bare rock, with towers and belfries. The
westering sun threw the whole into warmth and mellow light.

"The saltire still floats," cried Prosper; "we are not too late for
this time."

They were let in at dusk by the Martin Gate, not without some parley.
The only word Prosper would give had been, "Death to Galors de Born."
This did not happen to be the right word. Matters were not to be
adjusted either by "Life to the Countess," for Prosper did not happen
to wish it her.

The High Bailiff and the Jurats argued at some length whether what he
had said did not imply the other of necessity.

"If you talk of necessity, gentlemen," finally said the High Bailiff,
"in my advice it is written that our necessity is too fine for
dialectic. Our present need is to kill the common enemy. Here is a
gentleman who asks for no other pleasure. Let him in." And they did.

Prosper was in love at last; but he did not lose his head on that
account. It was not his way. The girl he had first pitied, next
desired, then respected, then learned, finally adored, was gone. Well,
he would find her no doubt. She had but two enemies, Galors and
Maulfry; who hunted in couple just now. She might be anywhere in the
world, but it was most likely that where she was they were also. If he
found them he should find her. That was why, without having any desire
to befriend the Countess, who had in his judgment made a fool of
herself first and an enemy of him afterwards, he undertook the
defences of Wanmeeting.

For it came to that. He found a thin garrison, a pompous bailiff,
wordy and precise, headboroughs without heads, and a panic-stricken
horde of shopkeepers with things to lose, who spent the day in crying
"Danger," and the night in drinking beer. Outside, somewhere, was an
enemy who might be a rascal, but was certainly a man. Professional
honour was touched on a raw. Since he was in, in God's name let him do
something. After a day spent in observing the manners and customs of
Wanmeeting in a state of semi-siege, he got very precise ideas of what
they were likely to be in a whole one. He called on the High Bailiff
and spoke his mind.

"Bailiff," he said very quietly, "your defences are not good, but they
are too good to defend nothing. I am sorry I cannot put your citizens
at a higher figure. There does not seem to me to be a man among them.
They chatter like pies, they drink like fishes, they herd like sheep,
they scream like gulls. They love their wives and children, but so do
rabbits; they are snug at home, but so are pigs in a stye; they say
many prayers, they give alms to the poor. But no prayers will ever
stay Galors, and the alms your people want I spell with an 'r.' I know
Master Galors, and he me. If he comes here the town will be carried,
the men hanged, the women ravished, and I shall be killed like a rat
in a drain. Now I set little store by my life, but I and the man I
have brought with me intend to die in the open. Do what you choose,
but understand that unless things alter to my liking, I take myself,
my sword, and my head for affairs into the country."

"And who are you, Messire, and what do I know of your head for
affairs?" cried the High Bailiff, on his dignity.

"My name is Prosper le Gai, at your service," the youth replied; "and
as for my head, it becomes me not to speak."

"If you will not speak of it, why are you here?" asked the High
Bailiff, at the mercy of his logic.

"I am here, sir, for the purpose of killing Dom Galors de Born."

"You speak very confidently, young gentleman."

"There is no boasting where there is no doubt."

"Is there no doubt, pray, whether he might kill you?"

"I intend to remove that doubt," said Prosper.

"Pray how, sir?"

"By killing him first."

The end of it all was that the High Bailiff, in the presence of the
Jurats and citizens, solemnly girt on Prosper the sword of the
borough, and declared Messire Prosper le Gai of Starning to be
generalissimo of its forces. Prosper at once paraded the garrison.

He rated the men roundly, flogged two of them with his own hand for
some small insubordination, and made fast friends in all ranks. Having
established a pleasant relationship by these simple means, he spoke to
them as follows.

"Gentlemen," he said, "have the goodness to remark that I have taught
you how to parade. In time I doubt not you will follow me with as good
a will as you have hitherto followed your own devices. These, I take
leave to tell you, were very foolish. If you follow me I shall lead
you in the thick of the fighting, should there be any. If you leave
me, or if I have the honour to be killed, you will all have your
throats cut. I do not mean to be killed, gentlemen, and rely upon you
in the alternative which remains."

He took a guard and went the round of the defences. Wherever he went
he brought heart with him. As for the burgesses and the burgesses'
wives, they thought him a god. The result was, that in six weeks he
had half the place under arms, a fighting force of one thousand pikes
and five hundred archers, an outer wall of defence ten feet by six,
and provision to stand a two months' siege. This brought the time to
July.

On July 14 one of his scouts brought home the news that Galors had
concentrated on Hauterive, while keeping close watch along Wan. He
himself was no one knew where, scouring the country for traces of the
girl Isoult la Desirous, who had escaped from High March. Meantime a
detached force under the Golden Knight had surprised Goltres, and put
the inhabitants to the sword. They held that stronghold, and were said
still to be there.

Prosper sent for his horse, and rode down to the council house to see
the High Bailiff.

"Bailiff," he said, "Galors will not be here yet awhile. If he comes
you will know what to do. But I do not think he will come just yet."

"Ah, Messire, will you desert us?" cried the good soul.

"If you put it so, yes."

"You are tired of warfare, Messire?"

"Warfare, pardieu! I am tired of no warfare. I am going to make some
for default of it."

"And leave us all here?"

"And leave you all here."

"Would you have us assume the offensive, sir?"

"By no means, Bailiff. I would have you mind your walls. But forgive
me, I must be off."

"Where are you going, Messire?"

"I am going to find Galors, or at least those who will save me the
trouble. Adieu, Bailiff."

Prosper galloped away as if the devil were in him. The High Bailiff
assumed command.

CHAPTER XXIII

FALVE THE CHARCOAL-BURNER

While Prosper is galloping after Dom Galors, and Dom Galors is
galloping after Isoult, let us turn to that unconscious lady who hides
her limbs in a pair of ragged breeches, and her bloom under the grime
of coal-dust. Her cloud of hair, long now and lustrous, out of all
measure to her pretence, she was accustomed to shorten by doubling it
under her cap. An odd fancy had taken her which prevented a second
shearing. If Prosper loved her she dared not go unlovely any more. Her
hair curtained her when she bathed in the brook and the sun. Beyond
doubt it was beautiful; it was Prosper's; she must keep it untouched.
This gave her an infinity of bother, but at the same time an infinity
of delight. She took pride in it, observed its rate of growth very
minutely; another fancy was, that before it reached her knees she
should give it with all herself to its master. It is so easy to
confuse desires with gratifications, and hopes with accomplishments,
that you will not be surprised if I go on to say, that she soon made
the growth of her hair _data_ by which to calculate her restoration
to his side. She was to have a rude awakening, as you shall judge.

The July heats lay over the forest like a pall, stilled all the leaves
and beat upon the parched ground. Isoult, seduced by the water and her
joy to be alone with her ring, audacious too by use, took longer
leave. So long leave she took one day that it became a question of
dinner. The one solemn hour of the twenty-four was in peril. Falve was
sent to find her, and took his stick. But he never used it; for he
found, not Roy indeed, but Roy's rags on the brookside, and over the
brook on the high bank a lady, veiled only in her hair, singing to
herself. He stood transported, Actaeon in his own despite, then softly
withdrew. Roy got back in his time, cooked the dinner, and had no
drubbing. Then came the meal, with an ominous innovation.

They sat in a ring on the grass round an iron pot. Each had a fork
with which he fished for himself. Down came Falve smirking, and sat
himself by Isoult. He had a flower in his hand.

"I plucked this for my mistress," says he, "but failing her I give it
to my master."

She had to take it, with a sick smile. She had a sicker heart.

The horrid play went on. Falve grinned and shrugged like a Frenchman.
He fed her with his fork--"Eat of this, my minion;" forced his cup to
her lips--"Drink, honey, where I have drunk." He drank deep and,
blinking like a night-bird, said solemnly--

"We have called you Jack, to our shame. Your name shall properly be
called Roy, for you should be a king."

The men made merry over this comedy, finding appetite for it; but to
the girl came back that elfin look she had almost lost since she had
known Prosper. She had worn it the night she came plump on Galors, but
never since. Now again hers were a hare's eyes, wide and quaking.

From that hour her peace left her, for Falve never did. Escape was
impossible; the man eyed her as a cat a mouse, and seemed to play upon
her nerve as if she had been a fine instrument. He became
astonishingly subtle, dealt in images like a modern poet, had the same
art of meaning more than he said to those who had the misfortune to
understand him. He never declared what he knew, though she could not
but guess it; did not betray her to the others; seemed to enjoy the
equivoque, content to wait. So he kept her on tenterhooks; she felt a
cheat, and what is worse, a detected cheat. This filled her deep with
shame. It made her more coy and more a prude than she had ever need to
be had she gone among them kirtled and coifed. At last came the day
when that happened which she had darkly dreaded. A load of coals went
off to Market Basing; to dinner came herself only, and Falve.

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