Part 10

Mellis, lying in a patch of young fern on the edge of the beech wood, held her breath and watched him in amazement. For one moment a wild doubt stabbed her; he was a craven, he was going to surrender Woodmere and shirk a fight. The next moment she thought him mad, but she had torn all doubt of him from her heart and thrown it from her with hot scorn. She saw Martin let down his bridge, and take his stand just outside the gate, with the point of his sword on the ground and his hands resting on the pommel. He was a white and challenging figure holding the bridge and the gate, daring Swartz and his men to come at him and try their fortune.

One of the cross-bowmen fired a shot; the bolt struck Martin’s pauldron and glanced harmlessly aside.

“Drop that—drop that!”

Swartz roared at the fellow. He was a tough old rogue, but he had a soldier’s love of courage.

“One man against eight, and you want to fight him at fifty paces!”

He pushed his horse along the causeway, and looked curiously at Martin Valliant. The figure in white harness puzzled him; it did not seem to belong to a runaway monk.

“Who are you, my friend?”

Martin answered him.

“Come and see.”

Swartz grinned.

“By God—and we will! Bid that Dale wench drop her bow, and my fellows shall not use their arbalists. We will make a straight fight of it, Master Greenshield.”

The first man to try his luck was a little stunted fellow who had been a smith and was immensely strong in the arms and back, but a fool in the choice of his weapons. He came footing it cautiously along the narrow bridge, with his spear held pointed at Martin. He had some idea of feinting at Martin’s throat, of dropping the point and getting the shaft between the taller man’s legs and tripping him. The trick might have worked if Martin Valliant had not lopped off the spear-head with a sudden sweep of his sword, caught the staff in his left hand, and swung the fellow into the water. The smith could not swim, and was drowned; but Martin had no time to think of being merciful.

A tall fellow charged him while he was still on the beam, and it was a question of which man gave the bigger blow and knocked the other into the mere. Martin’s sword had that honor. Swartz’s second gentleman fell across the beam with a red wound in his throat, struggled for a few seconds, and then slipped dying into the mere.

Swartz was biting his beard.

“What—there is no man here who can stand up to a monk! Big Harry, there: have a swash at him with your pole-ax.”

Big Harry had the face and temper of a bull. He made a rush along the bridge, swung his pole-ax, and struck at Martin’s head. The salade threw the point aside, and the shaft struck Martin’s shoulder. He had shortened his sword and thrust hard at the big man. The point went through Big Harry’s midriff, and the mere hid a third victim.

Swartz rolled out of the saddle and drew his sword.

“Stand back! This fellow is too good for such raw cattle. I have fought many fights in my time.”

Then Martin did a knightly thing. He went to meet Swartz, crossing the beam, so that they met on the broad causeway where neither man could claim any advantage.

Swartz saluted him.

“I take that to heart, my friend. It was gallantly thought of. One word before we fight it out like gentlemen. Who the devil are you?”

Martin kept silent.

“You will not tell me? I must find it out for myself. Good. And so—to business.”

Swartz was lightly armed, and he trusted to his swordsmanship, for he was very clever with the sword. But his swashbuckling craftiness proved useless against a man harnessed as Martin Valliant was harnessed, and who fought like a young madman. It was like aiming delicate and cunning blows at a man of iron, a man who struck back furiously without troubling to defend himself. Swartz, with blood in his eyes, plunged to escape that whistling sword, closed with Martin, and tried to throw him; but Martin’s gadded fist beat him off and sent him heavily to the ground.

Swartz lay still, while the five men who had stood to watch this battle royal fumbled with their weapons and looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes.

“Try the cross-bow on him, Jack.”

“Shoot, man, and we’ll push at him with our spears.”

But Martin Valliant did not leave them the right to choose how and when they would attack him. His blood was on fire. He came leaping along the causeway, a white figure of shining wrath, and those five men turned tail and fled incontinently toward the woods. Martin did not follow them, but went back to the place where Swartz was lying. The old swashbuckler was sitting up, dazed, ghastly, trying to wipe the blood out of his eyes with his knuckles.

The man in Martin leaped out to the man he had wounded. This fellow with the black beard was made of finer stuff than the lousels who had taken to their heels. He grinned at Martin Valliant, and tried to rise.

“Lord, my friend; but am I also to feed the fishes?”

Martin helped him to his feet.

“That blood must be staunched. Those rogues should have stood and fought for you.”

“Let them run. Master Greenshield, methinks you have broken my brain pan with that blow of yours. Let me lie down on something soft. I feel sick as a dog that has eaten grass.”

Martin sheathed his sword, picked up Swartz in his arms, and carried him over the footbridge. He remembered his own bed of bracken at the foot of the stairs, and he bore the wounded man there and laid him on the fern.

“Thanks, Greenshield. My head’s full of molten metal. No—let me lie. I’ll just curse and burrow into the fern, I have had worse wounds than this in my time.”

He stretched out a hand suddenly.

“No bad blood—no grudges! I’m your prisoner; I play fair.”

Martin gripped his hand hard and went back to the gate.

Mellis had been lying in the bracken, listening to the rout of Swartz’s gentry in the wood behind her. For five men they made a fine noise and flutter in getting to horse, and it was like the flight of a small army, what with their shouting and their quarreling as to what should be done. She heard them galloping away into the Forest, for they were in frank agreement upon the main issue, and that was to have nothing more to do with that devil of a man in white harness who held the bridge at Woodmere.

Mellis rose up, and went down toward the mere, her heart full of Martin’s victory. He came out through the gate as she reached the causeway and crossed the footbridge to meet her. He had taken off his salade, and so came to her bare-headed, flushed, brave-eyed, and triumphant.

The sheen of her eyes opened the gates of heaven. She was exultant, glorious, a woman whose love had taken fire.

“Martin Valliant—oh, brave heart! What a fight was that! I thought you mad when you came out on the bridge.”

He could find nothing to say to her, but his eyes gave her an answer.

“You little thought that I was watching you.”

This made him smile.

“Yes, I knew that you were up yonder. I saw you looking down from behind a tree. I think I could have beaten twenty men—because you were watching me.”

“Am I so fierce?”

“No, it is not that,” he said, quite simply.

Mellis knew what was in his heart, and the cry that echoed to it in her own. She looked at him with a sudden, tremulous light in her eyes.

“I would have a man brave and staunch—for my sake. It is very sweet to a woman when she is lonely.”

Martin dared not look at her for a moment. He was her man so utterly that he could have kissed the dust from her feet, for the love in him was great and passionate and holy.

“I did what my heart bade me,” he said, “and not to shame this sword.”

“Yes, give me the sword.”

“It is all bloody.”

“What matter. It is but a christening.”

He drew the sword from its scabbard and gave it into her hands. And Mellis kissed the cross of the hilt, and held it for him to take.

“That is a second sacrament,” he said; “I shall need no other crucifix.”

They entered Woodmere, and Martin raised the bridge and closed the gate.

“You took a prisoner.”

He remembered Swartz, brain-sick and groaning.

“Their captain! A good fighter—and a generous. I must wash his wound; and if I could find linen——”

“You shall have linen. I love that softness in you, comrade; good soldiers are made so.”

She turned aside through the postern into the garden, and Martin went to look at Swartz. He was sitting up, holding his head between his hands, but the blood had ceased flowing.

“Ah, Brother Greenshield, get me out into the sunlight. I would rather lie on the green grass—under those apple trees. This place smells of the coffin.”

Martin helped him up.

“That wound of yours must be dressed. Mistress Mellis is finding me linen.”

Swartz put an arm around him.

“Deo gratias, but I guess I owe this crack of the poll to her. Well, I bear her no ill-will. And I have a liking for you, Greenshield, a man after my own heart.”

“We were trying to kill each other half an hour ago.”

“Lord, man, are we the worse for that?”

Martin helped Swartz out into the orchard and propped him against a tree. And there Mellis found them like brethren in arms when she brought linen and red wine.

“I have found you linen, Martin Valliant.”

But she did not tell him that she had torn it from her own shift.

Swartz had a look at her as she turned to go.

“Saints, brother, but some things are well lost for a woman.”

Martin’s eyes grew grim.

“Tush, man, I did not speak lightly. Never flare out at Peter Swartz; he is too old a ruffian.”

Martin fetched water from the mere in his salade and washed and dressed Swartz’s head for him. He gave him wine to drink, and Swartz was glad of it.

“Zounds, that’s good. Now, by my soul, I think I will spend the night here, out of the dew, and with the stars blinking above. I have a love of the green earth, Martin Valliant; I was not bred in a city. And look you here, man——”

Martin gazed at him steadily.

“You took me in fair fight, and here I shall stay, so long as you hold the place. I swear to keep faith, and to play no tricks on you. And here’s the hand of a soldier.”

Martin accepted the pledge.

“My heart trusts you,” he said.

“One word, lad: never trust the man I serve—or did serve—Roger Bland, if you have him as you have me now. I am a war-dog, but he is a cold snake. Put your heel on his head, and spare no weight.”

_Chapter XXIV_

The sun sank low in the west, and the whole world was very still. Peter Swartz had fallen asleep under his apple tree in the orchard, and the white blossom scattered itself on him as he slept.

A great wonder had overtaken Martin Valliant. He had eased himself of his harness and gone down to a little grassy place where willows cast a net of shadows over the brown water. He stood there, leaning against the trunk of a willow tree, listening to the birds singing in the valley that shone like a great bowl of magic gold. The west was all afire, and throwing a strange glory over the woods, so that the tall trees seemed topped with flame. Not a breath of wind stirred in the leaves or grasses.

And Martin Valliant’s heart was full of a strange, listening awe. He looked at the still water, the burning trees, the glimmering meadows, and there seemed no sadness anywhere, but only deep exultation and a sob of wonder in the throat. His face shone under the soft green of the willows. This place was the new Paradise, and a woman’s eyes looked out of the window of Heaven.

A voice called to him.

“Martin, Martin!”

A spasm of emotion shook Martin Valliant’s soul. He spread his arms, and raised his face to the sunset. If to love a woman was sin, then God was a devil, and the Lord Christ had never walked the earth.

He heard Mellis come singing through the orchard where Peter Swartz slept under the apple trees. The sound of her voice quickened his love almost to anguish. He dared not go to her for the moment or meet those dark eyes of hers.

“Martin Valliant!”

She came out from the shadows of the orchard, and saw him standing there, his right arm covering his face. Her heart faltered for a beat or two, and then quickened with a rush of wonder and awe.

Mellis went toward him, her eyes mysterious and full of soft, tremulous light. Martin heard her footsteps and her gown sweeping the grass. He uncovered his face, and it was all white and strange and radiant.

For a moment they looked at each other with mute timidity. There seemed nothing that could be said, for the great mystery of life had touched them.

Then Mellis spoke, and her words were no louder than a light wind moving in the trees.

“I do not know what the day has done to me. But I could sit in the long grass and listen to the birds singing, and watch the sunset on the water, and never speak nor move.”

“It is very wonderful,” he said, “for all the joy of the world seems in this valley.”

“I could touch no food to-night but honey and white bread, and moisten my lips with the dew.”

She heard Martin draw in his breath.

“And presently the soft dusk will come, and the day will die. But there will be the stars, and a silver sheen on the water, and a silence that waits—and listens——”

Her face dreamed.

“Come.”

He followed her, found himself at her side, moving through the long grass that rustled under their feet. He was no more a body, but a soul that burned with yearning and a great white glory. And Mellis’s hair was as black as the night.

She led him into the garden, and there he saw their table strewn with flowers. She had set out bread, and wine, and honey. His helmet lay in the midst on a cushion of green leaves, and she had bound it about with a spray of red roses taken from the old rose bush.

Mellis pointed a finger.

“Even the roses bloomed for us to-day. And there is your crown of victory.”

He stretched out a hand and touched hers timidly, as though he were afraid.

“Mellis——”

Her hand closed on his with a sudden thrill of tenderness.

“Is not life good? Do you fear to look at me, Martin?”

“You have stepped out of heaven,” he said, “and the great light of you blinds my eyes.”

They sat down at the board, but though the bread was white and the honey sweet, little of either passed their lips. It fell to old Swartz to make an end of the loaf, and to sweeten his black beard with the honey.

“Deo gratias,” he said when Martin brought him his supper; “but I have been asleep and dreaming, and in my dreams I thought I heard a woman singing. You can leave me the wine bottle. I shall not play the swine with it.”

He looked shrewdly at Martin Valliant’s face, and saw that the green island had become a place of enchantment.

“Get you gone, Sir Greenshield. I shall be ready to sleep again, and this apple tree will serve as a tent. Black beards are not for such as you, and perhaps I was not dreaming when I slept.”

He cut himself a great hunch of bread.

“Think of the blood I have to make good! Take your youth, man, and thank God for it. You are welcome to any glory you have got out of the bloodying of my poll!”

Swartz watched Martin Valliant walk back toward the garden.

“His head is in Paradise,” he said to himself, “but he had the heart to remember my supper. May the wench be kind to him. It is all a midsummer madness—this love. Well, give me the madness, say I; good wine and a comely woman. The worms can have me when a wench will no longer give me a glint of the eye.”

Mellis had brought her lute with her from the Black Moor, and she had not touched its strings since she had sung to the burgher revelers in the tavern at Gawdy Town. And somehow all her grief and travail and yearning seemed to melt into an exultation that was like the beauty of an April day, a race of sunlight and of shadow.

As the sunset reddened, and the black bats began to flutter around on noiseless wings, the sound of her lute went over the water. Old Swartz heard it, and then her voice, deep, and strange, and very sweet, warming the heart like wine.

She looked down at Martin lying in the grass at her feet.

“Is there sin in my singing—when my brother is dead? Am I forgetting because my mouth is not silent?”

The sunset lit up Martin’s face. His eyes were gazing into the distance, eyes that questioned the earth and heaven—and life and the hypocrisies of men. It was as though the gates of a new wisdom had been opened to him. A man may think himself into hell, and feel himself into heaven.

“What is sin?”

She smiled at him.

“Such words from your lips!”

“I see a vision,” he said slowly, “of the beauty of the earth and the mystery thereof. Shall I quarrel with the apple because it comes from the bloom of the tree? Do not the beasts fight for their mates, and is there not a nobleness in valor? The good knight rides out, and his strength is for the service of those who are oppressed. As for hiding in a cell and starving one’s body—such a life begins to smell of cowardice.”

She raised her head proudly.

“We are rebels, Master Valliant, you and I. Say, have I lost you your soul?”

“No, by God; but you have found it for me, and set it free. I am no longer afraid of the shadows of sick thoughts.”

She swept her fingers over the strings, and began to sing to him as the dusk gathered. The woods melted into a cloud of blackness; the red of the sky changed to amber; moths came to feed from the white flowers in the grasses of the wild garden.

Between the snatches of song she leaned toward him, and he knelt to meet her.

“What if we die to-morrow? What can the Lord of Troy take from us?”

“No man shall take you while I live.”

“And in the Forest the birds sing at dawn.”

“And in the night I lie before your door to guard it with my body.”

They looked long into each other’s eyes.

“Martin Valliant,” she said very softly, “Martin Valliant.”

And he bowed himself and kissed her feet.

_Chapter XXV_

John Falconer of Badger Hill was too shrewd a gentleman to betray himself or his affairs to the lurkers whom John Rich had left in the woods to watch him. Falconer made no stir about the place, left his men working in the fields, and kept his own counsel.

“If the dogs have been busy about here,” he said to himself, “we will give them no cause to hunt us. There are other parts of the Forest where men can muster and march to help Mellis Dale.”

Yet he was much troubled about Mellis, and what might have happened at Woodmere in her absence. Roger Bland’s men might have seized the place and made it a trap for her. John Falconer had no faith in any runaway monk, even though he happened to be old Valliant’s son.

When night came he went quietly to the stable with a wallet full of food, saddled and bridled his horse, and rode out by the way of the pine woods. The moon would not be up for an hour; the woods were dark as a pit; he saw nothing of Rich’s men, nor did they see anything of him. When he was well away from Badger Hill, John Falconer tied up his horse and sat down to wait for the moon.

Old forester though he was, Falconer missed his way that night, and the sun had been up an hour before he reached the hills above Woodmere Vale. Martin Valliant had been up and stirring before the dawn, for love and his harness had left him but little sleep.

Mellis had taken the watch, and had bidden him unbuckle his harness and sleep in the upper room; but Martin had refused to take off his breast and back-plates, gorget and cuishes, lest Roger Bland’s men should try to steal into the place at night and catch him unprepared.

“When your friends rally here,” he had said, “then I can rest out of this iron skin.”

He was minded to better his footbridge, and broaden it with two lighter pieces of planking so that a horse could be brought across. His forethought proved prophetic, for when the first grayness of the dawn spread over the valley he saw three horses quietly cropping the grass not fifty yards from the bridge-head. One of them was Swartz’s roan; the others had been lost by the five men in the flurry of their flight.

Swartz’s roan seemed to be a companionable beast. He came down to the bridge-head, and stood there whinnying and watching Martin at his work. He was still saddled and bridled, as were his two comrades who went on cropping the grass.

Martin Valliant looked at Swartz’s horse as he had never looked at a horse before. The creature had a new meaning for him; it was no ambling pad, no fat palfrey, but a beast built to carry a man to battle, one of the strong things of the earth whose strength had to be mastered. Martin left his bridge-building for something more knightly. He wanted to ride Swartz’s horse, to feel himself astride of that brown body, to know himself the creature’s master.

The roan seemed as ready as Martin Valliant. He was playful, full of zest, and went off at a canter directly Martin was in the saddle. But the man was the lord. He made the beast drop to a trot, and then worked him to a gallop over the dew-wet grasslands between the water and the woods.

So when John Falconer came to the edge of the beech wood he saw a young man in half armor galloping a horse furiously up and down the valley, and handling him like no novice. Horse and man were in excellent temper, the one delighting in riding, the other in being ridden.

John Falconer kept himself in the shade, and looked down on Woodmere. He noticed the two horses feeding by the mere, that the bridge was down and the gate open, and for the moment he had good cause to fear that the Lord of Troy’s men had taken the place, and that this galloper on the horse was one of them. Then he saw a woman appear on the leads of the tower, and knew her to be Mellis.

She watched Martin Valliant and the roan horse, and waved a hand to him as he came cantering back from the lower end of the valley. Falconer tugged at his beard with thumb and forefinger.

“So this is our outlaw monk! The fellow has learned to sit a horse.”

He rode out from the beech wood, and the two horses converged upon the bridge, Martin feeling for his sword and calling himself a fool for galloping about unarmed, with the bridge down and the gate open.

He saw Mellis waving a scarf at the new-comer, and guessed that all was well. Falconer had reined in by the bridge-head and was waiting for the man on the roan horse. The master of Badger Hill had a shrewd eye for the shape of a man, the color of his eyes, and the set of his head. He could look inwards, judge without favor; and though he had no desire to be pleased, Martin Valliant pleased him.

These two men stared into each other’s eyes with a certain searching and haughty curiosity.

“So this is Roger Valliant’s son? You are overtrustful, young man, to go galloping up and down with that gate open. Had I been an enemy, I could have put a shaft into you.”

Martin flushed.

“I have called myself a fool for it,” he said bluntly, “but the horse came and whinnied at me, and I had to ride him.”

“Then it is no horse of yours?”

“No, Peter Swartz’s.”

“Peter Swartz’s! Such a tale hangs crooked!”

“He is wounded and a prisoner.”

Then Mellis came out to them with eyes that smiled at old Falconer’s grim and puzzled face. He had to be told everything, how Martin had fought with Peter Swartz and his men, beaten them, and taken Swartz prisoner. And still John Falconer was not pleased. He had ridden out with a fixed distrust of Martin Valliant in his heart, and being an obstinate and dogged gentleman, he was in no hurry to surrender his distrust. Martin had tied up Swartz’s horse and gone back to his bridge-building.

“Very pretty—very pretty. But the fat’s in the fire, thanks to our champion’s valor. ’Twould have been almost better to have played fox and let them have the place.”

“And what would you have said of Martin Valliant if he had made no fight for it?”

“Praised his cunning, no doubt!”

“No; you would have called him a coward and a traitor.”

She was smiling, but there was a glitter of hot partisanship in her eyes, and she was ready to stand by her man and speak for him.