Part 16

He lay for a while in a little dell, resting his chin on his hands, and staring at the seed pods of the wild hyacinths that had carpeted the ground. The wood remained silent, save for the screaming of a couple of jays, yet Martin guessed that the red knight was no solitary adventurer, but the leader of a great company that was lying hidden among the trees.

What of Sir Gregory and the men of the Red Rose? Were they pushing blindly into an ambush, and if so—what would come of it? A grim impartiality guided Martin’s thoughts; he cared not which beast devoured the other, provided Mellis was not harmed; he was a thief ready to snatch the precious plunder while these gentry fought. The inspiration was obvious, and stirred him to action. He crawled to the edge of the wood, followed it southwards for a short distance, chose a tall fir, and swarmed up it, leaving his club lying in the grass.

The tree forked above thirty feet from the ground, and Martin wriggled up and out along one of the limbs till he was part of the pine needles, like a crow in its nest. The fir gave him a superb view. He could see nearly the whole of Bracknell Plain, my Lord of Troy’s camp, even Sir Gregory’s troops massed in the hollow behind the hill. This live map puzzled him for a moment; he was thinking of the red knight in the wood, a sinister figure, the wizard who could conjure forth a dragon of steel.

Martin had his eyes on Sir Gregory’s forces, when he saw one of the columns push forward up the hill with a scattering of dark figures running on ahead. Sir Gregory was sending on his archers to sow arrows and disorder in my lord’s sluggish camp. The gentry and men-at-arms followed at a walk, moving on the farther side of the footmen, and ready to break into a charge when the archers had done their work. Last of all came Mellis’s guard, a knot of steel-clad figures with Falconer and Mellis in the midst.

Martin turned his eyes on my Lord of Troy’s camp. It looked amazingly still and unconcerned, the sentries standing to their arms in the midst of the heather. This carelessness seemed astonishing to the man who was watching those armed masses surging up the blind side of the hill. But the very foolishness of that seemingly casual camp flashed the meaning of it all into Martin Valliant’s mind. It was not my Lord of Troy who was in dire peril, but those hot heads who were streaming to the attack.

For many a year the Forest had good cause to remember the battle of Bracknell Plain. It began with the rush of Sir Gregory’s archers over the hill, and a rattling shower of arrows into my Lord of Troy’s camp. Yet these arrows did but little damage, for the White Rose bowmen had thrown up a wall of sods behind the line of brushwood and were lying under cover, while the heavily armed knights and gentry could trust in their harness. The foresters fired flight after flight of arrows into the camp, shouting and leaping like madmen, for not an arrow shot came in return.

Sir Gregory, who rode over the hill with his men-at-arms, saw his archers shooting furiously, and heard them cheering as though the victory were won. He did not pause to consider the question, but thinking my Lord of Troy’s men too panic-stricken even to run to their horses, he set his riders at the gallop and charged down upon the camp. His footmen were to follow and to end the business when he and his “spears” had broken in and scattered the enemy.

Then Martin saw puffs of blue smoke belch out from behind the brushwood, and heard the roar of my lord’s cannon. The archers sprang to their feet and poured a flight of arrows into the charging “horse.” The cannon shot tore into the mass; the arrows struck the horses. A great confusion followed, as of a wave of water meeting a wall; horses and men were down; the whole company faltered, broke, tangled itself into a whirl of disorder. Arrows came stinging down on them, for the shooting was fast and easy so far as my Lord of Troy’s archers were concerned.

A thunder of hoofs in the wood behind him, a screaming of trumpets, and out galloped the red knight with a torrent of steel at his back. The charge was superb, terrible, carried out like a whirlwind. It bore down on Sir Gregory’s disorder, crashed through and over it, wheeled, and headed for the mass of footmen who had halted in a palsied crowd on the edge of the plain. My lord’s archers and footmen were running out to complete the overthrow of Sir Gregory’s horse, to cut throats and to take prisoners.

The battle was over in twenty minutes; it became a wild slaughter, a scattering of death and despair over Bracknell Plain. Sir Gregory’s “foot” had turned and run, throwing down their weapons as they fled over the heather. And Martin Valliant had come swarming down his tree, picked up his club, and started to run toward the rout as though he had lost his senses.

He had seen John Falconer and his men-at-arms halt on the open plain and stand watching the battle as though it was neither their business to fight nor to fly. None the less, the disastrous issue had pricked their consciences; they had moved forward tentatively, faltered, and thought better of such heroism; moreover, they had a prize to guard, and John Falconer had kept his head. But fate and Fulk de Lisle did not will it that they should escape the slaughter on Bracknell Plain, and Martin had seen the red knight and some fifty of his lances wheel and gallop down on Mellis’s guards. De Lisle’s men opened out and enveloped the little group before it could escape over the edge of the plain.

That was the reason of Martin Valliant’s madness and his wild dash across the heather. Fortune was with him in a sense, for he came through the butchery and the turmoil without being struck down by my Lord of Troy’s men. There was a space of calmness between the main rout and the fight that was going on between John Falconer and De Lisle, but the tussle was over before Martin drew near. Falconer lay dying from a spear thrust through the body; his men were down or had surrendered; De Lisle’s riders tossed their spears and cheered.

Then Martin saw a sight that made him stand stone still and set his teeth. The group of steel-coated figures parted, and from the midst of them came riding the red knight, leading a white horse by the bridle. Martin Valliant saw Mellis drooping in the saddle, her hair falling over her face, her hands hanging as though she despaired.

The red knight did not turn toward my lord’s camp, but rode calmly away over the plain toward the woods in the distance. No one followed him or the woman on the white horse. His men knew that Fulk de Lisle was not to be meddled with when he followed the chase and the game was a stag or a woman.

Martin Valliant started running again, his face all white and twisted. But a certain cunning saved him from throwing his life and his hope away. He doubled sharply under the brow of the hill, caught a riderless horse that was standing nosing the heather, mounted, and urged the beast to a canter, keeping to the lower ground out of sight of the riders from Troy.

When he was well clear he turned upwards on to Bracknell Plain, the reins in one hand, his hollywood staff in the other. The white horse and the red tabard showed a mile away over the heather, and Martin followed them with the grimness of death.

_Chapter XXXVIII_

Fulk de Lisle rode for a mile without troubling to glance back. He was in great good humor, and trying to raise some color in the face of the girl beside him. She looked dazed, beaten, her eyes empty of all light, her hands gripping the pommel of her saddle.

“Why so sad, sweet mistress? Am I not as good a man as any fellow yonder, and better than our friend the monk? I have won you on a fair field.”

Her eyes glanced at him with furtive dread.

“I know not who you are.”

He put up his vizor and she knew him by his eyes, bold, brown, and merciless.

“Ah!”

Her frank horror angered him, and he reached out and twisted his hand into her hair.

“What! Shall I have to tame you, teach you what manner of man I am? What others have had I will have also.”

“Beast!”

Her pride rose at his challenge.

“Let me go, or I will throw myself out of the saddle.”

“And be dragged by the hair, my shrew! No, no; such tricks will not serve. I have taken my prize, and this time I shall not be balked of it.”

She knew her own helplessness, and constrained herself to try other weapons.

“Let me go. You are hurting.”

“Is the fault mine? Smile at me, you jade, and look not so sick and passionless.”

She contrived to smile, hating him the more for it.

“That’s better—much better. Why, I have taught many women to love me, but love does not last, wench; that is why men should marry for a month and no more.”

He let her go, and glancing back over his shoulder, he reined in with sudden fierceness. The white horse, checked so roughly, swerved and showed temper.

“Stand still, you beast! Hallo! what have we here?”

Mellis saw what Fulk de Lisle saw, and her face flamed like a sunset. Martin Valliant had drawn up to within a quarter of a mile of them, but he was holding his horse in and following them with a certain grim leisureliness. This eastern part of Bracknell Plain was an utter wilderness; they had left victory and defeat far behind; nothing moved over the heather.

Fulk de Lisle caught a glimpse of Mellis’s face with its shining eyes and its rich rush of tenderness. The droop had gone out of her figure, and her throat had regained its pride.

He laughed with malicious insolence.

“What is this, my lady? A beggar in a black smock? I am in no temper to give alms to-day.”

He spurred on his horse, and jerked Mellis along with him. It was his spear that had broken itself in John Falconer’s body, and he felt to see that his sword was loose in its scabbard. Mellis noticed the act, and smiled strangely. Ahead of them towered the fir woods of Amber Holt, dark and silent, like a great green cloud across the blue. Dense gloom lay behind the tall straight trunks, and bracken foamed at their feet.

She glanced back over her shoulder, and realized that Martin had no harness. He had drawn nearer, and she could see that he carried some sort of weapon on his shoulder. Fear for him darkened her eyes. What chance had he, a naked man, against this steel-coated swashbuckler with his sword and dagger?

She hated Fulk de Lisle—hated him with such intensity that he turned his head sharply and met her eyes. Even his vanity could not misread the look in them.

“So! Madame has a tender heart? You white-bosomed jade!”

He drew the white horse in, hooked an arm around her neck, and forced her face close to his helmet.

“Look in my eyes, wench. Yes, our friend can see this pretty picture. If he meddles with me I shall kill him; somewhere over yonder in the fir woods. Then we shall be alone together, you and I, and you will give me all that I desire.”

She strained away from him.

“Beast! Be not so sure!”

He laughed.

“What—a fool of a monk with a club! I know that sort of clumsy savage. It will be mere murder.”

But she would not betray her fear.

“Have it so. Strange things happen—even to kings.”

Martin saw all this, and his wrath blew like a north wind. He had guessed the name of the red knight and knew the man with whom he had to deal. It would be no easy business, setting about this notable sworder and captain with nothing but a green holly stake, but somehow Martin had no doubts as to how the battle would end. His cold fury was so intense and so fanatical that it resembled a fate that was not to be stayed or turned back.

Fulk de Lisle and Mellis were nearing the fir woods, and Martin put his horse at a canter and drew up within fifty yards. De Lisle had no spear; that was something in Martin’s favor, though his long sword would be deadly enough in so strong and cunning a hand. Martin had a shrewd notion as to how he ought to fight the man; if he could dismount him and get to close grips De Lisle’s heavy armor would make him clumsy and slow.

The shadows of the firs swept over them, and they were in among the crowded trunks, riding down a narrow track that seemed to lose itself in the distant gloom. Martin drew closer, teeth set, his heavy truncheon ready on his shoulder.

Fulk de Lisle turned in the saddle and looked back at him. He had drawn his sword.

“My friend, be warned in time. Turn back, or I shall kill you.”

Martin said never a word, but drew closer, his eyes shining in a dead-white face.

De Lisle had every advantage, but there was a woman at his side, and he did not respect her courage or her hatred as he should have done. The white horse was close to his, and of a sudden Mellis twisted sideways, threw her arms about De Lisle’s body, and held to him desperately.

“Martin—Martin!”

Martin kicked his heels into his horse’s flanks, leaning forward and swinging his club. De Lisle had got an arm around Mellis’s body. He dragged her around on to his knees, struck her savagely in the breast with the pommel of his sword, and flung her down under her horse’s feet. He brought his horse around just as Martin charged him, and gave his enemy the point; but Martin had been waiting for such a trick, and slipping down under his horse’s flank, he let Fulk’s blade gash his shoulder.

His own horse blundered into De Lisle’s and staggered the other beast. Martin slipped clear, and got in a blow that made the swashbuckler reel in the saddle. De Lisle struck back at him, and Martin, guarding, had his staff cut clean in two. He sprang in and up, got a grip of Fulk’s swordbelt and wrist, and dragged him out of the saddle.

De Lisle’s sword flew out of his hand, and the two men lay struggling like wild beasts under the horses’ hoofs. De Lisle’s harness bit into Martin’s flesh, his spurs gashed him, but Martin felt no pain. The fight was for the swashbuckler’s poniard, already half drawn from its sheath. Martin came uppermost, one hand gripping De Lisle’s wrist, the other thrust under the vizor of his helmet. De Lisle struck at him furiously with his gadded glove, and then tried to tear Martin’s hand away from his eyes.

But Martin was too strong for him; he had lived a cleaner life, and his muscles won in the tense balance of such a struggle. Neither man seemed to move for half a minute, both bodies rigid, straining against each other. Then De Lisle’s hand was jerked from the handle of his poniard, and Martin had clutched it and drawn it from its sheath.

Fulk de Lisle knew what was coming. He rolled to and fro, lashed out with his mailed fists, tore at Martin with his spurs; but his heavy harness cumbered him, and his breath was gone. Martin struck three times at the man’s gorget before the plates gave, and the poniard drove deep into the swashbuckler’s throat.

Two more such blows, and Fulk de Lisle twitched, gave a wet cry, and lay still.

Martin struggled up, panting, battered, running with blood. He looked around for Mellis. She had been leaning against a tree trunk, her hands clasping her bruised bosom, watching that death struggle with eyes that saw love and life fighting for her and for her honor. Her man was wounded. He would need her now.

She ran to him, eyes full of soft lights and shadows, pitying his wounds, and not shrinking from his bloodiness.

“Martin! Oh, brave heart!”

She caught his face between her hands and kissed him.

“Mellis!”

“Was there ever so fine a man as mine? And your wounds, your poor shoulder! Now it is that my hands can be of use.”

She made him lie down at the foot of a tree, spreading her own cloak for him. Her horse carried saddle-bags, so did Fulk de Lisle’s, and the two beasts were nosing each other as though to protest that a man’s quarrel was not theirs. Mellis took them by the bridles and tied them to a tree, unstrapped the bags, and laid them on the grass. In her own she found some clean linen, in Fulk de Lisle’s a bottle of wine.

Martin Valliant lay on his back, white and faint, his eyes staring dreamily at the flickering sunlight in the fir boughs overhead. A great lassitude had fallen on him—a sweet indolence. His manhood surrendered itself into the hands of a woman.

She came and knelt by him.

“Now—your shoulder. That must be mended.”

She had drawn the wooden spigot out of the stone bottle.

“Wine is clean and good. Lie still.”

The wound was washed with red Bordeaux, wiped clean, and swathed in the bandages torn from her piece of linen. Then she raised Martin’s head and made him drink, looking at him with eyes that glimmered mystery.

He caught a strand of her hair and laid it against his lips.

“What more could a man ask of life?”

She smiled, and brushed her cheek against his hand.

Presently Martin sat up and looked about him, at the dead man, the horses, his own ragged cassock, and his spur-torn legs. They were burning as though he had fallen into the fire, and he knew that his face had been cut by the gads on De Lisle’s gloves. A pretty object he must look to her, and yet her love was like a soft light around him.

“A swim in the Rondel would not come amiss.”

“To-night, perhaps.”

He took the wine and the rest of the linen from her, and rising, went away among the trees. He bathed his face with the wine, swathed his legs with the linen, and put his hands ruefully through the rents in his cassock. It seemed to be hanging by shreds, and his skin showed in a dozen places.

“Martin!”

He rejoined her, looking very solemn, but she was holding up a rich red cloak that she had unstrapped from De Lisle’s saddle.

“This will serve.”

She tossed it to him, and he flung it over his shoulders and tied the laces.

“A new color.”

“And no ill color either.”

Mellis picked up her own green cloak and fastened it so that it made her look more of a woman. She blushed, and gave Martin a shy, laughing glance.

“This man’s gear does not please me. I shall have to thieve or borrow. And, alas! all the world has gone against us.”

De Lisle’s red figure lying there stark and still made them remember the peril that threatened them. The Red Rose was in the dust; the Forest was but a hunting ground for my Lord of Troy and his riders; the gallows at Troy Castle would bear deadly fruit.

Mellis’s eyes darkened, and her face lost some of its soft, rounded light.

“God help us! This has been an ill day for the Forest. And yet—they were my enemies!”

She stole a glance at Fulk’s body.

“Let us go, dear comrade. We have no friends now—save each other. How dark this wood is!”

“Where would you go?”

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Ah! what a question! Where? Into the deep woods with the wild things, and so somewhere where our faces are not known. I would live a little while yet, Martin, for life can be sweet—now.”

He looked at her strangely.

“Yes; you are too beautiful to die.”

The horse that Martin had ridden had wandered off into the wood, but Fulk de Lisle’s was at his service. Moreover, the dead man’s sword and dagger might have their uses, and for the better carrying of them Martin took Fulk’s belt and buckled it about him.

“I like it not,” he said; “but necessity is our master.”

He helped Mellis to her saddle, unfastened the horses, and mounted Fulk de Lisle’s. Then he hesitated, looking into Mellis’s eyes, for he knew not where to turn.

“Which way?”

“On through the wood. Thanks be to God, I was born in the Forest.”

_Chapter XXXIX_

Mellis knew the ways, and through all the heat of the day she guided Martin southwards toward the Rondel river, picking up the wild tracks and never faltering in her choice. They kept to the woods, and avoided the open heaths, sometimes following a brown stream that flickered under the green shadows and leaving it when it left the woods. Not a living creature did they see save a few deer far down a deep glade, a hawk searching for food, and once, a gray-green snake basking on a bank in the sun.

A gloom seemed to have fallen on the Forest, and even the young foliage looked darker, heavier, less bright with the freshness of spring. The open woods were full of a listening sadness, a mysterious expectancy; for Death was out, Death and the Lord of Troy. Yet Mellis was touched by no such melancholy, no sinister forebodings; her man’s life was in her hands, her eyes were keen and watchful; danger gave a sparkle to her beauty; the day’s need steadied her heart.

Martin Valliant watched her, and marveled. He forgot his wounds in looking at her forest-shaded face with its clean, clear comeliness, its alert, proud self-trust. There was nothing more wonderful than her eyes and the way they filled with light when meeting his. Their color seemed so elusive, changing from blue to black, and sometimes they were all a-glimmer like water touched by the sun. He looked at her lips, her white throat, her hair, the hands that held the reins, and had to tell himself that she was his. Every part of her seemed a piece of enchantment. She was so fair in his eyes that the thought of touching her seemed sacrilege.

He found her smiling at him shyly.

“Have we lost our tongues, dear man?”

“So much has happened, and you——”

“And I?”

“Sometimes I think that you do not belong to this world, that you will vanish away.”

She looked at him intently, curiously, for it seemed to her that his mood foreshadowed some solemn and subtle fancy that was working in his heart. He desired her, and yet did not desire her. The glamour of a mystical self-renunciation was not dead in Martin Valliant.

“I am flesh and blood, God be thanked for it.”

He half closed his eyes.

“I see more than that.”

She colored.

“See the woman in me. For it is the man in you that has made me dream dreams.”

They rode in silence for a while, but both were conscious of a listening tenderness, a mysterious and unsolved unrest.

“Martin?”

He glanced at her gravely.

“Life and Death march on either side of us. We have to take thought for to-morrow and to-morrow’s morrow. It will not be easy.”

She saw his eyes grow dark and deep.

“Nor is life easy, child. I hold your soul in pledge, and this place is full of our enemies. And what am I but a broken man, an outcast?”

“You are my love,” she said simply.

He did not speak for a moment, and there were lines on his forehead.

“Is God satisfied? Does He look on us as two children? I could show Him my heart—without fear—and yet——”

“Well?”

“I could die and not be afraid. But life is yours, and the beauty and the sweetness thereof, and where is the chalice for such wine? Are my hands fit to carry it?”

“I ask for no other hands. Let God judge.”

Martin rode at her side, sunk in deep thought. He had not forgotten Peter Swartz and the inn of the Crossed Keys at Gawdy Town. Life and liberty might lie that way, escape from the vengeance of my Lord of Troy, and from the curses of the brethren of Paradise; but it would be at the cost of exile, of wanderings in a strange land. Was Mellis made for such a life? Was not her very beauty too rich and perilous? Moreover, all hope had not vanished for her out of England; Richmond was on the seas; the Red Rose might yet out-flower the White.

Mellis was waiting on his meditations. Her mind was most obstinately made up; she was no green child or the victim of fanciful tenors; life had taught her much; the rough wisdom begotten of her adventures had been wedded to the sure instincts of the woman. Martin Valliant was her man; he was strong, and could keep her from the hands of other men, for she had no waywardness, no wish to change her lovers. Some women are born to be courtesans, but Mellis was not one of them.

“Still thinking, Martin?”

He hesitated, and then told her of Swartz, and the inn at Gawdy Town. Her eyes brightened.

“Good Swartz! Good comrade! Why, that is a plan worth trying when matters look so desperate. The men of Gawdy Town have no great love for my Lord of Troy.”

Martin looked at her in astonishment, for the brave adventurousness of her face betrayed no fear of the future.