Part 5

The sun had been up some hours before she saddled her nag and rode forward through Bracknell Deep. She knew all the ways, though Woodmere lay three leagues to the north-west, and the Black Moor two leagues to the east of it. She felt no need of hurrying. The deep woods delighted her; her dark eyes seemed to fill with their mystery; their silence soothed her heart. Life was a great adventure, a game of hide-and-seek in a garden where every path and nook and thicket were unknown. She was strong and comely and full of the pride of her youth; her breath was sweet, her black hair fell to her knees, her lips were as red as the berries on a briar.

Martin Valliant was hoeing weeds in Father Jude’s garden when Mellis rode her brown nag up the southern slope of the Black Moor. There was no life in Martin’s labor; his eyes had a dull look as though some pain gnawed at his vitals. His heart had discovered a new bitterness in life, for the words that Kate Succory had spoken to him in the night kept up a tumult in his brain. He had begun to understand many things that had seemed obscure and meaningless. He even realized why he was hoeing weeds on the top of a lonely moor. The very men whose life he had shared were filled with malice against him, and, like Joseph’s brethren, were trying to sell him into bondage.

He heard the tramp of Mellis’s horse, and his new-born mistrust stood on the alert.

“Why should I fear anything that walks the earth,” he thought, “man, woman, or beast? They are but creatures of flesh.”

And then he discovered himself standing straight as a young ash tree, resting his hands on the top of the handle of the hoe, and staring over the hedge into a woman’s eyes. He could see her head, shoulders and bosom; the green hedge hid the rest of her. But if Martin had dared to scoff at Dame Nature, that good lady was quick and vigorous with her retort. She showed him this girl, black-haired, red-lipped, flushed with riding, sitting her horse with a certain haughtiness, her head held high, her white throat showing proudly.

“You are Father Jude?”

Martin could have stammered with a sudden, wondering awe of her. Her eyes were fixed on him questioningly, and with an intentness that heralded an incipient frown.

“Father Jude is no longer here.”

“Not here!”

“He lies sick at Paradise.”

The frown showed now on her forehead. Her eyes lifted and gazed beyond him, and Martin Valliant had never seen such eyes before. His mistrust of her had vanished, he knew not why. Paradise had no knowledge of such a creature as this. She had ridden out of the heart of a mystery, and her face was the face of June.

“Fools!”

She was angry, perplexed. And then she smiled down at Martin with quick subtlety.

“Your pardon, father.”

She smiled whole-heartedly as she took stock of his youth.

“What am I saying! I have a vow of silence upon me, save that I may speak to such as you. I am a pilgrim. I had a fellow-pilgrim with me, but she fell sick at Burchester, and I rode on alone. Father Jude’s name was put in my mouth by the prioress of Burchester. Is there not a pilgrim’s rest-house here?”

Martin Valliant was still full of his wonder at her beauty.

“Assuredly. This is the chapelry of St. Florence. The good saint so willed it that all who passed this way should have food and lodging.”

Her face had changed its expression. She showed a sudden reticence, a cold pride.

“St. Florence has my thanks. Will you send your servant to take my horse?”

He gaped at her, as though overcome by the thought that this creature of mystery was to move and breathe in the guest-house next his cell.

He tried to save his dignity by taking refuge in sententiousness.

“I am the servant of St. Florence and of all those who tarry here.”

She glanced at him guardedly, and seemed to realize his unworldliness.

“I shall be no great burden. A stall for the horse and a roof for my own head. I can look to my own horse, if you will show me the stable.”

Martin let the hoe drop out of his hands. He went striding along the hedge as though some enchantment had fallen upon him. But she was out of the saddle by the time he reached the gate, and, by the way she carried herself, more than fit to deal with her own affairs.

“That is the stable, there by the woodstack?”

“Yes.”

“Is the door locked? No? I thank you, good father.”

He loitered about there like a great boy, feeling that he ought to help her, but that she did not desire his help. She seemed to have a way of taking possession of things. He could see her removing the saddle and bridle from her horse, and presently she was at the haystack gathering up some of the loose hay in her arms. She had left her brown cloak in the stable, and her blue spencer and green gown made Martin think of some rich blue flower on a green stalk.

Next he saw her handling a bucket, and this time the spirit moved him. He went across to her with boyish gravity.

“The spring is down the hill. I will fetch the water.”

She gave him the bucket with an air of unconcern. Her hand touched his, and thrilled him to the shoulder, but she did not so much as notice that she had touched him.

“Thank you, Father——”

“Martin.”

“Martin.”

“It would be too heavy for you to carry,” he said bluntly.

But she turned back into the stable as though she had not heard him.

Martin Valliant went down to the spring with a most strange sense of self-dissatisfaction. He filled the bucket, balanced it on the rough stones that formed a wall around the spring, and stared at his own reflection in the water. The thought struck him that he had never looked at himself in that same way before, critically, with a personal inquisitiveness. A new self-consciousness was being born in him. He stood there brooding, wondering if other men——

Then he rebuked himself with fierce severity, and carried the bucket back up the hill. Mellis was not in the stable, so he watered the horse and stared at the saddle and bridle hanging on the wall as though they could tell him who she was and whence she came. It occurred to him that she might be hungry, and at the same time he remembered that the food in his larder was hardly fit for a sturdy beggar.

This struck him as an absolute disaster. He went guiltily to his cell, and took out what by courtesy he called bread. It was of his own baking, a detestable piece of alchemy.

He weighed it in his hand, and found himself thinking of the lithe way in which she moved.

“They bake good bread at Paradise,” he said to himself.

A quite ridiculous anger attacked him.

“Mean hounds! This chapelry should be better served. A couple of mules with panniers——”

He went forth, stroking his chin dubiously, and looking at the bread he carried.

“Poor stuff for such a pilgrim.”

The door of the little rest-house stood open, showing its oak table and benches, and the rude wooden pallets that served as beds. Mellis was standing behind the table, unpacking one of her saddle-bags.

“This bread——”

He felt his face growing hot. Her eyes regarded him with momentary amusement.

“Is that—bread?”

“It is as God made me make it.”

She was smiling. His quaint humility touched her.

“I will take your bread, Father Martin, and in exchange you shall eat some of mine.”

She took out a manchet wrapped in white butter cloth and held it out to him.

“Put your bread upon the table. I dare vow it cost you much honest—labor.”

She had nearly said “cursing,” but his solemn face chastened her.

Martin Valliant took her manchet, handling it as though it were something that would break. His eyes wandered around the room and noticed the wooden pallets.

“There should be some sweet hay spread there,” he said to himself.

Mellis was watching him, but with no great interest. For the moment life called to her as a fierce and impetuous adventure. She had no use for a man who wore the dress of a priest.

“I will keep this bread for the altar,” he said suddenly, feeling that he had no excuse for loitering any longer in the room.

For an hour or more Martin Valliant went about his work with grim thoroughness. He fetched more water from the spring, cut up wood for kindling, swept out the chapel and his cell, and looked into the press where he kept his vestments to see that the moths had not been at work. Yet all the while he had his mind’s eye on the door of the rest-house; his thoughts wandered, no matter how busy he kept his hands.

He was standing at the doorway of the chapel, polishing one of the silver candlesticks that stood on the altar, when Mellis came out of the rest-house and turned her steps toward the great wooden cross. She passed close to the chapel in wandering toward the highest point of the moor, and her eyes rested for a moment on Martin Valliant and his silver candlestick.

It may have been that she asked herself what this tall fellow meant by living the life of an old woman when he was built for the trade of the sword. At all events, Martin Valliant saw a look in her eyes that was very like pity touched with scorn.

He watched her go to the cross and sit down on the mound. Her chin was raised, and she turned her head slowly from side to side, as though to bring all the Forest under her ken. There was something finely adventurous about her pose. She made Martin think of a wild-eyed bird surveying the world before spreading her wings for a flight.

He conceived a sudden distaste for polishing such a thing as a candlestick. He studied his own hands; they were big and brown, and he knew how strong they were. He remembered how he had straightened an iron crowbar across his knee, to the delight of the prior’s woodcutters. And when the big wain had got bogged by Lady’s Brook, Martin Valliant had crawled under the axle beam and lifted it out.

The candlestick was returned to the altar, and Martin went down to the haystack to fetch hay for Mellis’s bed. The hay knife was in the stack, and he cut out a good truss of fresh stuff and carried it to the rest-house. He had spread it on one of the wooden beds and was crossing the threshold, when he met Mellis face to face.

“I have brought some hay for a bed.”

He colored like fire, but her voice was casual when she answered him.

“You vex yourself too much on my account, father. Last night I slept out under a tree.”

Martin spent an hour walking up and down behind the chapel, raging with sudden self-humiliation. Why did she treat him as though he were an old man or a child?

_Chapter XII_

The next day came and went, a pageant of white clouds in a deep blue sky, and the earth all green to the purple of the distant hills.

Martin Valliant began the morning with a queer flush of excitement, even of trepidation. The woman with the dark hair and the wild woodland eyes would mount her horse and ride away out of his life. And somehow he did not want her to go, nor was he ashamed of the desire. He found himself in awe of her, but he did not fear her as he had feared poor Kate Succory. She was a mystery, a vision, a strange new world that made him stand wide-eyed with wonder. Her lips made him think of the holy wine, pure drink, red as blood, and undefiled.

His restlessness began with the dawn. He rang the chapel bell, went through the services, with his thoughts wandering out and waiting expectantly outside the rest-house door. For the very first time the spirit of dissimulation entered Brother Martin’s life, prompting him to walk up and down the grassy space outside his cell, hands folded, head bent, as though in meditation.

He saw her door open. She came out, her black hair hanging loose, wished him a calm “good morning,” and went down toward the spring. She had gone to wash herself there, to dabble her hands in the water. Martin paced up and down.

She returned, disappeared into the rest-house, and there was silence—suspense. Martin Valliant kept passing the open doorway, but he had not the courage to look in.

“Father Martin——”

He faced around with a guileless air, as though she had been very distant from his thoughts.

“Did you speak to me, Mistress——”

“And I have not told you my name! I am called Catharine Lovel. I wish to tarry here for some days, if St. Florence does not forbid it.”

Martin looked grave.

“I never heard that St. Florence had set a boundary to his charity,” he said.

“Then I am the more his debtor in the spirit. This is so sweet and calm a place. I come from a forest country, Father Martin.”

“It is a very wonderful country,” he agreed.

“And should be pleasant to one who has been vowed to a month’s silence?”

Again Martin agreed with her. She stood at gaze, her hands clasped in front of her.

“One cannot lose oneself with this moor as a guide post. I shall ride out, Father Martin, and go down into the woods.”

“In the valley there the beech trees are very noble,” he said; “I love them.”

“Sometimes, Father Martin, trees are nobler than men.”

He pondered those words of hers all day.

Dusk was falling before she returned. The brown horse’s ears hung limp, as though she had ridden him many miles, and his coat was stained with sweat. Martin Valliant had been standing in the doorway of his cell. He went forward to hold her horse.

“I so managed it that I lost myself,” she said.

Her face looked white in the dusk, and her eyes tired.

“I reached a river, a fine stream.”

“The Rondel. It runs a league away, and the woods are great and very thick.”

“That lured me on—perhaps. I found a ford, and pushed my horse over, there are wild grasslands beyond all full of flowers.”

“I have never been so far,” he confessed.

“It is a great country, even wilder than my own. I saw as splendid a hart as ever swam a stream come down and cross the river. And now I am as hungry as though I had followed the hounds.”

He saw that she was weary.

“I will look to the horse.”

She glided down from the saddle.

“The poor beast has had to suffer for my whims, father. He will bless you, no doubt. And so good-night to you; I shall be asleep almost before I have supped.”

Martin Valliant led the horse to the stable, took off the saddle and bridle, and rubbed the beast down with a handful of hay. He found the animal muddied above the knees, and there were other matters to set Martin thinking. The fords of the Roding were floored with sand, for the Roding was a clean river and ran at a good pace. Of course, the mud might have come from some piece of bog or a forest stream. He was the more astonished that she should have reached the river, and having reached it, found her way back again through one of the wildest and most savage parts of the Forest. The ways were few and treacherous, and known only to the forest folk, and yet what reason was there for her to lie?

The second day resembled the first in its happenings, save that Martin Valliant betrayed a more flagrant interest in this mysterious woman’s pilgrimage. She rode out early, and he hid himself behind a thorn bush on the moor and watched her progress. She chose neither the path that led to the beech woods, nor the road going west, but turned aside along the track that made for Oakshot Bottom. Martin watched her till she was out of sight, hidden by the belt of birches that bounded the northern rim of the moor.

She returned earlier that day, and in a strange and sullen temper. She let Martin take the horse, but her eyes avoided his, and she had little to say to him.

“I struck a fool’s country—all sand.”

“That would be the White Plain.”

“‘White’ they call it! A good jest!”

“Because of the birch trees.”

“Ah, the birch trees! I remember.”

He looked at her curiously, but she went straight to the rest-house and shut herself in. Something seemed to have gone very amiss with her that day, and Martin was honestly perplexed. Were women made of such wayward stuff that some dust, a wood of birch trees, and perhaps a few flies, could stir such spirited discontent?

He took her horse to the stable, fed and groomed him as though he were my lady’s servant. And again he examined the beast’s feet, only to discover something that was singular. One of the hind hoofs had red clay balled in it, and Martin Valliant knew that red clay was not to be found in that part of the Forest.

He picked the stuff out and stared at it, holding it in one palm.

“Oakshot is yellow, Bracknell is black, Troy is as white as a miller’s sack, The Paradise fields are as brown as wood, But red is the color of Bloody Rood.”

He called to mind the old Forest jingle, and the reddish-yellow lump in his hand rhymed with it.

“Bloody Rood? That is the Blount’s lordship. Young Nigel holds the fee.”

He frowned and tossed the clay into the stall.

Martin saw no more of Mellis that evening; she remained shut up in the rest-house, nor did he leave the limits of his cell. A new emotion had been born in Martin Valliant’s heart—an emotion that was so utterly human that the saint was fast losing himself in the man. Mellis was growing more mysterious, more elusive, and Martin Valliant’s imagination had carried him away at a gallop in pursuit of her.

Why had she ridden all the way to Bloody Rood? Chance could not have carried her there, and what reason had she for hiding the truth? The adventure had not gone smoothly, to judge by the temper of her return. And what sort of adventure could befall a woman in the Forest?

From the moment of that thought an utterly new look came into Martin Valliant’s eyes. His nostrils dilated, he stared fixedly at some imaginary scene, his hands clenched themselves. Dame Nature had flicked him with her scourge of jealousy, set him thinking about a certain young Nigel Blount of Bloody Rood.

Martin Valliant discovered his own manhood that night. He had ceased to be an onlooker, a creature in petticoats, an impersonal, passionless saint. He was going to take a part in the adventure: to see for himself how life stood.

_Chapter XIII_

Mellis had little to say to him next morning when he carried her a bucket of water from the spring. She was standing in the doorway of the rest-house, a far-away look in her eyes, her black hair caught up by a piece of red ribbon and tied behind her shoulders.

Martin did not dare to question her as to what she purposed for the day. His own secret was too big for him, and he felt guilty toward her in his thoughts. He went back to his cell, filled a wallet with food, and laid it ready behind the door with a stout hollywood staff that had belonged to Father Jude. If the girl rode out that morning he had made up his mind to follow her and leave the chapelry to take care of itself.

Going out to reconnoiter, he saw Mellis in the stable saddling her horse. The hint was sufficient. He kept out of the way and bided his time.

She did not call to him that morning or offer him any explanation, but rode straight from the stable past the great cross and over the edge of the moor. Martin saw her go. He slung the wallet over his shoulder, took his staff, and followed, stopping at the rest-house door to see whether she had left her saddle-bags behind. They were lying on one of the wooden beds, so that he knew that she purposed to return.

As a boy, Martin Valliant had tracked the deer, and his following of Mellis was just as subtle a piece of hunting. The old brown horse was jaded and stale, but she pushed him to a trot down the slope of the moor, and Martin had to run to keep her well in view. Luckily she was too busy keeping a watch for rabbit holes to trouble about looking back. When she reached the place where the track branched she reined in, and Martin dropped down behind a furze bush. Her indecision lasted only for a few seconds, for when he raised his head cautiously to get sight of her she was already moving along the track that made for the Green Deeps. Martin’s nostrils quivered, and his eyes lost some of their hardness. She had not chosen the track to Oakshot Bottom; Bloody Rood and the Blounts were out of court.

The brown horse appeared to be setting his own pace, and she had to humor him because of his age. A fair stride enabled Martin to keep his distance. He had to follow very cautiously over the moor, watching her like a hound, and ready to drop to earth should she waver or look back. There was a moment when he thought that he had betrayed himself, for she reined in her horse and sat looking steadily back at the swell of the moor. Martin lay flat in the heather, and presently she rode on.

The Green Deeps opened before them, wild valleys choked with woodland, almost pathless, a region where outlaws sometimes hid themselves. A narrow ride almost choked with scrub and brambles followed the valleys, lifting itself now and again over the shoulder of a low hill. The woods towered against the blue, solemn and silent. Sometimes a stream broke the stillness with a thin, trickling murmur.

They were heading for the Rondel; Martin knew that much, though this wild country was all virgin to him. He had to keep in closer touch with her, for the track disappeared at times, and Mellis threaded her way among the oaks and beeches. He was astonished at the steady, unhesitating way she rode, choosing her path when the track branched, without any sign of faltering. The Deeps were a great green fog to Martin Valliant; he was utterly lost in them, save for the guesswork that they were traveling north. All his wits were centered on the girl, on keeping her in view, and pushing ahead quickly when he lost her behind some leafy screen, on saving himself from rushing into a betrayal.

The track climbed a hill, and then the ground fell steeply, almost like a green cliff. Martin saw the gleam of water shining below the crowded domes of the trees. It was the Rondel flashing in the sunlight between the green walls of the Forest.

Mellis was urging the brown horse into the water when Martin reached the underwood at the top of the bank. She had struck the ford, and he saw that the water was quite shallow, reaching just above the horse’s knees. He dared not break cover until she was across, and there was every chance of his losing her if he fell too far behind, but she rode her horse straight out of the water and on into the Forest without glancing back. Martin tucked up his frock and splashed his way across like Atlas plowing through the ocean, scrambled up the far bank, and caught sight of her at the end of a colonnade of beeches, a green tunnel floored with brown leaves and bluebells. He started running, keeping close to the trunks of the trees, ready to dodge behind one of them if she so much as turned her head.

Martin’s chase of her lasted another hour, and the farther she led him the more mysterious she became. He was utterly perplexed by the whole business, and astonished by her miraculous knowledge of the Forest ways. He became aware of a change in the green wilderness; the woods were more open, the glades more frequent, and stretches of grassland flowed here and there, all yellow with buttercups and shining like cloth of gold. It was a more spacious country, more beautiful, less savage, lush, deep, and mysterious, sheltered from the winds. There were yews and hollies here more ancient than he had ever seen. Great sweeps of young bracken covered the open slopes of the hills.

They climbed a long rise where old beech trees grew. Its solemn aisles opened westwards on a little secret valley. Water glimmered in the green lap of the valley, and for a moment Martin thought that he had struck one of the reaches of the river. But something that happened ahead of him brought Martin Valliant to earth, with his chin resting on the mossy root of a beech tree. Mellis had dismounted, and was tying her horse to a drooping bough. They had come to the end of their journey.