Part 8

Martin Valliant had to hide the vivid memories of yesterday, but as he stood at Mellis’s side on the edge of the beech wood and looked down upon Woodmere, he could but marvel at the strangeness of life. Here was he beside her, her comrade in arms, an outlaw, a man who had thrown the future into the melting-pot of fate. And as he watched a world of tenderness and yearning swim into her eyes, his soul stood stoutly to its outlawry. His muscles were made to serve her, and he thanked God for his strength.

“That was our home.”

She looked long at it, her lips trembling, her bosom rising and falling with emotion.

“Gilbert will never see it again. We used to draw pictures in France, and in his fancy the apple trees were always pink and white, just as they are now.”

Martin could find no words to utter. He wanted to touch her, to make her feel that he understood.

But she broke loose from these sad thoughts, rallied herself to face the fiercer issue.

“The valley looks empty.”

They scanned it keenly.

“Not a soul.”

“They will not leave us in peace for very long, and the hours will be precious. Come.”

Martin shut his eyes for a moment. He could not forget that vision of her with her dark hair clouding about her body. But the vision was sacred.

“You see, the bridge is broken.”

He had to pretend his innocence.

“And there is no boat?”

“It is rotting in the mud.”

They went down to the water’s edge, and Martin tied the horse to one of the willows. He paid homage to her forethought in the bringing of those tools.

“We shall have to build a bridge.”

Already she was pushing her way through the scrub, and Martin followed her. There were two gaps to be dealt with, one where the arch had fallen, and a second where the drawbridge should have served.

“The trunks of a few young trees thrown across.”

“Yes—but the horse.”

“We could leave him on this side for the night.”

She stared at the gate-house.

“Perhaps. But we shall want a bridge that can be drawn in, to keep out chance visitors. The gate, too, is off its hinges, and broken. I know where a beam is hidden, but I doubt whether we can lift it.”

“There is the rope—and I am strong.”

Her eyes looked him over with critical praise.

“Yes, you are bigger than your father. If we could throw a couple of young ash trees across the first gulf. There is a thicket of ashes down yonder.”

Martin needed no second word from her. He had the tools off the horse’s back, and the ax on his shoulder.

“Which way?”

“Over there. I’ll take the billhook and lop off the boughs while you do the felling.”

They started away like a couple of children, full of the adventure, and Martin was soon at work in a thicket of ash trees that had been planted some twenty years before. He chose a tree and had it down with six clean, slanting blows of the ax, so that the cuts clove wedgewise into the trunk.

“Oh, brave man! That was woodman’s skill.”

She fell to clearing the trunk of its top and side branches while Martin threw a second tree. He felled four, and shouldered them one by one up to the bridge end, and here his great strength served. These ash spars were no broomsticks, and he had to spear them forward over the gap, and keep their ends from dropping into the water.

“Brave comrade! Well done!”

She cheered his triumph.

“And now a few willow withies.”

He took the bill, lopped off some willow boughs, and then, straddling his way along the ash trunks, lashed them together with the withies. The thing made a very passable bridge. Martin tested it, and was happy.

“A few more trees, and some earth rammed on the top, and the horse will be safe across.”

“Yes—to-morrow. It is growing late. Now for the beam I told you of.”

It was lying in the sluice ditch under a smother of brambles and young thorns, a great balk of timber all sodden with damp, fifteen feet long, six inches thick, and a foot in breadth. Two men might have shirked carrying it twenty yards; but Martin, in that springtime of his love, dragged it out upon the grass.

“Good saints, but you are strong!”

She tossed him the rope.

“Throw a noose around it. I can help at pulling.”

They got the beam to the bridge, across the platform of ash trees, and so to the place where the drawbridge should have been, and here the business baffled them. The thing was far too ponderous to be thrust across like a plank.

Martin solved the riddle. He had to fell two more small trees, lay them across, and straddle his way over. Then he climbed the stair to the broken gate-house and bade Mellis throw him the rope. The first two casts failed, but the third succeeded. They swung the great beam across between them, Martin keeping his end raised by straining the rope over the wall.

He saw Mellis run lightly across, and scrambling back along the wall and down the stone stairway built in the angle of the gate-house, he joined her in the courtyard. The sun hung low over the tops of the trees, and its level rays threw the blackened beams of the burned roof of the hall into grim relief. The whole place had been gutted, with the exception of the little octagonal tower to the south of the hall, and one or two outhouses lying beyond the garden. The gate-house was just a stone shell, the charred gate lying rotting in a bed of nettles.

The evening light played in Mellis’s eyes, and Martin Valliant held his peace for the moment. Her lips moved as though she were repeating some promise she had made. It crossed his mind that she might wish to be alone, so he went back across the bridge and carried the two sacks and the tools over.

She called to him.

“Martin—Martin!”

She had opened a door that led from the courtyard into the garden, and stood waiting for him.

“Let us look everywhere. I want to be sure that no one has been here before us.”

She wandered out into the garden, a sweet and tangled place, sloping toward the sunset. The walks had gone back to grass, and the rose bushes were smothered with brambles. The four clipped yews by the sundial had grown into shaggy trees, and the herbs in the borders lived the life of the woods. Wild flowers had taken possession, buttercups, ragged robin, purple vetches, and great white daisies. There was a nut walk that had grown into a green tunnel; and a stone seat on the terrace under the wall of the house was almost hidden by bushes that had sprung up between the stones.

“This was a garden, and that was my mother’s seat. Men are very cruel.”

“And yet the place is very beautiful,” he said.

“With the beauty of sadness and of pain.”

In one of the borders she found an old rose bush that was budding into bloom, and one red flower had opened its petals. Her eyes glimmered.

“Why—this is a miracle!”

She plucked the rose, kissed it, smelled its perfume.

“Red is our color.”

And then a thought struck her.

“Comrade in arms, you are for Lancaster; here is your badge.”

She gave him the rose, and Martin touched it with his lips as she passed on down the garden.

They had explored the whole island before the sun dropped below the trees. The only habitable place was the tower; it had escaped the fire, probably because the wind had been blowing from the south when Roger Bland’s men had thrown their torches into the hall. A newel staircase led to an upper room, and though there was nothing but the boarded floor, the place was dry and habitable.

Martin did not enter the room, but stood on the threshold, as though some finer instinct held him back.

“There is plenty of old bracken in the beech wood,” he said; “it would serve—for a night.”

She was leaning her hands on the window ledge and looking down on the sea of white apple blossom below. Martin left her there, and, crossing himself, went out to the woods to gather bracken.

When he returned he found her watering the horse at the edge of the mere.

“We can let him lodge in one of the thickets for the night,” she said, smiling at the great bundle of brown bracken on Martin’s back.

A blackbird was singing in the orchard, and bats were beginning to flit against the yellow sky. Martin carried the bracken to the tower, and threw the bundle down on the floor of her room. The door still hung on its hinges, and he nodded his head approvingly when he saw that it could be bolted on the inside. It was fitting and right that she should feel secure in her chamber, since she was the queen of the place and more sacred to him than any lady in the land.

Martin went for more bracken, and when he returned with it he left the bundle on the flagstones at the foot of the stairs. Mellis had found a sheltered woodland stall for the horse, and had tethered him there with several lapfuls of grass for his supper. Dusk was falling over the Forest, and a great stillness prevailed. The surface of the mere was black and smooth as a magician’s mirror.

Martin heard Mellis calling.

“Bread and wine—and then to bed.”

She had found a rickety, worm-eaten oak bench, and carried it out to the terrace above the garden. They sat one at each end of the bench, using the space between them as a table.

“To-morrow there will be much work for you, Martin Valliant,” she said, smiling.

“Work is the sap of life.”

“Oh, sententious man! You will build me an oven, and I will bake bread. There are plenty of fish in the mere, and some venison would help to stock our larder. You will be a slave to-morrow, Martin Valliant; we have to victual our stronghold and stop the gaps in its defenses. Every day may be precious.”

He could see that she was weary, and ready to yawn behind her hand.

“Go and sleep,” he said, when they had ended the meal; “I shall lie on guard, ready for an alarm.”

“Martin Valliant, man-at-arms!”

So Martin made his bed at the foot of the stairs, and slept across them, so that no one could pass save over his body.

_Chapter XX_

Mellis woke on her bed of bracken soon after the birds had broken into song. She went to the window of the tower room and found the valley full of white mist and the whole world all wet with dew. The day promised gloriously, heralded by such a dawn.

As she had said to Martin Valliant, every hour was precious, for the Lord of Troy’s riders would be scouring the Forest, and Woodmere would not be forgotten. If she and Martin were to hold it as a strong rallying place for their friends of the Red Rose, then it behooved them to be up and doing before their ruinous stronghold was attacked.

She opened her door, and going softly down the stairs, found Martin Valliant still sleeping across them on his bed of fern. And for the moment she felt loth to rouse him, for he lay breathing as quietly as a child, one arm under his head.

“Martin Valliant——”

She touched him with her foot, and the result was miraculous. He sat up, clutching the billhook that lay on the step beside him, a most fierce and unpeaceful figure in the gray light of the dawn.

“Stand! Who’s there?”

Mellis retreated a step or two, laughing, for he was a dangerous gentleman with that bill of his.

“A friend, Martin Valliant.”

He got up, looking not a little angry with himself for having let her catch him asleep.

“What, daylight already!”

“I was loth to wake you, but there is much to be done.”

“It is I who should have been awake, not you.”

He looked in a temper that wanted to catch the day’s work by the throat and throttle it. Mellis stepped over the pile of bracken and stood in the doorway that opened on the courtyard.

“One does not work well hungry,” she said, “and we must talk over the day’s needs.”

Her hair hung loose, and she shook it down so that it fell like a black cloak about her green-sheathed body. The color and the richness of it thrilled Martin to the heart. Her throat looked as white as May blossom, and her eyes had all the mystery of the dawn. And of a sudden a swift exultation leaped in him at the thought that he was her man-at-arms, chosen to shield her with his body, her comrade in this great adventure.

“The day is ours,” he said; “I feel stronger than ten men.”

She turned her head, and her eyes held his.

“I think I am fortunate in you, comrade-in-arms.”

He could have taken the hem of her gown and kissed it.

Mellis served the meal, and they broke their fast in the garden, sitting on the oak bench and watching the white mist lift and melt from the valley. The woods grew green, the sky became blue above them, the mere flashed gold, the flowers glowed like wet gems in the grass. And Martin Valliant’s soul was full of the dawn, the mystery and freshness thereof; the smell of the sweet, wet world intoxicated him; the red rose that Mellis had given him lay over his heart. He looked at her with secret, tentative awe, and life seemed a strange and miraculous dream.

She began to speak of the day’s needs.

“That bridge does not please me, comrade. We want a thing that can be dropped and kept raised at our pleasure. And then there is the gate.”

“The hinges and nails are all that are left of it.”

“I have it. There is some good timber in those outhouses; we could build a new gate. The curtain walls are still strong and good. Then there is the gate leading into the kitchen court; we could wall that up with stones. We must hope to keep the Lord of Troy’s men from crossing the water, if they come before we have raised a garrison.”

She grew more mysterious.

“I shall have other things to show you, but they can keep till the evening. And now—as to the horse.”

The beast raised quite a debate between them, since he complicated the matter of the bridge. Martin was for leaving him tethered in one of the glades, and trusting to luck and to Roger Bland’s men not discovering him if they rode to Woodmere within the next few days. And in the end Mellis agreed with him, since he was to be responsible for the contriving of a drawbridge.

“Your plan has it,” she confessed. “I will go and tether Dobbin in one of the glades, and then come and serve as housewife. The man’s part shall be yours.”

Martin went to work with fierce enthusiasm. He had a scheme in his head as to how the thing might be done, and he set about it when Mellis had crossed the water. He bored a hole through one end of the big beam, ran the rope through the hole and knotted it. At the other end he contrived a rough hinge by driving four stout stakes criss-cross into the ground, with a crossbar under them which could be pegged to the butt-end of the beam. The pulley wheels for the chains of the old bridge were still in the two chain holes of the gate-house, about ten feet from the ground. Martin piled some stones against the wall, climbed on them, and ran the rope through one of the chain holes. The trick worked very prettily. He found that he could raise and lower the beam from inside the gate-house, and all that was needed was a stake to which he could fasten the rope when the bridge was up.

Mellis came back from the woods as he was driving the stake into the ground under the gateway. He had rolled his cassock over his girdle, and turned the sleeves up nearly to his shoulders, so that the muscles showed. And he looked hot and masterful and triumphant as he turned to show her how his bridge worked.

“Well done, Martin Valliant. Let the beam down and I will come over and see if I am strong enough to raise it.”

He lowered the beam, and she walked over to him.

“Now I understand why you did not want to build a bridge that would carry a horse. Let me see what I can do. I might have to play bridgeward some day.”

She found that she was strong enough to raise the beam, for she was tall and lithe, with a beautiful breadth across the bosom.

Martin’s eyes shone.

“Now I must build you a gate,” he said, “a gate that nothing but a cannon shot can shiver.”

It took him the rest of the morning to pull down one of the outhouses, sort out his timber, and get it cut to size and shape. He had dragged the charred mass of the old gate from its bed of nettles, and had stripped it of its great iron hinges when Mellis came to call him to dinner.

“I have done famously: hot meat, and new bread, and a dish of herbs. I found two old iron pots in the cellar, and I am quite kitchen proud.”

Martin was loth to leave the work. He was hunting for the smith’s nails that had fallen out of the burned wood of the old gate; they were more precious than pieces of gold. She pretended to be hurt by his lack of gratitude.

“I have cooked for my comrade in arms, and he will not eat what I have cooked.”

Martin straightened up, and left his hunting for nails among the trampled nettles.

“It was not churlishness on my part.”

“I know. You must do things fiercely, Martin Valliant, with your whole heart, or not at all.”

“My hunger is fierce,” he confessed, smiling gravely. “No food could be sweeter than what your hands have prepared.”

He was shy of her, and voiceless, all through that meal, and there was an answering silence in Mellis’s heart, for though so short a time had passed since their lives had been linked together, she was forgetting Martin the monk in regarding Martin Valliant the man. She began to look at him with a vivid and self-surprised curiosity; his shyness infected her; she became conscious of the deep wonder light in his eyes. Hitherto she had been a creature of impulses, a wild thing blown along by the wind of necessity; but of a sudden she saw the man as a man, and her heart seemed to cease beating for a moment, and her thoughts to stand still.

He was the very contrast of herself, with his tawny hair tinged with red, and his frank, steadfast, trusting eyes. Regarded as a woman, Mellis was a fine, lithe, white-skinned creature, and Martin Valliant matched her in the matter of bodily beauty. There was no gnarled uncouthness about his strength. He carried himself like a king’s son, and without any arrogance of conscious pride. The soul of the man seemed to show in his movements, a steady, gentle, unflurried soul, capable of great tendernesses, of great wraths, and of strange renunciations.

Her eyes grew wayward, more shadowy; they avoided his. A new subtlety of feeling stole into the hearts of both of them. The sun shone, the woods were green, the wild flowers were bright in the lush grass. When a blackbird sang Martin Valliant felt that the bird’s song and his heart were one.

He broke away, for the grosser hunger was soon satisfied.

“I shall not sleep till that gate is up.”

She brushed the crumbs from her lap.

“You will need me. I will come when you call.”

He was walking away when she uttered his name.

“Martin.”

Her voice had never sounded so strange and human in his ears.

“I have a secret to show you—presently—when the gate is up.”

He went off, wondering, his eyes full of his new exultation.

Martin worked like a giant, with a fever of love in his blood. In three hours he had the gate finished and ready to be hung, but the hanging of it was the devil. The thing was monstrously massive and cumbersome to lift, and too broad for him to get a grip of it with spread arms.

He went in search of Mellis.

“I can build my gate—but as to hanging it——”

She smiled at his grim, baffled face.

“Women are cunning!”

She went to help him, and spoke of wedges and the crowbar.

“I can steady the thing while you heave it up, little by little, till the hinge straps are over the bolts.”

He gave her a look from his blue eyes.

“A man rushes like a bull. While you——”

“Ah, as I told you, women are cunning.”

Between them they got the gate on its hinges, and though it groaned and moved reluctantly, it was as strong as a man could wish.

“No spear truncheon will prise that up in a hurry.”

She was flushed and breathing fast, and her quick beauty swept into Martin’s heart like the wind. He stood still, gazing at her, till she looked at him, and then his eyes fell.

“See how strong that is,” he said.

And his heart would have cried, “Strong as my love.”

The main gate of Woodmere was safe now from a surprise, and no enemies could attack the place save by swimming the mere. Martin had made a round of the walls; they stood twelve feet high and were strongly built. The only other openings in them were the gate leading from the kitchen court and the wicket opening on the garden. The garden wicket still hung on its hinges, a stout oak door studded and banded with iron, and easily barred in case of an attack. The kitchen gateway they had decided to wall up, and Martin set to work upon the wall, using the big stones that had fallen from the battlements of the hall. They were so heavy that they wedged and weighted each other in place, and stood as solidly as though they had been laid by a mason.

Martin had nearly closed the gap when Mellis called him.

“The sun is near the hills. You have done enough.”

In spite of his youth and his strength Martin Valliant was very weary. He looked at the wall that he had built, and saw that it was strong enough to stand against a surprise.

Her voice came nearer.

“Are you ever hungry?”

He went whither her voice lured him. She had made a table in the garden out of some stones and pieces of wood, set flowers on it, and laid supper thereon.

Her dark eyes seemed to him to be deep with a new mystery. They broke bread together and drank their wine, and the meal had the flavor of a sacrament.

“There is yet work to be done,” she had said to him, “before the daylight goes. And I shall show you a thing, Martin Valliant, that shall pledge me your honor.”

When they had ended the meal she rose and looked at him with great steadfastness.

“Martin Valliant, is your heart still set on this life of the sword? Tell me the truth, and keep nothing hidden. God knows that a man must make his choice.”

His eyes met hers without flinching.

“I have chosen,” he said; “there shall be no turning back.”

She went toward the tower, beckoning him to follow.

“I have not been idle, and here is my secret.”

It was her brother’s treasury that Mellis showed him, the vault at the base of the tower, filled with war gear and a store of food. She had raised the stone by thrusting a long pole through the iron ring. A stout leather sack lay on the ground beside the entry.

“There are bows and bills and war harness below there,” she told him. “We have fooled the Lord of Troy, who swore that there should not be so much as a boar-spear left in the Forest. Take that sack, Martin Valliant, and carry it for me into the garden.”

He shouldered the thing, and knew that he carried iron, both by the weight of it and by the way a sharp edge bit into his shoulder.

“Lay it on the grass—there.”

He obeyed her, wondering what was in her mind.

Mellis knelt and cut the leather thong that fastened the throat of the sack. The leather had kept out the damp, and her white hands drew out armor that was bright as the blade of her poniard. It was a suit of white mail beautifully wrought, yet noble in its clean simplicity. Salade, breast-plate, shoulder pieces, back-plate, tassets, loin-guard, vam-braces, rear-braces, elbow pieces, gauntlets, thigh plates, greaves, solerets and spurs, she laid them all upon the grass. And last of all she drew out a belt and sword, and a plain shield colored green.

She spread her hands, palms downwards, over them.

“This was to have been my brother’s harness.”

Martin Valliant was kneeling at her side.

“And now, God helping me, I have chosen the man who shall wear it—even you, Martin Valliant, my comrade in arms.”

Martin’s eyes seemed to catch the sunlight. He knelt for a while in silence, as though he were praying.

“May no shame come to it through me,” he said at last; “and though it may sit strange on me, my heart shall serve you to the death.”

She took the sword and rose from her knees.

“My hands shall gird you.”

He reached out, drew the pommel of the sword toward him, and kissed it.

“I swear troth to you, Mellis.”

He looked up, and her eyes held his.

“Martin Valliant you are called, and valiant shall you be. Stand, good comrade.”

She buckled the sword on him, knowing in her heart that he was her man.