Part 9

_Chapter XXI_

Martin Valliant slept at the foot of the tower stairway with Mellis’s sword beside him. He fell asleep with one hand gripping the hilt, like a child clutching a toy.

Mellis did not have to wake him that morning, for he was up before the birds had begun their orisons, his heart full of the great adventure that life had thrust upon him. He had taken it solemnly, like a young man before his knighthood, or a soldier setting forth on a Crusade, and all that he did that morning in the gray of the dawn betrayed the symbolical passion of the lover. He was to enter upon a new state before he touched that white harness, and so he went to the mere, stripped off his clothes, and bathed in the water. Then he knelt awhile, grave-eyed and strong, watching the sun rise on the new day, while the birds were a choir invisible.

When Mellis came down from her chamber she found him in the garden with the harness spread out upon the leather sack, so that the wet grass should not tarnish it. He had cut his cassock short above the knees, and was holding the salade in his hands and staring at it like a crystal gazer.

He flushed, and glanced at her with an air of bafflement.

“These iron clothes are new to me.”

Mellis did not smile at his predicament, though she guessed that he had no knowledge of how to arm himself.

“You must try the feel of it,” she said, “for a man should test himself with the weight of his harness. Four hands are needed for such a toilet. When we have eaten I will play the page to you.”

She was as good as her word, and the arming of Martin Valliant was an event in the life of the garden. Mellis made him seat himself upon the bench, while she picked up the pieces one by one and taught him his lesson by buckling them on with her own hands. First came the breast- and back-plates, the pauldrons and gorget, the vam-braces and rear-braces. Then she made him stand up.

“You may call that half-harness; a man can move lightly and fight on foot, but when bowmen are about, a man-at-arms should be sheathed from top to toe.”

Next she buckled on tassets, loin-guard, cuishes, greaves and solerets, set the salade on his head, and slung the green shield by its strap about his neck.

“Now, man of the sword!”

She stood back and surveyed him.

“Yes, it is better than I had hoped. You are a bigger man than my poor brother, but the harness covers you. Of course you should be wearing a wadded coat to save all chafing, and hose of good wool.”

Her eyes lit up as she looked him over, and she held her head proudly.

“I have no spear to give you, though I doubt not that you will make a better beginning with the sword—if needs be. Try the joints, Martin.”

He walked up and down before her, raised his arms, spread them wide, folded them over his chest. He seemed made for such heavy harness; the strong, sweeping movements of his limbs were not crabbed or clogged by it.

“The thing is like an iron skin.”

“Ah! it was made by a fine armorer. The joints are perfect. And the weight of it?”

“I’ll swear I could run or leap.”

“You are fresh as yet. A man must wear such harness for a day to learn where it irks him. And so I am thinking that I will leave you to master it. There is work for me in the Forest.”

He unhelmed himself, and his blue eyes looked at her questioningly.

“What! You are venturing abroad?”

“Yes; I shall take the horse, and your wallet full of food.”

“Why must you go?”

“Why, brother-in-arms, because we are not the only people on God’s earth who thirst to humble the Lord of Troy. We have friends in the Forest, and I must see them—take counsel, and plan what can be done. They were waiting for friends from France, and for poor Gilbert to give the word.”

He answered her with sudden fire.

“I carry your brother’s sword and wear his harness. It is my right to go.”

She smiled at him with quiet eyes.

“Dear man, that would not help us; you could not prove, as yet, that you are in the secret. Besides, all the wheels of it are in my head. I shall ride to Badger Hill and see John Falconer; he holds the reins in the Forest.”

“But what of the Lord of Troy? Those dead men——”

“What does he know as yet? He may send out riders, but I know the Forest better than any man that Roger Bland can count on. I shall not be caught in a snare. Moreover, Martin Valliant, I leave you to guard our stronghold and the precious gear in that cellar.”

He was very loth to let her go alone, and bitterly against it, though he saw the wisdom of her argument.

“My heart mislikes this venture.”

“You run to meet a ghost,” she said. “I shall come to no harm, believe me.”

She had her way, and he went to open the gate and lower the bridge while she put on a cloak and hood, and filled the wallet with food. She joined him on the causeway, where he stood scanning the woods mistrustfully.

“I would to God I might go with you.”

Her eyes looked into his.

“Your heart goes with me. Bear with that harness, for your bones will ache not a little. And keep good guard.”

He watched her cross the grassland toward the thicket where they had hidden the horse. Woodmere seemed to lack sunlight of a sudden, and his heart felt heavy when the trees hid her.

Nor were Martin’s fears for her safety the mere idle qualms of a man in love. There was a saddling of horses at Troy Castle, and Fulk de Lisle, Roger Bland’s bravo, was shut up with him in my lord’s closet.

Vance’s archer man, who had escaped Martin Valliant’s spade, had come in the night before, after losing his way in the Forest. His tale lost nothing in the telling. Mellis Dale had stabbed the Forest Warden with her poniard, and her paramour, the priest, had then beaten him, and John Bunce, to death. If my lord doubted it, let him send men to the Black Moor, and they would find the bodies.

So Fulk de Lisle had his orders. He was a gay, swashbuckling devil, very handsome, very debonair, a great man with his weapons. He stood before the Lord of Troy, leaning on his sword, his black hair curled under his flat red hat, his sword belt bossed with gold. He wore no armor save a cuirass, and light greaves; the blue sleeves of his doublet were puffed with crimson; his hose were striped red and blue.

“Take thirty men; let them ride in three troops. Go yourself with one troop to the Black Moor; send Peter Rich with ten men to Badger Hill, and Swartz with the rest to Woodmere. I have sent messengers to Gawdy Town. I want the wench and the priest, both of them. And Vance’s body had better be brought in.”

Fulk de Lisle turned to go. This was work that pleased him. The Forest had been dull and law-abiding for many months.

“Wait!”

Fulk faced about.

“My lord?”

“How do you think to know the girl when you see her?”

“They say she is dark and vixenish, with eyes that bid a man stand back, a well-favored wench.”

“Tush! Any pretty jade would do for you, man!”

“Oldham, the archer, can recognize them both.”

“He cannot be in three places at once, Sir Fulk de Lisle.”

“He shall go with me. Swartz and Rich shall have orders to take and bring in any likely looking damsel.”

“Yes, leave it at that. Waste no time. I am not patient when such tricks are played me.”

So Fulk de Lisle and his men rode out from Troy Castle. They were lightly armed for fast riding, and ten of them shouldered cross-bows instead of spears. They kept together till they reached Red Heath, where Peter Rich and Swartz broke off with their two troops with guides for Woodmere and Badger Hill.

Meanwhile Mellis was on her way to John Falconer’s house at Badger Hill. She sighted it about nine o’clock, a great, low, black-beamed, white-plastered place, walled around with gray stone, on the side of a sandy hill. Fir woods, dark as midnight, climbed skywards behind it; the farm lands lay in the valley to the south, but elsewhere the soil was poor, and grew nothing but gorse and heather.

Mellis rode over the heath and up the hill to the house. A gawk of a boy, who was cleaning harness outside the stable doorway, stared at her with a face like sodden dough. She reined up in the courtyard and called to him.

“Is Master Falconer here?”

“Sure!”

The boy never budged.

“Tell Master Falconer that I am waiting.”

“Who be—I?”

“Run, you dolt, or I will get you a whipping.”

He vanished down a slope that led under one wing of the house, and in half a minute John Falconer came out to her. He was like the hill he lived on—a gray badger of a man, grim, reticent, yet kindly. His short neck made the breadth of his shoulders more apparent. His legs were bowed and immensely strong. John Falconer was a piece of the Forest. His hair and beard were the color of beech mast, sanded with gray.

“Do you know me?”

His eyes brightened like a dog’s.

“God’s death! Is it you?”

“My own and very self. And poor Gilbert—you have heard?”

He looked grim.

“God hearten you, child! But what has happened?”

The boy reappeared, and proceeded to stare at them, while he picked his teeth with a straw. Nor was John Falconer aware of the youngster’s presence until he saw Mellis’s eyes prompting him to turn his head.

The man of Badger Hill gave a kind of growl, and the child disappeared with a flutter of brown legs.

“I had to find you, John, but I am loth to be seen here by any stray fool.”

“The men are in the fields.”

“But that boy?”

“He has no tongue when it pleases me.”

She glanced at the pine woods.

“If your dinner can wait I will talk to you up there.”

He nodded.

“Wise wench!”

Mellis fastened her horse to a tree, and she and John Falconer walked to and fro along one of the black aisles. She had much to tell him, and he seemed to grow grimmer the longer he listened. His comments were short, gruff growls and an occasional terse judgment.

“Vance dead! May he burn like pitch! The priest turned outlaw! What next? You have made him your man? Nay—I mislike that. A black Benedictine! Lord, but we are in for a storm!”

John Falconer frightened most people, but he did not frighten Mellis. She had known him since she was a toddler of three, to be picked up and carried on his shoulder.

“Whether you like it or not, John, these things cannot be helped. Vance has made us run when we would have walked. As to Martin Valliant, I would stake my right hand on his keeping faith with us. And now—will you rally to us? We can hold Woodmere till the whole Forest flaunts the Red Rose.”

“I would we had word from France.”

“It cannot be helped. If our people are loth to move—well, I will disappear, go and live in one of those old quarry holes by the Rondel.”

He answered her doggedly.

“No. I am with you, if I lose my old head for it. I am not so young as I was, and I would get my blow in at Roger Bland before I am stiff in the back. I will ride out to-night and warn our friends, and by to-morrow we shall be able to throw a garrison into Woodmere.”

“Stubborn, trusty oak!”

Falconer smiled grimly.

“There are many men who lust to feel their poniards in Roger Bland’s throat. I pray that mine may have that honor.”

Mellis did not tarry there much longer. Her work was done for the day; she could leave the Forest folk to John Falconer. She chose a different track for her homeward ride—a way that plunged through the pine woods and turned south again by Witch’s Cross. And she was saved by her caution, for half an hour after she had left Badger Hill Peter Rich and his men came riding along the track she had used in the morning.

They found John Falconer at his dinner, and well warned as to their business. He was bluff and easy with Peter Rich, had ale drawn for the men and water for their horses.

Rich did not beat about his business.

“This is a hanging job for any fool who meddles. We are after old Dale’s daughter.”

“Tut, man! She has been in France these seven years.”

“That is a good bit of brag, John Falconer. Come, now; I have no wish to ride the high horse; the girl has been here; let us have the truth.”

Falconer told his lie with square-faced hardihood.

“I have not seen Mellis Dale for seven years. You can search the house.”

Rich had it searched to salve his conscience. His men found nothing—not even the stable boy, who was shut up in the venison hutch in a dark corner of the larder, and far too much in terror of John Falconer to betray himself.

Peter Rich drank ale while his men were at work. He took his failure philosophically, and got back into the saddle.

“It has saved me pulling you by the beard, John Falconer.”

“My beard may be at your service—some day.”

They grinned at each other like fierce dogs, and Peter Rich rode off. But he left two men in the woods to watch the place, which was a trick of no great moment, for John Falconer guessed that he would be watched.

“Thank God the girl left betimes, and by the other road. And God grant she may not find a trap at Woodmere House.”

_Chapter XXII_

Martin Valliant was as restless as a dog whose master had gone out and left him chained to his kennel.

His activities were various and many that morning. He took off his arm-plates, covered his breast-plate with a sack, and completed the walling up of the kitchen gateway. The defense of the causeway and the bridge exercised him still further, and he built a rough ladder and stage to one of the loopholes of the gate-house, so that a man with a bow could command the bridge. The matter of archery piqued him to try what skill he had left. He raised the roof stone of the cellar, searched out a bow and some arrows, and going up on the leads of the tower, tried shooting at a bush on the far side of the mere. Five arrows missed the mark, but the sixth got home. And this testing of his skill taught him something of value, in that he discovered the tower to be the right and proper place for a watchman. He could scan the woods, the whole of the valley, and the island, and see into nearly every corner of the ruined house itself. The battlements were breast high, and gave good cover for a man with a bow.

His armor was beginning to sit heavy on him, for he was raw to it; but as to humoring his body, that was a surrender that he refused to make. He returned to the courtyard, took his sword, and practiced striking and thrusting at an imaginary mark. It was a “hand and a half” sword, heavy, and long in the blade, but very finely balanced. To Martin it felt no heavier than a willow wand; he played with it half the morning, cutting off the heads of nettles, learning to judge his distances and the sweep of a full-armed blow. From time to time he climbed the tower and took a view of the woods and the valley.

The sun stood at noon when Martin Valliant caught his first glimpse of the Lord of Troy’s gentry. He was on the leads of the tower and looking toward the great beech wood when he saw a man skulking under the trees. The fellow wore the Troy livery of green and silver, and carried a cross-bow on his shoulder.

Martin kept very still, and the steel of his helmet may have toned with the gray stone of the battlements, for the man with the cross-bow did not appear to see him. He came out from the wood shade into the open, and stood awhile looking at the island and the house. Then he put a horn to his lips and blew a short blast.

Martin was still asking himself whether the man was an enemy or a friend, when Swartz and his troop came riding out of the beech wood. The sun flashed on their breast-plates and helmets, and on the points of their spears. Swartz, mounted on a roan horse, and wearing a tabard of green and silver, rode a little ahead of his men.

Martin crouched low, watching them. He had no doubt now as to whence these gentry had come and as to what their business was. They were from Troy Castle, adventurous rogues, the scum of the Yorkist armies, for Roger Bland had good cause to keep a crowd of bullies around him. He was no born lord; men had not served his father before him; the fealty sworn to him was lip service; he paid with gold for such faith as men would sell.

This bunch of spears came trotting across the grassland, their horses’ hoofs beating the golden pollen from the flowers. They reined in about a hundred paces from the mere, and sat in a half circle, scanning the newly built gate and the bridge, things that betrayed that Woodmere was not deserted.

Swartz gave an order, and two men pricked away and posted themselves at either end of the mere. The rest dismounted; two who carried cross-bows wound up the winches and stood with the bolts ready on the cord. One of them marked down Martin on the tower, and calling to Swartz, pointed out what he saw.

Swartz rode nearer, staring upwards under his hand. Nor did Martin play at hide-and-seek. The men had seen him; the game had begun.

“Hullo, there! Open, in the name of the King!”

Martin kept silent.

“Hullo! You on the tower, let the bridge down and open the gate, or we shall have to break it for you.”

Martin was not to be drawn. His eyes kept watch while his thought went racing through the woods toward Mellis. Had she been taken? And even if they had not taken her, her peril was still very desperate. She might come riding out of the beech wood and betray herself to these men. They were well mounted, and her old brown horse would stand no chance in such a chase. He sweated at the very thought of her being dragged down by this rough pack.

Swartz was still shouting, but his voice seemed a long way off. Martin caught the words, but they had no more significance than the scolding of a fish-wife. If he could only get to Mellis, warn her! But the futility of such a plan was self-apparent directly he considered it. If he swam the mere he would have to swim it naked; he would be seen, and either be killed or captured. No; salvation did not lie that way. He remembered her charge to him, “Keep good guard,” and the charge helped him to a decision. It was his affair to keep these men out of Woodmere, and to hold the place, if one man could hold it against ten.

Swartz had given over shouting. He shook his fist at the tower, and rode down boldly to examine the bridge. There was no passage that way without much labor; Swartz saw that plainly, and rode back again to his men.

But he was an old “free-lance,” and very determined. He meant to enter Woodmere before sunset, or know the reason why.

“Pounds and Littlejohn, you two men can swim. Off with your harness and clothing; take poniards with you, and see what is to be found over yonder.”

The men looked glum.

“Thunder, get to it, you dogs! Are you afraid of a girl and a monk? You can run fast enough naked, if the monk puts the fear of God into you.”

The two fellows began to strip, and Martin saw how the first assault threatened him. He had his bow and half a dozen arrows with him, and there was no hesitation in his eyes.

He saw the two men come haltingly toward the mere, while their fellows roared jests at them.

“Lord, but Jack Pounds has last year’s shirt on him.”

“Yoicks, see Littlejohn mincing like a girl! More spunk, Thomas!”

“Don’t frighten the lady, Jack! Be gentle.”

The men waded into the shallows, and took the water together, swimming side by side with their poniards between their teeth. Martin had his chance and took it, though he shot rather to discourage than to kill. The arrow struck the water a yard from Littlejohn’s head.

Shouts went up from the gentry who were watching. One of the cross-bowmen let fly, and the bolt struck the stone coping behind which Martin was sheltering himself.

He heard Swartz cursing, and shaking his fist, for the two swimmers had lost all stomach for so bald and naked an adventure. They had turned back, and were splashing toward the shallows.

Swartz met them on the bank, and threatened them with the flat of his sword.

“You craven swine!”

He was not loved because of his stern temper.

“Swim the foul pond yourself!” said one of them. “We are not paid to be speared like fish.”

Swartz’s blood was up and his ambition kindled. Roger Bland did not grudge gold to those who served him well, and Swartz saw that the luck was with him, and that he might capture the prize before De Lisle or Rich could come to share it. So he sat down before Woodmere, had the horses taken back into the shade, and posted his two cross-bowmen to mark the house. Swartz was an old campaigner, and always carried a hatchet slung to his saddle; it would serve in this crisis. He sent six of his men into the woods to fell trees, while he himself rode his horse at a walk around and around the mere, preferring to trust his own eyes when a trap had to be watched.

Martin could have shot at him, but he respected Swartz’s courage. These gentlemen were not to be scared away by a few arrows; they were taking the business in hand with methodical seriousness, and the outlook was not hopeful. Yet Martin was conscious of a feeling of grim elation; his wits were taut as a bow string; he had thrown himself with a cool head and steady eyes into the great game of war.

Swartz’s purpose soon explained itself. The men came down from the woods, carrying the trunks of young trees, till they had a dozen or more, stacked ready at the end of the causeway. They were going to throw a bridge across the gap, batter the gate down, and take the place by assault.

Martin knelt on the leads of the tower, rubbing his chin, and watching the menace taking shape. He was thinking hard, how he could best meet the attack; whether he should try to hold the gate against them, or make his stand in the tower.

Happening to glance at the great beech wood, he saw something that drove every other thought out of his head. Mellis was there, looking down on the place from behind the trunk of a beech tree. For a moment or two her white face and green gown remained in view, and then vanished into the wood’s gloom.

Martin felt his heart beating hard under his ribs. He looked at Swartz and the men. They were intent on the work they had in hand; they had not seen Mellis.

_Chapter XXIII_

Martin Valliant did some mighty rapid thinking. That glimpse of Mellis’s face had stirred his manhood to a kind of Norse frenzy. Yet he kept his wits unclouded; and this was the way he reasoned the thing out.

“They will build that bridge of theirs. I might shoot one or two of them through the loophole, but they have cross-bows and will mark the loop. When they have built their bridge they will be able to batter down the gate, and while I am busy there, one or two of them might swim the mere and come at me from behind. They are in light harness. This armor of mine should turn a cross-bow bolt. I will try to shoot one or two of them, and then open the gate, let down my bridge, and give them battle there or on the causeway.”

The audacity of the plan pleased him, for Martin Valliant was discovering in himself the wit and daring of a great fighter. He hung his green shield about his neck, dropped the vizor of his salade, took the bow and arrows and his naked sword, and made straight for the gate-house. The ladder and stage he had built gave him command of the loophole. And his luck and his cunning shook hands, for he pinked two men, one in the body and the other in the throat, before a cross-bow bolt came stinging through the loophole.

“Two from ten leaves eight.”

He scrambled down the ladder, leaving his bow on the stage, and quite calmly and at his leisure unbarred and opened the gate.