Part 4

"My new mother don't be very angry, or grieved with your new son because of what I have just asked Enid to do. I had a very good reason for it and I will explain it all to you. The other day when I left the queen at Caerleon to avenge the insult done her by Edryn, the son of Nudd, she made me two wishes. The one was that I should be successful with my quest and the other was that I should wed with my first love. Then she promised that whoever my bride should be she herself with her own royal hands would dress her for her wedding day, splendidly, like the very sun in the skies. So when I found this lovely Enid of yours in her shabby clothes I vowed that the queen's hands only should array her in handsome new robes that befitted her grace and beauty. But never mind, dear mother, some day you will come to see Enid and then she will wear the golden, flowered birthday dress which you gave her three years ago."

Then the earl's wife smiled through her tears, wrapped Enid in a mantle, kissed her gentle farewells, and in a moment saw her riding far, far away beside Geraint.

The queen Guinevere that day had three times climbed the royal tower at Caerleon to look far into the valley for some sign of Geraint, who had promised to be back that day, if he did not fall in battle, and who would certainly come now, since Edryn had been vanquished and had come to the court. At last when evening had fallen she spied the prince's charger pacing nobly along the road, and Enid's palfrey at his side. Instantly Queen Guinevere sped down from the small window in the high turret, tripped out to the gate to greet him and embrace the lovely Enid as a long-loved friend.

The old City of Caerleon was gay for one whole week, over the wedding week of Geraint and Enid. The queen herself dressed Enid for her marriage like the very sunlight, Dubric, the highest saint of the church, married them, and they lived for nearly a year at the court with Arthur and sweet Guinevere.

And so the insult done the queen was avenged, and her two wishes were fulfilled. For Geraint overcame his enemy and wedded with his first-love, dressed for her marriage by the queen.

GERAINT'S QUEST OF HONOR.

One morning Prince Geraint went into Arthur's hall and said:

"O King, my princedom is in danger. It lies close to the territory which is infested with bandits, earls and caitiff knights, assassins and all sorts of outlaws. Give me your kind good leave and I will go there to defend my lands."

The king said the prince might go, and sent fifty armed knights to protect him and pretty Enid as they traveled away on their horses across the Severn River into their own country, the Land of Devon.

After Geraint had come into Devon he forgot what he had said to the king of ridding his princedom of outlawry, he forgot the chase where he had always been so clever in tracking his game, forgot the tournament where he had won victory after victory, forgot all his former glory and his name, forgot his lands and their cares, forgot everything he ever did, and did nothing at all but lie about at home and talk with Enid. At last all his people began to gossip about their fine prince who once had been illustrious everywhere and now had become an idle stay-at-home who spent his time in making love to his wife.

Enid heard of the tattling about Geraint from her hair-dresser, and one morning as he lay abed, she went over it all to herself, talking aloud. She wished, that he would not abandon all his knightly pursuits but would hunt and fight again and add to his lustre. She felt very bashful about mentioning the matter to him as she was very shy by nature and lived in a time when wives were altogether over-ruled by their husbands, yet to say nothing she thought would not be showing herself a true wife to Geraint. All this and more Enid went over to herself.

The drowsy prince, half awake, just half heard her and quite misunderstood her meaning. When she said that in keeping quiet about the gossip she was not a true wife to him he supposed she meant that she no longer cared for him, that he was not a handsome and strong enough man to suit her. This grieved him deeply and made him very angry with her, for Geraint had really given up all the glory of the king's court just to be alone with Enid, although no one knew it. And the thought that now she looked down upon him infuriated all his heart. A word would have made everything right but he didn't say it.

Springing up quickly from his bed he roused his squire and said, "Get ready our horses, my charger and the princess' palfrey. And you," turning a frowning face to the princess, "put on the worst looking, meanest, poorest dress you have and come away with me. We are going on a quest of honor and then you will see what sort of soldier I am."

Enid wondered why her lord was so vexed with her and replied, "If I have displeased you surely you will tell me why."

But Geraint would not say; he could not bear to speak of it. So Enid hurried after her poor old faded silk gown with the summer flowers among its folds, which she had worn to ride from her old home to Caerleon, and hastily dressed.

"Do not ride at my side," Geraint said as they both mounted their horses to start away. "Ride ahead of me, a good way ahead of me, and no matter what may happen, do not speak a word to me, no not a word."

Enid listened, wondering what had come over her lord.

"There!" he cried as they were off, "we will make our way along with our iron weapons, not with gold money." So saying, he loosed the great purse which dangled from his belt and tossed it back to his squire who stood on the marble threshold of the doorway where the golden coins flashed and clattered as they scattered every which-way over the floor. "Now then, Enid, to the wild woods!"

At that they made for the swampy, desolated forest lands that were famous for their perilous paths and their bandits, Enid with a white face going before, Geraint coming gloomily nearly a quarter of a mile after.

The morning was only half begun when the white princess became aware that behind a rock hiding in the shadow stood three tall knights on horseback, armed from tip to toe, bandit outlaws lying in wait to fall upon whoever should pass. She heard one saying to his comrades as he pointed toward Geraint:

"Look here comes some lazy-bones who seems just about as bold as a dog who has had the worst of it in a fight. Come, we will kill him, and then we will take his horse and armor and his lady."

Enid thought, "I'll go back a little way to Geraint and tell him about these ruffians, for even if it will madden him I should rather have him kill me than to have him fall into their hands."

She guided her palfrey backward and bravely met the frowning face which greeted her, saying timidly:

"My lord, there are three bandit knights behind a rock a little way beyond us who are boasting that they will slay you and steal your horse and armor and make me their captive."

"Did I tell you," cried Geraint angrily, "that you should warn me of any danger. There was only one thing which I told you to do and that was to keep quiet; and this is the way you have heeded me! a pretty way! But win or lose, you shall see by these fellows that my vigor is not lost."

Then Enid stood back as the three outlaws flashed out of their ambush and bore down upon the prince.

Geraint aimed first for the middle one, driving his long spear into the bandit's breast and out on the other side. The two others in the meanwhile had dashed upon him with their lances, but they had broken on his magnificent armor like so many icicles. He now turned upon them with his broadsword, swinging it first to the right and then to the left, first stunning them with his blows, then slaying them outright. And when all three had fallen he dismounted, and like a hunter skinning the wild beasts he has shot, he stripped the three robber knights of their gay suits of armor, and leaving the bodies lie, bound each man's sword, spear and coat of arms to his horse, tied the three bridle reins of the three empty horses together and cried to Enid.

"Drive these on before you."

Enid drove them on across the wastelands, Geraint following after. As she passed into the first shallow shade of the forest she described three more horsemen partly hidden in the gloom of three sturdy oak-trees. All were armed and one was a veritable giant, so tall and bulky, towering above his companions.

"See there, a prize!" bellowed the giant and set Enid's pulses in a quiver. "Three horses and three suits of armor, and all in charge of--whom? A girl! Isn't that simple? Lay on, my men!"

"No," cried the second, "behind is coming a knight. A coward and a fool, for see how he hangs his head."

The giant thundered back gaily.

"Yes? Only one? Wait here and as he goes by make for him."

"I will go no farther until Geraint comes," Enid said to herself stopping her horse. "And then I will tell him about these villains. He must be so weary with his other fight and they will fall upon him unawares. I shall have to disobey him again for his own sake. How could I dare to obey him and let him be harmed? I must speak; if he kills me for it I shall only have lost my own life to save a life that is dearer to me than my own."

So she waited until the prince approached when she said with a timid firmness, "Have I your leave to speak?"

"You take it without asking when you speak," he replied, and she continued:

"There are three men lurking in the woods behind some oaks and one of them is larger than you, a perfect giant. He told them to attack you as you passed by them."

"If there were a hundred men in the wood and each of them a giant and if they all made for me together I vow it would not anger me so as to have you disobey me. Stand aside while we do battle and when we are done stand by the victor."

At this, while Enid fell back breathing short fits of prayer but not daring to watch, Geraint proceeded to meet his assailants. The giant was the first to dash out for him aiming his lance at Geraint's helmet, but the lance missed and went to one side. Geraint's spear had been a little strained with his first encounter, but it struck through the bulky giant's corselet and pierced his breast, then broke, one-half of it still fast in the flesh as the giant knight fell to the earth. The other two bandits now felt that their support and hero was gone, and when Geraint darted rapidly on them, uttering his terrible warcry as if there were a thousand men behind him to come to his aid, they flew into the woods. But they were soon overtaken and pitilessly put to death. Then Geraint, selecting the best lance, the brightest and strongest among their spears to replace the one he had broken on the giant, he plucked off the gaudy armor from each brigand's body, laid it on the backs of the three horses, tied the bridle reins together and handed them to Enid with the words, "Drive them on before you."

So Enid now followed the wild paths of the gloomy forest with two sets of three horses, each horse laden with his master's jingling weapons and coat of mail. Geraint came after. As they passed out of the wood into the open sky they came to a little town with towers upon a rocky hill, and beneath it a wide meadowland with mowers in it, mowing the hay. Down a stony pathway from the town skipped a fair-haired lad carrying a basket of lunch for the laborers in the field.

"Friend!" cried Geraint, as the lad trotted past him, for he saw that Enid looked very white, "let my lady have something to eat. She is so faint."

"Willingly," the youth answered, "and you too, my lord, even although this feed is very coarse and only fit for the mowers."

He set down his basket and Enid and Geraint alighted and put all the horses to graze, while they sat down on the green sward to have some bread and barley. Enid felt too faint at heart, thinking of the prince's strange conduct, to care a great deal for food, but Geraint was hungry enough and had all the mowers' basket emptied almost before he knew it.

"Boy," he cried half-ashamed, "everything is gone, which is a disgrace. But take one of my horses and his arms by way of payment, choose the very best."

The poor lad, who might as well have had a kingdom given him, reddened with his extreme surprise and delight.

"My lord, you are over-paying me fifty times," he cried.

"You will be all the wealthier then," returned the prince, gaily.

"I'll take it as free gift, then," the lad answered. "The food is not worth much. While your lady is resting here I can easily go back and fetch more, some more for the earl's mowers. For all these mowers belong to our great earl, and all these fields are his, and I am his, too. I'll tell him what a fine man you are, and he will have you to his palace and serve you with costly dinners."

"I wish no better fare than I have had," Geraint said, "I never ate better in my life than just now when I left your poor mowers dinnerless. And I will go into no earl's palace. If he desires to see me, let him come to me. Now you go hire us some pleasant room in the town, stall our horses and when you return with the food for these men tell us about it."

"Yes, my kind lord," the glad youth cried, and he held his head high and thought he was a gorgeous knight off to the wars as he disappeared up the rocky path leading his handsome horse.

The prince turned himself sleepily to watch the lusty mowers laboring under the sun as it blazed on their scythes, while Enid plucked the long grass by the meadows' edge to weave it round and round her wedding ring, until the boy returned and showed them the room he had got in the town.

"If you wish anything, call the woman of the house," Prince Geraint said to Enid as the door closed behind them. "Do not speak to me."

"Yes, my lord," returned Enid, still marvelling at his cold ways.

Silently they sat down, she at one end, he at the other, as quiet as pictures. But suddenly a mass of voices sounded up the street, and heel after heel echoing upon the pavement. In a twinkling the door to their room was pushed back to the wall while a mob of boisterous young gentlemen tumbled in led by the Earl of Limours, the wild lord of the town, and Enid's old suitor whom her father had rejected long ago, a man as beautiful as a woman and very graceful. He seized the prince's hand warmly, welcomed him to the town and stealthily, out of the corner of his eye, caught a glimpse of unhappy Enid nestled all alone at the farther end of the room.

The prince immediately sent for every sort of delicious things to eat and drink from the town, told the earl, to bid all his friends for a feast and soon was gaily making merry with the men, drinking, laughing, joking.

"May I have your leave, my lord," cried Earl Limours, "to cross the room and speak a word with your lady who seems so lonely?"

"My free leave," cried the merry Prince Geraint, who did not know the earl, "Get her to speak with you; she has nothing to say to me."

As Limours stepped to Enid's side he lifted his eyes adoringly, bowed at her side and said in a whisper:

"Enid, you pilot star of my life, I see that Geraint is very unkind to you and loves you no longer. What a laughing stock he is making of you with that wretched old dress you have on! But I, I love you still as always. Just say the word and I will have him put into the keep and you will come with me. I will be kind to you forever."

The tears fluttered into the earl's eyes as he spoke.

"Earl," replied Enid, "if you love me as you used to do in the years long ago, and are not joking now, come in the morning and take me by force from the prince. But leave me tonight. I am wearied to death."

So the earl made a low bow, brandishing his plumes until they brushed his very insteps, while the stout prince bade him a loud good night, and he moved away talking to his men.

But as soon as he was gone Enid began to plan how she could escape with Geraint before Earl Limours should come after her in the morning. She was too afraid of Geraint to speak with him about it, but when he had fallen asleep she stepped lightly about the room and gathered the pieces of his armor together in one place ready for an early departure on the morrow. Then she dropped off into slumber. But suddenly she heard a loud sound, the earl with his wild following blowing his trumpet to call her to come out, she thought. But it was only the great red cock in the yard below crowing at the daylight which had begun to glimmer now across the heap of Geraint's armor. She rose immediately in her fright to see that all was well, went over to examine the weapons and unwittingly let the casque fall jangling to the floor. This woke Geraint, who started up and stared at her.

"My lord," began Enid, and then she told him all that Earl Limours had said to her and how she had put him off by telling him to come this morning.

"Call the woman of the house and tell her to bring the charger and the palfrey," Geraint cried angrily. "Your sweet face makes fools of good fellows." Geraint loved Enid still and he was in as great perplexity as she, for after misunderstanding what she had said he no more knew whether she cared for him truly than she knew what was troubling him and making him act in this unaccountable manner.

Enid slipped through the sleeping household like a ghost to deliver the prince's message to the landlord, hurried back to help Geraint with his armor and came down with him to spring upon her palfrey.

"What do I owe you, friends?" the prince asked his host, but before the man could reply he added "take those five horses and their burdens of arms."

"My lord, I have scarcely spent the price of one of them on you!" cried the landlord astonished.

"You'll have all the more riches then," the prince laughed, then turning to Enid, "today I charge you more particularly than ever before that whatever you may see, hear, fancy or imagine, do not speak to me, but obey."

"Yes, my lord," answered Enid, "I know your wish and should like to obey, but when I go riding ahead, I hear all the violent threats you do not hear and see the danger you cannot see, and then not to give you warning seems hard, almost beyond me. Yet, I wish to obey you."

"Do so, then," said he. "Do not be too wise, seeing that you are married, not to a clown but a strong man with arms to guard his own head and yours, too."

The broad beaten path which they now took passed through toward the wasted lands bordering on the castle of Earl Doorm, the Bull, as his people called him, because of his ferocity.

It was still early morning when Enid caught the sound of quantities of hoofs galloping up the road. Turning round she saw cloudsful of dust and the points of lances sparkling in it. Then, not to disobey the prince, yet to give him warning, she held up her finger and pointed toward the dust. Geraint was pleased at her cunning, and immediately stopped his horse. The moment after, the Earl of Limours dashed in upon him on a charger as black and as stormy as a thunder-cloud.

Geraint closed with the earl, bore down on him with his spear, and in a minute brought him stunned or dead to the ground. Then he turned to the next-comer after Limours, overthrew him and blindly rushed back upon all the men behind. But they were so startled at the flash and movement of the prince that they scrambled away in a panic, leaving their leader lying on the public highway. The horses also of the fallen warriors whisked off from their wounded masters and wildly flew away to mix with the vanishing mob.

"Horse and man, all of one mind," remarked Geraint, smiling, "not a hoof of them left. What do you say, Enid, shall we strip the earl and pay for a dinner or shall we fast? Fast? Then go on and let us pray heaven to send us some Earl of Doorm's men so that we can earn ourselves something to eat."

Enid sadly eyed her bridle-reins and led the way, Geraint coming after, scarcely knowing that he had been pricked by Limours in his side, and that he was bleeding secretly beneath his armor. But at last his head and helmet began to wag unsteadily, and at a sudden swerving of the road he was tossed from his horse upon a bank of grass. Enid heard the clashing of the fall, and too terrified to cry out, came back all pale. Then she dismounted, loosed the fastenings of his armor and bound up his wounds with her veil. Then she sat down desolately and began to cry, wondering what ever she should do.

Many men passed by but no one took any notice of her. For in that lawless, turbulent earldom no one minded a woman weeping for a murdered lover than they now mind a summer shower. One man scurrying as fast as ever he could travel toward the bandit earl's castle, drove the sand sweeping into her poor eyes, and another coming in the opposite direction from out the earl's castle park in seeming hot haste, turned all the long dusty road into a column of smoke behind him, and frightened her little palfrey so that it scoured off into the coppices and was lost. But the prince's charger stood beside them and grieved over the mishap like a man.

At noon a huge warrior with a big face and russet beard and eyes rolling about in search of prey, came riding hard by with a hundred spearmen at his back all bound for some foray. It was the frightful Earl Doorm.

"What, is he dead?" cried the earl loudly to Enid, as he spied her on the wayside.

"No, no, not dead," she quickly answered. "Would some of your kind people take him up and bear him off somewhere out of this cruel sun? I am very sure, quite sure that he is not dead."

"Well, if he isn't dead, why should you cry for him so? Dead or not dead, you just spoil your pretty face with idiotic tears. They will not help him. But since it is a pretty face, come fellows, some of you, and take him to our hall. If he lives he will be one of our band, and if not, why there is earth enough to bury him in. See that you take his charger, too, a noble one."

And so saying, the rude earl passed on, while two brawny horsemen came forward growling to think they might lose their chance of booty from the morning's raid all for this dead man. They raised the prince upon a litter, laying him in the hollow of his shield, and brought him into the barren hall of Doorm, while Enid and the gentle charger followed after. They tossed him and his litter down on an oaken settle in the hall, and then shot away for the woods.

Enid sat through long hours all alone with Geraint besides the oaken settle, propping his head and chafing his hands, but in the late afternoon she saw the huge Earl Doorm returning with his lusty spearmen and their plunder. Each hurled down a heap of spoils on the floor, threw aside his lance and doffed his helmet, while a tribe of brightly gowned gentle-women fluttered into the hall and began to talk with them. Earl Doorm struck his knife against the table and bellowed for meat, and wine. In a moment the place fairly steamed and smoked with whole roast hogs and oxen, and everybody sat down in a hodge-podge and ate like cattle feeding in their stalls, while Enid shrank far back startled, into her nook.

But suddenly, when Earl Doorm had eaten all he would, and all he could for the moment, he revolved his eyes about the bare hall and caught a glimpse of the fair little lady drooping in her niche. Then he recollected how she had crouched weeping by the roadside for her fallen lord that morning. A wild pity filled his gruff heart.