CHAPTER XIX.

'STONE WALLS DO NOT A PRISON MAKE.'

'Sir Aimand de Sourdeval a prisoner in this castle?' repeated the countess in a tone of the most complete surprise, and her cheeks grew white with a sudden horror, for, to explain this thing, either, it seemed to her, the young knight, whose honest face and noble bearing had won her respect and the heart of her best-loved bower-maiden, must be unworthy; or--and the thought gave her a keener pang than even she had suffered from the rumour of his death--the master of the castle had made evil use of his power.

'Wherefore is this? Knowest thou his offence, father?' demanded the countess.

The young priest bowed his head. 'Daughter, if thou wilt know the truth, the offence of a too great fidelity to his suzerain, William of Normandy,' he answered in a low voice.

A spasm of pain crossed Emma's face at this objective presentment of her worst fear, and the terrible heart-searchings with which she had entered into the struggle against the Conqueror returned with renewed force.

'I would hear this prisoner's defence from his own lips, and judge for myself of his guilt,' she said, turning to Father Pierre with quick decision, and a pale, set face. 'Lead me to him.'

'Noble Emma, the dungeon in which he is chained is no seemly place for gold-embroidered slippers and ermined robes.'

'Less seemly still, then, for an innocent man, if innocent he be,' cried Emma, each syllable sounding like a challenge thrown at a foe. 'Show me the way. I will see myself to the lodgment of all under my roof.'

Then a satisfied light gleamed from Father Pierre's unworldly dark eyes, and his thin, ascetic features relaxed into a smile. 'The Holy Mother reward and sustain thee, my daughter!' he said softly. 'Come then at once!'

Emma followed him; outwardly calm, but in reality deeply moved, and not without terror at thought of entering those terrible dungeons, which, although she had passed her life in castles, had hitherto been known to her only by name.

He led her through winding passages secured by more than one heavy, clangorous portal--the vaulted walls echoing to the creak of their hinges--into the silence and the darkness of the basement.

The chaplain was free to penetrate at will into these halls of suffering and despair in the prosecution of his sacred office, but the warders who guarded the various portals half forgot to make their reverence to the priest, as they stared with open-eyed surprise at the lady, till, on recognising her, they saluted with clumsy haste, and strove to atone for momentary negligence by quick opening of the door which formed their ward.

Emma shuddered as the torch with which Father Pierre had provided himself gleamed on the damp, massive walls. It seemed to her that imprisonment between them would of itself bring death to her, and she marvelled how any human creature should sustain life under such conditions.

'In sooth, noble Emma,' said Father Pierre, as the countess gave expression to this feeling, 'the holy saints have sent thee hither this night, because time grew pressing. A little while, and the man who is the object of thine errand of mercy would be released by a sterner liberator--death. If thou shouldst deem him worthy of his dungeon, he will not need guarding long!'

'Ah!' sighed Emma, with a sharp pang of horror, and instinctively quickening her steps, as if a moment might be fatal.

They had reached a narrow, ponderous door, studded with huge nails. Father Pierre produced a key which he had taken from a warder who stood at the end of the passage. He turned it in the lock, and, drawing back their solid bolts, pushed open the door and entered the cell into which it gave access, the countess following with shrinking steps.

The cell was small, for it was hollowed in the wall of the keep, some thirteen feet in thickness at the outside; it was, perhaps, eight feet square. The walls were running with moisture, and the air was dank and foetid. On a stone ledge raised a little higher than the ground, the prostrate figure of a man was revealed by the fitful gleam of the torch, and Father Pierre went forward and bent over him.

'Awake, my son!' he said gently, holding the torch so that the light fell upon the slumberer's face.

Emma's hands clung together in anguish as she saw the gaunt, cadaverous features, the paled skin, and the wild matted hair and beard of the prisoner, and marked the fleshlessness of the limbs that were extended in uneasy length upon the inhospitable couch. His appearance might have moved the hardest-hearted to pity, and seemed all the more terrible in contrast with the image that was in Emma's mind, of the young knight as she had last seen him, in all the bravery of the harness of the jousting-field, neat-shaven and close-cropped as any modern English gentleman, according to the fashion of the Normans.

The unhappy knight opened his eyes with a nervous start, and sprang into a sitting posture; the rattle of chains that accompanied his movement revealing to the ruthful eyes of the countess that his ankles were loaded with heavy rings of iron, attached by chains to a stanchion in the floor.

'Fear nothing, Sir Aimand,' said the priest reassuringly. 'It is I--Father Pierre; and I have brought thee hope, and at least the surety that thy case will be inquired into and sifted to the ground. See, the noble Countess Emma has herself deigned to visit thy prison. St. Michael has answered thy prayers!'

The captive stared round him with haggard eyes, which seemed almost supernaturally large and bright, and Emma quailed as they rested at length upon her, with an expression of wonder and inquiry.

'The Countess Emma?' he repeated in a faint voice,--'the bride?'

Time for him had been standing still since the day of that fatal bride-ale, which brought evil in some form to all who partook of it!

'Art thou indeed Sir Aimand de Sourdeval?' said Emma, crossing the cell and standing before the prisoner, her beautiful face full of pity, yet not all softness. 'Unhappy knight,' she added almost sternly, her clear, decisive utterance ringing round the cell, 'what crime hast thou committed against my lord, that thou art subject to such durance?'

De Sourdeval threw back his head with a gesture of indignation; then his expression changed to one of sadness, and he threw himself on his knee before the countess.

'Noble Emma,' he said, 'the only crime I have committed against thy lord and mine own liege, was that of being faithful to his suzerain and mine, nor can I believe the kind and generous De Guader knows my fate.'

'Thank God!' cried Emma, with a sudden sob.

'Thou hast been good to me always!' exclaimed De Sourdeval, with intense excitement, his breast heaving and his eyes shining as he spoke. 'Oh, gracious countess, bear my petition to thy lord, and tell him that Aimand de Sourdeval was never unfaithful to him in word or deed, and pray him to sift this matter to the bottom, for if he knoweth aught, 'tis most like that his ears have been abused by the untrue malignities of my enemies.'

'Knowest thou not that the earl is sped to Denmark, there to collect fresh forces wherewith to relieve us from the beleaguering host that now sits before the castle walls?' asked Emma, with less firmness, feeling for the first time the full weight of the responsibilities she had undertaken. 'In my hands is the ruling of the castle; tell me, therefore, the burden of thy petition.'

Then Sir Aimand related to her the story of his adventures on the night of her bridal, and how Sir Alain de Gourin had foully entreated him, a narrative broken by terrible fits of coughing, showing how deeply the chills of his prison had wrought upon his frame, and by exclamations of surprise from the countess, who was much startled to discover the conduct of the Breton knight, and in great perplexity, for she felt keenly that Sir Aimand had but acted the part of an honourable man, and that to offer him a pardon under such circumstances would be but an insult. Moreover, he seemed to ignore the earl's present position of active rebellion, and she could not gather how far he was aware of the position of affairs.

'Doubtless, Sir Knight,' she said, 'thine impulse to be faithful to thy suzerain was that of a true and loyal soul, and none can blame thee; but William of Normandy has made the land groan under his tyranny, and so haught and overbearing was he, that, for the mere delight of showing his power, he crushed his most loving peers under his heel. Thou knowest that he strove to part my lord from me, and forbade our marriage; and so wroth was he at the breach of his capricious mandate, that, in self-defence, my lord was driven to take arms. Let the past be forgotten. Thou shalt be reinstated in all knightly honour, and shall prove thy faith to the earl thy lord, by defending his lady in his absence.'

She held out her white jewelled hand to the gaunt, unkempt prisoner, looking in his face with a persuasive witchery that might have tempted a man to leave a palace for a dungeon. But De Sourdeval kept back his meagre, unwashed hand.

'Noble countess,' he exclaimed, with a long sobbing sigh, that showed how great the effort was to speak words that might close for ever his half-opened prison door, 'against whom am I to defend thee? Am I to fight men who are faithful to their knightly vows, by the side of traitors who have broken troth?'

'My son! my son!' interposed Father Pierre anxiously. The knight's bold words brought home the unvarnished truth of the situation with a startling clearness, which his own dreamy nature had enabled him to shirk facing hitherto.

Emma proved cowardly; she evaded a direct answer, and sheltered herself behind the privileges of her sex.

'Surely thy vow of chivalry binds thee to succour ladies in danger? We are in danger, myself and my ladies. Eadgyth of Norwich,'--she paused and looked in his face. De Sourdeval made a gesture of distress,--'Dame Amicia, whose age and infirmity should nerve the arm of a brave young knight and all our band, need the help of every stalwart friend who can be found. Still further, Sir Aimand, famine is our most dread foe,' she added, half smiling at the inhospitable thought. 'We can ill support idle mouths in Blancheflour.'

'Let me then starve, dear lady,' replied De Sourdeval in a low voice of desperate earnest, and avoiding her too persuasive eyes. 'I cannot lift my hand against my heart's witness to the right.'

'Fight not then, noble Sir Aimand!' exclaimed the countess, deeply moved. 'Only pass thy knightly pledge not to betray us to the foe, or to struggle to escape, and thou shalt be free! Nay, if we make a prisoner we will honourably exchange thee!'

'Not even that can I do, noble countess,' said Sir Aimand with unwavering firmness. 'I cannot pledge myself not to help the right.'

'Nay then, thou art obstinate!' cried Emma, stamping on the stones with one of the gold-embroidered slippers which Father Pierre had observed to be ill suited to dungeon floors, and turning away.

Sir Aimand bowed his head in silence, and made no effort to recall her, as she swept towards the door, though his trembling lips and clenched fingers showed the fierceness of the struggle he was making.

But Emma paused before she reached the door. 'Thou art too proud, Sir Knight,' she said coldly. 'But few can rival the Fitzosberns in that quality, and I also have my pride. I scorn to make conditions with a man circumstanced as thou art. Abuse my generosity if thou list. Thou art free!'

'Mary Mother in heaven bless thee for thy goodness, noble countess!' cried De Sourdeval, raising his head with a start of joy. 'Yet methinks I am scarce free yet!' He lifted his shackled limbs, and made the heavy irons clang upon the floor.

'Ah, good St. Nicholas, no!' cried Emma, with a fresh shock, as she realised what sufferings the prisoner must have undergone. 'But thou shalt be free before the sun is in the sky.'

'Noble countess,' interrupted a harsh voice behind her, 'what means thy presence in this cell at such an hour? By the Rood! thou dost great honour to the would-be murderer of thy husband.'

'Liar!' hissed the prisoner between his set teeth.

Emma turned with a start to face Sir Alain de Gourin, his cheeks purple with passion, and his quivering hand on the hilt of his _miséricorde_. The countess thought it politic to ignore his speech, although every word had reached her ears.

'Sir Alain!' she exclaimed, simulating pleasure at his appearance. 'Thy coming is most opportune. I was about to send a messenger to thee. Give orders forthwith that the irons be struck from the limbs of this worthy knight without delay. He hath been shrewdly misunderstood, and my will is that he be set free!'

She looked the mercenary hardily in the face as she gave him her command, and the villain quailed. He saw that he had come too late to prevent her from hearing Sir Aimand's statement of the case.

He accepted the oblivion in which she had buried his first insulting speech, and took an entirely different tone. 'Thy will is law, noble countess,' he said obsequiously, and with a low bow.

Emma did not retire to rest until she knew that the knight was comfortably lodged in the state apartments of the castle.

The Breton had been completely taken by surprise. He had imposed upon the earl with a story which the latter, in the excitement attendant upon his ambitious enterprise, had neglected to verify, and it had never entered his head that the countess would trouble herself about the matter. He supposed that the earl himself had at least spoken to her of Sir Aimand as a culprit, and that she was entirely ignorant of his presence as a prisoner in the castle; as she had been, until the strange impulse which came to her to have a mass said for him, caused her to name him to the chaplain.

Even in case of her finding the matter out and wishing to probe it, he had an ingenious story ready, wherewith to put her off the scent.

But the suddenness with which she had taken matters into her own hands, and had visited the prisoner and heard _his_ version of the facts, quite overcame the somewhat clumsy wit of the Breton.

His first impulse, as usual, had been to bluster, but the firmness with which the countess confronted him had fairly cowed him for the moment, as he knew that he would have to justify himself, and to eat a good many of his words before Sir Hoël and the Norman knights of the garrison, to whom he had accounted for De Sourdeval's absence by representing that he had been sent on an embassy by the earl.

Many were the curses that he inwardly showered on the devoted head of Father Pierre, to whom he attributed the discovery of his schemes, and he also reviled himself for having forgotten him as a possible channel of communication between the prisoner and the countess.

His wits had not been the brighter for the hour at which Emma had happened on her inopportune discovery, for he had been indulging freely in his favourite spiced hippocras during the evening, and therefore it seemed best to his clumsy cunning to offer no further open opposition to the countess, and to carry out her orders himself, thus gaining time to concoct plausible excuses before Sir Hoël should know of the affair.

Emma also kept her own counsel, and did not say a word even to Eadgyth, when the Saxon maiden, who slept in her chamber, came to help her to unrobe.

When Eadgyth ventured a question as to what had detained her to such a late hour, the countess smiled and kissed her.

'Thou shalt know all in good time, dear donzelle,' she answered. 'Ask me not to-night.'