Chapter II: Part 2

A puzzled look came into Martin Valliant’s eyes as he neared the chapelry. A little tuft of smoke was drifting from the chimney of his cell, and he knew that he had lit no sticks under the oven that morning.

“They have sent a servant from Paradise.”

He quickened his steps, but saw no live thing moving about the place. He looked into the stable, and found it empty; but the garden hedge offered him his first surprise. Certainly the thing that he saw was nothing but a shirt spread on the hedge to dry, and looking as white and clean as one of the big clouds overhead.

His own cell offered further mysteries. The oven door stood open, and a couple of nicely browned loaves were waiting to be taken out. A meat pasty that smelled very fragrant had been left on the oven shelf. His cassock, neatly mended, hung over the back of Father Jude’s oak chair.

Martin could make nothing of these mysteries. The loaves and the pasty were real enough—so real that he remembered the cup of water and the crust of bread with which he had broken his fast soon after dawn.

He went and looked into the chapel and the guest-room, but there was no one there, nor could he see anything moving over the moor. The business puzzled him completely. It was possible that a servant had been sent from Paradise; but Paradise was three leagues away, and Martin would have expected to find a horse or a mule in the stable. Moreover it occurred to him that some one must have looked into the oven not so very long ago, lifted out the pasty, and put it on the shelf. The good creature might be hiding somewhere, but what need was there for such a game of hide-and-seek?

Martin returned to the cell, set the pasty on the table, took the loaves out of the oven, and his platter and cup from the shelf. Common sense suggested that the food was meant to be eaten. He pulled the stool up to the table, said grace, took the knife from the sheath at his girdle, and thrust the point of it through the pie-crust.

Then he sat rigid, listening, the blade of his knife still in the pie and his hand gripping the haft. Some one was singing on the moor among the yellow gorse and broom. The voice was a girl’s voice, gay and birdlike and challenging.

Martin sat there with a face like a ghost’s, his heart beating fast, his eyes staring through the open doorway. For the voice seemed to speak to him of all that he had sought in the Forest and had not found. It was youth calling to youth in the spring of the year.

The voice grew fainter and fainter; it seemed to be dying away over the moor. Martin Valliant’s eyes dilated, his knees shook together. He started up, knocking over the stool, and rushed out of the cell like a madman, his eyes full of a fanatical fire.

The voice had ceased singing. He climbed to the place where the wooden cross stood, and looked fiercely about him. But he saw nothing, nothing but the gorse and broom and heather. He went down among the green gorse banks, searched, and found nothing.

Sweat stood on his forehead, and his heart was hammering under his ribs.

Then he crossed himself, fell on his knees, and prayed. The first thing he did on reaching his cell was to take the loaves and the cooked meat and throw them into the fire under the oven.

_Chapter VI_

When a man has done what he believes to be a good deed he is flushed for a while with a happy self-righteousness, and may forget the struggle he had with his own soul. So it was with Martin Valliant. He had no quarrel with himself or with his loneliness for the rest of that day. He had won a victory; he had been tempted of the Devil and had refused the meats that the Devil had cooked for him.

Strange—this fear of the white body or the lips of a woman, this naïve cowardice that dares not look into Nature’s eyes. In it one beholds the despair of saints who see no hope for man save in the crushing of the body to save the soul. The few struggle toward a cold triumph, maimed, but half human. With holy ferocity they run about to persuade humanity that God is without sex. Men may listen to them; the deserts become filled with monks; Nature is flouted for a while. Then the thing becomes no more than a rotten shell; men obey their impulses but still wear their vows; cynicism and a lewd hypocrisy are born; the great realities are glozed over. Then comes the day when a more youthful and noble generation wakes to the horror of such a superstition. Gates are torn off their hinges; walls battered down; the slime and the refuse exposed to the sunlight. The new generation runs to the woods and the fields like a flock of children released from some abominable pedantry. They are no longer afraid. The world grows young and beautiful again. There is no sin in the sunset, no shame in the singing of birds.

Martin Valliant felt himself uplifted all that day; but the old Pagan people had gathered out of the woods and were lying hidden in the gorse and heather. There was Pan with his pipes; there were girls and young men who had danced in the Bacchic dances; Orpheus with his lute. Even the pale Christ looked down with compassionate eyes, the Great Lover who was human till the fanatics covered His face with a veil of lies.

Evening came, and the birds began their singing down in the beech woods under the hill. They sang their way into Martin Valliant’s heart, made him hear again the voice of the girl singing on the moor. A great restlessness assailed him. He went forth and wandered under the stars, but there was no healing for him in their cold brightness. And that night he slept like a man in fear of the dawn.

Again, it was the birds which troubled him. He woke in the gray of the morning, to hear their faint orisons filling the valley. He arose, went to the chapel, and was long at his prayers. Moreover, he chose to fast that morning, contenting himself with a cup of cold water before he wandered out over the moor.

Yet in spite of all his carefulness Martin Valliant was not wholly his own master that morning. He made himself go forward, but a part of his soul kept looking back. There was a voice, too, that challenged him. “Of what are you afraid? Why are you trying to escape? A monk is a soldier. He should fight, and not hide himself.”

This voice would not be silenced. It was like a scourge striking him continually.

“Go back,” it said; “blind men are afraid of falling.”

At last he obeyed it, vaguely conscious of the nearness of some new ordeal. He did not guess that the all-wise Mater Mundi had him by the hand, that he was one of her chosen children. She would try him with fire, teach him to be great through the power of his own compassion, so that his soul might burn more gloriously when the purer flame touched it.

Martin Valliant found the door of his cell standing open, and from within came the sound of the snapping of dry wood. A girl was kneeling by the oven, with a fagot lying on the floor at her side, and she was busy laying the fire for the baking of bread. She was dressed in a gown of apple green, and from the collar thereof her firm white neck curved to meet the bronze of her hair. So intent was she on breaking up the fagot wood and building her fire that she had not discovered the man standing in the doorway.

Life had never yet posed Martin with such a problem as this. He stood and stared at the girl, wondering how to begin the attack. Her back was turned toward him, and the initiative was his.

Then he became inspired. He would assume blindness, deafness, refuse to recognize her existence. He would not so much as speak to her, and behold! the problem would solve itself.

Kate Succory turned sharply at the sound of a man’s footsteps. Her lashes half hid her roguish brown eyes; she held a hazel bough between her two hands; her green gown, cut low at the throat, showed the upper curves of her bosom.

She saw Martin Valliant take his Mass-book from the shelf, sit down in the chair, and begin to read. He was within two yards of her, but for all the notice he took of her she might have been less than a shadow.

She watched him for some moments and then went calmly on with her work, breaking the sticks to pieces and feeding the fire. Absolute silence reigned in the cell, save for the sound of the snapping of wood and the crackling of the flames in the oven.

Martin’s eyes remained fixed on his book, but he was most acutely conscious of what was happening so close to him. The situation had taken on a sudden, unforeseen complexity. He felt himself growing hot about the face.

Presently the fire appeared to be burning to the girl’s satisfaction. She rose, went to the larder, brought out the things that she required, and set them on the table. Then she turned up the sleeves of her gown, and her arms showed white and shapely.

Martin’s face was growing the color of fire. He tried not to see the girl, to anchor his whole consciousness to the square of parchment in front of him. The dilemma shocked him. Was it possible that this creature in the green gown took his silence to be consenting?

Meanwhile she went on calmly with her work, hardly looking in his direction, her red lips parting now and again in a smile. Martin raised his eyes very cautiously and looked at her. The solid and comely reality of her shape, her purposeful composure, appalled him. This problem would have to be attacked somehow, desperately, and without delay.

The girl’s intuition forestalled his gathering effort toward revolt.

“It was foolish of you to burn those loaves yesterday.”

He stared at her with sudden, frank astonishment, but said nothing.

“Good food should not be wasted like that. Besides, I had come all that way to see what a pair of hands might do for you, Father Martin. No bread could have been cleaner; I always wash before baking.”

Here was an amazing development! The girl was actually scolding him, reproving him for being wasteful, assuming control of the stores in his cupboard. He opened his mouth to speak, but again she forestalled him.

“Father Jude was a very careful soul. Rose Lorrimer had no trouble with him; she wept her eyes out when he had to go back to Paradise. She had just made him two new shirts. And she did not mind the loneliness up here, for Father Jude is an old man, and Rose has seen forty——”

Martin Valliant laid his Mass-book on the table. Kate Succory was talking so calmly and so naturally that he knew she was to be believed; yet here was a new and astonishing phase of monastic life thrust upon him without a moment’s warning. Martin was no innocent, though he had led a sheltered life; he knew that there were monks at Paradise who had broken their vows. But here was this girl coming all the way from Paradise village and turning up her sleeves to keep house for him as though she were doing the most natural thing in the world.

He floundered in the depths of his own simplicity.

“Who sent you here, child?” he asked her bluntly.

Kate’s brown eyes met his.

“I just mounted the gray donkey and came. No one could have bidden me sweep your hearth for you. Rose Lorrimer was hearth-ward to Father Jude, and before Father Jude Father Nicholas was here, and old Marjory cared for him; but she was not old Marjory then.”

She laughed, and began to mold the dough into shape, her arms all white with flour.

“Rose took Father Jude’s sheets away with her, but if we can come by some good linen I will soon have things as they should be. Of course, if I do not please you——”

She gave him a quick, sidelong glance, her teeth showing between her red lips.

Martin Valliant had gone as white as the dough she was kneading. His knees were trembling. He could not escape from the knowledge of her green gown, her shining hair, and the sleekness of her skin. And her voice was very pleasant, with a sly lilt of playfulness and of youth in its tones.

He gripped the arms of his chair and stood up.

“My child—” he began.

She gave him the full, challenging frankness of her brown eyes, and Martin knew that he could not pretend that she was a child.

“It is very lonely here,” she said, looking at her hands, “and a man cannot do a woman’s work. Rose told me that travelers passed no more than once a month. And—and I——”

He pushed his chair back, and groped with one hand for the cross that hung at his girdle.

“It is not good that you should be here.”

He saw her head droop a little. Her hands rested on the table. He strove with himself, and went on.

“But I thank you, my sister. What I bear must be borne for the sake of the vows I have taken. When I kneel in the chapel, you shall be in my prayers.”

All the sly, provoking roguery had gone from her face. She did not speak for a moment, did not move. Then she lifted her head and looked at him, and her brown eyes were like the eyes of an animal in pain.

“I am not a bad woman, Father Martin, not evil at heart. But——”

She caught her breath, and pressed her hands to her breasts.

“Yes, I will go.”

She turned suddenly and walked straight out of the cell into the glare of the sunlight. And Martin Valliant stood biting the sleeve of his frock, and thinking of the look her brown eyes had given him.

_Chapter VII_

Kate Succory went no farther than the nearest cluster of gorse on the slope of the moor. She threw herself face downwards on a patch of short, sweet turf, where rabbits had been feeding, and plucked at the grass with her fingers, twisting her body to and fro with the lithe and supple movements of a restless animal. Her hair came loose, and she shook it down upon her shoulders.

There was rebellion in her eyes.

“He is a good man. Why should he not have what other men crave for? And I love him. There is not a man so tall and fine in all the Forest.”

She rested her elbows on the ground and her chin in her two hands, and stared at the gorse bushes.

“Geraint would not have hesitated. Pah! that black rat! How the girls would laugh at me! I don’t care. Why did God make him a priest?”

She frowned fiercely and bit at her lower lip, the elemental passion in her refusing to be dominated by the rules of the Church.

“He is a good man. No; I will not go away. Priestcraft is all wrong. The Lollards say so; I could argue it out with him. As if living down there in a priory made men good! Bah! what nonsense! Father Geraint is a black villain, and the rest of them are not much better. I wonder if he knows?”

A note of tenderness sounded in the turmoil of her brooding. She smiled and caressed the grass, stroking it with her open hand.

“Perhaps it would hurt him if he knew. And he was as frightened of me as though I had walked naked into the cell! Oh, my heart!”

Martin Valliant had been praying, little guessing that the days would come when he would trust to his own heart, and not be forever falling on his knees and asking strength from God. He had thrown Kate’s unbaked loaves into the fire, and made a meal from the scraps he had found in the cupboard. But he was in no mood to sit still and think. Father Jude’s spade offered itself as an honest companion, and Martin went forth into the garden to dig.

He had not turned two spadefuls of soil when Kate Succory began singing. She was sitting hidden by the gorse, her arms hugging her knees, and her voice had no note of wayward exultation. It was as though she sang to herself plaintively, like a bird bewailing its lost mate.

Martin frowned, and stood listening, but her singing did not die away into the distance as he had expected. She was hidden somewhere, and her voice remained to trouble him.

He began to dig with fierce determination, jaw set, eyes staring at the brown soil. And presently he stopped, and lifted up his head like a rabbit that has crouched hidden in a tuft of grass. What a chance for a jester to have thrown a clod at him! The girl’s singing had ceased.

Martin breathed hard, and lifted up his spade for a stroke, but the silence had fooled him.

“The moon shone full on my window
When Jock came down through the wood,
And I felt the wind in the trees blow
The springtime into my blood.”

She gave the words with a kind of passionate recklessness, and all her youth seemed to thrill in her throat. Martin bowed his head and went on digging as though by sheer physical effort he could save himself from being a man.

Presently he found himself up against the hedge, with no more ground that he could attack with the spade. The hedge was in leaf, and hid the open moor from him. He fancied he heard some one moving on the other side of the green wall.

“Martin—Martin Valliant.”

He started to walk toward the chapel, but the voice followed him along the hedge.

“Do not be angry with me, Martin Valliant; I want to speak with you. You are a good man and to be trusted; I am a grown woman and no fool.”

Martin hesitated.

“What would you say to me?”

“Many things. I have the wit to know that all is not well with the world. We are heretics, Father Martin, heretics in our hearts. We—in Paradise—no longer believe what the monks teach us, for they are bad men, who laugh in their sleeves at God.”

Martin’s eyes hardened.

“Such words should not come from your lips, child.”

She laughed recklessly.

“I speak of what I see. Is Father Geraint a holy man? Do the brothers keep their vows? And why should they—when they are but men? It is all a great mockery. And why did they send you away to this solitary place?”

He did not answer her at once, and his face was sad.

“No, it is no mockery,” he said at last, “nor is life easy for those who strive toward holiness. Get you gone, Kate. I will keep my faith with God.”

He could hear her plucking at the hedge with her fingers.

“I do not please you,” she said sullenly.

“God forgive you,” he answered her. “You are to me but a brown bird or a child. Shall I offend against God, and you, and my own soul because other men are base? No; and I will prove my faith.”

She heard him go to the cell, and a sudden awe of him awoke in her heart. She went and hid in the gorse and waited, expecting some strange and violent thing to happen. Presently she saw him come forth carrying an oak stool, a length of rope, and a knife. He went straight toward the great wooden cross on its mound, and for a moment panic seized her. Martin Valliant was going to hang himself!

She crouched, watching him, ready to rush out and strive with him for his life. She saw Martin set the oak stool at the foot of the cross, stand on it, cut the rope into two pieces, and fasten them to the two arms of the cross. He made a loop of each, and turning his back to the beam, thrust his hands through the loops. Then she understood.

Martin Valliant had only to thrust the stool away or take his feet from it, and he would hang by the arms—crucified. And that was what he did. He raised himself by drawing on the ropes, lifted his feet from the oak stool, and let himself drop so that he hung by the arms.

Kate knelt there, her arms folded across her bosom. Her brown eyes had grown big and solemn, more like the eyes of a child. She looked at Martin Valliant, and her awe of him was mingled with a strange, choking tenderness.

How long would he hang there? How long would he endure? He had only to place his feet upon the oak stool in order to rest himself to show some mercy to his body. But the soul of the man welcomed pain. His eyes looked steadily toward the sea with an obstinate tranquillity that made her marvel at his patience.

The day was far spent and the sun low in the west, and as the sun sank lower it fell behind the cross and showed like a halo about Martin Valliant’s head. The glare was in Kate’s eyes, so that the cross and the man hanging upon it were no more than a black outline.

How long would he endure? How would it end?

And then, of a sudden, the eyes of her soul were opened. She was no longer the laughing wench in love with the shape of a man. She saw something noble hanging there against the sunset, a figure that was like the figure of the Christ.

She flung herself on her face, and wept for Martin and her own heart. There was no escape from the truth. It was she who had crucified him, put him to this torment.

The sun had touched the hills and there was a wonderful golden radiance covering the earth as she rose up with wet eyes, and hastened toward the cross. She went on her knees, kissed the man’s feet, and wiped away the mark of her kisses with her hair.

“I will go,” she said, bowing her head. “If I have sinned against your holiness, Martin Valliant, forgive me—because I love you.”

He looked down at her and smiled, though his arms felt as though they were being torn from their sockets.

“Who am I that I should forgive you, sister? Sometimes it is good to suffer. Go back to Paradise.”

She rose up and left him, running wildly down the long slope of the moor, not daring to let herself look back.

“He shall suffer no more for my sake,” she kept saying to herself, and all the while she was weeping and wishing herself dead.

_Chapter VIII_

Roger Bland, my Lord of Troy, rode back from hunting in the Forest. Dan Love, his huntsman, had sent word that morning that he had found the slot of a hart down by Darvel’s Holt, and that the beast lay close in one of the thickets. My Lord of Troy had gone out with his hounds and gentlemen, hunted the hart, and slain him. He was riding home in the cool of the evening, the sunlight shining on his doublet of green cloth of gold, its slashed sleeves puffed with crimson, as though striped with blood.

Troy Castle loomed up above at the top of a steep and grassy hill, throwing a huge shadow across the valley. It was the crown of Roger Bland’s pride, the sign and symbol of his greatness, for the Lord of Troy was a new man, a shrewd hound who had lapped up the blood of the old nobles butchered in the wars of Lancaster and York. Richard Crookback had been well served by Roger Bland. The fellow was a brain, an ear, a creature of the closet, bold in betraying, cautious in risking his own soul.

Yet the Lord of Troy had a presence, a certain lean dignity. His face narrowed to a long, outjutting chin. His mouth was very small, his pale eyes set somewhat close together. The man’s nostrils were cruel, his forehead high and serene. When he spoke it was with a dry and playful shrewdness; he could be very debonair; his tongue wore silk; there was nothing of the butcher about him.

Roger Bland was a man of the new age, half merchant, half scholar, with some of the pride of a prince. He had caught the spirit of the Italians. Subtlety pleased him; he despised the stupid English bull. And up in Troy Castle he lived magnificently, and kept a quiet eye on the country for leagues around, a hawk ready to pounce on any stir or trouble in the land. And the Forest hated him with an exceeding bitter hatred, for it had suffered grimly at his hands, seeing that it had chosen to wear the Red Rose when the White had proved more fortunate. The Lord of Troy had ridden into it, and left great silences behind him. There were houses empty and ruinous, and no man dared go near them. There were people who had fled across the sea. There were graves in the Forest, shallow holes in the earth into which bodies had been tumbled and left hidden in the green glooms.

As Roger Bland’s black horse lifted him out of the valley a man came down to meet him along the steep road that climbed the hill. It was Noble Vance, the Forest Warden, a thick, coarse stub of a man who dressed to his own red color. The Forest folk feared him, and mocked at his parents who had christened him so sententiously. “Noble, forsooth!” He wore a doublet of scarlet and hose of green. His red hat looked as big as the wheel of a cart, and the face under it was the color of raw meat, and all black about the jowl.

He swept his hat to the Lord of Troy.

“My lord has had good sport,” and he nodded toward the hart lying across the back of a horse.

“Excellent, Master Vance.”

“There is other game, my lord, beyond the purlieus. I have ridden over to speak to you.”

Roger Bland glanced back over either shoulder.

“A good gossip, my friend——”

“As you say, sir, a good gossip——”

“Is best kept for the closet, and a cup of wine. Ride here beside me. Yes, we have made an excellent day of it; we turned that beast out by Darvel’s Holt and ran him three miles. I love a beast with a good heart, Vance, and a man who fights to the death.”

The Forest Warden grinned.

“Such men are growing scarce, my lord, in these parts. A few green youngsters perhaps, and an old badger or two deep down in their earths.”

“Like old Jack Falconer, I shall draw that badger some day.”

Trumpets sounded as they crossed the bridge over the dry moat, for my Lord of Troy had a love of ceremony and spacious, opulent magnificence. The guards at the gate-house presented their pikes. In the main court grooms and servants came hurrying in my lord’s livery of silver and green. A page stood uncovered beside Roger Bland’s horse, with a cup of wine ready on a silver salver.

My lord waved him aside.

“Bring two cups, child, to my closet, and let it be known that I am not to be troubled. Now, Master Vance.”

They entered by a little door in an angle of the courtyard, and a staircase led them to the great solar above and at the end of the hall. From the solar a passage cut in the thickness of the wall linked up my lord’s state chamber with his closet in one of the towers. It was a richly garnished room, its hangings of cloth of gold, its floor covered with skins and velvets. There were books on the table. The open door of a great oak armoire showed ivory chessmen set ready on a board.

My lord chose one of the window-seats. He liked a stately perch, a noble view, and his back to the light. The subtler shades did not matter to Noble Vance; he let fate hang him where it pleased, like a joint of meat in a butcher’s shop.

“It is wondrous hot for May, sir.”

“The blood is hot in the spring, Vance. Here comes the wine.”

The page served them, and had his orders.

“Stay in the gallery, Walter, and see that we are not disturbed.”

The Forest Warden waited for my lord to raise his cup.

“Your good esteem, sir.”

“I think you hold it, Vance. Do things ever happen in the Forest?”

“But little, sir. You have left no man fit to quarrel with you. But I have come upon a little business in Gawdy Town.”

“Such places breed fleas—and adventures. What is it, Vance?”

“Young Gilbert Dale and the girl are there.”

“What—those cubs?”

“They came in the ship Rose. The lad is a grown man, and the girl a fine, black-browed wench. Pimp Odgers spied them out, though they played the part of strollers.”

“You are sure?”

“I have Odgers here, and another fellow who knew the Dales, and could swear to the son.”

Roger Bland turned in his seat and looked out over the Forest. It was as noble a view as a man could desire, a world of green valleys and distant hills blue on the horizon. The lord of Troy Castle smiled as he sat there high up in the tower, a sly, cynical smile of self-congratulation. The Forest lay at his feet; he was its master. Even the thought of the cruel strength he had shown in taming it pleased him, for, like many men who lack brute physical courage, he was cleverly and shrewdly cruel.

“How many years, Vance, is it since that day when we smoked the Dales out of Woodmere?”

“Seven, this June, sir.”

“Old Dale had sent his cubs away. What is the young gadfly doing in Gawdy Town?”

“Playing the viol and singing songs, with bells in his cap. He goes out of nights, I hear, but my men say that it is to Petticoat Lane.”

“Many things are hatched in a brothel, Vance. And the girl?”

“Plays the lute and sings. A haughty young madam, they say, with eyes quick to stab a man.”

“There is no whisper of secret work, no playing for Harry Richmond?”

Vance shook his big head solemnly.

“I keep my nose for that fox,” he said, “but have struck no scent as yet. What is your pleasure, sir?”

The Lord of Troy continued to gaze out over the Forest.

“Saw you ever anything more peaceful, Master Vance, than yon green country? It is I who have taught it to be peaceful, and much labor it gave me. I have cleared it of wolves; I have cowed its broken men. I choose that it shall remain at peace.”

The warden’s eyes glittered.

“The Dales were ever turbulent, hot-blooded folk. That young man might give us trouble.”

“Prevent it, Master Warden. You have a way of contriving these things. A quarrel in some low house, daggers, and a scuffle in the street.”

“My lord, it is as simple as eating pie. My men will manage it. And the girl?”

“Bring her here, Master Vance. We will question her. It is possible to learn things from a woman. Moreover, our good king loves a wildfire jade.”

The Forest Warden finished his wine, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

“By the rope that hanged Judas, sir,” he said, “it is a pleasure to serve a great man who knows his own mind!”

_Chapter IX_

Mellis and her brother had left Gawdy Town lying behind them on the blue edge of the sea. The day was very young, and a north wind came over the marshes about the mouth of the Rondel river, bending the reeds in the dykes and rousing ripples in the lengthening grass. Mellis was mounted on a modest nag whose brown coat and sleepy ears were more suited to the russet cloak she wore than to the brighter colors underneath it. Gilbert marched at her side. His eyes looked gray in the morning; the north wind had pinched his courage a little; and he and Mellis were to part for a while.

“Keep your heart up, sweet sister.”

She looked down at him and smiled. Her eyes were steadier than his, and more determined, and she was less touched by the north wind. His nature was more mercurial, more restless, not so patient when life’s adventure dragged.

“I feel near home, Gilbert. I think I could live in the Forest—like a wild thing.”

“Woodmere must be all green, and the lilies white on the water. The house is but a shell, they say.”

Her eyes filled with a great tenderness.

“My heart is there,” she said, sighing.

A flock of sheep passed them, being driven to the river pastures. A great wood-wain came rumbling along, loaded high with brown fagots. Mellis’s nostrils dilated, and her eyes shone.

“What a good ship, and what merchandise! I can smell the Forest.”

He laughed, with a note of recklessness.

“Oh the merry, merry life, with the horn and the hound, and the bed under the greenwood tree. Why did our people wear the wrong color, sister? Our hearts were red, and the color beggared us.”

“My heart is the color of fire,” she answered him, “and I let it burn with the thought of vengeance. When will you begin to tell me your secrets?”

“Very soon, sister. I want no listeners within a mile of us. You see how discreet I am! Gawdy Town is a pest of a place; even the dogs do their spying; and there is always the chance of your getting a knife in your back. That is why I thought it better that you should go.”

“Have you ever found me a coward?”

“Dear heart, you are too brave, and such courage may be dangerous.”

They were leaving the marshes behind them, and the Rondel had taken to itself glimmering green lines of pollard willows. Little farmsteads dotted the long northward slope of the hills. Here and there the Forest showed itself, thrusting a green headland into the cornlands and the meadows.

Gilbert was on the alert. Presently he pointed to an open beech wood that spread down close to the road.

“There is our council chamber, Mellis.”

“It should serve.”

“We can tie up the nag and see how my friend the cook has filled your saddle-bags.”

They turned aside into the beech wood, tethered the horse, and sat down under a tree. They were hidden from the road; the gray trunks hemmed them in.

Gilbert was examining the saddle-bags.

“That cook is a brave creature! Good slices of bread with meat in between. And a bottle of wine. There is enough stuff here to last you for days. Dear Lord, what trouble I was at to explain my buying of that sorry old nag!”

He set one of the bags between them.

“Now for dinner and a gossip. There are two words that you must never utter, Mellis, save when some one challenges you with the question, ‘What of Wales?’”

“And those words?”

“Are ‘Owen Tudor.’ They will win you friends where friends are to be had, but also they might hang you.”

“Of course.”

“Our plans have not gone so badly. Our king across the water is a shrewd gentleman. Our business is to stir up a hornets’ nest in these parts; others will play the same game elsewhere, so that Crooked Dick shall be stung in a hundred places while Lord Harry is crossing the sea. Roger Bland is our arch enemy.”

She drew in a deep breath.

“Do I forget it?”

“Tsst!—not too much fire! He is the very devil for cunning. We have got to hold him in these parts, so worry him that he cannot march and join the Hunchback when spears will be precious to that king. They will find a dozen fires alight in every corner of the kingdom, and if our Harry wins the day, Woodmere will be ours again.”

She uttered a fiercer cry.

“And blood shall pay for blood. Oh, I am no sweet saint, Gilbert. That man dragged our father at his horse’s heels, and then——”

She broke off as though the words were too bitter to be spoken.

Gilbert’s eyes had hardened.

“God forgive me for feeling merry at times. Well, sister, I stay on in Gawdy Town, as you know, to wait for news, and to watch for the men who will come over the sea. Old John Falconer is our watchdog in the Forest. The Blounts and the Ropers are with us; also a dozen more. We ought to muster three hundred men when the day comes. The Flemming is a jewel. His pack mules have smuggled war gear and stores into the Forest. There are three suits of armor, besides bills and salets and jacks hidden in our cellar under the south tower. There is a big beam, too, in the sluice ditch to throw across the gap in the trestle bridge.”

He lay back against the tree, thinking deeply.

“This Father Jude on the Black Moor is a close-mouthed old worthy. He is a man who asks no questions, and there is money to be made by such people; a fellow who can mind his own business is worth his wage. There is not a wilder place in the Forest. You will lodge there in the pilgrim’s house; the Benedictines of Paradise are bound to feed and lodge any traveler who passes that way. Besides, Father Jude is one of us; the man has some bitter grudge against the Lord of Troy.”

She looked at him questioningly.

“And I am a pilgrim.”

“Under a vow.”

“And how shall I serve you, on the top of a moor? It seems foolishness.”

“If a man goes to shrive himself or to pray at a holy place, can folk quarrel with him? That butcher villain of a Vance has his spies everywhere. A bird does not fly straight to its nest when a cat is about.”

“True.”

“And, sister, it would be well if you could steal your way to Woodmere, and see with your own eyes that things are as old Falconer and the Flemming say they are. The cellar trap is hidden under a pile of loose stones; a stout stake through the ring will raise it.”

“I could find my way to Woodmere in the dark.”

“What a wench you are for wandering! You have that money safely? I might have my purse cut in Gawdy. You must play Jew.”

She put her hand to her bosom.

“It is here.”

They talked awhile of all that was in their hearts and of the great adventure that lay before them. Mellis was as serious as he was gay; his flippancy increased as the time slipped by.

“I shall have a tale to spin, oh false woman who passed as my sister! I am a Jack without a Jill.”

Yet his eyes were sad. A gradual melancholy took hold of him.

“Kiss me, child; we must be parting. Keep a brave heart.”

She kissed him with sudden tenderness.

“God guard you, my brother.”

“Oh, I have a cat’s lives!”

He jumped up and went to unfasten her nag.

“Remember, this good priest will ask no questions. He is a kind soul, and will swear to any lie, so they tell me. Up with you, sweetheart.”

He strapped on the saddle-bags, helped her to mount, and led her horse out of the wood. There was not a soul to be seen on the road, and still he seemed loth to leave her.

“I will go with you a little way.”

She looked at him dearly.

“No, I am brave. And there is no one here to see us part, and to gape and wonder concerning us.”

“True, oh queen! And so, farewell.”

He tossed his cap at her, laughed, and went off whistling.

And a sudden strange sadness assailed her. She held her horse in and sat there watching him. He was so gallant, so debonair, this brother of hers.

And she would never set eyes on him again. No prophetic instinct could tell her that.

_Chapter X_

Brother Geraint made his way through the dusk to Widow Greensleeve’s house at Cherry Acre. It was a warm, still night, and the scent of the white thorn blossom in the hedges hung heavy on the air.

He came to the gate and stood listening. There was no sound to be heard save the rush of the river through the sluices of the mill.

Geraint pushed the gate open and peered about under the apple trees.

“Good evening to you, holy sir.”

Some one was laughing close to him in the dusk.

“Who’s there?”

“What, not know my voice?”

“It is you?”

“Come and see. Have you forgotten the seat by the hedge?”

He thrust the apple boughs aside, and saw the white kerchief that covered her shoulders.

“Where is the girl?”

“Saying her prayers somewhere. I have not seen her since noon. She is touched in the head, and goes wandering for hours together.”

Geraint sat down on the bench beside the dame. He was in a sullen mood, and very bitter.

“The fool! Send her back to the moor.”

“She swears she will not go.”

“This Martin Valliant is the devil. She could make nothing of him?”

“Why, my good man, it was he who made a Magdalene of her. She came back crying, ‘He is a saint. There is no man in Paradise fit to lace his shoes!’”

Geraint cursed under his breath.

“A pest take both of them!”

She rapped his shoulder sharply with her knuckles.

“A word of warning, Dom Geraint. If the man is dangerous, the girl may prove more so. I tell you he has worked a miracle with her, and women are strange creatures. She says openly, ‘Some day Martin Valliant will come down from the moor, and make an end of the wickedness in Paradise.’”

“She says that!”

“Aye, and dreams of it. I tell you women are strange creatures when love has its way. She is all for turning anchoress, and praying all day to St. Martin. For half a cup of milk she would go running through the valley, screaming the truth. Be very careful, Dom Geraint.”

He leaned forward, glowering and biting his nails.

“We have made a poor throw, dame. And here is that pestilent pedant of an abbot threatening us with a visitation. We have heard of the storm he raised at Birchhanger; he trampled on the whole priory there, had one of the brothers hanged by the judge on circuit. Privilege of clergy, forsooth! The Church is to be regenerated!”

He rocked to and fro.

“And this Martin Valliant, the very man to play the holy sneak! A pretty pass indeed! A cub we took in and nurtured!”

The woman touched his sleeve.

“Some men are too good for this world. They are so much in love with the next world——”

He laughed discordantly.

“That they should be kicked into it! By my bones, there’s truth in that! It had entered my head, dame. And after all it is but doing a saint a service to help him to a halo.”

“Tsst—you are too noisy! Have a care.”

They drew closer together on the bench till their heads were nearly touching.

“Kate is not about?”

“She’ll come back singing a litany. We shall hear her.”

Yet the girl was nearer than either of them dreamed. She had come wandering silently along the path soon after Geraint had entered the garden, and their voices had warned her. She was standing on the other side of the hedge within two yards of the bench, her hands clenched, her face white and sharp.

She could hear all that they said to each other, and it was sufficient to make her wise as to what was in Geraint’s heart. She realized how his brethren at Paradise hated Martin, and how they wished him out of the way.

Kate heard Geraint stirring at last. There were sounds from the other side of the hedge, sounds that made her wince. She crept away, step by step, till a turn of the path hid her from view.

The gate shut with a clatter. She heard the monk give a great yawn, and then his heavy steps dying away beyond the orchard.

Kate stood very close to the hedge and shivered. Life had so changed for her; she was horrified at things that she had hardly understood before; men seemed contemptible creatures. She was thinking of what she had overheard, and of the treachery that threatened Martin Valliant.

Kate had kept her promise, and the very keeping of it had strengthened her heart; but that night she was persuaded to break it, nor could her conscience find fault with her.

There would be a moon in an hour. She crept around to the stable that stood some way from the house, put a halter on the old gray donkey, and got the beast out with scarcely a sound. He was as stubborn as any ass could be in most people’s hands, but he had a liking for humoring Kate. She led him down the orchard, through the slip gate into the dame’s meadow, and so away over the open country to the bridge at the mill. No one saw her cross the river, though the miller nudged his wife when he heard the donkey’s hoofs on the timber of the bridge.

“Now who would you guess that to be?”

The good wife ran to the window, but saw nothing, since the moon was not up.

“An ass, by the sound.”

“Two of them, more likely. And supposing it were Kate Succory, where would she be going?”

“It is best to mind one’s business, John, when we live at the prior’s mill.”

“Remember it, dame, by all means,” he said, somewhat sullenly, “there is not an honest man among them now that Martin Valliant is away on the moor.”

His wife clapped her hands.

“Maybe that ass travels as far as the moor.”

“Get you to bed. A woman’s tongue stirs up too much mire.”

Kate did not trouble her head as to whether anyone had seen her from the mill. She set the donkey’s nose for the Forest, and helped him with her heels. Luckily, she knew the way, and soon the moon came over the hill to help her.

“A blessing on you, Master Moon,” she said quite solemnly, looking over the donkey’s tail.

The clock at Paradise was striking midnight when Kate saw the Black Moor lying dim and mysterious under the moon. More than once she had been shrewdly frightened in the deeps of the woods; but old Jock was the most stolid of mokes, and the beast’s steadiness had comforted her. She had stretched herself on his back, her arms about his neck, her face close to his flopping ears, and had talked to him.

“Who’s afraid, Jock? I can say a Mater Maria and a Pater. Besides, we are on a good errand, and the saints will watch over us.”

Jock, by his silence, most heartily agreed with her.

“Dom Geraint is a treacherous villain. The lean, black rat! Some day Abbot Hilary will send for Martin Valliant and will make him prior.”

She sat up straight on Jock’s back as the donkey climbed the moor. The place had a magic for her. She could imagine all sorts of miraculous things happening where Martin Valliant lived.

“Assuredly he will be a very great saint,” she said to herself, “and people will come to him to be healed.”

Presently she saw the cross standing out against the sky, and it stirred her almost to passionate tears. She slipped off Jock’s back, fastened him to a stunted thorn, and went on alone.

Everything was very still. In the far south the sea glimmered under the moon. Kate went forward with a strange, exultant awe in her heart. Martin would pardon her for breaking her promise when he knew why she had come.

The buildings were black and solemn, though a faint ray of light shone from the window of the chapel. It was the vigil of St. Florence, and Martin had left two candles burning on the altar while he slept for an hour.

Kate looked into the chapel and found it empty. She knelt on the threshold, put her hands together, and said a prayer.

Martin Valliant was sound asleep in his cell, but he awoke to the sound of some one knocking. He sat up on his pallet, and listened.

“Martin Valliant—Martin Valliant!”

He knew her voice, and for a moment he would not answer her.

“Martin Valliant, be not angry with me. I am not breaking my vow to you; no, not in the spirit. I have come to warn you.”

“Child, what mean you?”

“Beware of Brother Geraint, beware of the monks of Paradise. They go about to do you a great wrong.”

He rose to his knees.

“How should you know?”

“Listen. I speak what is true.”

She told him of the things she had heard Geraint whisper in the garden.

“They are evil men, and mean treachery toward you. I could not rest, Martin Valliant, because you are a good man, and taught me to see the Christ.”

There was silence.

Then she said, “Pray for me, Martin Valliant,” and was gone.

Martin rose up and opened the door of the cell, but she was out of sight over the edge of the moor.

He stood there a long while, rigid, wide-eyed, a young man amazed that older men should be so base.

_Chapter XI_

Mellis Dale had passed the night sleeping under a thorn tree in Bracknell Wood, with a pile of last year’s bracken for a bed. The thorn tree had stood as a green and white pavilion, and there was a forest pool among the birch trees of Bracknell that had served her both as a labrum and a mirror. She broke her fast to the sound of the singing of the woodlarks, and with the sunlight playing through the delicate tracery of the birches. Her brown nag was cropping the wet grass in a little clearing where she had tethered him.

Mellis’s eyes were full of a quiet tenderness that morning. She was a Forest child, and its sounds and scents and colors were very familiar and very dear. She was as forest-wise as any ranger or woodman, and was as much part of its life as the birds or the deer or the mysterious woodland streams and the brown pools where the dead leaves lay buried. A great content possessed her. She had no fear of the wild life or of a bed under the stars.

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.”