RAIMBAUT THE SIX-FINGERED

A lord might of course visit one who held from him, often did so. But it was not Raimbaut’s use to ride to Castel-Noir. And Garin, parting from him less than a week ago, had heard no word of his coming.

But here he was, pushing Sicart aside, striding into the hall, a low-browed, thick-skulled giant, savage with his foes, dull and grudging with his friends—Raimbaut the Six-fingered! Foulque hastened to do him reverence, make him welcome; Garin, stepping to his side, took from him his wide, rust-hued mantle and furred cap.

“Well met, my Lord Raimbaut!” said the abbot in his golden tones.

Raimbaut gloomed upon him. “Ha, Lord Abbot! Are you here for this springald, my esquire? Well, I have said that you might have him.”

“Nay,” said the abbot mellowly, “I think that I want him not.”

“—have him,” pursued Raimbaut. “And likewise his quarrel with Savaric of Montmaure.”

He spoke with a deep, growling voice, as of an angered mastiff, and as he spoke turned like one upon Garin. “Why, by every fiend in hell, did you fight a Tuesday, with his son?”

Garin stared. He heard Foulque’s distressed exclamation, saw the abbot purse his lips, but beyond all that he had a vision of a forest glade and heard a clash of steel. He drew breath. “Was he that knight in crimson? Was that Jaufre de Montmaure?”

Raimbaut doubled his fist and advanced it. Before this Garin had come to earth beneath his lord’s buffet. He awaited it now, standing as squarely as he might. He was aware that Raimbaut had for him a kind of thwart liking—a liking that made, in Raimbaut’s mind, no reason why he should not strike when angry. It was not the expected blow that set Garin’s mind whirling. But Jaufre de Montmaure! To his knowledge he had never, until that Tuesday, seen that same Jaufre. But he knew of him, oh, knew of him! Montmaure was a great count, overlord of towns and many castles. In Garin’s world Savaric of Montmaure was only less than Gaucelm of Roche-de-FrÊne—Gaucelm the Fortunate from whom Savaric held certain fiefs. Immediately, Montmaure loomed larger than Roche-de-FrÊne, for Raimbaut the Six-fingered owed direct fealty to Montmaure and in war must furnish a hundred men-at-arms.

Garin knew of the young count, Sir Jaufre. He knew that Jaufre had been long time in Italy, at the court where his mother was born, but that now he was looked for home again. He knew that he had fought boldly in sieges of cities, and in tournaments was acclaimed brave and fortunate. Perhaps Garin had dreamed of his own chance coming to him by way of Montmaure—perhaps he had dreamed of somehow recommending himself to this same Jaufre. That gibe of the abbot’s about the signet ring had struck from the squire an answering thought, “Some day I may—” Now came the reversal, now Garin felt a faintness, an icy fall. He was young and in a thousand ways, unfree. For a day and a night his conscious being had strained high. Now there came a dull subsidence, a slipping toward the abyss. “Jaufre de Montmaure!”

Raimbaut did not deliver the meditated blow—too angered and concerned was Raimbaut to dispense slight tokens. He let his hand drop, but ground beneath his heavy foot the rushes on the floor. “I would I had had you chained in the pit below the dungeon before I let you go to Roche-de-FrÊne!” He turned on Foulque who stood, grey-faced and dry-lipped. “Knew you what this fool did?”

Foulque struck his hands together. “He told me that eve. He did not know and I did not know—He thought it might be some wandering knight—Ah, my Lord Raimbaut, as we owe you service, so do you owe us protection!”

Raimbaut strode up and down, heavy and black as his own ancient donjon. “Comes to me yestereve, as formal as you please, a herald from Montmaure! ‘Hark and hear,’ says he, puffing out his cheeks, ‘to what befell our young lord, Sir Jaufre, riding through the forest called La Belle, and for some matter or other sending a good way ahead those that rode with him. Came a squire out of the wood, drunken and, as it were, mad, and with him, plain to be seen, a stark fiend! Then did the two fall upon Sir Jaufre from behind and forced him to fight, and by necromancy overthrew and wounded him, and, ignobly and villainously, bound him to a tree. Which, when they had done, they vanished. And straightway his men found him and brought him home. And now that fiend may perchance not be found, but assuredly the man may be discovered! When he is, for his foul pride, treason, and wizardry, the Count of Montmaure will flay him alive and nail him head downward to a tree.’”

Mistral sent into the hall a withering blast. The smoke from the fire blew out and went here and there in wreaths. It set the abbot coughing. Raimbaut the Six-fingered continued his striding up and down. “Then he puffs his cheeks out and says on, and wits me to know that Savaric of Montmaure calls on every man that owes him fealty to discover—an he is known to them—that churl and misdoer. And thereupon,” ended Raimbaut on a note of thunder, “to my face he describes Garin my esquire!”

Garin stood silent, but Foulque panted hard. “Ah, thou unhappy! Ah, the end of Castel-Noir! Ah, my Lord Raimbaut, have we not been faithful liegemen?” He caught his brother by the arm. “Kneel, Garin—and I will kneel—”

But Garin did not kneel. He stood young, straight, pale with indignation. “Brother and Reverend Father and my Lord Raimbaut,” he cried, “never in my life had I to do with a fiend! Nor was I drunken nor without sense! Nor did I come upon him from behind! Does he say that, then am I more glad than I was that I brought him fairly to the earth and, because of his own treachery, tied him to a tree and bound his hands with his stirrup leather—”

Raimbaut, in his striding up and down being close to his squire, turned upon him at this and delivered the buffet. It brought Garin, hand and knee, upon the rushes, but he rose with lightness. Raimbaut, striding on by, came to the abbot, who, having ended coughing, sat, double chin on hand and foot in furred slipper, tapping the floor. He stopped short, feudal lord beside as massive ecclesiastic. “The Church says it is her part to counsel! Out then with good counsel!”

The abbot looked at him aslant, then spoke with a golden voice. “Did you tell the count’s herald that it was your esquire?”

“Not I! I said that it had a sound of Aimeric of the Forest’s men.” Aimeric of the Forest was a lord with whom Raimbaut was wont to wage private war.

The abbot murmured “Ah!” then, “Did any in your castle betray him?”

“No,” said Raimbaut. “Only Guilhelm, and Hugonet heard surely and knew for certain. Six-fingered we may be and rude, but we wait a bit before we give our esquires to other men’s deaths!” Again he covered with his stride the space before the wide hearth. He was as huge as a boar and as grim, but a certain black tenseness and danger seemed to go out of the air of the hall. Turning, he again faced the abbot. “So I think, now the best wit that I can find is to say ‘Aye’ twice where I have already said it once, and speed this same Garin the fighter into Church’s fold! Let him as best he may convoy himself to the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius. There he may be turned at once into Brother Such-an-one. So he will be as safe and hid as if he were in Heaven and Our Lady drooped her mantle over him. By degrees Montmaure may forget, or he may flay the wrong man—”

The abbot covered his mouth with his hand and looked into the blaze that mistral drove this way and that. Foulque came close, with a haggard, wrinkling face; but Garin, having risen from Raimbaut’s buffet, made no other motion.

The abbot dropped his hand and spoke. “Do you not know that last year the Count of Montmaure became Advocate and Protector of the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius? As little as Lord Raimbaut do I will openly to offend Count Savaric.”

“‘Openly,’” cried Foulque. “Ah, Reverend Father, it would not be ‘openly’—”

But Abbot Arnaut shook his head. “I know your ‘secret help,’” he said goldenly. “It is that which most in this world getteth simple and noble, lay and cleric, into trouble!” He spread his hands. “Moreover, our Squire-who-fights-knights hath just declined the tonsure.”

“Hath he so?” exclaimed Raimbaut. “He is the more to my liking!—So the abbot will let Count Savaric take him?”

The abbot put his fingers together. “I will do nothing,” he said, “that will imperil the least interest of Holy Mother Church. I will never act to the endangering of one small ornament upon her robe.”

Raimbaut made a sound like the grunt of a boar. Foulque covered his face with his hands.

“But,” pursued the abbot, “kin is kin, and in the little, narrow lane that is left me I will do what I can!” He spoke to Raimbaut. “Has Count Savaric bands out in search of him?”

“Aye. They will look here as elsewhere.”

Garin stood forth. Above his eye was a darkening mark, sign of Raimbaut’s buffet. It was there, but it did not depreciate something else which was likewise there and which, for the moment, made of his whole body a symbol, enduing it to an extent with visible bloom, apparent power. For many hours there had been an inward glowing. But heretofore to-day, what with Foulque and Abbot Arnaut and disputes, anxieties, and preoccupation, it had been somewhat pushed away, stifled under. Now it burst forth, to be seen and felt by others, though not understood. Anger and outrage at that knight’s false accusation helped it forth. And—though Garin himself did not understand this—that glade in the forest toward Roche-de-FrÊne, and that lawn of the poplar, the plane, and the cedar by the Convent of Our Lady in Egypt, that Tuesday and that Thursday, came somehow into contact, embraced, reinforced each the other. Aware, or unaware, in his conscious or in his unconscious experience, there was present a deep and harmonious vibration, an expansion and intensification of being. Something of this came outward and crossed space, to the others’ apprehension. They felt bloom and they felt beauty, and they stared at him strangely, as though he were palely demigod.

He spoke. “Brother Foulque and Lord Raimbaut and Reverend Father, let me cut this knot! I must leave Castel-Noir and leave my Lord Raimbaut’s castle, and I must take my leave without delay. That is plain. Plain, too, that I must not go in this green and brown that I wore when I fought him! Sicart can find me serf’s clothing. When it is night, I will quit Castel-Noir, and I will lie in the fir wood, near the little shrine, five miles west of here. In the morning you, Reverend Father, pass with your train. The help that Foulque and I ask is that you will let me join the Abbey people. They have scarcely seen me—Sicart shall cut my hair and darken my face—they will not know me. But do you, of your charity, bid one of the brothers take me up behind him. Let me overtravel in safe company sufficient leagues to put me out of instant clutch of Count Savaric and that noble knight, Sir Jaufre! I will leave you short of the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius.”

“And where then, Garin, where then?” cried Foulque.

“I will go,” said Garin, “toward Toulouse and Foix and Spain. Give me, Foulque, what money you can. I will go in churl’s guise until I am out and away from Montmaure’s reach. Then in some town I will get me a fit squire’s dress. If you can give me enough to buy a horse—very good will that be!” He lifted and stretched his arms—a gesture that ordinarily he would not have used in the presence of elder brother, lord, or churchman. “Ah!” cried Garin, “then will I truly begin life—how, I know not now, but I will begin it! Moreover, I will live it, in some fashion, well!”

The three elder men still stared at him. Mature years, advantageous place, bulked large indeed in their day. A young Daniel might be very wise, but was he not young? A squire might propose the solution of a riddle, but it were unmannerly for the squire to take credit; a mouse might gnaw the lion’s net, but the mouse remained mouse, and the lion lion. The Abbot of Saint Pamphilius, and Raimbaut the Six-fingered, and Foulque the elder brother looked doubtfully at Garin. But the air of bloom and light and power held long enough. They devised no better plan, and, for the time at least, their minds subdued themselves and put away anger and ceased to consider rebuke.

Raimbaut spoke. “I give you leave. I have not been a bad lord to you.”

His squire looked at him with shining eyes. “No, lord, you have not. I thank you for much. And some day if I may I will return good for good, and pay the service that I owe!”

Foulque the Cripple limped from the hearth to a chest by the wall, unlocked it with a key hanging from his belt, and took out a bag of soft leather—a small bag and a lank. He turned with it. “You shall have wherewith to fit you out. Escape harm now, little brother! But when the wind has ceased to blow, come back—”

The abbot seemed to awake from a dream, and, awakening, became golden and expansive even beyond his wont. “You hear him say himself that he has no vocation.... Nay, if he begins so early by overthrowing knights he may be called, who knoweth? to become a column and pattern of chivalry! I will bring him safe out of the immediate clutch of danger.”

An hour, and Raimbaut departed, and none outside the hall of Castel-Noir knew aught but that, hunting a stag, he had come riding that way. The sun set, and the abbot and his following had supper and Garin served his brother and Abbot Arnaut. Afterwards, it was said about the place that the company—having a long way to make—would ride away before dawn. So, after a few hours sleep, all did arise by torchlight and ate a hasty breakfast, and the horses and mules and the abbot’s palfrey stamped in the courtyard. Mistral was dead and the air cool, still, and dark. The swung torches confused shadow and substance. In the trampling and neighing and barking of dogs, clamour and shifting of shapes, it went unnoticed that only Foulque was there to bid farewell to the abbot and kinsman.

In the early night, under the one cypress between the tower and the wall, Foulque and Garin had said farewell. The light was gone from about Garin; he seemed but a youth, poor and stricken, fleeing before a very actual danger. The two brothers embraced. They shed tears, for in their time men wept when they felt like doing so. They commended each other to God and Our Lady and all the saints, and they parted, not knowing if ever they would see each other again.

The abbot and his company wound down the zig-zag road and turned face toward the distant Abbey of Saint Pamphilius. Riding westward they came into the fir wood. The sun was at the hill-tops, when they overtook a limping pedestrian,—a youth in a coarse and worn dress, with shoes of poor leather and leggings of bark bound with thongs, and with a caped hood that obscured his features. Questioned, he said that his father sowed grain and reaped it for Castel-Noir, but that he had an uncle who was a dyer and lived beyond Albi. His uncle was an old man and had somewhat to leave and his father had got permission for him to go on a visit—and he had hurt his foot. With that he looked wistfully at the horse of the lay brother who had summoned him to the abbot.

“Saint Gilles!” exclaimed the abbot, and he spoke loud and goldenly. “It were a long way to hop to Albi! Not a day but I strive to plant one kindly deed—Take him up, my son, behind thee!”