GARIN TAKES THE CROSS

The bells of a neighbouring religious house were ringing with a mellow sound. People passed this way and that before the church porch. The doors were opened, and one and another entered the building. Garin paid them no attention; he sat sunk in thought. What now? What next?

He was twenty years old—strong, of a sound body, not without education in matters that the time thought needful. He could do what another esquire of gentle blood could do. Moreover, he felt in himself further powers. He was not crassly confident; he turned toward those bright shoots and buds an inner regard half shy and wistful. He was capable of longing and melancholy.... Danger from Savaric of Montmaure and his son Jaufre he held to be fairly passed. Accident might renew it, to-day, to-morrow, or ten years hence, but accident only took its chance with other chances. He was out of Savaric’s grasp, being out of his territory and into that of Toulouse, with intention to wander yet farther afield. Extradition and detectives had their rough-hewn equivalents in Garin’s day. But he was assured that there was no spy upon his track, and he did not brood over the possibility of a summons to Toulouse to deliver him or be warred against. He had his share of common sense. He was an offender too obscure and slight for such weightiness of persecution. Did they find him, they would wring his neck, but they would not dislocate their usual life to find him. He thought that, with common precaution, he was at present safe enough from Montmaure. He could not go back to Raimbaut or to Castel-Noir—perhaps not for many years ... though if he became a famous knight he might ride back, his esquires behind him, and challenge that false knight, Jaufre de Montmaure! To become that knight—that was his problem, or rather, one great problem. He must change his name, he must seek a lord, he must win back, first, to squirehood. On the road yesterday, one had asked him his name. He had replied with the first thing that came into his head. “Garin Rogier,” he had said. He thought now that this would still answer. For his country, he proposed to say that he was of Limousin.

It might take years to become a knight. His own merit would have to do with that, but Fortune, also, would have to do with it. He knew not if Fortune would be kind to him, or the reverse. He sat bent forward, his hands clasped between his knees, his eyes upon the sunshine-gilded stones. Find knighthood—And how should he find his lady?

He took into his hand a corner of his mantle. The stuff was simple, far from costly, but the colour was that blue, deep but not harsh, dark but silvery too, which had been worn by that form in the stone chair beneath the cedar tree, by the Convent of Our Lady in Egypt. He had bought it because it was of that hue. Now the sunshine at his feet seemed of the very tissue of that day. He sat in a dream, his mind now a floating mist of colour and fragrance, now an aching vision of a woman’s form whose face he could not see. He drew and coloured the face, now this way and now that, but never to his satisfaction.... Would ever he meet her face to face? He knew not. Where did she live? He knew not. East, west, north, south—beyond the mountains or across the sea? He knew not. It would be in some court. There were many courts. His strong fancy was that she had come from far away. He knew not if in this world he would again enter her presence.

An exaltation came upon Garin. And if he did not, still could he uphold to the stars that dreamy passion! Still could he serve, worship, sing! The Fair Goal—the Fair Goal! Music seemed to possess him and a loveliness of words, and of rich and lofty images. The Fair Goal—the Fair Goal! Garin stretched forth his arms. “O Love, my wingÈd Lord! Let me never swerve from the love of that lady!”

From the church behind him came a drift of music and chanting. A woman, mounting the steps, caught his words and paused to look at him. She was between youth and age, with a pale, ecstatic face. “Now all the violets bloom,” she said, “and the leaves shiver on the trees as the flowers come up between them! But earthly spring, fair brother, is but a fourth part of Time, and in Eternity a grain, a wind-blown petal! Choose thou Religion and find her the true love!”

She passed into the church. Garin, rising from the steps, looked about him. While he sat there the space around had become peopled. Many folk were entering the doors. As he looked, there turned a corner eight or ten men walking in procession, behind and about them a throng. All mounted the steps, pressing toward the entrance. The most had pale faces of enthusiasm. Of the crowd some were weeping, some uttering exclamations of praise and ecstasy. Garin touched a bystander on the sleeve. “What takes place?”

“Do you not see the crosses?”

“I could not for the crowd,” said Garin. “I can now. They are going to the land over sea?”

“Three ships with their companies sail from the nearest port. All the churches are singing mass and sewing crosses on those who will take them.”

“But there is no great and general going preached to-day,” said Garin. “There has not been since Saint Bernard’s time.”

“They say it will soon be preached again,” answered his informant. “Holy church must find a way to set off heresy that is creeping in!—These are ships sailing with help for King Baldwin of Jerusalem. The Pope has granted a great Indulgence, and many from these parts are going that they may wipe out their sins.”

The informant moved toward the doors. Garin thought of entering and hearing mass and seeing the crosses sewed on. But then he thought that it would be wiser to keep his road. He waited until most of the people had gone into the church, then found his way to the westward-giving town gate and passed out into the country. In Foulque’s purse he had still enough to purchase—not another Paladin, as he recognized with a sigh, but yet some horse not wholly unworthy. But this town, he had been told, had no good horse-market. Such and such a place, some miles away, was better. So he walked in his russet and blue and suited so the russet, sunshiny country and the profound blue arch of the sky.

Upon a lonely stretch of the road he came to a wayside cross, with a gaunt figure carved upon it. A gaunt figure, too, sat beside the cross, but rose as he approached and tinkled a small bell that it carried. As he lifted his mantle and went by with averted face so that he might not breathe the air that flowed between, it croaked out a demand for alms. It came so foully across Garin’s dream that he shook his head and hurried by. But when an eighth of a mile was between him and the leper he stood still, his eyes upon the ground. At last, drawing out Foulque’s purse, he took from it a coin and going back dropped it into the leper’s cup. “In Love’s name!” he said.

The leper widened his lips. “What is Love’s name?” he asked. “If I had its name, I might make it do something!”

Garin left him by the wayside cross, a terrible, unhelped person. He darkened his mood for him, or the stress and strain and elevation of the past week, flagging, left him suddenly in some dead backwater or black pool of being. He walked on, putting the miles behind him, but with no springing step and with a blank gaze. Light and colour seemed to withdraw from the day and the landscape. The cross-taking in the town behind him and the leper by the roadside conjoined with many another fact, attitude, and tendency of his world. It could show itself a gusty world of passion and energy, and also a world of asceticisms, humilities and glooms, of winter days struggling with spring days, of an inward fall toward lessening and annihilation. Here was an hour impetuous and crescive, and here was its successor passive, resigned and fading, and one man or woman might experience both. Garin had been aloft; now he walked in a vale indeed, and could have laid himself upon its ashy soil and wept.

Out of that mood he passed into one less drear. But he was still sad, and the whole huge world came into correspondence. Lepers and outcast persons, prisoners, and slaves, the poor and hopeless, the lovers parted, the condemned for sin—Garin plodded on, his eyes upon the earth.

A sound of distant bells aroused him. He lifted his head and looked to see whence it came. At the base of an olive-planted hill appeared a monastery, not large, but a simple-seeming, antique place. It had a church, small too, with a bell-tower. The country hereabouts was rich with woods and streams and purple crags, in the distance a curtain of great mountains. Before him, two miles or so away, Garin saw a castle crowning a cliff rising from a narrow valley. It, neither, was large—though larger than Raimbaut’s castle.... The bells were ringing sweetly, the light bathed the little vale and washed the crag and the castle walls. Garin’s sadness fell, in part, from him. What stayed only gave depth and charm to all that in that moment met his senses. In him phantasy turned quickly, acted quickly. “I like all this,” it said in effect. “And I tell myself that in the baron who dwells in that castle I shall find a lord who will knight me!”

He resolved to go to the castle. He walked quickly now, with a determined, light step. A spur of the road led off to the church where the bells were yet ringing. Between the town he had quitted and this spot he had met few people upon the way. Nor were there any here, where the two roads joined. It lay a wide, clean, sunny space. But as he continued upon the highway the emptiness of the world began to change. Folk appeared, singly or in groups, and all were going toward the ringing bells. Passing an old man, he asked, “What is the mass for?” and was answered, “They are going over sea.”

A young man, an artisan with a bag of tools in his hand, approached. Garin stopped him. “What lord lives in yonder castle?”

“Sir Eudes de Panemonde,” said the artisan. “He has taken the cross and is going to the land over sea.”

Garin stood still, staring at him, then drew his breath, and with a jerk of the head went on by. “The land over sea!” said Garin. “The land over sea!”

There was a calvary built by the roadside. Men and women knelt before it, then rising, hurried on toward the church. Close by, on a great stone, sat a cowled monk, stationed there, it would seem, to give information or counsel. Garin, coming up, gave and received salutation.

“Are you for the cross, fair son?” demanded the monk. “You would give a lusty blow to the infidel! Take it, and win pardon for even the sins you dream of!”

“Why, brother,” asked Garin, “does Sir Eudes de Panemonde go?”

“Long years ago,” answered the monk, “when he was a young man, Sir Eudes committed a great sin. He has done penance, as this monastery knows, that receives his gifts! But now he would further cleanse his soul.”

“He is not then young nor of middle-age?”

“He is threescore,” said the monk.

Another claimed his attention. Garin moved away, kept on upon the road. None now was going his way, all were coming from the direction of the castle. There must be a little bourg beyond, hidden by some arm of earth, purple-sleeved. He thought that he saw in the distance, descending a hill, a procession. Under a lime tree by the road sat an old cripple decently clad, and with a grandson and granddaughter to care for him. Garin again stayed his steps. “What manner of knight, father, is Sir Eudes de Panemonde?”

The light being strong, the cripple looked from under his hand at the questioner. “Such a knight,” he said, in an old man-at-arms voice, “as a blue-and-tawny young sir-on-foot might be happy to hold stirrup for!”

“I mean,” said Garin, “is he noble of heart?”

But the old man was straining his eyes castle-ward. The grandson spoke. “He is a good lord—Sir Eudes! Sir Aimar may be a better yet.”

The procession was seen more plainly. “They are coming, grandfather!” cried the girl. “Sir Eudes and Sir Aimar will be in front, and the men they take with them. Then the people from the castle and Panemonde following—”

“Yea, yea!” said the old cripple. “I have seen before to-day folk go over seas to save the Holy Sepulchre and spare themselves hell pains! They mean to come back—they mean to come back. But a-many never come, and we hear no tales of what they did.”

The grandson took the word. “Jean the Smith says that from the castle Sir Eudes walks barefoot and in his shirt to the church. That’s because of his old sin! Then, when all that go have heard mass and have communed, he will dress and arm himself within the monastery, all needful things having been sent there, and his horse as well. Then all that go will journey on to the port.”

Garin spoke to the girl. “Who is Sir Aimar?”

“He is Sir Eudes’s son.” She turned upon him a lighted face. “He is a brave and beautiful knight!”

“Is he going to the land over sea?”

“Yes.”

A hundred and more people were coming toward the lime tree, the calvary beyond it, the church and monastery beyond the calvary. Dust rose from the road and that and the distance obscured detail. There seemed to be horsemen, but many on foot. All the people strung along the road now turned their heads that way. There ran a murmur of voices. But Garin stood in silence beneath the lime tree, from which were falling pale yellow leaves. He stood in a waking dream. Instead of Languedoc he saw Palestine—a Palestine of the imagination. He had listened to palmers’ tales, to descriptions given by preaching monks. Once a knight-templar had stayed two days with Raimbaut the Six-fingered, and the castle had hearkened, open-mouthed. So Garin had material. He saw a strange, fair land, and the Christian kingdoms and counties planted there; saw them as they were not or rarely were, or only might be; saw them dipped in glamour, saw them as a poet would, as that Prince Rudel did who took ship and went to find the Lady of Tripoli—and went to find the Lady of Tripoli....

The procession from the castle and the village beyond coming nearer, its component parts might clearly be discerned. In front walked two figures, and now it could be seen that they were both in white.

“Ah, ah!” cried the girl beside the old man; and there were tears in her voice. “Sir Aimar that did not do the sin, goes like Sir Eudes—”

The cripple would be lifted to his feet and held so. Grandson and daughter put hands beneath his arms and raised him. “So—so!” he said querulously. “And why shouldn’t the son go like a penitent if the father does? That’s only respect! But the young don’t respect us any longer—”

The procession came close. There rode twenty horsemen, of whom three or four wore knights’ spurs, and the others were mounted men-at-arms and esquires. All wore, stitched upon the mantle, or the sleeve, or the breast of the tunic, crosses of white cloth. Behind these men came others, mounted, but without crosses or the appearance of travellers. They seemed neighbours to the lord of Panemonde, men of feudal rank, kinsmen and allies. Several might hold their land from him. There might be present his bailiff and also the knight or baron who had promised to care for Panemonde as though it were his own fief. In the rear of the train came the foot-people, castle retainers and servants, villagers, peasants, men, women and children, following their lord from Panemonde through the first stage of his travel over sea. Throughout the moving assemblage now there was solemn silence and now bursts of pious ejaculation, utterances of enthusiasm, adjurations to God, the Virgin and the Saints. Or, more poignant yet, there were raised chants of pilgrimage. When this was done the people along the roadside joined their voices. Moreover there were men and women who wept, and there were those who fell into ecstasy. Of all things in the world, in this age, emotion was the nearest at hand.

Garin felt the infecting wave. At the head of the train, dismounted, barefoot, wearing each a white garment that reached half-way between knee and ankle, bare-headed, moving a few paces before their own mounted knights, appeared the lords of Panemonde, father and son. Sir Eudes was white-headed, white-bearded, finely-featured, tall and lean. His son, Sir Aimar, seemed not older—or but little older—than Garin’s self, and what the girl had said appeared the truth.

The two came close to the lime tree. Garin, dropping his mantle, stepped into the road and fell upon both knees, suppliant-wise. “Lord of Panemonde,” he cried, “let me go with you to the land over the sea!”

Sir Eudes and his son stood still, and behind them the riders checked their horses.

“What is your name, youth?” asked the first, “And whence do you come?”

“Garin Rogier,” answered Garin, “and from Limousin. I was a younger brother, and have set out to seek my fortune. Of your grace, Lord of Panemonde, place me among your men!”

Sir Eudes regarded him shrewdly. “I make my guess that you are a runaway from trouble.”

“If I am,” said Garin, “it is no trouble that will touch your honour if you take me! I fought, with good reason, one that was more powerful than I.”

The other made to shake his head and go on by. But Garin spread out his arms that he might not pass and still cried, “Take me with you, Lord of Panemonde! I have vowed to go with you across the sea, and so to serve you that you will make me a knight!”

The two gazed at him, and those behind them gazed. He kneeled, so resolved, so energized, so seeing the fate he had chosen, that as at Castel-Noir, so now, the glow within came in some fashion through the material man. From his blue-grey eyes light seemed to dart, his hair, between gold and brown, became a fine web holding light, his flesh seemed to bloom. His field of force, expanding, touched them. “In the name of the Mother of God!” cried Garin; but what the man within meant was, “Because I will it, O Lord of Panemonde!”

The people on foot, too far in the rear to see more than that there was a momentary halting of the train, began a louder singing.

“Jerusalem!
Shall the paynim hold thee,
Jerusalem?
And shame our Lord Jesus,
Jerusalem?
And shame our blessed Lady, his meek Mother,
Jerusalem?
So that they say, ‘Why come not the men
To slay Mahound and cleanse our holy places?
Where are the knights, the sergeants and the footmen?’
Jerusalem!
Who takes the cross and wendeth over seas,
Jerusalem!
Will save his soul thereby, raze out his sins,
Jerusalem!”

Sir Eudes de Panemonde stared at the kneeling figure. But the young knight beside him who had stood in silence, his eyes upon the suppliant, now spoke. “Let him go with us, father! Give him to me for esquire.—There is that that draws between us.”

The father, who had a great affection for his son, looked from him to Garin and back again. “He is a youth well-looking and strong,” he said. “Perhaps he may do thee good service!”

The chant, renewed, and taken up from the roadside, came to his ear. He crossed himself.

“Nor may I deny to our Lord Jesus one servant who will strike down the infidel! Nor to the youth himself the chance to win forgiveness of sins!” He spoke to Garin. “Stand up, Garin Rogier! Have you a horse?”

Garin rose to his feet. “No, lord. But I have money sufficient to buy one.”

Sir Aimar spoke again. “Pierre Avalon will sell him one when we come to the monastery.”

The father nodded. “Have you confessed and received absolution?”

“One week ago, lord. But when we come to the church I will find a priest. And when I am shriven I will take the cross.”

“Then,” said Sir Eudes, “it is agreed, Garin Rogier. You are my man and my son’s man. As for becoming knight, let us first see what blows you deal and what measure you keep! Now delay us no longer.”

He put himself into motion, and his son walked beside him. The mounted men followed, their horses stepping slowly. Then came the stream afoot, and Garin joined himself to this.

“Who takes the cross and wendeth over seas,
Jerusalem!
Will save his soul thereby, raze out his sins,
Jerusalem!”

Here was the calvary again, and the monk sitting beside it—here was the church, jutting out from the monastery—and people about it, and priests and monks—and a loud and deep chanting—and a mounting sea of emotion. Many broke into cries, some, phrensied, fell to the earth, crying that they had a vision.

“To slay Mahound, and cleanse our sacred places!”

The mass was sung, the sacrament given those who were going to the land over sea. Garin found his priest and was shriven, then knelt with the esquires and men-at-arms and with them took the Body. Upon his breast was sewn a white cross. He had, with all who went, the indulgence. He was delivered from all the sins that through his life, until that day, he had committed.

The mass was sung. A splinter of St. Andrew’s cross—the church’s great possession—was venerated. The two de Panemondes, rising from their knees, passed from the church to the monastery, and here, in the prior’s room, their kinsmen and peers about them, they were clothed as knights again. Without, in a grey square, shaded by old trees, Garin purchased a horse from Pierre Avalon.

Sir Eudes and his son came forth in hauberk and helm. The knights for the ships and the land over the sea mounted, their followers mounted. Farewells were said. Those who were going drew into ranks. A priest blessed them. The people wept and cried out blessings. The monks raised a Latin chant. The sky was sapphire, a light wind carried to and fro the autumn leaves. Sir Eudes de Panemonde and his son touched their horses with their gilded spurs. The knights followed, the esquires and men-at-arms. Behind them the voices, at first swelling louder, sank as lengthened the road between. They pressed on, and now they lost that sound and lost the church, the monastery, and the castle of Panemonde.... Now the leper by the roadside was passed, still sitting beneath the cross, tinkling his bell. In the distance was seen the town that Garin had left that morning. The company did not enter it, but turned aside into a road that ran to the southward and then east and then south again. So at last, to-morrow at sunset, they would come to the port and to the ships that would bring them to Syria.

Garin rode in a dream. He thought of Raimbaut and of Foulque, of Castel-Noir and Roche-de-FrÊne, but most he thought of the Fair Goal, and tried to see her, in her court he knew not where.