SAINT MARTHA’S WELL

The Princess Audiart crossed the river that made a crescent south and east of the town,—her errand, to see how went the defences on that side. Two stout towers reared themselves there, commanding the river-bank, guarding the bridge-head. Beyond the towers workmen in great numbers deepened a fosse, heaped ramparts, strengthened walls, and in the earth over which Montmaure must advance planted sharpened stakes and all gins and snares that the inventive mind might devise. To hold this bridge was of an importance!—South and east stretched the yet unharried lands and the roads by which must come in food for the town, the roads by which it might keep in touch with the world without, the roads by which might travel succour!

The day was a blaze of light, a dry and parching heat. The river ran with a glitter of diamonds. The stone of the many-arched bridge threw back light. The hill of Roche-de-FrÊne, the strong walls, the town within them, the towered, huge church, the castle lifted higher yet, swam in radiance. They lost precision of outline, they seemed lot and part of the daystar’s self.

With the princess there rode three or four of her captains. Clearing the river they must turn their horses aside, out of the way of a multitudinous, approaching traffic that presently, embouching upon the bridge, covered it from parapet to parapet. Noise abounded. A herd of cattle came first, destined, these, for the slope of field and meadow between the stream and the town walls. Wagons followed—many wagons—heaped with provision and drawn by oxen. They held grain in quantity, fodder, cured meat, jars of oil, dried fruit, pease and beans, whatever might be gathered near and far through the land. They came, a long line of them, creaking slow, at the head of the oxen sometimes a man walking, oftener a lad or a woman. They kept the princess and those with her in the glare of the sun. A knight spoke impatiently. “They creep!”

“They creep because they are heavily laden,” said the princess. “Let us thank our Lady Fortune that they creep!”

The wagons gave way to a flock of sheep, bleating and jostling each the other. Followed swine with their herd, goats, asses bearing panniers from which fowls looked unhappily forth, carts with bags of meal, a wide miscellany of matters most useful to a town that Montmaure proposed to besiege—with Aquitaine behind him! The princess noted all. The stream flowed by her orders, and her mind appraised the store that was adding itself this morning to the store already gathered in town and castle. She turned her horse a little and gazed afar over the green and tawny country.

Out of the sheen of the day came from another direction a straggling crowd. Nearer at hand it resolved itself into a peasant horde—a few men neither strong nor weak, but more very aged men, or sick or crippled, many women from young to old, many children. They also had carts, four or five, heaped with strange bits of clothing and household gear. Lying upon these were helpless folk—an old, palsied man, a woman and her day-old babe. They came on with a kind of deep, plaintive murmur, like a wood in a winter blast.

“Ah, Jesu!” said the princess. “More driven folk!”

As they came near she pushed her horse toward them, bent from her saddle, questioned them. They had come from a region where Montmaure was harrying—they had a tale to tell of an attack in the night and a burned village. Unlike many others, these had had time to flee. When they found themselves upon the road, they had said that they would go to Roche-de-FrÊne and tell the princess, the prince being dead.

“Aye, aye!” said the princess. “Poor folk—poor orphans!”

She gave them cheering words, then sat as in a dream and watched them faring on across the bridge and up the climbing road to the town gate.

There spoke to her one of her captains, a grey, redoubtable fighter. “My lady, you are not wise to let them enter! In the old siege your great-grandfather let not in one useless mouth!”

“Aye!” said the princess. “When I was little I heard stories from my nurse of that siege. A great number died without the walls. Men, women, and children died, kneeling and stretching their arms to the shut gates!—That was my great-grandfather. But I will not have my harried folk wailing, kneeling to deaf stone!—Now let us ride to see these barriers.”

The day was at the crest of light and heat when with her following she recrossed the bridge, rode up the slope of summer hill, and in at the gate of the town called the river-gate. Everywhere was a movement of people, a buzzing sound of work. The walls of Roche-de-FrÊne were strong—but nothing is so strong that it cannot be strengthened! Likewise there were many devices, modern to the age or of an advanced efficiency. The princess had sent for a master-engineer, drawing him with rich gifts to Roche-de-FrÊne. The town hummed like a giant hive, forewarned of the strong invader. Prince Gaucelm lay in the crypt under the cathedral. At night the horizon, north and west, burned red to show the steps of Montmaure. Over there, too, was Stephen the Marshal with a host—though with never so great a host as had Montmaure whom Aquitaine aided. In the high white light and dry heat Roche-de-FrÊne, town and castle, toiled busily. The castle looked to the town, the town looked to the castle. In the town, by the walls, were gathered master-workman and apprentice, not labouring to-day at dyeing and weaving and saddlery, at building higher the church-tower; labouring to-day at thickest shield-making; studying to keep out sack and fire, death and pillage, rape and ruin, studying to keep out Montmaure.

Thibaut Canteleu was mayor, chosen by the town last spring. He made the round of the walls with the princess. “By all showing,” said Thibaut, “the walls are greater and stronger than in the old siege.”

“Not alone the walls,” the princess answered.

“You are right there, my Lady Audiart! We are more folk and stronger. We begin this time,” said Thibaut, “well-nourished, and, after a manner of speaking, free. Also, which is a very big thing, liked and liking.”

“I would, Thibaut Canteleu, that my father were here!”

“Well, and my lady,” said Canteleu, “I think that he is. My father, rest his soul! was a good and a bold man, and, by the rood, I think that he is here—only younger and something added!”

The princess stayed an hour and more by the walls, moving from point to point with the captains and directors of the work. At one place a company of men and women were seated, resting, eating bread, salad, and cheese, drinking a little red wine. She asked for a bit of bread and ate and drank with them.

A child clung to its mother’s skirt, hiding its face. “It’s the princess—it’s the princess—and I have not on my lace cap, mother!”

Audiart smiled down on her. “I like you just as well without!” She talked with the workers, then nodded her head and rode on.

“Aye,” said Canteleu beside her. “This is such a tempered town as Julius CÆsar or King Alexander might have been blithe to have about them!”

The princess studied him, walking by the bridle of her white Arabian. “What would you do, Thibaut Canteleu, if I gave you Montmaure for lord?”

Thibaut looked at Roche-de-FrÊne spread around them, and then looked at the sky, and then met, frank and full, the princess’s eyes with his own black ones.

“What could we do, my Lady Audiart? Begin again, perchance, where we began in your great-grandfather’s time. Give us warning ere it happen! So all who love freedom may hang themselves, saving Count Jaufre the trouble!”

“It will not happen,” said Audiart. She, too, looked at Roche-de-FrÊne, and looked at the sky. When she had made the round of the walls, she rode through the street where the armourers and weapon-makers worked at their trade more busily than in the days of peace, and to the quarter where the fletchers worked, and to the storehouses where was being heaped the incoming grain and other victual. Everywhere reigned activity. Roche-de-FrÊne contained not alone its own citizens, together with the castle retainers, the poor knights, the squires, the people of vague feudal standing and their followers whom ordinarily it lodged, but in at the gates now, day by day, rode or walked fighting men. There mustered to the town and the crowning great pile of the castle lords and knights, esquires and mounted men and footmen. Men who owed service came, and in lesser numbers free lances came. And all the great vassals that entered had kneeled in the castle hall, before the Princess Audiart, and putting their hands between hers, had taken her for their liege lady. Where had reigned Gaucelm reigned Audiart.

Each day, before she recrossed the castle moat and went in at the great gate between Red Tower and Lion Tower, she would go for a little time to the cathedral. She rode there now, knights about her. The white Arabian stopped where he was wont to stop. Dismounting, she passed the tremendous, sculptured portal and entered the place.

Within abode a solemn and echoing dimness pointed with light. There were a score of shadowy, kneeling folk, and the lights of the shrines burned. The pillars stood like reeds in a giant elder world. Thin ladders of gold light came down between them. Obeying the princess’s gesture, the two or three with her stayed their steps. She went alone to the chapel of Our Lady of Roche-de-FrÊne. Here, between the Saracen pillars, before the tall, jewelled Queen of Heaven, before the lamps fed with perfumed oil, lay a great slab of black stone. The Princess Audiart knelt beside it, bowed herself until her forehead felt the coldness....

She bent no long while over Gaucelm the Fortunate, lying still in the crypt below. Sorrow must serve, not rule, in Roche-de-FrÊne! Before she rose from her knees and went, she lifted her eyes to the image in blue samite, with the pierced heart and the starry crown. But her own heart and mind spoke to something somewhat larger, more nearly the whole.... She quitted the cathedral, and mounting her Arabian, turned with her following toward the castle heaped against the sapphire sky.

Riding that way, she rode by the bishop’s palace, and in the flagged place, beside the dolphin fountain, she met Bishop Ugo. He checked his mule by the spraying water, those with him attending at a little distance.

“Well met, my Lord Bishop!” said Audiart. “I have wished to take counsel with you as to these stones. Here are five hundred fit for casting upon Montmaure.”

Ugo regarded the fair space between fountain and palace. “Then have them taken up, princess, and borne to the walls.” He left the subject. “Has there come any messenger from the host to-day?”

“No. None.”

“If there is battle,” said Ugo, “I pray the Blessed Mother of God that the right may win!”

He spoke with attempted unction. What was gained was more acid than balm.

The princess had a strange, hovering smile. “How may a man be assured in this world,” she asked, “which of two shields is the right knight’s?”

Ugo darted a look. “How may a man?—May a woman, then?”

“As much, and as little, as a man,” answered the Princess Audiart. “My Lord Bishop, if Count Jaufre strikes down Roche-de-FrÊne, will you wed him and me?”

Ugo kept a mask-like face. “I am a man of peace, my Lady Audiart! It becomes such an one to wish that foes were friends, and hands were joined.”

With this to think of, the princess rode through the chief street of Roche-de-FrÊne, the castle looming nearer and more huge with each pace of the Arabian. Here was the deep moat and the bridge sounding hollowly; here the barbican, Lion Tower and Red Tower. She rode beneath the portcullis, through the resounding, vaulted passage, and in the court the noblest knight helped her from her horse. She was dressed in a dull green stuff, fine and thin, with a blue mantle for need, and about her dark hair a veil twisted turban-wise. Her ladies came to meet her, silken pages and chamberlains stepped backward before her. She asked for Madame Alazais, and learning that she was in the garden, went that way.

Cushions had been piled upon a bank of turf in the shadow of a fruit tree. Here reclined Alazais, beautiful as Eve or Helen, her ladies about her and Gilles de Valence singing a new-old song. Alazais’s face was pensive, down-bent, her cheek against her hand—but here in the shade the day was desirable, with air enough to lift away the heat—and Gilles’s singing pleased her—and the world and life must be supported! In her fashion she had felt fondness for the dead prince,—felt it now and still,—but yonder was death and here was life.... As for war in the land and impending fearful siege, Alazais held that matters might yet be compounded. Until this garden wall were battered in, her imagination would not serve to show her this great castle death-wounded. At the worst, thought Alazais, Audiart might wed Count Jaufre. Men were not so hugely different....

The reigning princess came and sat beside her step-dame. “It is singing and beauty just to be here for a moment under this tree!” She shut her eyes. “To cease from striving and going on! To rest the whole at one point of achieved sweetness, even if it were not very high sweetness—just there—for aye! It would tempt a god....”

The next day she rode westward from the town. Again the day was dry, with an intense and arrowy light. She rode with a small train some distance into the tawny land, to a strong castle that, strongly held, might give Montmaure a check. She rode here to give wise praise, to speak to those who garrisoned it words of the most courageous expectation. She ate with her train in hall, rested in the cool of the thick-walled room for the hour of extremest heat, spoke again with feeling, wit, and fire to the knights and men-at-arms who must desperately hold the place; then, with her following, said farewell and good-speed. She turned back toward Roche-de-FrÊne, through the burned, high summer country.

The sun was in the western heaven. Tall cypresses by the road cast shadows of immense length. There lay ahead a grove of pine and oak, a certain famous cold and bubbling spring, and a meeting with a lesser, winding road. “I am thirsty,” said the princess. “Let us draw rein at Saint Martha’s Well.”

Entering the grove, they found another there before them, athirst and drinking of the well. A knight in a blue surcoat knelt upon the grass beside the water and drank. His shield rested against a tree, he had taken off his helmet and placed it on the grass beside him, a squire held his horse. As the princess and her train came to the well-side he rose, stepped back with a gesture of courtesy. He had in his hand a cup of horn set in silver.

Several of those with the princess dismounted—one spoke to the stranger knight. “Fair sir, we have no cup! If you will be frank with yours—”

Garin stooped again to the water, rinsed and filled the cup, and carried it to the side of the white Arabian. The princess took it, thanked him, and drank. Her eyes noted, over the rim of the cup, the cross, proclaiming that he had fought in Palestine. Below it, on the breast of his blue surcoat, was embroidered a bird with outstretched wings. She drank, returned the cup and thanked the knight. He was deeply bronzed, taller, wider of shoulder, changed here and changed there from Garin the Squire. In his face sat powers of thought and will that had hardly dwelled there so plainly years ago. She was not aware that she had seen him before. She saw only a goodly knight, and possessing, as she did, wide knowledge of the chivalry within her princedom, wondered whence he had come. She had viewed famed knights from many a land, but she could not recall this traveller with his embroidered bird.

She spoke to him with her forthright graciousness. “Fair sir, are you for Roche-de-FrÊne?”

“Aye,” said Garin. “I come from the host, bearer of a letter to the princess from my lord Stephen the Marshal. If, lady, you are she—”

“I am Audiart,” said the princess, and held out her hand for the letter.

Garin bent his knee, took from his breast the letter wrapped in silk, and gave it. The princess drew off her glove, broke the seal and read, sitting the white Arabian by the murmuring spring. Those with her waited without movement that might disturb. Trees of the grove whispered in the evening air, splashed gold from the sun lay here and there like fairy wealth. The marshal wrote of ambushments, attacks, repulses, conflicts where Roche-de-FrÊne had been victorious. But the two counts were together now, and the odds were great. New men had come to them from Aquitaine. The host was great of spirit, and he, Stephen the Marshal, would do his best. But let none be dismayed if there came some falling back toward the town. So the frank marshal, a good general and truth-teller.

The princess read, sat for a moment with her eyes upon the light falling through the trees, then spoke, giving to her knights the substance of the letter. “So it runs, sirs! So the wheel turns and turns, and no mind can tell—But the mind may be courageous, though it knows not the body’s fortunes.”

She folded the marshal’s letter, put it within her silken purse, and drew on her glove. She spoke to Garin. “How do they call you, sir? Are you man of ours?”

“I am your man, lady. I am Garin, younger brother of Foulque of Castel-Noir, and I am likewise called Garin of the Golden Island.”

“Ride beside us to the town,” said the princess, “and give tidings of the host.”

Garin mounted Noureddin. Rainier bore his helmet and shield. The company left the grove for the open road. The road and all the earth lay in the gold of evening, and in the distance, lifted against the clear sapphire of the east, was Roche-de-FrÊne. Garin rode beside the princess and gave the news of the host. She questioned with keen intelligence, and he answered, it seemed, to her liking.

When she had gained what she wished, she rode for a time in silence, then, “I knew not that Foulque of Castel-Noir had a brother.”

“Years ago,” said Garin, “I took the cross and went to Palestine. This summer I came home and found the land afire. With two score men I left Castel-Noir, and with them joined the marshal and the host.”

“He speaks of you in his letter and gives you high praise. It is Lord Stephen’s way to praise justly.”

“I would do my devoir,” said Garin.

Roche-de-FrÊne lay before them. Castle and town and all the country roundabout were bathed by a light golden and intense. “Garin de l’Isle d’Or,” said the princess. “There is a troubadour named so—and he sang, too, in the land beyond the sea. Are you he?”

“Yes.”

“You sing of one whom you name the Fair Goal?”

“Aye, princess,” said Garin. “She is my lady.”

“Lives she in this land?”

“I know not. I have been in her presence but once—and that was long ago. I think that she lives afar.”

“Ah,” thought the princess, “behold your poet-lover, straining and longing toward he knows not what nor whom—save that it is afar!” Aloud she said, “If we are besieged in Roche-de-FrÊne brave songs, as well as brave deeds, will have room.”

Turning to the south and then to the east they rode by the river and so came to the fosse, ramparts, and towers, guardians of the bridge-head, and then upon the bridge itself. Right and left they saw the gilded water, in front the hill of Roche-de-FrÊne, with, for diadem, the strong town walled and towered, and high and higher yet, the mighty castle. The horses’ hoofs made a deep sound, then they were away from the bridge and climbing the road to the river-gate. A horn was winded, clear and silver. Now they were riding through the streets, filled with folk. Garin thought of an autumn day, and looked at the tower of the cathedral, higher now than then.... The street climbed upward, the castle loomed, vast as a dream in the violet light.

“The castle will give you lodging, sir knight,” said the princess.

Here was the moat, across it Red Tower and Lion Tower. Garin looked up at the great blue banner, and then along the battlements to where waved the green of the garden trees. Again there flashed into mind that autumn day, and that he had wondered if ever he would enter here, a knight, and serve his suzerain.