GARIN AND JAUFRE

With a great host Montmaure encamped before Roche-de-FrÊne and overran the champaign half way around. Of the remainder, one fourth was, so to speak, debatable ground,—now the field of the blue banner and now that of the green and silver. The final fourth was stubbornly held by Stephen the Marshal and the host. This gave to the east and included the curve of the river, the bridge and its towers, and the road by which still travelled, from unharried lands, food for the beleaguered town.

Montmaure’s tents covered the plain. Off into the deep summer woods fringed the myriad of camp-followers, sutlers, women, thieves, outlawed persons. But the fighting mass showed from the besieged town like a magic and menacing carpet spread half around it, creeping and growing to complete the ring. What was for the time a great army besieged Roche-de-FrÊne.

The barons, vassals or allies of Montmaure, had each his quarter where he planted his standard, and whence he led in assault the men who called him lord. The Free Companies pitched among vineyards or where had been vineyards. The spears from Aquitaine and a huge number of bowmen covered thickly old wheat-fields, pastures, and orchards. Near as might safely be to the walls of Roche-de-FrÊne,—so near that the din of the town might be heard, that the alarum bell, when it rang, rocked loud in their ears,—were raised, in the fore-front of tents as numerous as autumn sheaves, the pavilions of Count Savaric and of his son, Count Jaufre. It was August weather, hot and thunderous.

Jaufre de Montmaure came to the door of his pavilion and looked at the hill, the town and castle of Roche-de-FrÊne. Behind the three were storm clouds, over them storm light. The banner of the Princess Audiart flew high. Against the grey, heaped vapour it showed like an opening into blue sky.

Each day and every day assaults were made. One was now in progress, directed against the bridge-head, very visible from Jaufre’s tent. Aimeric the Bastard led it, and Aimeric was a fierce warrior, followed by men whose only trade was fighting. The atmosphere was still, hushed, grey, and sultry, dulling the noise that was made. The mass of the force was not concerned.

Jaufre stood, tall and red-gold, hawk-nosed, and with a scar across his cheek. He was without armour and lightly clothed, to meet the still heat. Upon the ground without the tent had been spread skins of wild beasts. He spoke over his shoulder, then, moving to these skins, threw himself down upon them. Unconquered town and castle, the present attack upon the bridge, the slow coming of the storm, the blue, undaunted banner could best be noted just from here. A squire brought a flagon of wine from the tent and set it beside him.

Out of a pavilion fifty yards away came Count Savaric, and crossed the space to his son. With an inner tardiness Jaufre rose from the skins and stood. “I have sent word to Gaultier Cap-du-Loup to take his Company to Aimeric’s help,” said Count Savaric. He took a seat that they brought him.

Count Jaufre lay down again upon the skins. There held the grey breathlessness and light of the slow-travelling storm.

Count Savaric watched the dust-cloud that hid the bridge-head, obscuring the strong tower and the supporting works that Roche-de-FrÊne had built and, with the aid of its encamped host, yet held against all assault.

But Jaufre regarded moodily the walled town and the castle. He spoke. “This tent has stood here a month to-day, and we have buried many knights.”

“Just,” answered Count Savaric. “Barons and knights and a host of the common people. A great jewel is a costly thing!”

“I miss my comrade, Hugues le Gai. And Richard will not lightly take the loss of Guy of Perpignan.”

“Duke Richard knows how jewels cost.”

Jaufre waved a sinewy hand toward Roche-de-FrÊne. The half-light and the storm in the air edged his mood. “Well, they will pay!” he said. He lay silent for a minute, then spoke again, but more to himself than to Count Savaric. “Until lately I took that woman yonder—” he jerked a thumb toward the high, distant, blue banner,—”for the mere earth I must take in hand to get the diamond of Roche-de-FrÊne! So I had the diamond, the bride that came with it was no great matter. She had no beauty, they said. But, Eye of God! there were other women on earth! They are plentiful. Take this one that went with the diamond, get sons upon her, and let her be silent.... Now, I care less for the diamond, I think, than to humble the Princess Audiart!”

Count Savaric, leaning forward, regarded the bridge-end. “Gaultier Cap-du-Loup is there.... Ha, they send men to meet him! That may develop—”

The castle loomed against the grey curtain of cloud. The minutiÆ of the place appeared to enlarge, intensify. Each detail grew individual, stubborn, a fortress in itself. The whole mocked like the heaped clouds. “Ha, my Lady Audiart!” said Jaufre, “who will not have me for lord—who takes a sword in her hand and fights me—”

He sat up upon the skins, poured himself a cup of wine, and drank.

His father, looking still at the bridge-tower, rose with suddenness to his feet. “The lord of Chalus and his men are going in! There must be yonder half Stephen the Marshal’s force! The plain stirs. Ha! best arm—”

Jaufre rose now also. There was a gleam in his eye. “Breath of God!” he said. “I feel to-day like battle!”

His squires armed him. While they worked the trumpets blew, rousing every segment of the camp. Trumpets answered from beyond the bridge. In the town the alarum bell began its deep ringing. The day turned sound and motion. Count Savaric left his tent, mounted a charger that was brought, and spurred to the head of a press of knights. The colours of the plain shifted to the eye; dust hung above the head of the bridge and all the earth thereabouts; out of it came a heavy sound with shouting. The area affected increased; it was evident that there might ensue a considerable, perhaps a general, battle. It was as though a small stir in the air had unexpectedly spread to whirlwind dimensions. And all the time the sky hung moveless, with an iron tint.

They armed Jaufre in chain-mail, put over this a green surcoat worked with black, attached his spurs, laced his helmet, gave him knightly belt and two-edged sword, held the stirrup while he mounted the war horse, gave him shield and spear. He looked a red-gold giant, and he was a bold fighter, and many a man followed him willingly. He shook his spear at the castle, and at the banner waving above the huge donjon. “Ha, Audiart the Wise! Watch now your lord do battle!”

Around the bridge-head, where Stephen the Marshal had his host, the battle sprang into being with an unexpectedness. There had been meant but a heavier than ordinary support to the endangered barriers, a stronger outward push against Aimeric the Bastard and Gaultier Cap-du-Loup. But the tension of the atmosphere, the menace and urge, the storm-light affected alike Roche-de-FrÊne and Montmaure. Each side threw forward more men and more. From the bridge-head the shock and clamour ate into the plain. The mÊlÉe deepened and spread. Suddenly, with a trampling and shouting, a lifting of dust to the skies, the whole garment was rent. There arrived, though none had looked for it on this day, general battle.... The leaders appeared, barons and famed knights. Here was the marshal, valiant and cool, bestriding a great steed, cheering on his people, wielding himself a strong sword. The battle was over open earth, and among the tents and quarters of the soldiery, and against and from the cover of the works that guarded the bridge. Now it shrieked and thundered in the space between the opposing camps, now among the tents of Roche-de-FrÊne and now among those of Montmaure. Banners dipped and fell and rose again, were advanced or withdrawn. There were a huge number of banners, bright-hued, parti-coloured. They showed amid the dust like giant flowers torn from a giant garden and tossed in air. It became a fell struggle, where riderless war horses galloped hither and yon, and the footmen fought hard with pike and sword, and the crossbowmen sent their bolts, and the archers sent whistling flights of arrows. And still the clouds hung grey, and the town and castle drawn against them watched breathlessly.

Aimar de Panemonde had joined his brother-in-arms. A brave and beautiful knight, he rode in the onset beside Garin of the Golden Island. The two lowered lances and came against two knights of Montmaure. The knights were good knights, but the men from Palestine defeated and unhorsed them. One was hurt to death, the other his people rescued. Garin and Aimar, sweeping forward, met, by a bit of wall, mounted men of a Free Company.... The din had grown as frightful as if the world was crashing down. Always Montmaure might remember that Montmaure had in field twice as many as Roche-de-FrÊne. Garin and Aimar thrust through the press by the wall, rode with other knights where the fight was fiercest. Garin wished to encounter Jaufre de Montmaure; he searched for the green and silver banner. But there was a wild toss of colours, shifting and indeterminate. Moreover the day, dark before, darkened yet further; it was not possible to see clearly to any distance.

And then, suddenly, a knight was before him, on a great bay horse caparisoned with green picked out with black, the knight himself in a green surcoat. The helmet masked the face, all save the eyes. Each combatant shook a spear and drove against the other, but a wave of battle surging by made the course not true. The green knight’s spear struck the edge of Garin’s shield. But the latter’s lance, encountering the other’s casque, burst the fastening, unhelmed him. Red-gold hair showed, hawk nose, scar across the cheek.

“Ha!” cried Garin. “I know you! Do you, perchance, know me?”

But the battle drove them apart. Here in the press was no longer a knight in green. Garin, looking around, saw only dim struggling forms, knights and footmen. Aimar had been with him, but the waves had borne Aimar, too, to a distance. He lost Rainier also, and his men. Here was the grey, resounding plain beneath the livid sky, and the battle, that, as a whole, went against Roche-de-FrÊne. His horse sank under him, cut down by Cap-du-Loup’s men. Garin drew his sword, fought afoot. He saw a tossed banner, heard a long trumpet-call, hewed his way where the press was thickest. A riderless horse coming by him, trampling the dead and the hurt that lay thickly, he caught it by the bridle and brought it in time to Stephen the Marshal full in the midst of that seething war. “Gramercy!” cried Stephen, and swung himself into saddle. Roche-de-FrÊne rallied, swept toward Montmaure’s coloured tents. Overhead the thunder was rolling.

Garin, his back to a heap of stones, fought as he had fought in the land over the sea. A bay horse came his way again. Jaufre de Montmaure, unhelmed, towered above him, sword in hand. Garin’s casque was without visor; his features showed, and in the pallid light his blue surcoat with the bird upon the breast. “Will you leave your horse?” quoth Garin. “It were better chivalry so.”

“I meet you the second time to-day. Moreover we encountered a fortnight ago, in the fight by the river. Beside that,” said Jaufre, “there is something that comes back to me—but I cannot seize it! Before I slay you, tell me your name.”

“Garin of the Golden Island.”

Jaufre made a pause. “You are the troubadour?”

“Just.”

“So that Richard knows not that I cut you down!” said Jaufre, and struck with his sword.

But not for nothing had Garin trained in the East. The blade that should have bitten deep met an upward glancing blade. The stroke was turned aside. Jaufre made a second and fiercer essay—the sword left his hand, came leaping and clattering upon the heap of stones. “Eye of God!” swore Jaufre and hurled himself from his war horse.

“Take your sword!” said Garin. “And yet once, where I was concerned, you lied, making oath that I struck you from behind and unawares—”

“Who are you with your paynim play? Who are you that I seem to know?”

“I was not knight, but squire—when I tied your hands with your horse’s reins!”

A deeper red came to Montmaure’s face, the veins stood out upon his brow, his frame trembled. “Now I remember—! Flame of Hell! You are that insolent whom I sought—”

“I flew from your grasp, and I wintered well in Palestine.—And still you injure women!”

Jaufre lunged with the recovered sword. “I will kill you now—”

“That is as may be,” said Garin, and began again the paynim play.

But he was not destined to have to-day Jaufre’s death upon him, nor to spill his own life. With shouting and din, through the blackening air, Count Savaric swept this way, a thousand with him. The mÊlÉe became wild, confused and dream-like. Jaufre sprang backward from the sword, like a serpent’s darting tongue, of Garin of the Golden Island. The Lord of Chalus pushed a black steed between and with a mace struck Garin down. He sank beside the heap of stones, and for a time lost knowledge of the clanging fight. It went this way and it went that. But the host of Roche-de-FrÊne had great odds against it, and faster and faster it lost....

Garin came back to consciousness. Storm-light and failing day, sound as of world ruin, odour of blood, oppression of many bodies in narrow space, faintness of heat—Garin looked upward and saw through a cleft in the battle Roche-de-FrÊne upon its hill-top, and the castle grey against the grey heaven, a looming grey dream. He sank again into the sea and night, but when he lifted again, lifted clear. He opened his eyes and found Aimar beside him, and Rainier.

Aimar bent to him. “What, Garin, Garin! All saints be praised! I thought you dead—”

“I live,” said Garin. “But the day is going against us.”

He spoke dreamily, and rose to his feet. Before and above him he still saw the grey castle. It lightened, and in a wide picture showed the broken host and the faces of fleeing men. One came by with outspread arms. “Lord Stephen is down—sore hurt or dead! Lord Stephen is down—”

Thunder crashed. Beneath its long reverberations sounded a wailing of trumpets. This died, and there arose a savage shouting, noise of Montmaure’s triumph. It lightened and thundered again. Other and many trumpets sounded, not at hand but somewhat distantly, not mournfully, but with voices high and resolved and jubilant. Garin thought that they came from the castle, then that they were blowing in the streets of the town, then that they sounded without the walls, from the downward slope of the great road. Rose came into the grey of the world, salt into its flatness.

“Blessed Mother of God!” cried Aimar. “See yonder, rescue streaming from the gates—”

Forth from Roche-de-FrÊne poured the castle garrison, poured the burghers. They came, each man armed as he would run, at the alarum bell, to the walls. Knight and sergeant rode; the many hasted afoot. All the old warriors and the young warriors, whose post of duty had been within the place, sprang forth, and followed them the host of the townsmen, at their head Thibaut Canteleu. But at the head of all, chivalry, foot-soldiers and townsmen, rode the Princess of Roche-de-FrÊne. Down came the torrent, in the light of the storm, down the hill of Roche-de-FrÊne, over the bridge, then widened itself and came impetuous, with a kind of singing will, freshness, and power upon the plain, to the battle that the one side had thought won and the other lost.

All lethargy passed from Garin’s senses. He beheld the rallying of the host, beheld Stephen the Marshal, sore wounded but not to death, lifted and borne to the great tower, beheld the princess, wearing mail like a man, a helmet upon her head, in her hand a sword. She rode a grey destrier, and where her banner came, came courage, hope, and victory. The battle turned. Montmaure was thrust back upon his tents. When the tempest broke, with a great rain and whistling wind, with lightning that blinded and pealing thunder, when the twilight came down and the battle rested, it was Montmaure that had lost the day.