OUR LADY OF ROCHE-DE-FRÊNE

Stephen the Marshal lay in a fair chamber in the castle of Roche-de-FrÊne, very grievously hurt and fevered with his hurt. A physician attended him, and his squires watched, and an old skilled woman, old nurse of the Princess Audiart, sat beside his bed. Sometimes Alazais, with the Lady Guida, came to the room, stood and murmured pitiful words. Through the windows, deep set in the thick wall, entered, through the long day, other sound, not pitiful. At times it came as well in the long night. Montmaure might assault three, four times during the day and, for that he would wear out the defenders, strike again at midnight or ere the cock crew.

Montmaure had so many fighting men that half might rest through the day or sleep at night while their fellows wore down Roche-de-FrÊne. Count Jaufre had ridden westward and northward,—after the day of the wounding of Stephen,—and coming to Autafort where was Duke Richard, had procured, after a night of talk and song, dawn mass, and a headlong, sunrise gallop between the hills, the gift of other thousands of men wherewith to pay the cost of the jewel. Normans, Angevins, men of Poitou and Gascony, Englishmen, soldiers of fortune, and Free Companions—they followed Jaufre de Montmaure to Roche-de-FrÊne and swelled the siege. They were promised great booty, plenary license when the town was sacked, a full meal for the lusts of the flesh.

The host defending Roche-de-FrÊne grew smaller, the host grew small and worn. Vigilance that must never cease to be vigilant, attack by day and by night, many slain and many hurt, death and wounding and, at last, disease—and yet the host held the bridge-head and the bridge, made no idle threat against Montmaure, but struck quick and deep. It did what was possible to the heroic that yet was human.... There came a day when the entire force of Montmaure thrown, shock upon shock, against the barriers, burst a way in. The strong towers, guardians of the bridge, could no longer stand. The Princess of Roche-de-FrÊne must draw a shattered host across the river, up the hill of Roche-de-FrÊne, and in at the gates to the shelter of the strong-walled town.

It was done; foot by foot the bridge was surrendered, foot by foot the host brought off. From hillside and wall the archers and the crossbowmen sent their bolts singing through the air, keeping back Montmaure.... Company by company, division by division, the gates were passed; when the host was within, they closed with a heavy sound. Gate and gate-towers and curtains of walls high and thick—the armed town, the huge, surmounting castle, looked four-square defiance to the Counts of Montmaure. Now set in the second stage of this siege.

Montmaure held the roads to and from Roche-de-FrÊne. Montmaure lay as close as he might lie and escape crossbow bolts and stones flung by those engines caused to be constructed by men of skill in the princess’s pay. From the walls, look which way you might, you saw the coils of Montmaure. He lay glittering, a puissant dragon, impatient to draw his folds nearer, impatient to tighten them around town and castle, strangle, and crush! To hasten that final hour he made daily assay with tooth and claw. Sound of fierce assault and fierce repulse filled great part of time. The periods between of repose, of exhaustion, of waiting had—though men and women went about and spoke and even laughed—the feeling of the silence of the desert, a blank stillness.

The spirit of the town was good—it were faint praise, calling it that! Gaucelm the Fortunate, Audiart the Wise, and their motto and practice, I BUILD, had lifted this princedom and this town, or had given room for proper strength to lift from within. Now Thibaut Canteleu supported the princess in all ways, and the town followed Thibaut. Audiart the Wise and Roche-de-FrÊne fought with a single will. And Bishop Ugo made attestation that he wished wholly the welfare of all. He preached in the cathedral; he passed through the town with a train of churchmen and blessed the citizens as they hurried to the walls; he mounted to the castle and gave his counsel there. The princess listened, then went her way.

Lords, knights, and squires, the chivalry of Roche-de-FrÊne, was hers. They liked a woman to be lion-hearted, and they forgot the old name that had been given her. Perhaps it was no longer applicable, perhaps it had never, in any high degree, been applicable. Perhaps there had been some question of fashion, and a beauty not answered to by the eyes of many beholders, a thing of spirit, mind, and rarity. Her vassals, great and less great, gave her devout service; they trusted her, warp and woof. She had a genius and a fire that she breathed into them and that aided to heroic deeds.

Garin of the Golden Island did high things in the siege of Roche-de-FrÊne. Where almost all were brave, where each day deeds resounded, he grew to have a name here for exquisiteness of daring as he had had it in the land beyond the sea.... He found himself, in one of those periods of stillness between assaults, alone by the watch-tower above the castle garden. He had left Aimar at the barbican, Rainier he had sent upon some errand. It was nearing sunset, and the trees in the garden had an autumn tint. The year wheeled downward.

Garin, mounting the watch-tower, found upon the summit a mantled figure, leaning against the battlement overlooking the wide prospect. A moment, and he saw that it was the princess and would have withdrawn. But Audiart called him back. In the garden below waited a page and an attendant of whom the princess was fond—the dark-eyed girl who told stories well. But for the rest there held a solitude. She had come from the White Tower to taste this quiet and to look afar, to bathe her senses in this stillness after clamour, and to feel overhead the enemyless expanse.

“You are welcome, Sir Garin of the Golden Island!” she said, and turned toward him. “I watched you lead the sally yesterday. No brave poet ever made men more one with him than you did then—”

Garin came to her side, bent and kissed her mantle edge where her arm brought it against the battlement. “Princess of Roche-de-FrÊne!” he said, “watching you, in this war, all men turn brave and poets.”

He had spoken as he felt. But, “No!” said the Princess Audiart. “No man turns what he is not.” She looked again at the wide prospect. “My heart aches,” she said, “because of all the misery! At times I would that I knew—”

She rested her brow upon her hands. The sun touched the mountains, jagged and sharp, shaped long ago by central fires. The castle and town of Roche-de-FrÊne were bathed in a golden light. The princess uncovered her eyes. “Well! we travel as we may, or as the inner will doth will.—How long do you think that this castle will go untaken by Montmaure?”

“I think that it will go forever untaken by Montmaure.”

“He is strong—he has old strength.... But I came to the garden and the watch-tower not to think of that and of how the battle goes.... Look at the violet stealing up from the plain.”

“In the morning comes the sun once more! I believe in light.”

“Yea! so do I.” She looked from the cloud-shapes of the western sky to the clear fields of the east and the deeps overhead. Her gaze stayed there a moment, then dropped, a slow sailing bird, to the garden trees below the tower, the late flowers, and the sunburned turf. “The autumn air.... I like that—have always liked it.... In the hurly-burly of this siege, you think yet of the Fair Goal?”

“Yes, lady.”

“Listen to the convent-bells! That is the Convent of Saint Blandina.... Pierol, down there, has a lute. I am tired. I would rest for an hour and forget blood and crying voices. I would think of fairer things. I would forget Montmaure. Let us go down under the trees, and I will listen to your singing of your Fair Goal.”

They descended the tower-stair and came into the garden. Here was a tall cypress and a seat beneath it for the princess, and a lower one for the singer. Pierol gave the lute, then with the dark-eyed girl drew back into the shade of myrtles. Garin touched the strings, but when he sang it was of love itself.

The Princess Audiart listened, wrapped in her mantle. When the song was ended, “That is of love itself, and beautiful it was!—Now sing of your own love.”

Garin obeyed. When it was done, “That is loveliness!” said the Princess. “This very moment that fair lady has you, doubtless, in her thought.”

“She whom I sing, lady, and call the Fair Goal, has never seen me. She knows not that such a man lives.”

“What!” exclaimed the princess and turned upon him. “You have seen her once, and she has not seen you at all! You know not her true name nor her home, and she knows not that you are in life! Now, by my faith—”

She broke off, sitting staring at him with a strangely vivid face. “I have heard troubadours sing of such loves,” she said slowly, “but I have not believed them. Such loves seemed neither real, nor greatly desirable to be made real. It was to me like other pretences.... But you, Sir Garin of the Golden Island, I hold to be honest—”

Garin laid the lute upon the earth beside him. He looked at the trees of the garden, and he seemed to see again a nightingale that flew from shade to shade and sang with a sweetness that ravished. “If I know my own heart,” he said, “it loves with reality!” And as he spoke came the first confusion, strangeness, and doubt, the first sense of something new, or added. It was faint—so underneath that only the palest dawn-light of it came over the horizon of the mind—so far and speechless that Garin knew not what it was, only divined that something was there. Whatever recognition occurred was of something not unpleasing, something that, were it nearer, might be known for wealth. Yet there was an admixture of pain and doubt of himself. He fell silent, faint lines between his brows.

The Princess of Roche-de-FrÊne likewise sat without speaking. A colour was in her cheek and her eyes had strange depths. There was softness in them, but also force and will. She looked a being with courage to name her ends to herself and power to reach them.

The dusk was coming, the small winged creatures that harboured in the castle garden were at their vesper chirping. The page Pierol and the dark-eyed girl whispered among the myrtles.

The princess rose. “I am not so tired nor so melancholy now! I thank you for your singing, Sir Garin.”

“I would, my princess,” answered Garin, “that, like the singers of old, I might build walls where they are broken! I would that, with armÈd hand, I might bring you victory!”

“One paladin alone no longer does that,” said Audiart. “If we win, we all have part—you and Sir Aimar and Lord Stephen, for whom I grieve, and all the valiant chivalry and those who fight afoot. And Thibaut Canteleu and every brave townsman. And the women who are so brave, ready and constant. And the children who hush their crying. All have part—all! Account must be taken, too, of my father’s jester, who, the other day, penned a cartel to Montmaure. He tied it to an arrow and shot it from the point of highest danger. And it was a scullion who threw down the ladder from the northern wall. All share. The value is in each!”

“And you, my Lady Audiart, have you no part?”

“I take account of myself as well. Yes, I, too, have part.”

She turned her face toward the myrtles. “Come, Pierol—Maeut!” then spoke again to Garin of the Golden Island. “It seems to me sad that the Fair Goal, whoever she be, wherever she bides, should know naught of you! Did you perish to-morrow in Roche-de-FrÊne, her tears would not flow. If she were laughing, her laughter would not break. No sense of loss where is no sense of possession! This siege never threats her happiness—so little do you know of each other!” Her voice had a faint note of scorn, with something else that could not be read.

“That is true,” said Garin, and was once more conscious of that appeal beyond the horizon, under seas. He felt that there had been some birth, and that it was a thing not unsweet or passionless. It seemed other than aught that had come before into his life. And yet, immediately, he saw again and loved again the inaccessible, veiled figure, the traveller from far away,—it had fixed itself in his mind that she was a traveller from far away,—the lady who had been the guest of Our Lady in Egypt! He loved, he thought, more strongly, if that might be, than before. And again came the note of pain and bewilderment. “It is true, my princess! And still I think that in some hidden way—hidden to her and to me—she knows and answers!” He took the lute from the grass and drew from it a deep and thrilling strain. “So,” he said, “is the thought of her among my heart-strings.”

The princess drew her mantle about her. “Let us go,” she said. “To-night I hold council. There is a thing that must be decided, whether to do it or not to do it.”

They left the garden, Maeut and Pierol following.

Garin was not among the barons and the knights in the great hall when the council was held. He might have been so, but he chose absence. The castle was so vast—there were so many buildings within the ring of its wall—that it lodged a host. He, with Aimar, their squires and men-at-arms, had quarters toward the northern face. Here he came, there being a half moon, and all the giant place in black and silver. But he did not enter his lodging or call to Aimar or to Rainier. He went on to where a wooden stair was built against the wall. Here stood a sentinel to whom he gave the word, then, passing, climbed the stair. At the top was space where twenty might stand, and a catapult be worked. Here, too, a soldier kept guard. Garin gave him good-evening, and the man recognized him.

“Sir Garin of the Black Castle, I was behind you in the sally yesterday! Thumb of Saint Lazarus! yonder was enough to make dead blood leap!”

Garin gave him answer, then crossed to the battlements, and leaning his folded arms upon the stone, looked forth into the night. This angle of the castle turned from the crowded town. The wall was built on sheer rock, and below the rock was the moat; beyond the moat rose scattered houses, and then the ultimate strong wall enclosing all, town and castle alike. And below, on the plain, was Montmaure, islanding Roche-de-FrÊne.

The autumn air struck cool. Montmaure had camp-fires flaring here and flaring there, making red-gold blurs in the night. Garin, watching these, came, full-force, upon an awareness of fresh misliking for Montmaure—for Jaufre de Montmaure; misliking so strong that it came close to hatred. He had misliked him before, calling him private no less than public foe. But that feeling had been tame to this.

The inner atmosphere thickened and darkened. Could he have forged material lightning, Jaufre might then have perished. He stood staring at the red flare upon the horizon. His lips moved. “Jaufre, Jaufre! would you have the princess?”

The autumn wind blew against him. Overhead, the moon came out from clouds and blanched the platform where he stood and the long line of the wall. He turned, and looking to the huge castle, saw the rays silver the White Tower. He knew that this was where the princess lived. Hate went out of Garin’s heart and out of his eyes. “What is this,” he cried, but not aloud, “what is this that has come to me?”

He stayed a long while on the platform, that was now in light and now in shadow, for the sky had fleets of clouds. But at last he said good-night to the pacing sentinel, and, descending the stair, went to his lodging. Here, before the door, watched one of his own men. “Has Sir Aimar returned, Jean the Talkative?”

“No, lord,” said Jean from Castel-Noir. “He sent to find you, but no one knew where—It seems that all the lords and famous knights have been called into hall. Moreover, there are townsmen in the great court, and the mayor is inside with the lords. The bishop came up the hill at supper-time with a long train. There was a monk here, an hour agone, who said that there had been a miracle down there in the cathedral. One Father Eustace, who is very holy, was kneeling before Our Lady of Roche-de-FrÊne, and he put up his hands to her, like a child to his mother, and he said ‘Blessed, Divine Lady, when will Roche-de-FrÊne have peace and happiness?’ Then, lord, what favour was granted to the holy man! Our Lady’s lips opened smilingly, and words came out of them in a sweet and gracious voice, to this effect: ‘When those two wed.’ Holy Eustace fell in a swoon, so wonderful was the thing, and when he came to went to my lord the bishop. Whereupon—”

But, “Talk less, Jean—talk less!” said Sir Garin, and went by, leaving Jean staring. Within the house, stretched upon the floor of the great lower room, lay his men asleep. They needed sleep; all in Roche-de-FrÊne knew the strain of watching overtime, of fighting by day and by night. Two only whispered in a corner, by a guttering candle. These springing up as Garin entered proved to be Rainier and the younger squire of Aimar, the elder being with his master. “Stay till I call you,” said Garin to Rainier, and passing between the slumbering forms, ascended the stair to the chamber above. Here, before a small window was drawn a bench. He sat down, and looked forth at the moon passing from cloud to cloud.

Eight years ago he, like Father Eustace, had knelt before Our Lady of Roche-de-FrÊne and asked for a sign.... Of his age, inevitably, in a long range of concerns, Garin had not formerly questioned miracles. They occurred all the time, sworn to by Holy Church. But now, and passionately enough, he doubted that Father Eustace lied.

Here, sometime later, Aimar found him. “Why did you not come to the hall? Saint Michael! It had been worth your while!”

“I know not why I did not come.... I have been on the walls—I think that I have been struck by the moon.... What was done in hall?”

Aimar stood beside him. “This princess—I have not seen another like her in the world!”

“She came from fairyland and the wise saints’ land and the bravest future land.—What was done?”

“Have you heard of the miracle of Our Lady of Roche-de-FrÊne?”

“I have heard of it. I do not believe it.”

“Speak low!” said Aimar. “Bishop Ugo related it with eloquent lips.”

“Bishop Ugo is Montmaure’s man.”

“Speak lower yet!... Perchance he thinks that Montmaure is his man.”

“Perchance he does. Let them be each other’s. What was answered?”

“The princess rose and spoke. She said that there were so many twos in the world that we must remain in doubt as to what two the Blessed Image meant.”

“Ha!” cried Garin, and laughed out.

“So,” said Aimar, “did we all—barons, knights, and no less a soul than Thibaut Canteleu. But the bishop looked darkly.”

“No doubt Father Eustace will presently be vouchsafed an explanation!—Light wed darkness, and Heaven approve!—Ha! what then, is Heaven?”

“But then Ugo became smooth and fine, and wove a sweet garland of words for the wise princess. And so, for this time, that passed.—Came that which the council had been called to judge of. Heralds from Montmaure, appearing this morning before the river-gate, asking for parley, were blindfolded and brought to her in hall.”

Garin turned. “What said Jaufre de Montmaure?”

“What is wrong with you, Garin of the Golden Island? Heaven forfend your sickening with the fever!—Montmaure offers a truce from sunrise to sunrise, offers, moreover, to pitch pavilions two bow shots from the walls. Then, saith the two of him,—or rather saith Jaufre with a supporter signed by Count Savaric,—then let this be done! Let the Princess of Roche-de-FrÊne, followed by fifty knights, and Count Jaufre de Montmaure, followed by fifty, meet with courtesy and festival before these pavilions—the end, the coming face to face, the touching hands, the speaking together of two who never yet have had that fortune. So, perchance, a different music might arise!”

“How might that be? Her soul does not accord with his.” Garin left the window, paced the room, came back to the flooding moonlight. “What said the princess?”

“She gave to all in hall the words of the heralds and asked for counsel. Then this baron spoke and that knight and also Thibaut Canteleu, and they spoke like valiant folk, one advising this course and one that. And Bishop Ugo spoke. Then the princess stood up, thanked all and gave decision.”

“She will take her knights, and with courtesy and festival she will meet and touch hands and speak with Jaufre, there by his pavilions?”

“Just,” said Aimar.... “Do you know, Garin, that when you make poems of the Fair Goal, you make men see a lady not unlike the princess of this land?”