THE ROCK-GATE

At the northern point of the Mount of Roche-de-FrÊne, castle wall and wall of the town made as it were one height, so close did each approach the other. Huge rock upon rock, Roche-de-FrÊne lifted here from the plain. This was the impregnable face, sheer rock and double wall, at the bottom a fosse, and, grim at the top, against cloud or clear sky, Black Tower and Eagle Tower. In the high and thick curtain of stone between was pierced the postern called the rock-gate. Here Garin came, on a night not cold and powdered with stars.

The gate had its turret, and within the shadow of the wall a long bench of stone. Ordinarily, day or night, there might be here a watch of twenty men. To-night he saw that this was not the case. There was a sentinel pacing to and fro before the turret. This man stopped him.

“The princess’s errand,” said Garin.

“The word?”

“Two Falcons.”

“Just.” The speaker paced on.

Garin, going on to the gate, pondered voice and air. They seemed to him not those of any customary sentinel, but of a knight of renown, a foster-brother of the princess. By the turret were other shadowy figures—three or four. These also kept silence, or, if they spoke among themselves, spoke briefly and too low for their words to be distinguished.

Garin, Elias of Montaudon’s mantle close about him, sat down upon the bench in the angle made by wall and turret. He thought that the shadowy figures took note of him, but they did not speak to him nor he to them. They and he were silent. There fell the sentinel’s step, and sounds now vague, now distinct, from Black Tower and Eagle Tower, both of which were garrisoned. For the rest came the usual murmur of the armed and watchful night. Garin lifted his eyes to the starry sky. At first his faculties drank simply the splendour of the night, the blended personalities of scene and hour; then some slight thing brought Palestine into mind. There came before the inner vision the eve of his knighthood, when he had watched his armour in the chapel of a great castle, crusader-built. That was such a night as this. There had been an open window, and through the hours, as he knelt or stood, he had seen the stars climb upward. The emotion of that night rekindled. It came from the past like a slender youth and walked beside the stronger-thewed and older man. Garin watched the stars, then with a long, sighing breath, let his gaze fall to the sky-line, vast, irregular, imposing, and to the mass of buildings that the earth upheld. Here was deep shadow, here a pale, starlight illumination. Here light rayed out from narrow windows, or a carried torch or lanthorn displayed some facet of the whole.

He turned toward the White Tower. He could see it dimly between two nearer buildings.... He rose from the bench. Figures were approaching, two or three. They also were mantled, face and form. Two stopped a few steps away, the third came on. He advanced to meet it. He could only tell that it was slender, somewhat less tall than himself. The mantle enveloped, the cowl-like hood enveloped. A hand held out a purse which he took. It felt heavy; he put it within the breast of his robe.

“Saint Martin’s summer,” said a voice.

He answered. “Dreams may come true.” His heart beat violently, his senses swam. The stars overhead seemed to grow larger, to become vast, throbbing, living jewels. It appeared that the world slightly trembled....

The mantled form turned head, motioned to those who had stopped short. These came up, then after a word all moved to the rock-gate. To right and left of this now stood the men who had waited by the turret. The night had grown still. Montmaure, busy with changes of position, let night and day go by without attack. Roche-de-FrÊne kept watch and ward, but likewise, as far as might be, sank to needed sleep. The investing host, the great dragon that lay upon the plain, seemed, too, to sleep. The castle up against the stars slept or held its breath. The small rock-gate opened. Garin and that one who had given him the purse and changed with him the countersign passed through. After them came the two who had accompanied that one. Garin now saw that the taller of these was Stephen the Marshal. The gate closed behind them.

They stood upon a shelf of rock. Below them they saw the stars mirrored in the castle moat. One of the accompanying men now passed in front and led the way. They were in a downward-sloping, tunnel-like passage. It wound and doubled upon itself; for a time they descended, then trod a level, then felt that they were upon a climbing path. At last came again descent. At intervals they had seen through the crevices overhead the stars of heaven; now the passage ended with the stars at their feet, dim light points in the still water of the moat, stretching immediately before them, closing their path. A boat, oared by one man, lay upon it. The four from the castle towering overhead stepped into this; it was pushed from the sheer rock. In a moment there showed no sign of the road by which they had come. The boat went some way, then turned its prow to the opposing bank. It rose above them dark and sheer. No lasting stairway was here, but as the boat touched the masonry, a hand came over the coping above, and there dropped one end of a ladder of rope. The man who had led the way through the tunnel caught it and fastened it to a stanchion at the water’s edge.

“Go first,” said Stephen the Marshal to Garin.

The latter obeyed, went lightly up the ladder, and upon the moat’s rugged bank found himself among two or three men, kneeling, peering down upon the boat and its occupants. That one who had said “Saint Martin’s summer” came next, light and lithe as a boy. Last of the four mounted the one who had fastened the ladder and gone ahead in the tunnel. Garin thought him that engineer whom the princess highly paid and highly trusted.

They were now between the moat and the wall of the town, rising, upon this northern face, in the very shadow of the castle rock. About them were roofs of houses. They went down a staircase of stone and came into a lane-like space. Before them sprang, huge and high, the burghers’ wall, with, on this side, no apparent gate, but a blankness of stone. On the parapet above, a sentinel went by, larger than life against the sky that was paling before the approach of the moon. Some sound perhaps had been made, at the moat or upon the stair between the houses; for now a guard with halberds, a dozen or more, came athwart their road with a peremptory challenge to halt.

A word was given, the guard fell back. The four from the castle, followed by those who had met them at the moat, went on, walking in the shadow of the wall that seemed unbroken, a blank, unpierced solid. They had moved away from the most precipitous point of the hill of Roche-de-FrÊne, but now they were bearing back. High above them, almost directly overhead, hung that part of the castle wall where was set the rock-gate.

They came to a huge buttress springing inward from the city wall, almost spanning the way between it and the moat. Here, in the angle was what they sought. From somewhere sprang a dim light and showed a low and narrow opening, a gate more obscure even and masked than that by which they had left the castle. Here, too, awaited men; a word was given and the gate opened. A portcullis lifted, they passed under, passed outward. There was a sense of a gulf of air, and then of Montmaure’s watch-lights, staring up from the plain. As without the gate in the castle wall, so here, they stood upon a ledge of rock, masked by a portion of the cliff and by a growth of bush and vine. Behind them was Roche-de-FrÊne, castle and town; before them the rock fell sheer for many feet to a base of earth so steep as to be nearly precipitous. This in turn sank by degrees to a broken strip, earth and boulder, and to a wood of small pines which merged with the once-cultivated plain.

The dragon that lay about Roche-de-FrÊne watched less closely here to the north. He could not get at Roche-de-FrÊne from this side: he knew that no torrent of armed men could descend upon him here. His eyes could not read the two small, ambushed doors, out of which, truly, no torrent could come! Perhaps he was aware that the besieged might, some night-time, let down the cliff spy or messenger striving to make a way north to that distant and deaf King of France. If so, that daring one might not at all easily pass the watch that the dragon kept. Gaultier Cap-du-Loup and his Free Companions encamped in this northern quarter.

Those who stood without the wall of Roche-de-FrÊne looked from their narrow footing forth and down upon the fields of night and the flickering tokens of the dragon their foe. The men who had handled the rope-ladder at the moat now knelt at the edge of this shelf, made fast a like stair but a longer, weighted the free end with a stone, and swung it over the cliff side. It fell: the whole straightened itself, hung a passable road to the foot of the rock. That attained, there would rest the rough and broken hillside that fell to the wood, the wood that fell to the plain where the dragon had dominion. The night was still, the waning moon pushing up from the east.

That one who alone had used the phrase “Saint Martin’s summer” spoke to Garin: “Go you first,” and then to Stephen the Marshal: “Now we say farewell, Lord Stephen!”

Garin, at the cliff edge, heard behind him the marshal’s low and fervent commendations to the Mother of God and every Saint. He himself set his feet upon the rope-stair, went down the rock-side, touched the stony earth at the base, stood aside. That other, that strange companion of this night, came lightly after—not hurriedly, with a light deliberateness—and stood beside him on the moon-silvered hill. The moon showed a woman, slender and lithe, with a peasant’s bodice and ragged, shortened kirtle and great mantle of frieze. At her word he loosened the weighting stone, drew at the rope three times. Those at the top of the rock receiving the signal, the ladder was drawn slowly up, vanished. Above the two soared the clean rock, and loftier yet, the bare, the inaccessible wall of Roche-de-FrÊne. Black Tower and Eagle Tower seemed among the stars. There was a gulf between them and those small, hidden, defended entrances. The strained gaze could see naught but some low, out-cropping bushes and a trailing vine. Up there the men who had brought them to that side of the gulf might yet be gazing outward, listening with bated breath for any token that that dragon was awake and aware; but they could not tell if it were so. Up there was the friendly world, down here the hostile. Up there might be troubadour-knight and princess, down here stood jongleur and peasant.

They stood yet a moment at the foot of the crag, then she who was dressed as a worker among the vines or a herd to drive and watch the flocks turned in silence and began to descend the moonlit boulder-strewn declivity. She was light of foot, quick and dexterous of movement. Garin, who was now Elias of Montaudon, moved beside her. They came down the steep hill, bare and blanched by the moon. The dragon had no outpost here; did he plant one, the archers upon the town wall might sweep it away. But the shafts would not reach to the wood—there perhaps they might hear the dragon’s breathing. They went without speech, and with no noise that could be helped of foot against stone.... Here was a slight fringe of pine and oak. They stood still, listened—all was silent. They looked back and saw Roche-de-FrÊne and the castle of Roche-de-FrÊne bathed by the grey night.

“Cap-du-Loup and his men hold in this quarter,” said the woman in a low voice. “We had a spy forth who got back to us three days since. Cap-du-Loup’s tents and booths are thrown and scattered, stony ground and seams in the earth between the handfuls. He does not keep stern watch, not looking for anything of moment to descend this way. Hereabouts is the ravine of the brook of Saint Laurent, and half a mile up it a medley of camp-followers, men and women.”

She had not ceased to move as she spoke. They were now in the midst of a spare growth of trees, under foot a turf burned by the sun and ground to dust by the tread, through half a year, of a host of folk. Some distance ahead the night was copper-hued; over there were camp-fires. They were now, also, in the zone of a faint confused sound. They moved aside from the direction of the strongest light, the deepest, intermittent humming, and came, presently, to the brook of Saint Laurent. It flowed through a shallow ravine with rough, scarped banks. Down it, too, came faint light and sound, proceeding from the camp of followers.

“Our aim,” said she in peasant dress, “is to be found at dawn among that throng, indistinguishable from it, and so to pass to its outermost edge and away.”

They were standing above the murmuring stream. Overhead the wind was in the pine-tops. There were elfin voices, too, of the creatures of the grass and bush and bark. All life, and life in his own veins, seemed to Garin to be alert, awake as never before, quivering and streaming and mounting like flame.

“I am Elias of Montaudon,” he said. “I understand that, and how to play the jongleur, and that if peril comes and stands like a giant and questions us, I am no jongleur of Roche-de-FrÊne nor allied there—”

“Say that you are of Limousin.”

“I have not dropped from the sky into the camp of Cap-du-Loup, but have been singing and playing, telling japes and tales, merry or sad, vaulting and wrestling elsewhere in the host—”

“With the men of Aquitaine. Say that in Poitou Duke Richard himself praised you.”

“And should they question me of you?”

“I also am of Limousin. There I watched sheep, but now I am your mie and a traveller with you.”

“By what name am I to call you?”

“I am Jael the herd. You will call me Jael.”

They were moving this while up the stream. Did any come upon them now, it would hardly be held that they had flown from the battlements of Roche-de-FrÊne. The ground was rough, the trees, crowding together, shut out the light from the moon, while the fires at the end of vistas grew ruddier. The muttering and humming also of the host in the night increased.

Jael the herd stood still. “It will not suit us to stumble in the dark upon some wild band! Here is Saint Laurent’s garden of safety. Let us rest on the pine-needles until cock-crow.”

They lay down, the jongleur wrapped in his mantle, the herd-girl in hers. “We must gather sleep wherever it grows,” said the latter. “I will sleep and you will watch until the moon rounds the top of that great pine. Wake me then, and look, Elias, that you do it!”

She pillowed her head upon the scrip or wallet which she carried slung over her shoulder, and lay motionless. The jongleur watched.... The barred moon mounted higher, the night wheeled, eastern lands were knowing light. Garin, resting against a pine trunk, lute and wallet beside him on the earth, kept his gaze from the sleeper, bestowed it instead upon the silver, gliding boat of the moon, or upon the not-distant, murky glare of unfriendly fires. But gaze here or gaze there, space and time sang to one presence! Wonder must exist as to this night and the morrow and what journey was this. Mind could not but lift the lanthorn, weigh likelihoods, pace around and around the subject. That quest drew him, but it was not all, nor most that drew.... Jael the herd! Jael the herd! Here came impossibilities—dreams, phantasies, rain of gold and silver, impossibilities! He remembered clearly now a herd-girl, and that when he had asked her name she had answered “Jael.” Many shepherdesses trod the earth, and a many might be named Jael! Moreover sheer, clear impossibility must conquer, subdue and dispose of all this mad thinking. She who lay asleep was like that herd-girl—he saw it now—shape, colouring, voice—That and the name she had happened to choose—that and the torn, shepherdess garb—to that was owed this dizzy dreaming, this jewelled sleet of fancy, high tide of imagination, flooding every inland.... Things could not be different, yet the same—beings could not be separate, yet one—or in some strange, rich world, could that be so? But here was mere impossibility! Garin strove to still the wider and wider vibrations. The Fair Goal—The Fair Goal!... The moon rounded the top of the pine tree.

He crossed to the sleeper’s side, knelt, and spoke low. “My liege—” She stirred, opened her eyes. “My liege, the moon begins to go down the sky.”

With her hand pressed against the pine-needles she rose to a sitting posture. “I slept—and, by my faith, I wanted sleep! Now it is your turn. Do not again call me liege or lady or princess or Audiart. The wind might carry it to Cap-du-Loup. Say always to me, ‘Jael.’ And now lie down and sleep. I will wake you when the east is grey.”

Garin slept. The Princess Audiart rested against a tree, and now watched the moon, and now the fires kindled by her foe and Roche-de-FrÊne’s, and now she watched the sleeping man. The attire which she wore, the name she had chosen for the simple reason that once before she had chanced to take it up and use it, brought brightly into mind a long-ago forest glade and a happening there. But she did not link that autumn day with the man lying wrapped in Elias of Montaudon’s cloak, though she did link it with Jaufre de Montmaure who had kindled those fires in the night. It came, a vivid picture, and then it slept again. There was, of need, a preoccupation with this present enterprise and its chaplet, necklace, girdle, and anklets of danger, no less than with its bud of promise which she meant, if possible, to make bloom. Her own great need and the need of Roche-de-FrÊne formed the looming presence, high, wide, and deep as the night, but, playing and interblending with it, high, wide, and deep as the day, was another sense.... She gazed upon Garin of the Golden Island lying wrapped in the jongleur’s cloak, and the loss of him was in the looming night, and the gain in the bud of promise and the feeling of the sun. To-night, her estate seemed forlorn enough, but within she was a powerful princess who did not blink her own desires though she was wise to curb and rein and drive them rightly.