THE ABBEY OF THE FOUNTAIN

Morning broke. They rose and travelled on. This day they passed definitely from the dragon’s present reach, though yet they were in lands of Roche-de-FrÊne, done into ruin by him, poisoned by his breath. Adventures they had, perils and escapes. These were approached, endured, passed. At night they came to a hermit’s cell where was no hermit, but on a stone hearth wood ready for firing. They closed the door, struck flint and steel, had presently a flame that reddened the low and narrow walls and gave the two, tired and cold, much comfort. The hermit’s cupboard was found, and in it dried fruit and pease and a pan or two for cooking. Without the cell was water, a bubbling spring among moss and fern.

The night was dark and windy. None came to strike upon the hermit’s door, no human voice broke in upon them. The wind shook the forest behind the cell and scoured the valley in front. It whistled around their narrow refuge, it brought at intervals a dash of rain against door and wall. But the two within were warmed and fed, and they found an ocean-music in the night. It rocked them in their dreams, it soothed like a lullaby. The princess dreamed of her father, and that they were reading together in a book; then that changed, and it was her old, old nurse, who told her tales of elves and fays. Garin dreamed of the desert and then of the sea. Dawn came. They rekindled their fire and had spare breakfast, then fared forth through a high and stormy world.

Night came, day came, nights and days, beads of light and its doings, beads of dimness and rest. They kept no list of the dangers they entered and left, of the incidents and episodes of peril. They were many, but the two went through like a singing shaft, like a shuttle driven by the hand of Genius. Now they were forth from the invaded princedom, now they were gone from fiefs of other suzerains. Where they had faced north, now they walked with the westering sun.

When that happened, Jael the herd wore no longer the saffron cross. It had served the purpose, carrying her through Montmaure’s host, that else might not have let a woman pass.... The two had slept upon leaves in an angle of a stone wall, on the edge of a coppice. The wall ran by fields unharmed by war; they were out from the shadow. A dawn came up and unfolded like a rose of glory. The coppice seemed to sleep, the air was so still. The night had been dry, and for the season, warm. Cocks crew in the distance, birds that stayed out the year cheeped in the trees.

The herd-girl took her frieze mantle, and, sitting upon a stone, broke the threads that bound to it the Church’s stigma and seal. The jongleur watched her from where he leaned against the wall. When it was free from the mantle, she took the shaped piece of saffron-dyed cloth and moving from the stone kneeled beside their fire of sticks and gave it to the flame. She watched it consume, then stood up. “It served me,” she said. “I know not if it ever served any upon whom it was truly chained. As I read the story, He who was nailed to the cross had a spirit strong and merciful. It is the spirits who are strong that are merciful.”

The rose in the east grew in glory. Colour came into the land, into the coppice, and to the small vines and ferns in their niches and shrines between the stones. Garin of the Golden Island stood in green and brown, beside him the red-ribboned lute. “As the first day from Roche-de-FrÊne, so now again,” said Audiart, “you are the jongleur, Elias of Montaudon. I am your mie, Jael the herd.”

“Your will is mine, Jael the herd,” said Garin.

He bent and extinguished the fire of sticks. The two went on together, the sun behind them.... Once Vulcan had had a stithy in this country. Masses of dark rock were everywhere, old, cooled lava, dark hills, mountains and peaks. Chestnut and oak ran up the mountain-sides, the valleys lay sunken, there was a silver net of streams. Hamlets hid beneath hills, village and middling town climbed their sides, castles crowned the heights, in vales by the rivers sat the monasteries. The region was divided between smiling and frowning. Its allegiance was owed to a lord of storms, who, in his nature, showed now and then a broad golden beam. At present no wild beast from without entered the region to ravage; there it smiled secure. But Duke Richard drained it of money and men; its own kept it poor. He drained all his vast duchy and fiefs of his duchy, as his brothers drained their lands and his father drained England. They were driving storms and waters that whirled and drew; one only was the stagnant kind that sat and brewed poison. This region was a corner of the great duke’s wide lands, but the duke helped himself from its purse, and the larger number of its men were gone to his wars.

But for all that, the jongleur and the herd-girl met a many people and saw towns that to them from Roche-de-FrÊne seemed at ease, relaxed, and light of heart. Baron and knight and squire and man were gone to the wars, but baron and knight and squire and man, for this reason, for that reason, remained. Castle drawbridges rested down, portcullises rusted unlowered. The roads, bad though they were, had peaceful traffic; the fields had been harvested, and the harvest had not gone to feed another world. The folk that remained were not the fiercer sort, and they longed for amusement. It rested not cold, and folk were out of doors. The country-side, mountain and hill and valley, hung softened, stilled, wrapped in a haze of purple-grey.

Jongleur’s art, human voice at its richest, sweetest, most expressive—such was wanted wherever now they went. They had jongleur’s freedom in a singing time. Travelling on, they made pause when they were called upon. The jongleur sang the heart out of the breast, the water into the eyes, high thoughts and resolves into the upper rooms of the nature. The dark-eyed, still girl, his companion and mie, sat on doorstep, or amid the sere growth of the wayside, or stood in castle hall or court, or in the market-place of towns, and listened with the rest to the singing voice and the song that it uttered. The few about them, or the many about them, sighed with delight, gave pay as they were able, and always would have had the jongleur stay, sing on the morrow, and the morrow’s morrow. But jongleurs had license to wander, and no restlessness of theirs surprised. Day by day the two were able, after short delays, to take the road again.

They came to Excideuil.

“Is the duke here?”

“No. He was here, but he has gone to AngoulÊme.”

Elias of Montaudon brought that news to Jael the herd. She listened with a steady face. “Very well! In ways, that suits me better. There are those at AngoulÊme whom I know.”

The jongleur sang in the market-place of Excideuil. “Ah, ah!” cried many, “you should have been here when our duke was here! He had a day when there sang six troubadours, and the prize was a cup of gold! And yet no troubadour sang so well as you sing, jongleur!”

A week later, crown of a hill before them, they saw AngoulÊme. The morning light had shown frost over the fields, but now the sun melted that silver film and the day was a sapphire. Wall and battlement, churches, castle, brilliant and spear-like, stood out from the blue dome: beneath spread a clear valley and clear streams. Other heights had lesser castles, and the valley had houses of the poor. Travel upon the road thickened, grew more various, spiced with every class and occupation. The day carried sound easily, and there was more sound to carry. Contacts became frequent, and these were now with people affected, in greater or less degree, by the sojourn in AngoulÊme of Duke Richard. The air knew his presence; where he came was tension, energy held in a circumference. From the two that entered AngoulÊme spread another circle. Garin felt power and will in her whom he walked beside, felt attention. The force within him rose to meet hers and they made one.

The town grew larger before them, walls and towers against the sky.

“Ask some one,” said Audiart, “where is the Abbey of the Fountain?”

He asked.

“The Abbey of the Fountain?” answered the man whom he addressed. “It lies the other side of the hill. Go through the town and out at the west gate, and you will see it below you, among trees.”

They climbed the hill and entered AngoulÊme, thronged with life. To the two who kept the picture of Roche-de-FrÊne, wrapped in clouds of storm and disaster, AngoulÊme might appear clad like a peacock, untroubled as a holiday child. Yet was there here—and they divined that, too—grumbling and soreness, just anger against Richard the proud, coupled with half-bitter admiration. Here was wide conflict of opinion and mood. Life pulsed strongly in AngoulÊme.

Jongleur and herd-girl threaded the town, where were many jongleurs, and many women with them lacking church’s link. They regarded the castle, and the Leopard banner above it. “Richard, Richard!” said the herd-girl, “I hope that a manner of things are true that I have heard of you!”

They came to the west gate and left the town by it. Immediately, when they were without the walls, they saw in the vale beneath groves of now leafless trees and, surrounded by these, the Abbey of the Fountain. Jael the herd stood still, gazing upon it. “I had a friend—one whom I liked well, and who liked me. Now she is abbess here—the Abbess Madeleine! Let us go down to the Abbey of the Fountain, and see what we shall see.”

They went down to the vale. Great trees stretched their arms above them. A stream ran diamonds and made music as it went. Now there came to Garin the deep sense of having done this thing before—of having gone with the Princess Audiart to a great house of nuns—though surely she was not then the Princess Audiart.... He ceased to struggle; earthly impossibilities seemed to dissolve in a deeper knowledge. He laid down bewilderment and the beating to and fro of thought; in a larger world thus and so must be true.

Passing through a gate in a wall, they were on Abbey land, nor was it long before they were at the Abbey portal. Beggars and piteous folk were there before them, and a nun giving bread to these through the square in the door. Garin and Audiart stood aside, waiting their turn. She gazed upon him, he upon her.

“Came you ever to a place like this,” she breathed, “in green and brown before?”

“I think that it is so, Jael the herd.”

“A squire in brown and green?”

He nodded, “Yes.”

Jael the herd put her hand over her eyes. “Truth my light! but our life is deep!”

The mendicants left the portal. The slide closed, making the door solid.

“Wait here,” said the herd-girl. “I will go knock. Wait here until you are called.”

She knocked, and the panel slid back. He heard her speaking to the sister and the latter answering. Then she spoke again, and, after a moment of hesitation, the door was opened. She entered; it closed after her. He sat down on a stone bench beside the portal and watched the lacework of branches, great and small, over the blue. A cripple with a basket of fruit sat beside him and began to talk of jongleurs he had heard, and then of the times, which he said were hard. With his lameness, something in him brought Foulque to Garin’s mind. “Oh, ay!” said the cripple, “kings and dukes make work, but dull work that you die by and not live by! The court will buy my grapes, but—” He shrugged, then whistled and stretched in the sun.

“How stands Duke Richard in your eye?”

The cripple offered him a bunch of grapes. “Know you aught that could not be better, or that could not be worse?”

“Well answered!” said Garin. “I have interest in knowing how high at times can leap the better.”

“Higher than the court fool thinks,” said the cripple. He sat a little longer, then took his crutch and his basket of fruit and hobbled away toward the town.

Garin waited, musing. An hour passed, two hours, then the panel in the door slid back. A voice spoke, “Jongleur, you are to enter.”

The door opened. He passed through, when it closed behind him. The sister slipped before, grey and soundless as a moth, and led him over stone flooring and between stone walls, out of the widened space by the Abbey door, through a corridor that echoed to his footfall, subdue his footfall as he might. This ended before a door set in an arch. The grey figure knocked; a woman’s voice within answered in Latin. The sister pushed the door open, stood aside, and he entered.

This, he knew at once, was the abbess’s room, then saw the Abbess Madeleine herself, and, sitting beside her, that one whose companion he had been for days and weeks. The herd-girl’s worn dress was still upon her, but she sat there, he saw, as the Princess of Roche-de-FrÊne, as the friend, long-missed, of the pale Abbess. He made his reverence to the two.

The Abbess Madeleine spoke in a voice of a silvery tone, mellowing here and there into gold and kindness. “Sir Knight, you are welcome! I have heard a wondrous story, and God gave you a noble part to play.—Now will speak your liege, the princess.”

“Sir Garin de Castel-Noir,” said Audiart, “in AngoulÊme lodges a great lord and valiant knight, Count of Beauvoisin, a kinsman of the most Reverend Mother. She has written to him, to my great aiding. Take the letter, find him out, and give it to him, your hand into his. He will place you in his train, clothe you as knight again. Only rest still of Limousin, and, for all but this lord, choose a name not your own.” She mused a little, her eyes upon the letter, folded and sealed, that she held. “But I must know it—the name. Call yourself, then, the Knight of the Wood.” She held out the letter. He touched his knee to the stone floor and took it. “Go now,” she said, “and the Saints have a true man in their keeping!”

The Abbess Madeleine, slender, pure-faced, of an age with the princess, extended her hand, gave the blessing of Mother Church. He rose, put the letter in the breast of his tunic, stepped backward from the two, and so left the room. Without was the grey sister who again went, moth-like, before him, leading him through the corridor to the Abbey door. She opened this—he passed out into the sunshine.

Back in AngoulÊme, the first man appealed to sent him to the court quarter of the town, the second gave him precise directions whereby he might know when he came to it the house that lodged the Count of Beauvoisin, here in AngoulÊme with Duke Richard. By a tangle of narrow streets Garin came to houses tall enough to darken these ways, in the shadow themselves of the huge castle. He found the greatest house, where was a porter at the door, and lounging about it a medley of the appendage sort. Jongleur’s art and his own suasive power got him entrance to a small court where gathered gayer, more important retainers. He sang for these, and heads looked out of windows. A page appeared with a summons to the hall. Following the youngster, Garin found himself among knights, well-nigh a score, awaiting in hall the count’s pleasure. Here, moreover, was a troubadour of fame not inconsiderable, knight as well, but not singer of his own verses. He had with him two jongleurs for that, and these now looked somewhat greenly at Garin.

A knight spoke. “Jongleur, sing here as well as you sang below, and gain will come to you!” Garin sang. “Ha!” cried the knights, “they sing that way in Paradise!”

The troubadour advanced to the front of the group and bade him sing again. He obeyed. “Gold hair of Our Lady!” swore the troubadour. “How comes it that you are not jongleur to a poet?”

“I had a master,” answered Garin, “but he foreswore song and, chaining himself to a rock, became an eremite. Good sirs, if the Count might hear me—”

“He will be here anon from the castle. He shall hear you, jongleur, and so shall our Lord, Duke Richard! Springtime in Heaven!” quoth the troubadour. “I would take you into my employ, but though I can pay linnets, I cannot pay nightingales!—Do you know any song of Robert de Mercoeur?”

He asked for his own. Garin, seeing that he did so, smiled and swept the strings of the lute. “Aye, I know more than one!” He sang, and did sweet words justice. The knights, each after his own fashion, gave applause, and Robert de Mercoeur sighed with pleasure. The song was short. Garin lifted his voice in another, made by the same troubadour. “Ah!” sighed Robert, “I would buy you and feed you from my hand!” He sat for a moment with closed eyes, tasting the bliss of right interpretation. Then, “Know you Garin of the Golden Isle’s, If e’er, Fair Goal, I turn my eyes from thee?”

Garin sang it. “Rose tree of the Soul!” said Robert de Mercoeur; “there is the poet I would have fellowship with!”

The leaves of the great door opened, and there came into hall the Count of Beauvoisin, with him two or three famed knights. All who had been seated, or lounging half reclined, stood up; the silence of deference fell at once. Garin saw that the count was not old and that he had a look of the Abbess Madeleine. He said that he was weary from riding, and coming to his accustomed great chair, sat down and stretched himself with a sigh. His eyes fell upon the troubadour with whom he had acquaintance. “Ha, Robert! rest us with music.”

“Lord count,” said Robert, “we have here a jongleur with the angel of sound in his throat and the angel of intelligence in his head! Set him to singing.—Sing, jongleur, again, that which you have just sung.”

Garin touched his lute. As he did so he came near to the count. He stood and sang the song of Garin of the Golden Island. “Ah, ah!” said the Count of Beauvoisin. “The Saints fed you with honey in your cradle!” A coin gleamed between his outstretched fingers. Garin came very near to receive it. “Lord,” he whispered as he bent, “much hangs upon my speaking to you alone.”

A jongleur upon an embassy was never an unheard-of phenomenon. The Count moved so as to let the light fall upon this present jongleur’s face. The eyes of the two men met, the one in an enquiring, the other in a beseeching and compelling gaze. The count leaned back in his chair, the jongleur, when he had bowed low, moved to his original station. “He sings well indeed!” said the Count. “Give him place among his fellows, and when there is listening-space I will hear him again.”

Ere long he rose and was attended from the hall. The knights, too, left the place, each bent upon his own concerns. Only the troubadour Robert de Mercoeur remained, and he came and, seating himself on the same bench with Garin, asked if he would be taught a just-composed alba or morning song, and upon the other’s word of assent forthwith repeated the first stanza. Garin said it over after him. “Ha, jongleur!” quoth Robert, “you are worthy to be a troubadour! Not all can give values value! The second goes thus—”

But before the alba was wholly learned came a page, summoning the jongleur. Garin, following the boy, came into the count’s chamber. Here was that lord, none with him but a chamberlain whom he sent away. “Now, jongleur,” said the count, “what errand and by whom despatched?”

Garin drew the letter from his tunic and gave it, his hand into the other’s hand. The count looked at the writing. “What is here?” he said. “Does the Abbess Madeleine choose a jongleur for a messenger?” He broke the seal, read the first few lines, glanced at the body of the letter, then with a startled look, followed by a knit brow, laid it upon the table beside him but kept his hand over it. He stood in a brown study. Garin, watching him, divined that mind and heart and memory were busied elsewhere than in just this house in AngoulÊme. At last he moved, turned his head and spoke to the page. “Ammonet!” Ammonet came from the door. “Take this jongleur to some chamber where he may rest. Have food and wine sent to him there.” He spoke to Garin, “Go! but I shall send for you here again!”

The day descended to evening, the evening to night. Darkness had prevailed for a length of time when Ammonet returned to the small, bare room where Garin rested, stretched upon a bench. “Come, jongleur!” said the page. “My lord is ready for bed and would, methinks, be sung to sleep.”

Rising, he followed, and came again to the Count’s chamber, where now was firelight and candle-light, and the Count of Beauvoisin in a furred robe, pacing the room from side to side. “Wait without,” he said to Ammonet, and the two men were alone together. The count paced the floor, Garin stood by the hooded fireplace. He had seen in the afternoon that he and this lord might understand each other.

The count spoke. “No marvel that we liked your singing! What if there had been in hall knight and crusader who had heard you beyond the sea?”

“Chance, risk, and brambles grow in every land.”

“Garin of the Golden Island.—I know not who, in AngoulÊme, may know that you fight with Roche-de-FrÊne. Duke Richard, who knows somewhat of all troubadours, knows it.”

“I do not mean to cry it aloud.—Few in this country know my face, and my name stays hidden.—May we speak, my lord count, of another presence in AngoulÊme?”

The other ceased his pacing, flung himself down on a seat before the fire, and leaned forward with clasped hands and bent head. He sat thus for an appreciable time, then with a deep breath straightened himself. “When she was the Lady Madeleine the Abbess Madeleine ruled a great realm in my life. God knoweth, in much she is still my helm!... Sit you down and let us talk.”