UCSB LiBKAKY THE SONG OF RENNY MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NBW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA LTD. TORONTO THE SONG OF RENNY BY MAURICE HEWLETT MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1911 DEDICATION To the Fountain of my long dream, To the Chalice of all my sorrow, To the Lamp held up, and the Stream Of Light that beacons to-morrow ; To the Bow, the Quiver and Dart, To the Bridle-rein, to the Yoke Proudly upborne, to the Heart On fire, to the Mercy-stroke ; To Apollo herding his cattle, To Proserpina grave in Dis ; To the high Head in the battle, And the Crown I consecrate this. 1911. CONTENTS BOOK I THE STRIFE FOR THE CROWN CHAPTER I TAGS. EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR ..... 3 CHAPTER II THE HIGH LITTLE LADY . . . . . .12 CHAPTER III SORGES ELECTS ........ 25 CHAPTER IV INCLYTA DOMUS ATQUE MISERRIMA .... 38 CHAPTER V THE PROUD LADY ....... 46 viii THE SONG OF RENNY CHAPTER VI PAGE DONNA MABILLA BEDAUBS HERSELF . . . .58 CHAPTER VII LANCEILHOT'S PROGRESS ...... 70 CHAPTER VIII THE RENNYS HEAD FOR THE NORTH . 80 CHAPTER IX DEEDS OF BLANCHMAINS . . . . . .88 CHAPTER X BETWEEN CAMPFLORS AND CANHOE . . . 101 CHAPTER XI PlKPOYNTZ MUSTERS . . . . . .105 CHAPTER XII CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR . . . . . .115 CHAPTER XIII A FORTIORI . . . . . . . .132 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER XIV PACK PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY ....... 148 CHAPTER XV THE RENNY WAY 166 CHAPTER XVI CANZON DE REINI PART I . . . . .180 BOOK II MISTRESS OF THE ROBE CHAPTER I THE CANDIDATE ....... 203 CHAPTER II TESTIMONY OF THE ROAD . . . . . .208 CHAPTER III THE TAVERN OF 'THE HOLY GHOST' .... 220 CHAPTER IV MORTON DYKE .... . . 231 x THE SONG OF RENNY CHAPTER V PAGE THE EYE OF PAULET . . . 242 CHAPTER VI DON JOHN'S ALLIANCES . . . . .256 CHAPTER VII THE COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ ..... 268 CHAPTER VIII THE BATTLE OF THE WITS ...... 290 CHAPTER IX TREATY OF COLDSCAUR ...... 305 CHAPTER X LOVE AND THE COUNTESS OF PlKPOYNTZ . . .322 CHAPTER XI THE MASKS ARE OFF ....... 340 CHAPTER XII THE MASKS ARE OFF continued . . . . .351 CONTENTS xi CHAPTER XIII PAGE THE PASSIONATE PILGRIMAGE ..... 368 CHAPTER XIV CANZON DE REINI PART II . . . . .381 CHAPTER XV MABILLA DISCLAIMS THE RENNY RIGHT .... 399 CHAPTER XVI LANCEILHOT SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF ... . 406 CHAPTER XVII CANZON DE REINI PART III . . . . .415 EPILOGUE 420 BOOK I THE STRIFE FOR THE CROWN CHAPTER I EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR IT used to be said that in the whole county of Pikpoyntz there was not to be found a single tree, but that must have been poet's licence. There was, in fact, a substantial sycamore in the court- yard of Speir, as many condemned wretches, who were hanged upon it, could have testified, and as the inhabitants did not fail to report when the calumny was uttered against them. The Speir sycamore, as the only tree, was likely to be as famous as Speir itself, the only castle, in Pikpoyntz. Pikpoyntz indeed was a barren fief, fruitful only of rocks and stones. It suffered all extremes and knew no mean. Periodically it was raked gaunt by deluges of rain, sodden anew beneath a mantle of snow, parched by frost, bleached under a brief onslaught of a pitiless summer sun. Being, as it were, a series of spikes and valleys, the former withered in heat and the latter lay hidden in fog the greater part of the year's round. Of all its valleys the deepest, the gloomiest, the most drenched in mildew and mist was the Valley of Stones through which raced the brawling Sar ; and of ail its peaks the most 3 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i terrible was that which threatened the valley and carried on its bare summit the Speir sycamore and the Castle of Speir. Gunlaw was a white spike standing solitary in the Valley of Stones. Speir was a castle which followed exactly and occupied the whole of its summit. Shale and shingle, the debris of a great river-bed, filled the valley ; mountains and clouds shut the sun from it ; mist hung over and drenched it day after day. At high noon, or for an hour before and after, the sun might look down on the bare bones the river had left, on grey hovels and on the white faces of goltred peasants who crowded in them : but Speir bathed in his light the twelve hours through, so that folk below thought it a battlement of heaven and looked to see the wings of angels tipping the walls. Once upon a time in those dim days when Maximilian III. reigned over Jadis, and Sir Prosper le Gai adventured in Morgraunt, as has been related elsewhere Gernulf de Salas was Lord of Speir and of the whole Valley of Stones. Being, indeed, Earl of Pikpoyntz, he was lord of the county ; but he was doubly lord of the Valley of Stones because of his domineering white castle. There, and wherever he went within his lands, he was served fearfully with knee service only, for there was little else to give him ; but the fact is that he was more often in other counties than his own, and never for any good purpose, if common report may be trusted. He always had a strong force at Cantacute to watch the South and another at Montgrace to keep eyes on Logres and the CH. i EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR 5 North. Behind these he felt himself impregnable ; beyond them, he knew that they would hold the gates for him in case of need. Under these pre- cautions he was seldom at home, and never for long. He would be away for a year at a time, none knowing where. At such times there was no white-barred flag to cow the Valley of Stones. The frontiers were too strait and too well watched. Half a dozen men kept the castle walls ; the great gates only opened to admit the tenantry with their weekly dole. Father Sorges, the old chaplain, let himself in by the postern when he came up daily to say Mass. He braved the six hundred steps of the rock and all the dangers of ice, snow, tempest and (worst of all) fog ; for he was a meek man and would not trouble the door-ward's hours of ease. Inside the great windy house, besides the lacqueys and meaner sort, were only Clotilda the old Housekeeper, Shrike the black Chamberlain, and Nitidis and Blanchmains, Maids of the Hall. The gardens of Speir stretched across the whole table of the mountain-top, and might be a mile one way and half a mile the other. They were mostly cut in broad terraces, one below another. There were no trees, no flowers : nothing but grass as deep as velvet, yew hedges of immense age, and many fountains. Before the southern front ran a flagged walk edged by a low parapet. Leaning upon this, you could trace the course of the jade-green Sar set as it was in a broad band of shingle ; you saw the blue valleys, the great grey splinters of the mountains. Upon the eye level 6 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i were the snowfields and the lonely pikes. You would be 5000 feet above the river ; almost im- pregnably secure. If you looked, you would see a white road cross the Sar and wind three times round Gunlaw, climbing always till it reached the Barbican. That was the pass, and the only pass on that side of the county. No need of a moat at Speir when you had such a way whereon your enemy must needs go at a foot's pace and be in view for the whole of it ; no need of drawbridge, when nobody could live to hail the door-ward unless you had a mind to let him. From the terrace, also, you could see how fine a place Speir was, with its deep-set windows, its corbels and turrets and golden vanes. Looking on it you would share your gaze with the saints, of whom a whole row stretched from end to end, flanking the midmost shrine, a Mary and Jesus under a gilt baldacchin. All those paid court to Speir and turned their backs upon the plagues, the dry bones, the dwarfed shrubs and lean dwellers in the Valley of Stones. On all sides was the sound of water falling ; and sometimes the ravens who nestled in the sycamore wheeled about the vanes and turrets with harsh croakings. So much must suffice (for the moment) for Speir in Pik- poyntz, which, in the great old days of Jadis, Earl Gernulf held of his lord the King by the nominal service of a pair of gerfalcons yearly, in golden hoods, upon a golden cadge. Now, to Speir came the Earl in haste one frosty autumn morning, scantily attended, as his CH. i EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR 7 custom was, and bringing with him a girl-child set before him on the saddle-bow. She seemed to be some twelve years old ; she neither cried nor showed traces of tears ; neither spoke nor was sur- prised at anything ; had no fear, and never ceased watching. The great man dismounted in the courtyard and set the child on her feet on the flags. Then he called for Clotilda the housekeeper. ' I am here, my lord,' said she, who had watched him up from the valley. He passed the child over to her. ' She is a dead man's daughter,' he said, and every one knew what that meant. ' Guard her well and let her want for nothing.' Shrike the black shuddered and clattered his teeth. * But how is she called, this dead man's daughter ? ' cried old Clotilda, with her hands in the air. ' I never stayed to ask,' said the Earl grimly. 'Send for Father Sorges.' * Father Sorges will never wake the dead, my lord,' says Clotilda, persisting in her own thoughts. * I want him to sacre the living, old fool,' bit the chill voice of her lord. And no more was to be added. Father Sorges, the old priest who lived below Speir and climbed six hundred steps every morning to say Mass there, came into the hall, a little lean old man with a hungry mouth and pale, wandering blue eyes. He put a hand on the child's head and looked at her a very long while. She, for her part, stood by the Earl's chair, her hands behind THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i her back, her soft brown hair falling smoothly over her shoulders and curving inwards as it touched them, her solemn eyes fixed unwinking upon him. The Earl was having his riding-boots pulled off. Dame Clotilda watched the priest, who began the catechism. ' How were you called, my child, by your parents ? ' She answered him stilly, in a voice without a tremor, in a low voice, ' Sabine.' Father Sorges struck his forehead. Under his breath, as if fearfully to himself, he whispered, ' Sabine a rape ! a rape ! ' His lips formed like a whistler's ; and Shrike's eyes bulged from rings of white. Aloud he said, * A Roman name ! Were you so christened, my child ? ' She bowed her head. The old man turned to his master. * I cannot baptize the Lord's anointed,' he said. * She is God's already.' The Earl had been bathing his hand deep in his red beard. He now got up. ' Shrike, fetch me to eat and to drink,' he said, and the black fled away to serve him. 'As for the child, she is mine. Call her what you like among you.' Father Sorges, with a rapt look beyond his lord, said softly, ' Then I call her Sabine, as she was named, and take the omen.' ' Now what in God's name do you mean by that ? ' cried the Earl. ' My lord,' said the priest, holding up his hand, c she will grow to be more beautiful than a summer's day, arid women must pay for that.' CH. i EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR 9 ' When that day comes,' said the Earl, * she shall pay me,' and trampled down the hall to his meat and drink to where Blanchmains and Nitidis awaited him. In that noiseless night of fog there was talk of the little captive princess, who had named herself, and was to be called Donna Sabine. Blanchmains sat up in bed with clasped knees, blinking at the light. She was a white-faced girl with a very red mouth, and narrow eyes which were really yellow, but at night looked all black. Her hair too was black, long and heavy, as straight as if it were wetted. Nitidis had brown hair, gold in the ripples ; she stood now before the glass braiding it. Her gown was made of thin white silk, and her slippers had gold threads in them. Beneath her bosom ran a crossed girdle, also of gold. She was fastening on a crown of red flowers : the glass showed her laughing face all a dimpled rose, and her brown eyes sharp as a mouse's. * I have heard nothing yet,' said she through lips encumbered with hair-pins. * You should hear before long,* replied the other in a low bell-voice. ' Yes, very like.' ' Very like ? ' echoed Blanchmains. * I don't know the word. You must make it your business, child. How can I calculate without figures ? This may be a heavy matter for some of us.' Nitidis shivered at the shoulders. ' Blanch- mains, you would calculate on your death-bed, I do believe.' io THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i ' I would calculate in any bed.' * Ah, I am not like that,' said Nitidis softly, achieving her flower crown. * It is a dear child,' she added. * May be dearer than we care for. That you must find out.' Nitidis had no answer ready, but as she put on her cloak and lighted herself a lamp, one could see by the puckers in her brow that she was troubled. Thinking hurt her ; she sighed. ' Good-night, Blanchmains,' said she, stooping to kiss her friend. Blanchmains peered and glimmered. * A good night, little rabbit.' Nitidis went out, robed and crowned ; and Blanchmains lay down to sleep, but tossed and turned about, finding none. In an hour she got up, lit a lamp, and went out in her turn. Down the long corridor she crept, shading her light ; she entered the turret at the end, crept upstairs for a couple of flights, then turned very softly the handle of a door in front of her. She stole into a white-walled room. Sabine was lying asleep in the bed, with her bare arms over the quilt ; her little lips held tightly together, but her eyelids fluttered. Once she sighed deeply. Blanchmains held the lamp up in her thin white hand, and looked sharply at the unconscious child. Her eyes showed a mask of intense black which would have told you nothing. Going by her mouth full it was and rather long you would have seen it stretched and judged her anxious. After a time of hard looking she stooped to make certain that the girl slept. Satisfied of this, she set down the lamp, gently pulled back the bed-clothes, CH. i EARL GERNULF COMES TO SPEIR 1 1 and looked the child over from head to foot. Nothing escaped her, but she was most careful over the hands and feet ; also she felt the texture of her hair, the softness of her skin. Round the loins she found a fine gold chain. This interested Blanchmains vastly ; but it bore no mark of any sort, and had no visible fastening. She stood with one hand at her lower lip watching, judging, as if weighing the worth of the pretty thing lying there. Then she put everything as it had been and turned away this time to bed and to sleep. Speir, like an ice-castle, stared up to the frosty stars. The great mist-wreaths rolled over the deep Valley of Stones and brimmed up to the battlements. The sound of noisy Sar, the tinkling of goat-bells, the coughing of sick sheep, the barking of foxes, the owls' crying all noises of the night came up hollow and startlingly near through the fog. CHAPTER II THE HIGH LITTLE LADY THE Earl stayed but a short while at Speir. By the third morning after his arrival, before the sun was over the mountain-tops, there was a great array in the Valley of Stones of men, horses, and steel. Then the red Lord of Pikpoyntz rode out of his gates, bareheaded as his use was, thundered down the winding road in front of his clattering staff, flashed his long sword before his array, and was off for some year or more. All that was known certainly was that he had again swept through Cantacute ; therefore he was again for the southern parts. Not a soul in Pikpoyntz had more stuff for judgment than that fact. Nor was it meet that he should. Speir lived by rapine, and no doubt the stones would have cried it out if they could ; but since they could not, it was the Earl's firm policy that no tongued thing should have aught to tongue of. Not a soul in Speir knew where he went or what he did ; not a soul of all those who went with him ever set foot in Speir. The little Personage left behind him was royally left. By orders which, you may be sure, CHAP, ii THE HIGH LITTLE LADY 13 did not fail to be explicit she was to want for nothing of all the clothes, all the thousand luxurious necessities and superfluities she could have need or no need of. No more could have been done for the heiress of Pikpoyntz, which Blanchmains was at first tempted to think her. Blanchmains herself and Nitidis were appointed to be her Maids of Honour, Shrike was her chamber- lain ; Father Sorges, as spiritual director, was to teach her Latin, the rudiments of religion and the lives of the Saints. The good man liked the task. 'By the time you return, my lord,' he had said, chafing his thin hands, ' she shall have made her first communion.' Pikpoyntz had then turned upon him like a savage dog. ' What do you know of my return you, Sorges ? ' Sorges quailed, of course. * Ah, nothing, nothing, my lord. I am a poor priest.' ' Attend to your priesthood then, and leave my return to me,' grunted the Earl. But Sorges fixed it at some two years, all the same, and was not more than a year out. In addition to these honours, the little Lady Sabine was assigned a regiment of waiting and dressing women, horses, grooms, dogs ; and two pages, one to wait upon her table, one to follow her whenever she chose to be abroad. Bubo, Clotilda's nephew, was the first of these : he was a hunchback, and could not ride. The other was a strapping youth of good parentage, called Firmin, reputed to be dumb. This he was not ; but he was dull and slow-witted. Much better born than Bubo, there had been a question of his i 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i place when he first came to Speir ; his parts found their own level ; he was held to be but a finely- made block and sent to the guard-room instead of the hall. His title now was Esquire of the Bridle. Thus, according to the commands of the Earl, was Sabine encompassed, and thus, on bent knees, was she to be served. So, you may depend upon it, she was served, for Pikpoyntz had a way of making himself felt whether he was at home or abroad. He could strike heavily from a distance, and suddenly. Very early in her career Blanchmains had found that out. A couple of years or so before Donna Sabine was brought into the piece, upon one of her master's absences, she had found the days long and heavy within the thick walls. It was winter- time and the frost filmed the mirrors. She was sick of the loom, she could not look at her own arch face nor watch reflected the passage of her slim hands. She loved her bed dearly, yet she dared not lie in it beyond or before her appointed hours. At Speir everything went by a clock whose ticking was the stern pulse of Pikpoyntz. What was Blanchmains to do ? She fretted, had not yet learned the conditions of Speir. There was at that time a page in the castle named Leonard, a pretty, conceited boy. He had grown up in the service, and was just now able to see the down on his upper lip if the light were good. The light, however, was not good : the frost filmed the looking-glasses. Now of all things in the world, next to her still self, Miss Blanchmains loved looking-glasses. Since they CHAP, ii THE HIGH LITTLE LADY 15 were not to be had, she must needs see herself in this boy's fine eyes which, had she let him alone, had mirrored nothing but kitchen-maids, country girls, and other homely toys of a man's idleness. How far she led him, how far he needed to be led, I do not care to guess ; but it is certain that one black February night she kissed him at her door and stood with a torch lighting him down the gallery. Next morning he was found under the castle ramp ; frozen as stiff as a flower-stalk and dead of a cut throat. Father Sorges buried him in a hurry in four feet of ground : nothing was said. Pikpoyntz came home about the middle of March to find Blanchmains' broad tapestry very forward. She had completely finished the Triumph of Love and was immersed in that of Chastity, wherein Love, blindfolded, sits shrieking while his rainbow wings are torn out in handfuls by certain furious virgins. Love in this piece also was complete ; but the virgins still lacked bodies. That night Shrike, in default of a page, served Pikpoyntz with his great two-handed cup at supper. Nothing was said. Yet when my Lord of Pikpoyntz had gone out again, Nitidis pillowed her face by Blanchmains at night and worked with her by day at the Triumph of Chastity. For page in the hall came Bubo, Clotilda's little crook- backed nephew, with eyes not adapted for mirrors. Firmin was added later, when the lesson was thought to have been learned. The story is quite unimportant, but will serve to explain the fact that little Donna Sabine, a child of twelve, friend- less and a waif from none knew where, reigned as 1 6 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i mistress of Speir, was served with earl's honours, sat (half-drowned) in his chair of estate, knelt at his emblazoned fald-stool in the chapel while Mass was saying, and was attended on crooked knees by Shrike and his crew. At first she was willingly served, for everybody in the place was touched to laughter or tears by her, and either estate makes for tenderness. Father Sorges and the old chatelaine had lived so long in the service of the great that to obey was not only better, it was far easier than sacrifice. If they were to have no master they had rather humiliate themselves before a shadow of him than not at all. This solemn, preoccupied little girl, so soft and yet so desperately grave, drew deep upon the fund of pity they had. She was so small to be so great ! They grew to love her and, good humble souls, being in love, they could not grovel enough. Father Sorges, schooled by his office, did his grovelling mentally : in time, indeed, his interest in the child's soul swallowed up his sense of tears, as his duty of teaching lent him power. Sabine never suspected his abasements. But Dame Clotilda, poor wretch, ruined herself. Whatever Sabine thought about anything she always kept locked behind her firm lips ; but it is evident from what follows that she took the good woman at her own valuation, and would as soon have thought of confiding in a tame rat. The only asperity the mild-mannered child ever showed was to this fawning old hireling, who really loved her. The other camp at Speir was of those who were quick to contrast the gigantic Earl with his CHAP, ii THE HIGH LITTLE LADY 17 chubby little viceroy, and to find much scornful entertainment in the exercise. So long as this piqued them all went well ; but pique is very apt to end in mortification or weariness. So it was here : Shrike was mortified and Blanchmains tired to death of serving somebody she could not rule and was ashamed to fear. As for Nitidis, she was a cipher, a rosy rogue bubbling over with vanities, who does not count one way or another. But the first-named couple had mass enough to spoil the comedy which they had been the first to detect. Shrike, who had a gibing devil in him, at- tempted to make of the comedy a farce. And so indeed he did, though not as he had planned it. He burlesqued the situation, he postured and mouthed at his service, strutted, played the broad buffoon. Having no real wit and much more malice than vivacity, he overdid his part. Blanch- mains might have helped him to sharpen his offence, but just then she was too intent upon watching. The servants, however, would have taken the cue before long and little Sabine's ship foundered in a stormy mock observance but for her own prompt action. The child's mind, through those quiet eyes of hers, read into the black, found out that there was something unfamiliar at the core of him, guessed it unclean. From that hour she ignored him, just as you would ignore a smear on the wall. She looked through him, never at him. It took all the heart out of his attitudes and enabled her to see that she was being made a fool of. She acted at once it was droll to see Shrike upon the occasion. It was on a day when he chose to play c 1 8 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i the abject devotee at her dinner. When he bowed her to her seat his head went down between his knees. He lifted the covers as if he would elevate the Host ; at Sorges' grace he fell flat on his stomach with his forehead on the floor. In hand- ing the cup to his mistress he again plunged on all fours, or near it, with the vessel held over his head. There he had to remain, for Sabine simply let him kneel. He might have cracked his spine for all the notice she took. Tired at last, Shrike had to get up, hot, smarting and stiff". He found that Sabine had got another cup. The meal was making its usual way, nobody so much as smiled when he stood upright. Shrike seethed in shame. One case will do for all : the man was her slave from that time forth ; but she showed another part of her quality in the affair, namely, that she never forgot nor forgave. It is doubtful if she ever saw, certain that she never addressed him again. This little Sabine was a child so strangly silent, so strangely self-possessed, so deliberate in her aims, and so successful in them, that she was, for all her youth and exuberant beauty, almost grim. Locked behind the door of her rosebud mouth she kept everything in her life which had preceded her advent in the Valley of Stones, when she came thither like booty on the Red Earl's saddle-bow. Who she was, who her parents, what her rearing (save that it had been plainly delicate), what the hopes centred in her high little head, there were none at Speir could find out. All agreed from the first that she was high-born, probably an only CHAP, ii THE HIGH LITTLE LADY 19 child, greatly beloved. Pikpoyntz himself knew, and she knew, what that day had been in what colour, what temperature, at what desperate pace it had sped wherein she was lifted to his saddle and carried how far from home ? how far to Speir ? ' The daughter of a dead man,' said Pikpoyntz. That gave a spur to thought. Fire and sword, a burning roof ; steel for the master, a rope for the servant ; and one only snatched alive from the blood and smoke. Plenty to guess ! Why snatched at all ? Why brought to Speir ? Why not rescued, claimed, treated for, ransomed r Plenty to guess ! But she afforded no clues. They never saw her in tears. They listened at her chamber-door, but heard no sound of sobbing. The little head went royally high, the fierce little heart beat stealthily its own counsel. Queen of herself she was, and might well be queen of others, for as time went on she insisted (but without parade of insistence) on queenly observance. None might touch any part of her but her hand with the lips. If you did not bend the knee before her, she looked at you till you did. The Earl's high table did not suit her case : she must eat apart. A smaller table was brought on to the da'ls the dame and Shrike found it there one morning ; ever afterwards Sabine ate there alone. The customary civilities of cap-touching and the pulled forelock were discouraged. Every cap must come off when Sabine went out of the house. She would not cover her own head in chapel, and the good Father Sorges was made to understand how 20 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i impossible it was to ask it of her. The moment Dame Clotilda and Shrike found out the trend of affairs they helped her all they knew, the dame because she loved play-acting, Shrike because he was writhing for notice. Thus the legend of royal birth began and thus it grew. You may judge if Blanchmains had food for speculation, or Nitidis stuff for the romances which she loved to spin. When the Earl came back for a night at the end of his time, he found her Queen indeed. Sabine was fourteen and reported ravishing to view. ' Fetch her down,' said Pikpoyntz. Sabine refused point-blank to come. This was reported by Shrike in an agony. ' Fetch her down, I said,' repeated his master. She was brought. He surveyed her. ' Splendour of God, what a maid ! ' He spoke to her with gruff pleasantry, she looked at him without a word. * Come, come, mistress,' said he, and roared at her ; she still looked thoughtfully at him and let him roar. He bellowed, he swore, made to strike her : she did nothing else but as she had done. ' Accursed race of mules,' cried the Earl, beside himself, * may the Devil take one and all of you. Go souse ! ' And he sent her away. When he left next morning, he left her more a queen than ever. As became a queen, the little girl was terribly alone. It seemed as if no other position was possible to one whose pride congealed her blood, froze dry her alarms and dammed up the well of CHAP, ii THE HIGH LITTLE LADY 21 her young tears. If she had not chosen isolation it would have chosen her. She had, of course, no equals there, but there were two who would have died to serve her Dame Clotilda, whom she despised, Sorges, whom she tolerated. Shrike she abhorred and Nitidis she overlooked. As for the other, she kept Blanchmains at arm's length. But a confidant of some sort a child will have : Sabine dug very deep for hers. She took six months' deliberate survey of her position, then without any fuss made her selection and abided by it. She chose for her friend Firmin the Esquire of the Bridle. The dame lifted up her hands, Father Sorges wiped his weak eyes, Shrike rubbed his head, and Nitidis whispered her brim- ming confidences at every corner. Blanchmains alone kept a smiling face. Neither looks askance nor open elbow-nudging had any effect. Sabine never saw such things ; they were and were not. When Sorges introduced the subject into his life of Saints Cosmas and Damian she asked him to keep to the point ; when he shrilled too nearly towards it in his Sunday homily she sent for him, and he took no more such flights. She was mostly with Firmin all that summer and autumn. In the winter, when she could not ride, she had the terrace swept clear of snow and walked with him there morning and afternoon for an hour at a time, followed by three stag-hounds and a lame beagle. Periodically the Earl sent her a letter by his secretary to announce his health and inquire after hers. Sabine never opened or read these ; she gave them to Firmin to destroy and 22 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , presumably was obeyed, since Blanchmains was never able to find a trace of them in his quarters or on his person. The whole affair may have been one of innate perversity on the little lady's part ; but I think not. Firmin had his advantages. He was well-born, to begin with ; a good-looking fresh - coloured, strapping young man sinewy, well-built, a centaur on horseback, a monument of taciturnity at all times. I believe he was not so dull as he seemed ; I believe he found out as quickly as most of them how the land lay, that his little lady had chosen him precisely because he had not chosen her. Of all the household he alone had been stiff obedient as you please, but stiff. He never offered his service, but never avoided it ; he spoke when she asked him a question, but in the fewest possible words. More, he alone of the whole house could not be made to uncover in her presence. He saluted in military fashion, he raked his cap off for a moment, bowed (awkwardly enough), was quick to obey, and, at times, indubitably ready with his strength and brute courage. He pulled a savage hound off her one day in the winter and broke back its jaws with his pair of hands. He was a marvellous rider, breaker of horses, flier of birds ; he knew the weather like an open book, the country as well as you your drawing-room ; he did in his blunt offhand way the right thing at the right times. But he could not uncover his head and he never proffered any duty. Every one agreed afterwards that just such a fellow as this the perverse little lady would choose, and it had CHAP, n THE HIGH LITTLE LADY 23 to be owned that she was justified at the time. Firmin had few manners but apparently no vices. If he drank, no one knew it ; if he was inclined to women, there was no girl to testify. He was handsome and, as they all knew, a gentleman born some said noble. It had to be added to all this that he took no liberties, never sought confidences, never returned them, but at the same time never betrayed any that were made him. All the advances were Sabine's ; when she sent for him he came what else could he do ? When she spoke he answered, when she took his arm he endured it, when she went slowly into the house he went briskly (generally singing) to his quarters. Nitidis and Shrike laughed at him he watched them sedately. Dame Clotilda and Sorges lectured him in corners he heard them respect- fully. Blanchmains certainly did not laugh at him ; and as for lecturing in a corner, she thought the times not ripe. The consequence of all this was that Sorges em- bellished the lives of Saints Cosmas and Damian, pointed his homily, and was snubbed for his pains. After the Earl's visit and repulse my Lady Sabine practically spoke to no one but Firmin, unless she had an order to give. Shrike grew desperately jealous. He was all for knocking the lad on the head, stabbing him in the dark, or telling his master a story which assuredly would not have failed for colour. But when he spoke to Blanch- mains about this, his answer was a slim white finger on a thin red lip. He gathered that Mistress Blanchmains had her ideas, and he was 24 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i quite right. It is a great thing to detect a weak- ness in those you have to serve. Having found it, you can examine at large. Blanchmains found herself wishing that the Earl might be away for more than his customary two years of warfare. This was the position of affairs when the young Lady Sabine had been Queen of Speir for three years and a half. The season was then April, and the last snow blotted from the valleys of Pikpoyntz. CHAPTER III SORGES ELECTS EARLY in that April a letter arrived from the Earl of Pikpoyntz, to whom the chatelaine had written that the Lady Sabine was near sixteen years old and ready for her first communion in May. ' You are to know,' wrote the Earl through his secretary, ' that not only do we assent to your devout motions in regard to the little Lady Sabine, but that we are even eager to behold the graceful edifice of her body crowned with our Blessed Redeemer's sublime gift to mankind, seeing that our design is as fixed as ever it was at first to raise her up nearer to us and our estate, at once high and painful ; so that we may associate our cares with hers and hers with our own. Trusting, therefore, fully in your zeal for our temporal and spiritual welfare, we commend the little lady to your evangelical discretion. From Beatenshoe, this 1 9th day of March.' This was sealed with the Earl's privy signet of the Burning River and marked with a sprawling red P., which was the nearest the great man could strain towards his title. 25 26 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i When Blanchmains got sight of this letter she kept her room for two days. Sorges, seraphically disposed, read it not otherwise than as an exhorta- tion to ensure Sabine's heavenly privilege so far as he might. The Earl, whom he had suspected of rape, now intended marriage ! By the mercy of Heaven ! He gulped what might be horrible in that for the sake of the great glory of it, so obviously his pupil's due. As he put it, the greatest lady, the most royal child he had ever dreamed of, was to be mated to the greatest man he had ever known. He forgot her extreme youth, her beauty, her promise, her likely fate, his own pitiful anticipations, in his approval of the coming honour. It was the least she could exact ; but, Mother of God, to be Countess of Pikpoyntz ! He determined that she should do him credit ; her soul should be a polished mirror and reflect his devotion. She had been a very apt pupil, not only by disposition, but by intention as well. It seemed as if she realised the obligations of her great hidden estate to excel in whatever she set her mind at. Her Latinity was good, she knew the Psalter, the penitential psalms by heart, certain of the Epistles and Gospels. She could expound the Creed, follow the Ordinal of the Mass, say the Hours, was devoted to Mary and most of the saints. The Legendary also she knew, and she could sing in a low, steady voice such hymns as Te Lucis, Veni Creator, and Pange Lingua. She was punctual with the Rosary, strict in her fasts, and gave largely to the poor. Sorges, reviewing CHAP, in SORGES ELECTS 27 the position as calmly as he could, judged her ripe for confession. Her communion was to be made on the yth of May, the feast of Saint Stanislaus, and, it being by now the 2fth of April, Father Sorges prepared for what he designed to be the first of a series of particular interviews with his pupil. It was the last as well as the first of them ; for what he learned that day took him to the most desperate deed of his life. At this signal interview he produced a large clasped book, no less than the Register of the Peculiar of Speir. He set it open on the table before him, laid his hands upon it, moistened his lips, cleared his throat, blinked, and began. * My child,' he said, ' although the dignity and additions of his lordship the Earl put him far above the necessities of a meaner sort of people, it hath always been the laudable custom of his house to submit, so far as may be done, to the laws of Holy Church and the wholesomer laws of the realm.' Sabine made no sign. Sorges, in all innocence, went on : ' So in this register you will find in its proper place among Baptisms the name of Gernulf de Salas (as our Earl then was), with those of his parents, Morcar de Salas, Earl of Pikpoyntz, Bonamour, the Countess of the same, and of his sponsors, Mervyn Corleon, Simon de Landeveer, and Pruina Abbess of Unthank. So also is recorded his first communion. It would be his wish, my child, that you should conform in like manner ; and if I mistake not, it would be your 28 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i wish. Tell me, then, your names and degrees that I may inscribe them in the book.' He dipped his pen. Sabine remained silent for a while. Then she said quietly : * There is nothing to inscribe as yet, Father. I have not made my communion.' ' My child, I may not communicate those who are not of the Peculiar. The Bull, " Vulpes vero," forbids it. To make you of the parish I must record your baptism and the fact of your entry here.' Sabine was thinking hard ; at any rate she was frowning and tangling her fingers. Sorges' pen was dry before her brows cleared. Even then she did not speak for some three minutes, but kept her grave eyes fixed upon her director as if unwilling to discharge herself of her secret, or to burden him. Finally, with a little shake of her head, she spoke. * I can see no reason why you should not know it now, Father. Take your pen and write what I shall tell you.' Sorges dipped, and beamed expectantly upon her. Now, at last, his prescience was to be proved ! It was. ' Names, my child ? ' asked he, pen in hand. The answer came deliberate. ' Sabine de Renny,' said she smoothly. Sorges dropped his pen and his jaw as he fell back. * Mary of the Angels ! ' he whispered in a stare. ' Are you a Renny of Coldscaur ? ' Sabine stiffened in her chair. * No,' said she with a significant correction, ' no, Father, I am Renny of Coldscaur.' CHAP, in SORGES ELECTS 29 Sorges covered his eyes ; he appeared to be praying. But when he looked up there was no dew of prayer on his eyes or in his husky voice. ' Is this possible, just Heaven ? ' For answer, Sabine, upright, opened the front folds of her long gown, and parted her under garments to the very skin. There round her middle was the golden chain which Blanchmains had seen on her first night at Speir. But Sorges, knowing it well, stared at it as if it were a portent from the skies. His thin arm stretched out slowly to point at it the sleeve of his cassock was very short then he struck his forehead. ' Investiture ! ' he cried, * the cincture of the House ! ' He looked at the child with something like terror. ' But who did this ? What king ? When?' ' I did it myself,' said the little Lady Sabine. ' You are Renny of Coldscaur ! You are of that House ! You are yourself The Chieftain ! ' Down upon his two knees he went and shuffled to kiss her hand. 'And your parents your parents ? ' he faltered. ' They are dead.' ' And your brothers ? ' ' Dead, dead,' she murmured, struggling with herself ; * please write and be done.' Sorges made a botch of it. His hand shook. But he ended at last. f Parents' names, my lady ? ' No more ' child ' to this Vase of Election. ' Blaise V., Mary of Hartlepe.' * Ah, Lord of days ! Sponsors ? ' 30 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i ' Richard de Melsa, the King's nephew, the Earl Monthermer, Adhelidis the Queen, Isoult Countess of Hauterive, the Lady Roese de la Tour de Yon.' ' Light and Darkness,' moaned Sorges, ' I can write no more.' ' Father, you are ill,' said Sabine, rising. 'I will call for Clotilda or Blanchmains.' Sorges put up his hand. * Call for nobody, madam, but sit still, and wait till I am able to speak. I beseech it of you.' He spoke so authoritatively that, for once in her life, Sabine gave over her intent. It made no difference, as she subsequently resumed it ; but for the moment she sat back in her great chair until the poor man got his breath. Father Sorges wiped the sweat from his forehead with a red handkerchief; he gulped down his dismay twice or thrice before he could speak. When at last he was articulate there was a different note in his voice a note which announced that he had taken a side. * Ah, my sweet and gracious lady/ he said, ' I see it all ! He has murdered your father, mother, brothers. You are alone.' Sabine said nothing, but she heard him. * Renny of Coldscaur ! ' went on the good Sorges, apparently addressing Heaven, * Renny of Coldscaur, the greatest next the throne, a child, in the house of her father's assassin ! ' He turned suddenly. 'What of your kinsfolk, lady ? What of the Prince-Bishop Valeric ? What of Bishop Stephen, my old master ? What of your cousins whom these princes have in ward ? ' CHAP, in SORGES ELECTS 31 But she stopped him with a lifted hand. * Blaise, my father, knew nothing of these persons, Father, nor they of him. He denied them his lands, and would never enter theirs.' Sorges wailed. ' I might have known, Lord help me ! Did ever Renny do else to his brother but hate him ? O house of sorrow, house of sorrowful fate ! O proud house brought low ! Lord God, shall this endure ? Madam,' he said, turning to the silent girl, 'the pity of this fact overwhelms me. But I will grow stronger by the mercy of the just God. You are alone, but for me. Therefore I will be strong. Let us pray.' Sabine stared at him, but did not see it at all. ' Thank you, Father,' said she, very much Renny ; ' I have Firmin.' But at this the priest lost hold of himself. ' Firmin ! Firmin ! ' he shrilled. ' Firmin, that clot ! Do you put Firmin up against the Earl of Pikpoyntz, madam ? As well put up a rag doll. Oh, madam, Madam de Renny, you are mad, you are mad ! The man will eat you raw, devour your great inheritance ; you will be as a field-flower in the hollow of his hand. He has slain Blaise, now do you think he will stay for you ? No more o' this, o' God's name, or I shall rave.' He began to wring his hands, dimly conscious that he was adjuring rock. Sabine looked him full in the face. Her unflinching eyes had a cold bright speck apiece. ' 1 will never meet the Earl of Pikpoyntz until I can come as Renny against his foe,' said 32 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i she. Whereat Sorges laughed aloud a laugh of agony. ' I have been a servant of your father's brother,' he said, * of Bishop Stephen of Havilot. I know the traditions, the incredible greatness and sorrow of your high house. You will meet the Earl, you say you, child and with Firmin. Firmin ! Firmin ! O Lord of us all, what is this ? ' He mocked at her in his distress, more of a fool for his pains than Firmin could ever have been. Sabine grew drier and drier, less of an orphan and more of a queen with every groan of the infatuate old man. She got up ; she was very cool indeed, without resentment or gratitude, but plainly mistress of her resolve. ' I think our discussion is concluded,' she said. ' We will go on with our preparation another time.' Then she walked out of the room in her stateliest manner to the arm of Firmin, attendant on the terrace. Sorges saw her begin to talk to that impassive youth he threw his arms up like a man drowning, shut his eyes and strained his despair through clenched teeth. The terrace window was a lodestone, drew him to watch and judge. He saw the two heads together, the girl's leaning, eager, confidential ; she was talking very fast, and, he believed, really crying. Firmin kept his ; it was hung, but he looked round once or twice as if uneasy. Then Sorges saw him drop his mistress's arm and put his own lightly round her waist. She did not seem to notice the liberty ; the torrent of her troubles, voiced at last, perhaps carried off her wits. Sorges, frozen to the window, CHAP, in SORGES ELECTS 33 could do nothing but stare. His heart hammered at his ribs, well-nigh choked him. Then he heard a light step behind and, turning, saw Blanchmains. Speir has many windows ; the view of the Valley of Stones over the terraces is very fine. The priest whipt his hands behind his back to glare at the maid. The maid smiled tenderly in his face ; that poor face was streaked with wet. * Dear Father Sorges,' said she with her hand on her heart, ' are you going forth on your errand of mercy ? ' ' I am so engaged, mistress.' * And can you tell me where to find our lady ? She was with you of late.' ' She was ; but, as you see, I am alone or could be.' ' Ah, she is gone to meditate your counsels ? ' ' God, woman ! ' cried the old priest, ' she is meditating anything else you choose. Be so good as to let me pass. Stay ! Come with me. I will give you a note for her. I must make a journey a long journey, my Saviour ! ' * Willingly, my Father.' Blanchmains, all agog, waited her eyes sparkling. Sorges with a fluttering hand botched a couple of slips. He finally achieved, folded, and tied with silk a longish note. ' There, mistress,' he said, ' give that to your lady in one hour from now. It is important. Forget anything you choose, but forget not that. In one hour from now, if you please. There, there, my child ' for Blanchmains, with clasped D 34 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i hands, was kneeling before him 'there! May God and Our Blessed Lady be to you all that you deserve. Watch over our Lady Sabine. I must go indeed.' And gone he was. Blanchmains sat down in Sabine's chair, playing with the note in her hand. First she compressed her red lips, then she looked out of the windows, lastly she- untied the note and set herself to master it. 1 Pest ! ' she said, ' it is in Latin. Oh, a much too learned lady. Well, well, let us see. " Dilectissimae et honor atissimae suae Dominae Sabinae" she read ah! an address. She wandered on till she came to something which made her frown : ' Reverendo in Christo patri Stephana Havilotiensi Episcopo.' Now, who might he be ? But at the next name she caught her breath, literally panted. ' Inclyta domus atque miserrima de Reinij she read, and leapt into full conviction. Renny, Renny of Coldscaur ! Now she knew with whom she had to deal. There came a green light into the eyes of the chalk-faced girl at this phase, which may have become her and yet not have been very pleasant. It gave her a blank, sightless appearance the look of a socketted statue a tragic mask. Her lips moved, but all the words to be understood were in French. ' Rente pas Reinij they were ; which uttered, she shook the glaze from her eyes, and resumed her search for landmarks. * Firminium gardonem improbum.' Firmin ? Well, Firmin would be use- ful. Improbum was improbably a compliment. At the end were four words in a language she knew : CHAP, in SORGES ELECTS 35 * Je vous sauveray ancor,' she read, and was able to smile again at the priest's simplicity. As she scrupulously refolded and retied the billet ' Ah, Father Sorges, Father Sorges,' she said, with a whimsical twist of the head, ' if you are for saving her, I must be for saving myself.' For some time she sat still, twisting her fingers, pinching her lips, frowning, as she puzzled. She guessed Stephen of Havilot to be a kinsman of Sabine's Lord or Earl of that place which lay, she knew, far in the West, in Campflors. If Sorges were going thither, as (knowing his Western origin) she guessed he might be, it would take him three weeks or a month. She knew his horse and guessed at the roads. Three weeks to go, three to return six weeks. Time enough to turn round in good. Now, what else ? Sabine was a Renny eh ? That must mean Renny of Coldscaur, for Pikpoyntz was a towering falcon who flew high for his quarry. Were there any other Rennys ? At this moment her eyes caught upon the book lying open on the table. She jumped at it. Father Sorges had been in such a hurry to fetch at his Stephen of Havilot that he had left the Speir Register. There then, at last, she had the whole story to her hand. Donna Sabine de Renny of Coldscaur of course ! Stephen, Bishop of Havilot of course ! Yes, and there was Valeric, Prince-Bishop of Grand Fe also a Renny. Blanchmains grew cheerful, in a chilly sort of way, for she saw the whole thing. Sorges was going to rouse the Rennys on Firmin's account, it appeared ! Well, she was going to rouse Firmin on her own account. It remained to be 36 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i seen whose account would get quietus first. Blanch- mains was clear that Sabine must not be Countess of Pikpoyntz if she could help it. She did not know, of course, that Sorges was now equally clear on that point. She thought he was only afraid of Firmin ; she began to see her way. Should she deliver the note ? If it discredited Firmin, it would do no harm. Nothing would so effectually egg on Sabine, the little mule. But she was not certain ; it would be safer to deliver it to the fire. This was done, and then she went out to watch the young couple on the terrace. Father Sorges was in such a hurry to reach his lodging that he fluttered down his six hundred steps three at a time. His first act when he landed at his door was to thank God very heartily that he had not arrived in pieces ; his next to eat a hunch of bread ; his third to forage in his cup- board for a parchment roll. This turned out to be a rough map, made by himself, of the stages of his journey, made forty years before, from Havilot to Speir. He now turned his map upside down. * What I have to do,' said he, munching his crust, * is to avoid the Earl's garrison at Cantacute. I must go west to Farlingbridge. Being then in Logres I shall be safe. Then I drop down the two rivers to Minster- Merrow ; afterwards from city to city Cragarn, Breault, Saint-Save, Blemish until I strike on Joyeulx Saber. It may take me any time between three weeks and five ; but God will be with me, and I shall certainly get there.' He was not long over his equipment : his breviary, his cloak, a comb completed it. CHAP, in SORGES ELECTS 37 Arms he would have scorned had he had any within reach. He did wear, however, his crucifix outside his cloak. Then he saddled his flea-bitten old roan, pulled the girths as tight as he dared, and shambled off along the western road. The mountains closed in on all hands ; the roaring Sar drowned the plod of his horse's hoofs. Blanch- mains had been right in one thing he was going to rouse the Rennys, but not against Firmin. CHAPTER IV INCLYTA DOMUS ATQUE MISERRIMA WHEN Renny came before his lord to receive investiture from kingly hands of a kingly fee and franchise, he stood with his own hands held out, fettered with a golden chain. The Constable handed to the King the Sword of Estate ; the King severed the chain ; Renny was free. The fetter then served for cincture ; with his own chain the King girt Renny round the loins ; the trumpets shrilled in the market-place at Renny-Helm ; under the great tower the Heralds craved acceptance ' du tres hault, tres puissant^ redoute Prince^ Monseigneur Blaise par la grace de Dieu y Reini de Coldscaur, Sieur de Marvilion, Cousin de la tres-sainte Vierge Marie^ Cousin du Roy? etc. etc. Thereby this princely person stood seised of Coldscaur, and all Marvilion knew him for an Earl, though he chose to have no title but Renny of Coldscaur. Such was the custom instituted by Eudo the Wolf, sea- pirate, descended from Romans (from a dim Cneius Pompilius Arrhenis, as they boasted), when he came to the kingdom of Jadis ; and still it held at every violent death of a Renny. 38 CHAP, iv MISERRIMA DOMUS 39 Inclyta domus clique miserrima, wrote Sorges to his pupil, the latest Renny ; and truly enough wrote he. If the records of a famous realm, the annals, chronicles, romances, faitz et gestes, Rolls of Parliament, Files of Chancery, and all the rest of such gear can report me a noble house more rooted in pride, more furiously insisting upon proud observance, more blotted with blood, more wicked or more miserable, I have searched their folios in vain. There are traditions about most of the great old families of Jadis ; their names are proverbial, or symbolical, if you please. Thus De Breaute must always break women's hearts, De Flahault hand down inordinate desire from father to son, Botetort after Botetort be shifty, Melsa profuse with what Melsa spared him ; but Renny, it was said, warred upon his own kind, drained his own blood, heaped sin upon sin for himself, killed without mercy, was killed without ruth thieved, lied, debauched, blasphemed, but never abated one jot of his claim to be royal ; and whether he paltered with God, his king, his honour, or his salvation, never swerved from the Renny Creed, which was : What I need I claim, what I claim 1 have, what I have 1 hold. ' Renie pas Reini ' ran the legend of the house cut deep upon the escut- cheon over the portal at Coldscaur ; ' Renie pas Reini, said every man of them to his brother in turn, and enforced it or paid for it with the sword. Inclyta domus atque miserrima Arrhenensis, in- deed. There could be none more famous in the realm of Jadis and none more wretched. A race of heroes, incalculably ancient, very near the 40 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i throne, handsome as some full-hued rank of gods and hag-ridden by a desperate black fate. So it was with them. From that far day when Eudo Reini the Wolf, having harried Marvilion for twenty miles square and built his crag - castle upon the embers, brought into it his fierce Byzantine wife Basilida Kyriozoe, with her dyed purple plaits of hair, her white face and her green eyes from that day a doom malignant and per- verse sat down by the marriage -bed. Not a Renny died in it, though each in turn killed and was killed to call it his. Not a Renny, save Eudo himself, so much as died fighting a fair field. Renny after Renny stood in his hall, flushed and splendid, and rooted his enormous claim like a flag at his right hand. He claimed to be at once master of men and slave of his own appetite. For that he always paid dear ; yet the man who killed him to abate it set it up anew. I shall not attempt to follow them out in detail ; they were many and of divers degrees in arrogant rascality. Let their names suffice. Eudo the Wolf had the grace to be killed in some sort of battle. True, he was shot before the engagement began, shot in the eye by a shaft from ambush, and tumbled into a ditch to be out of the way. Basilida, who had loved him in a wild-beast fashion, came creeping out in the dusk to find him. It is said that the sound of her wailing could be heard for two miles over Dunfleet marshes. She found him lying defaced and dis- honoured in his ditch, his sword untarnished by any blood. This served her turn well enough. CHAP, iv MISERRIMA DOMUS 41 They left five children behind them to fend for themselves ; and fend they did with steel. The first Blaise followed Eudo, Blaise Red-foot as he was called. His sons killed him and succeeded to his inheritance, each in turn treading on his brother's body : Stephen, Halcro, then Blaise II. Blaise II., having no brothers left and his children too young for his attentions, picked a quarrel with the fighting Bishop of Cragarn, a kins- man by marriage. He caught the churchman and built a blind tower of masonry to hold him fast. To this day it is called the Mitre Tower. The Bishop, indeed, died in it, but he did manage to grapple with his enemy who had come in to revile him. The pair of them fell down the ladder-way together, and broke between them a brace of worthless necks. Blaise III., Harmin, Dunstan, then three Halcros in succession Halcro Wryneck, Halcro Stiffneck, Halcro Cutneck ; the Wydos and the rest of them must be passed over. What was reported of the horses of King Duncan of Scotland would fit their case. Out of one Rolf and his high-minded, unhappy wife, Isotta de Chypres, came a fourth Blaise before Rolf was drowned in his castle ditch one dark December night. He was vilely drunk, it seems ; yet he got nearer to a bed at home than any of his house before or since. Blaise IV. married his niece Sibyl Baskerville, with talk of a dispensation from Rome ; but none ever saw the document. This Blaise was huge and middle-aged, the bride a baby ; and Blaise was an ill-conditioned giant. He fell foul of the Countess Isabel de Forz, and 42 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i had his tongue cut out by an adventurous knight, one Salomon de Born. Blaise Sanslang is his name for all time. Out of his progeny this history comes ; for he had many sons. These were their names : Blaise, who reigned at Coldscaur as Blaise V. ; then Otho, who had a daughter Mabilla by his wife, the heiress of Joyeulx Saber in Campflors, and no other issue ; then Roger, who was killed with all his sons, fight- ing against his brother the Chieftain. He too left a daughter at home, Holdis, or Hold, to wit. Of these ladies anon; but there were two other brothers, churchmen both, and one of them, the elder, was Valeric, Prince-Bishop of Grand-Fe ; and the other was Bishop Stephen of Havilot, whom Sorges had served. It was when Blaise V., son of Sanslang, had reigned some dozen years at Coldscaur with a wife alive, five sons and a daughter, that the Earl of Pikpoyntz suddenly crossed his borders one misty autumn night, surprised the Scaur, reddened all the sky from edge to edge with the flames he set a-going, secured some thousand heads of black cattle, and paid ofF old scores by cutting down Blaise, his five sons and his wife in their own hall. This particular Blaise, by comparison mild- mannered, was indubitably a scoundrel ; but he met his death he and his boys as became a Renny. It was the hour of ease and minstrelsy in hall. He was weaponless and in silk, his wife was by his side on the da'fs ; the child, grave-eyed Sabine, was on his knee. Below sat the retainers CHAP, iv MISERRIMA DOMUS 43 and household, all unarmed, in the midst a young minstrel was singing a song of the South, which praised in the fluent southern fashion the great house, ' miraculous flowers of beauty, of honour, and of knightly deeds.' In the hush which followed the sudden burst of clamour outside, the great doors were flung open, and Pikpoyntz, in full armour, but bare-headed as he always was in his fighting, strode in at the head of his guards. ' Renny, you poisonous thief,' he roared, in the tones which had earned him his nickname, Bull of the North, ' I have come to send you to hell ! ' Blaise with one sweep of his eye saw what his chances were. He never moved, but ' Sit down, all of you,' he said to his household, and was obeyed. His wife's hand trembled on his arm, the young men his sons insensibly took hands, but not a soul moved. 'To your work, Pikpoyntz,' said Blaise de Renny then ; and Pikpoyntz did it. There is no reason to think that a soul was left alive in that hall but one. That was the child Sabine, whom you know by this time a prize he meant to turn to better account than his herd of trampling cattle. For the fact was, that Blaise and his five sons were the last males of the long line of Eudo, unless you are to count the two churchmen his brothers, which for obvious reasons is forbidden. Valeric, Prince-Bishop of Grand-Fe in Logres, was one of these a great man whose intellect at least scandal could never tarnish. The other was Stephen de Renny, Bishop of Havilot in Campflors Serges' friend of the West. So far, therefore, Pikpoyntz 44 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i had swooped to a purpose if his purpose had been only to scour the Scaur. But he had swooped to still better purpose. After the males came the women ; for Coldscaur is a female fief. Donna Sabine became Renny of Coldscaur ; was heiress of all Marvilion, and very marriageable ; in her right he could possess himself of her royalty by a clean title instead of a bloody one ; and if this was not in his mind when he compassed his deed of shame, he is not the man whom History reports. After her, it is true, came two other women Mabilla, daughter of Otho, and Hold, Roger's daughter. Of these he may or may not have heard, as also that they were older than the heiress and more instantly to be wedded. But if he knew of their names he must have known also of their conditions, that Mabilla de Renny was said to be betrothed to the King's brother, and that Donna Hold was in the ward of the Prince- Bishop of Grand-F6. Wisely, I think, he chose for the bird in the hand ; hawk-like he swooped where the brood lay thickest. The little Donna Sabine was the youngest of the cousins ; but as well as the Renny name she had the Renny inheritance. And that was a whole shire, and marched with Pikpoyntz. I beg the reader's pardon for this long-winded digression, but there was no help for it. You are to deal in this book with the fortune of the three cousins these last of the Rennys : you must know whence they sprang in order that you may judge of the length of their jumping. It seems an unlikely bed in which to look for the virtuous CHAP, iv MISERRIMA DOMUS 45 bearing which is a chief grace in ladies. Yet between them they worked out the curse : Renny had his own marriage-bed to lie in and to die in at last. And now for Campflors, Father Sorges, and Mabilla de Renny.. CHAPTER V THE PROUD LADY IMAGINE Sorges, blear-eyed and anxious, alternately fortified and dismayed by his mission, prodding his roan through country ways, munching his crusts, reading his breviary, dispensing blessings, jerks of the rein and inquiries of the road on all hands imagine Sorges in a laughing May land- scape, and forestall him for a little. You shall see more than he ever saw. In the vine-bright hill-province of Campflors country of Oh ! and Ah ! in many intonations, where poets do the work of lovers and fighting men, and Dame Venus and her son get a side-wind of the honour due to Dame Mary and hers in Campflors, I say, and in the castle of Joyeulx Saber, there lived the scornful young beauty known to her world as The Proud Lady, and to her sponsors as Mabilla de Renny. The castle was her half-brother's, the Viscount Bernart's ; not far off was the hold of her guardian, Bishop Stephen the walled city of Havilot; fronting all, across a glossy descent of myrtles, lemon-trees, and ilex, lay the sea, deep-blue as the iris of Mabilla's eyes. 4 6 CHAP, v THE PROUD LADY 47 Over all the province love was vocal, ran sighing through the trees, upon the sea lay laughing softly, in the shady corners of streets, under carved balconies, in thickets of flowering thorn, by starry night or at hush of noon came open-vowelled from the throats of patient men who plucked at lute- strings as if they were hearts. The young lady was attuned to this mild music, but only half attuned, since half of her was Renny. The Renny fire, the Renny fury of the blood was chilled on the surface by the phlegm of De Save (her mother's name), to make of her a chord of provocative, strangely stirring music. Outwardly frank to the point of daring, masking thus a reserve more deliberate than a black frost ; in face and form at once sumptuous and fine, at once delicate and hardy, showing at once the tender oval and frail lips of the Madonna, the dauntless eyes and thrust bosom of the Nike of the Greeks ; a blend of judgment and innocence, a woman with the motions of a child, a child with a woman's discre- tion, fire, and snow, a heart whose antechamber set open invites you to a sealed door, a golden cage to hold ice such was the young Lady Mabilla. She was not very tall, and her colouring was pale, sometimes even pallid ; she was never more than delicately flushed. Her very lips were pale carnation, and always dry. Her hair, very long and lustrous, was of sable brown, and up to her sixteenth year she wore it loose. She had dark- blue eyes (which changed with her moods), black lashes to them ; a neck like a shaft, a shape audacious in so young a girl ; an upper lip too short for kind- 48 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i ness, and a chin too full for humility. Behind this lovely mask lay her merciless gift of raillery, a tongue like a whetted sword, an understanding which could pierce any sophistry and excused no appeal from judgment on the merits. All this, with other qualities of hers equally rare in ladies a certain flintiness of mind, a Jack of the religious sense (though she punctually performed every due of Holy Church), and a great deal of irresponsive- ness where love and the tender passions were in debate got her the name of The Proud Lady. In matters of love she was believed impregnable. She was accounted a barbed virgin, a girl of whips and steel, and, though none could deny the charms of her person, suspected of amazonry in will if not in fact. No man at a feast had kissed nearer than her cheek ; she was said to dance happiest when her partner was a girl ; at jousts, tournaments, or Courts of Love no youth's arm had ever dared her waist. On their knees poets and knights, vavasours, viscounts, seneschals, even Earls of counties and (since the truth must be told) a Prince of the Blood Royal had spoken love to her Ebles de Saint- Horn, Geoffroi Mauteste, De Brault, De Cragarnis, De la Roche-tordue. She heard all their words. The habit of the country was to put such matters beyond all doubt ; if a young man loved a young woman, he never scrupled to tell her. Then, if she would accept of him, she took his face between her hands and, stooping where he knelt, kissed his mouth. That was how the Lady Maent of Montaignac, for instance, took Gaucelin de Bry. But Donna Mabilla CHAP, v THE PROUD LADY 49 had never done more than lend her cheek, and her general way of accepting devotion had been to stretch out her hand for the homage-kiss. Some- times she would dub a knight, giving the accolade with the flat of the sword. But mostly she roamed fancy-free with virgins of her own age and sex, and was least likely to afford a man her friendship when he showed he needed it badly. The real way to her intimacy was not that of devotion. If you could tell her of her ancestors the Rennys, she always listened ; if you went on to boast of your own, she listened until she judged either that you lied or in your own person belied them. If you ignored her, as likely as not she would be your very good friend. The quick of her nature was pride first of brain, next of birth. You had needs beware how you touched her. Treat her as an equal on either score, she accepted you ; treat her as a sovereign, she was a tyrant ; play the man before her, pretend her a luxury or a solace, she would be the bleak Goddess of the bow, and smile as she slew one after another your treasured pretensions to respect. Stephen of Havilot, the beetle-browed Bishop, when he was not coursing, or fighting, or hunting Jews, lived at Joyeulx Saber and indulged his niece. Renny through and through, he had therefore quarrelled with the head of his house, his brother Blaise of Coldscaur, and only refrained from the same treatment of his brother of Grand-Fe because he despised him. He thought him an old fool. Mabilla's mother had died of her birth ; she was 5 o THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i cut off her kinsfolk by leagues of dangerous country and the Renny rancour against Renny, had never seen her cousin Sabine, never her cousin Hold, had had about her no women her betters and very few her equals. The consequence was that she enjoyed a liberty denied to the ladies of Campflors, went her ardent ways freely, and had lovers before she was so much as in sight of marriage. Betrothed at six years old she had been, to the King's brother, John of Barsaunter a man, by now, of forty to her seventeen ; but politics had been stormy, the Prince much intrigued ; he had had no time and she no care to think of marriage. Indeed, she had seldom seen the man. Therefore she went free, and to her fell those amorous adventures which Campflors holds are properly for married women. It was only her virginal frost kept her from staling before her beauty had flowered. She was wooed, hymned, lauded, pestered ; she was cried a Goddess before she was out of bed, and went to sleep to the sound of wailing serenas. She had no quarter, but asked never for what she never gave. Mostly she laughed at these affairs, sometimes she was bitter, sometimes she stormed ; whichever she did the suitor writhed. For three months before Sorges started on his errand of ' Haro ! ' unconscious of any mischief and meditating none, she had been engaged hold- ing at arm's length the latest and most explicit of her adorers a minstrel, very young, very conceited, and very poor, by name Lanceilhot. This youth, all his goods in his head (with a few neatly written in his wallet), had sung his way to her gates and CHAP, v THE PROUD LADY 51 fought the entry by his audacity. Viscount Bernart would have whipped, the Bishop hanged, him ; but Donna Mabilla, as they called her, gave him her little hand to kiss. Lanceilhot had burst out crying over it. Mabilla thought him a baby, but bade him stay by her. He had stayed without any pretence that he was not there as her inexorable lover. Mabilla had raised, then knit, her fine brows, had bitten her lips and torn several feathers to pieces. The little poet amused her ; the rest was his affair : let him stay. She was now Sorges shuffling down the mountain road within sight of his mark with him in the lemon-tree walk. The hour was eight of the morning, the month singing June, the place a marble terrace, the scene a scented slope of myrtle woods to the sea. Up from the hidden shore, lipped by little tired waves, came the tinkle of a chapel bell ; across the bay rose the grey hills patched with green strips of vine ; crowning all was a white convent, Nostre Dame d'Amor. The lady was in russet velvet and lace ; on her soft hair was a crown of stars. She leaned her face in her hands ; she had an orange flower between her teeth. She watched the sea, not the minstrel ; but the minstrel watched her. Lanceilhot Paulet's outward habit may be dismissed in a word. He was shy, he was pale, he was slim and of no height in particular, he was fond of finery. He was, unfortunately for his promise of manhood, rather a pretty boy. His dark cropped head was very well shaped, round and properly set on ; he had the poetic brow, the 52 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i sullen poetic grey eyes under dark eyebrows, small straight nose, firm little chin, pretty pathetic mouth. He affected a style of dress which must needs be tawdry because it aimed at splendour and hit frippery. This amused Mabilla. If she had cared for him it would have hurt her. He was now, if you please, in a dark-blue velvet tunic edged with grey fox ; he had a belt of silver gilt filigree, wherefrom a dagger never used. He had light- blue hose on his pair of legs, little long-toed buff shoes. By a ribbon round his shoulder hung a lute which rested on his back ; and further, to match the hanger, there was a wallet which you may swear was more often in use. It contained manuscript mainly devoted to his lady's charms. Add that he was perfectly honest, sincerely lyrical, quick to feel, with a turn for dramatic effects, confident that he could do anything, reluctant to admit that he had as yet done nothing, contended for in turn by pride and sensibility there you have Lanceilhot Paulet at nineteen. Those were not the makings of a happy man, though they serve well enough for the confection of poets. He was expounding to her idle ears the music of Horace, a poet of whom, if he knew little, she luckily knew less. Prosody in Lanceilhot's day was not an exact science ; but he had caught at a rhythm of his own which fitted trippingly the words, and Vitas hinnuleo me similis, sang he to his lute, and looked at his listener as if she were Chloe and he believed it. CHAP, v THE PROUD LADY 53 Here he broke off to admire the sentiment, though he had done wiselier to keep to the lilt. ' Ah, fortunate poet ! ' he cried to the air, * with thy lady like a fawn oh, lovely image ! So should ladies always fly and lovers pursue ; for the treasure is prized for its rarity.' Mabilla turned upon him a limpid gaze. ' If the lady were never caught, Lanceilhot, there would be no treasure at all.' c Your pardon, lady, she would be caught soon enough.' ' Because the poet has the longer legs ? ' * Because he has the stouter heart. Moreover, he hath the image of her already seated there.' ' Let that content him, then,' said she, ' since he made it himself as indeed he made his flying lady. Ladies, I think, do not fly so often as they should. What is this divine poet of yours, after all, but another hunter of game, who starts it, not that he may eat, but that he may capture ? Your Horace's Chloe" was not the fawn, I think. Rather, it was he who did the fawning. He does not please me sing of something wiser than love.' Lanceilhot thought this blasphemy and looked his thought. * There is no wiser thing than love, my lady,' said he, ' since love it was that wrought the world and urged it to move. And every moving creature after his kind it urgeth. And so saith Rabanus, the wise Arabian, and so in his degree said David, the prince of poets and of Israel.' * Most assuredly it urged King David,' said Mabilla, with her flower between her teeth ; ' but 54 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , his is not an example you would recommend to yourself, Lanceilhot.' ' Eh, I know not, I know not at all ! ' sighed the boy with a sudden weariness ; * but like him I am wretched enough and can cry, My God, my God, look upon me ! ' She was not unkind ; she knew his trouble. She had known it for three months. Therefore she looked out over the valley whereas, to any one less abject than he, she would have fired her scorn directly at the scorned. Lanceilhot covered his face in his arm, and so remained until she spoke again. ' Master Paulet,' said the lady in the end, ' be- cause you are a poet, must you cease to be a man ? ' She said it smoothly, but it stung him to lift his head. She neither moved nor noticed him. He coloured, bit his lip, flushed a little. What was on the tip of his tongue did not, however, leave that sanctuary. ' Lady,' he said as gently as he could, ' I can- not cease to be what I am not, nor is it my fault that I am a poet. I shall be a man also in time, if God suffer it.' ' Meantime I am to suffer because you are not a man ? ' ' You play with words, my princess, as with other things.' ' I play with what toys I find. But I am in a bad humour this morning, Lanceilhot. Do not tempt me too far.' He grew humbler, though his eagerness also CHAP, v THE PROUD LADY 55 revived. Once get the talk to ' thou ' and ' I * and what lover is tardy ? ' Forgive me, my lady, for tempting you at all. I forget myself, my place and yours, it seems.' * It seems so to me,' said Mabilla. ' I will take care to remember it henceforth, madam,' he replied with a bow, ' if only to spare you the trouble of wounding me.' She arched her brows. * Do I wound you when I offer you a chair ? ' ' Yes, madam, when the chair is set in the dust. My only offence is that I love you.' Mabilla raised a finger to her lips. ' You must not say that.' ' I can say nothing else, my lady, so long as I am here.' * Then I can only remind you of I can only offer you a chair, Lanceilhot. Oh, foolish boy,' she suddenly cried, turning to him, holding out her hands, ' let us be happy. We have been happy over our Latin and poetry and lutes. Let us be happy still. Do we not deserve it ? We are very young.' She looked so beautiful to him, so ardent in her appealing youth, that he knew misery was more delight than such happiness. ' Ah, God ! ' he cried out pettishly, ' you know that I cannot.' Mabilla shrugged and turned away. ' Rente pas ReiniJ said she. This stung him afresh. ' Renny ! Renny ! Ah, Madam Virgin, teach me at least to forget that she is Renny/ ' You are never likely to forget that I am 56 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i Renny,' said Mabilla. * Ah ! ' and she gave a sigh of relief, * here comes my Bernart.' Lanceilhot shivered to see the smile she had for her half- brother. The Viscount Bernart de Save, olive-dark, grey-eyed, and slim, six feet of sinewy grace, came down the terrace, his page behind him carrying sword and helm. Beside him Mabilla showed all Renny never a tall race. He kissed her cheeks and threw a nod to the glum little minstrel, friendly but no more. Lanceilhot turned away, cold at the heart, his spell of enchantment over. Mabilla forgot, or appeared to forget, him ; she took her brother's arm and they walked away together. The pages loitered to make fun of the poet, whose hapless case was of the common stock. Lanceilhot, leaning on the balustrade, heard the clear high voice of his mistress ; the Viscount threw his head back to guffaw at some sally of hers. Lanceilhot shuddered from sole to crown ; she was mocking him O Heaven ! As a matter of fact, she had forgotten his existence ; but he would not have shuddered the less to have known that. * Sing, poet,' said one of the saucy boys, * sing of your lady. She is out of earshot.' * Thou art not out of earshot, by my soul ! ' cried Lanceilhot, white-faced and furious. He was too quick for the imp. 'Eh, Mother Virgin, I am not/ he howled, rubbing his tweaked ear. ' Come, Vernon, my comrade, let us leave him to nurse his heart.' His tormentors left him, and Lanceilhot, THE PROUD LADY 57 divinely wretched, felt the pricking of poesy. His tablets were out, a very fine descortz sprawling over the page 'Ay mi I Domna, coratgeT when he heard the voice of Bishop Stephen thundering on the upper terrace. Now, Lanceilhot feared only two things in the world ridicule and the Bishop of Havilot. He packed up his tablets and sought cover instead of rhymes. CHAPTER VI DONNA MABILLA BEDAUBS HERSELF VERY much happened that morning. Father Sorges came and set the Bishop of Havilot roaring like a stricken bull, Lanceilhot Paulet was given his congee, and Donna Mabilla put her foot in the mire. All things in order. Thus they fell. That anybody but a Renny should slay a Renny infuriated the Bishop. Sorges' mild eyes paled to the colour of a winter sky to see, blanched more yet to hear him. For the first hour he was for instant battle, and inclined to begin with the Viscount because he did not agree with him. The Viscount was as ready for battle as a young man should be ; but he was not a Renny and he had heard tell of the Earl of Pikpoyntz. * He keeps an array of 5000 men under arms, my lord, and long ere this the whole Renny fee is in his hands, with as many more to hold it.' ' Bloody villain ! What is this to me ? ' the Bishop spluttered. ' The dog is nothing but a border thief.' * He has thieved this time on the grand scale, 58 CHAP, vi THE BEDAUBING 59 my lord,' said Messire Bernart coolly. To which the Bishop could only lift his arms and groan, 4 Bloody villain ! ' Donna Mabilla, who heard everything, as her right was, was all for temperate measures. She thought of the cousin Sabine, the girl near her own age, now head of the great house. She pictured her in white, sitting scared in a field of blood ; she saw her under the fangs of the Red Earl, a captive in a shambles, or bound to some unspeakable servitude worse still. She set her face resolutely towards this horrible scene she never blinked facts : ' I must go to my cousin, my lord,' said she to the Bishop, and waited for the storm. ' Go to the nursery, silly child, and leave your cousin to the men of the House,' the prelate snapped at her. ' Rather, let us take the nursery to Speir, my lord,' said Mabilla. ' It is doubtful if they have anything so innocent there.' There was enough rebuke in this to prick the angry man. ' I will think of it, I will think of it. Run away now, child, and leave me with your brother, and this worthy man.' Mabilla retired to give her women orders for the journey. The Bishop, the Viscount, and the worthy man battled it out all the forenoon. Sorges magnified Pikpoyntz, the Bishop added his grievance to his dignity and magnified himself. The Viscount hinted that the greatest grief in the world was not worth a squadron. ' Let Joyeulx Saber furnish what it can,' said he ; * then go north to Logres 6o THE SONG OF RENNY and join the array of your lordship's brother, the Prince-Bishop. Being there, you will be upon Pikpoyntz's border, ready to act if action will serve you. But, remember the head of the House of Renny is now a hostage in your enemy's hands. If anything should happen to her, the main line is out.' * And the next line is in, by my soul ! ' roared the Bishop. ' My Mabilla becomes Renny of Coldscaur.' * She should therefore go up with us, my lord,' said her half-brother. * Go up ? Why, Heaven help you, Bernart, what else should she do ? ' the Bishop cried, forgetful of his nursery counsel. At dinner, it was announced that as soon as the array could be furnished Bishop Stephen would ride for the North. * My brother Grand-Fe,' he said to his niece, ' is one of those silvery fools who think the tongue to be humble servant of the head. He will be for practising upon that red robber at Speir. You will see. Of course, any dunce could tell him that precisely the opposite is the true case. What the tongue babbles the wretched headpiece has to defend. Well ! you shall see him wriggle and writhe. My own plan is to hit from the shoulder at the first smell of oiFence : then let the other counter if he can.' ' In this case, however, it appears that he could counter to some purpose,' said the young lady. The Bishop spluttered but agreed. Preparations were to be pushed on apace. At the rising from dinner it was agreed that they CHAP. VI THE BEDAUBING 61 should start in a week. My Lord Bernart called his esquire to arm him and rode out to see to the summons equis et armis. The Bishop retired to bully Sorges and his secretary. The young lady Mabilla got into mischief, according to the fortune of ladies whose brains are shackled by their petticoats. What else was she to do? Idle in the midst of stirring business, she sent for Lanceil- hot Paulet. What was life to her to him was death. The weight of the news seemed to clog his very veins. Here was the end of his three months' dream ; here tumbled the pretty castle he had been building for himself and his lady ! She escaped like a bird that wings to the sun, and left him bathed in the dust of ruin. And now she sent for him to amuse her, to tumble and grin that she might laugh ! The poor wretch was flying a craven flag, looked as sick as a monk at sea. It is to be feared that circumstance is a dirty feeder ; she seldom makes a clean bite, but falls munching upon you, tooth and claw in half a dozen places. Lanceilhot was still reeling under the news when his summons came. He was to posture before the lady whom he had the impertinence to adore, who knew it, and was now to see him mouthing for bread and butter. He had never seen himself lower nor her so immeasurably high. In he came, lute at back, to her shaded chamber. The girl they called Col-de- Velours took his hand at the door and led him in. In the cool depths he discerned her lying back among her women, fidgeting and mischievous. She was 62 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i in her own colours of green and white, her bodice cut low, her hair twisted up with pearls. She was pulling a feather to pieces and looked cross. About her sat her maidens, all handsome and all meek, evidently at their wits' end. Lanceilhot, at the door, dropt upon his knee. ' Mistress of my soul's house,' he said, ' I have come to do my homage.' ' The compliment is as high as you can lift it, Master Paulet,' said Mabilla, busy with her feather. Paulet knelt on ; she never looked at him. Then, with one of her startling revolts, she threw her idleness off her with her feather, leaned forward, clasped her knee, and looked a smiling invitation to him. ' Oh, Lanceilhot,' says she, ' I am cross because I am a woman. Sing to me, so that I may forget it for a little.' Alas, that was the one thing of which Lanceilhot must always remind her ! He took his lute, and with the first chords became the professional minstrel. Hey, alavi, alavia ! He would sing The Proud Lady. She was the Peregrine of the Rock, heya ! The sails of her communed with the upper air, she alone of the birds never stooped, never faltered, nor was foiled ; she alone would not be manned. She would be a haggard, heya ! Quest where she chose and mew not at all. And would you know why ? 'Twas because the blue of Heaven matched her matchless eyes. No other mate could be hers. To love a man she must mirror herself in his eyes. Heu ! was her azure to be clouded in a muddy pond ? Never, by his soul ; let her soar alone, a CHAP, vi THE BEDAUBING 63 falcon greater than she of Puy Ste. Marie, priceless, above all, to be striven for, never attained. Hey, alavi, alavia ! Another chord, and he looked round blushing at the ring. Mabilla did not like the song, and said so. ' You sing of fantasies, Lanceilhot. It is im- possible there should be such a lady as that. Think of it, my friend. I beg of you to sing of real people. Sing ah ! sing me the Song of Renny.' The Song of Renny was the great epic of the Sorrowful House which Lanceilhot was to write for her, some day. 'The Song of Renny is not yet finished, my lady,' said the minstrel, very solemn. * No, indeed,' said his mistress, kindling with her thought ; ' no, indeed ! It is but just begun. Come, Lanceilhot, I must tell you my news. Go, all of you, and leave us alone.' This was to the maids. So flickered the candle of the lad's life now blown thin and blue by cold breath, now flaring bright and bold when his lady was too kind. Alone with her in the shady chamber, sitting very near her, with the fragrance of her breath, the touch of her robe, the chance alighting of her hand upon his sleeve with all the unconscious witchery of her beauty upon him what wonder if he dreamed of building over high ! She told him all the story, all her resolve, laid open all her ambitions, plied him for counsel, never took it, lifted him close to her soul's throne and kept him trembling there. ' There are three of us left, 64 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i Lanceilhot, three girls left to bear up the House of Renny. The Girdle, the Robe, and the Crown : we are the choosers, Lanceilhot. Think of it ! Sabine has the Crown, of course. She is the main line. She is Renny of Coldscaur greatest in the realm next to the King, the only lord of a Province with no patent of nobility but his own. Oh, Lanceilhot ! ' She caught at his arm, and quick-breathing turned upon him the wonder of her face. * And which for me, Lanceilhot ? ' she went on, * which for me who come next ? ' * The Girdle, Lady of my soul, the Girdle,' he muttered. * The Robe, since I may not have the Crown,' said she. * I would die for Renny at this hour, if Renny asked it. Let cousin Hold have the Girdle if she will. A toy for a girl ! * Lanceilhot drank deep of her that day, as well he might : it was his last. So she told him. ' The Song of Renny, Lanceilhot ! ' she clamoured. * It is now begun, lady,' said he. * I go to live it out, and you to dream it. You shall come to me again when it is done.' * Do you send me away, madam ? ' ' Nay,' said she, ' but I go my way, and you yours.' Then he forgot himself and fell at her feet. Then he took her by the knees and implored. She was his life, his joy, his constant wonder and delight. She was necessary to him : he breathed her breath ; she was his sun, his moon, his earth, hell and heaven. Make him her lackey, CHAP, vi THE BEDAUBING 65 but let him be near ; let him scour dishes, he would know she would touch them, and where her fingers had touched, there his lips might be. He was lost utterly out of her sight ah, let him be near her lest he died ! She laughed, but uneasily ; he prayed the more ; she blushed, he clasped the closer ; she grew angry, he fell crying at her feet. Then she rose up in a rage. ' I am ashamed, you make me ashamed ; leave my room.' White and craven, unutterably wretched, he looked up at her, ' Ah, lady, forgive me, for- give me ! ' 4 You have no right to ask, and less to expect it of me/ said she, panting a little. * It is pre- sumption, it is folly ; it makes me uncomfortable. I am very angry. More than that, I am dis- appointed. I had thought you a man. You are two years older than I ; you are nineteen, you tell me, and yet you cannot control yourself better than to behave after this sort to me.' She spoke quickly and low, but her tone sufficed to overwhelm him. He began to sob. O She was too angry to pity him. She stamped her little foot. ' Get up at once,' she cried, * or I will never speak to you again. You fill me with shame for you.' That brought him up. ' You are right, madam,' he said. * I should never have spoken with you at all. You and I are of different worlds. I will go.' This least touch of manliness saved him. Never expect a woman to reach love by the road of F 66 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOKI pity. He knelt down again, kissed the hem of her gown, got quickly up and went towards the door. Womanlike, she let him reach it before she spoke the inevitable. * Stop,' said she. He turned at that, but stood to his door. ' I would not part bad friends with you, Master Paulet,' she said, gently enough. ' You have been very amiable, and have taught me many things. I shall remember those, and (I hope) forget some others not so profitable for me to have learned.' Lanceilhot came back and stood before her. They were just of a height, but morally they had not changed places. She looked down, he looked at her. He was very much in earnest, and rather out of breath. ' Let there be no false pretences, madam,' he now said. * I value your good opinion more than any- thing in the world, but I should not deserve it if I were not honest. I love you, as you very well know. I ask nothing of you ; what you can spare me that you shall give. But so much you must know before you give me anything at all.' * Ah ! you have no right to speak so to me/ said Mabilla now. * I speak of it as a fact, madam,' he went on imperturbably. ' Let us see how we stand. There is no need to recur to it for the present. Your destinies call you one way mine another. Yours will lead you ' * They will lead me to Coldscaur ! ' cried she. Lanceilhot shrugged. * The path of such great CHAP, vi THE BEDAUBING 67 ness is a path of blood often enough, and a path of mud, pardieu ! ' She was angered ; the play of her bosom began to quicken. ' Do you think that would stay me, Lanceilhot ? Mud, do you say ? Come with me.' Her head was very high, a thin clear fire burnt evenly over her cheeks ; she took his hand and led him swiftly out of the room, down the corridor, down a winding stair, out by the privy door which leads through the wall, over the Guards' bridge to the Eastern Baily, and so into the street of the hamlet which had grown up below Joyeulx Saber. In the street was a kennel where a very little water made a thread of way through black ooze. It seemed that she put a good deal of signifi- cance in the act which followed, if there could be any witness in a steadfast pair of eyes upon him, in a bosom impatient under breath, or a smile which showed her half amused, half scared, at her own bravery. * Look now, Lanceilhot,' she warned him, * I would do more than this for Coldscaur.' One after the other, slow and deliberate, she thrust her feet into the kennel-sludge. The minstrel shuddered to see her ; but before she could prevent him he had knelt down then and there and kissed the mired shoes. 'And I, lady, would do more than that for you,' said Lanceilhot, rising with fouled lips. ' Yet I pray God you may never need it.' Her eyes were hazy now, her colour all a hot fire. ' Oh, Lanceilhot,' she said, dismayed, ' what have we done ? * 68 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i ' We have bound each other, madam, each to our service.' Then he took her back in silence, and in silence they stood again in her shady room. ' You must go now,' she said at last. ' Good- bye !' ' Good-bye, my Lady Mabilla ! ' She gave him her hand, and he held it. So they stood for a little, in a fine tumult each. If the girl had chosen, he had gone. But a girl never does choose in this pass. ' I must go now,' she said again, with a feeble effort to recover her hand. * Eh ! Yes, yes,' said Paulet. Then silence broke over them anew, and they stood and thrilled. * Would you like that ring ? ' She looked down at her caught hand as she spoke. There was a signet ring on the forefinger. ' Do you give it me, madam ? ' * You may take it if you like.' If he kissed the finger he drew it from, kissed the ring ; if she was disappointed that he still kept his hold of the hand, she is to be blamed, not he. Paulet wore a crucifix round his neck a silver toy on a silver chain. He saw his lady look at it. * May I give you my Christ, lady ? ' he dared. Mabilla looked wise. ' I never wore a crucifix,' she said. * I do not promise to wear it. But you may give it me as a remembrance, if you will.' c Del tempo felice ? ' * I do not know Italian,' said Mabilla demurely. She gained the crucifix, regained her hand, and dismissed him, not before it was time. CHAP, vi THE BEDAUBING 69 ' I come to you when I am a man, my proud lady.' * When you are a wise man, Master Paulet,' said she, and looked after him when the door was shut. Lanceilhot left Joyeulx Saber that sundown. CHAPTER VII LANCEILHOT'S PROGRESS ON a golden evening Lanceilhot trudged out of Joyeulx Saber in a golden mood. He should have been most miserable ; but love is an irrational disorder and now gave him a great heart. Hey, alavi, alavia ! he could serve her wherever he was ; that was his inalienable right, as to love her was another. The man who loved so glorious a lady should himself be something glorious, partaking of her glory. Beneath his doublet, beneath his shirt the signet ring wagged as he went. O miracle of miracles, that he should have borne away such a token from The Proud Lady ! He sang to the lengthening shadows ' Coblas I will devise To the light of my lady's eyes Ha ! Colour of paradise Is the blue beam that flies Over my path from her eyes ! ' And, behold, the abiding hills took on a steady violet hue, and themselves spoke of her tender mood, of the mood of quiet trust in which she had bid him go in peace. ' " I will lift up mine 70 CHAP, vii LANCEILHOT'S PROGRESS 71 eyes to the hills," ' chanted Lanceilhot like any chorister ' lo, the depths of her ! lo, her essential soul ! ' He had some reason to deem himself favoured, for favoured he had been, to judge by the lady's standard. She who set herself higher than the highest, and for tribute however great had nothing but scorn to bestow, had been caught by this pale upstart in a melting mood, had listened, been meek, had leaned towards him. How was this ? The answer is that she herself had whipt the spirit into him which she found worthy. If he had gone on with his whining, cringing, craving, she would have driven him out to join the others. But the fact that a poet is first his own lover had saved him. She had spurred his self-esteem, so that he had shown her that, respect her as he might, he respected himself more. He had faced her and taught her also to respect him. He knew nothing of all this, yet had an instinct that to keep his vantage he must go to work his own way. He would go to school. He might as well have gone for a soldier, poor youth. The pen came readier to hand than the sword ; so Saint Save had him. f I am a poet/ said he to himself, ' and I have a shilling. Good ! I will go to a University. Now there was a famous University at Saint Save. He headed for that city to market his shilling. Saint Save is a fine town to this hour, belfried still, grey and venerable, islanded in green meadows and cinctured by broad streams. You 72 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , see in the distance the shadowy contours of the Campflors hills. In Lanceilhot's time it was of the finest walled, gated, be-domed, possessed of a dozen carillons belonging to as many steeples, of a mother-church with a nave like an elm-tree avenue, and a dome of green tiles ribbed with gold. Its half-score colleges were bowered in trees and dripping with greenery ; it had ranks of plane in the streets, broad grass ramparts cooled by the same shade, open squares, silent courts, where fountains sparkled all day and rippled all night ; it had a Bishop, a Chancellor, many Deans, two monasteries, and modest little cloisters for barefoot brothers of Francis, Dominic, and Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Though there were gates and wardens of gates, they were not serious, for, as the people said, Saint Save (God rest him) was no soldier, but a deacon and scholar. If the Saint Saviours went out to war, it was with the powers of darkness ; if others came out against them, they must first learn to read. Now, as no soldiers learnt to read in those days, Saint Save had peace. To the famous College of Leonardsheart went Master Corbet the morning of his arrival, and asked to see the Reverend Prior. 'My young ey ess -gentle,' said the porter, ' what is your little affair ? ' * I am a poet,' said Lanceilhot, baring his head. 'Then you should hit the humour of the Reverend Prior,' said the porter. ' Your name, Poet ? ' < Lanceilhot Paulet.' CHAP, vii LANCEILHOT'S PROGRESS 73 'Of ?' * Of Flashy in Gloverne ; but now from Joyeulx Saber.' The porter went at once. After a little he returned, all smiles. ' Pleased to be pained to follow me, Master Paulet.' Lanceilhot followed him up winding stairs till he was ushered into a breezy library. The sun made the place gay, a wood fire made it cheerful. Before the fire, both gay and cheerful, was a thin- faced, ruddy old man, in skull-cap and part of a cassock. The rest of the cassock was in his hands that his neat legs might hold converse with the fire. The season was June, the place Campflors ; nevertheless the fire did not seem out of place in the long room. The toaster of legs was the Reverend Prior of the College of Leonardsheart. He looked shrewdly at Lanceilhot as the youth stood rather defiantly posed by the door shrewdly, but with a humorous twitching at the corner of his mouth. ' Master Paulet,' he said, * the report comes to me that you are a poet.' ' I am a poet, Reverend Sir.' * It is a gentle craft. Pray, who taught you to poetise ? ' ' The sun, books, Merlin le Hardy, and God the Father,' said Lanceilhot, who was a serious youth. ' Excellent teachers, Master Paulet,' said the Prior. * At least, I would answer for the last three. Have you any of your compositions with you ? ' 74 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i ' I have them all, Reverend Sir.' ' Ah ! ' The Prior glanced at the height of the sun ; Lanceilhot dived into his wallet. ' Here,' said he, ' is my Gests of Maximilian, called The Gross, in eight books. Here is a Tenzon entitled, after its opening line, " The Cry is from the Holy Sepulchre," which hath for argument this consideration : whether, namely, a vow not to wash the hands and face until the Blessed Places are redeemed is a pious vow. Here are an alba to the awakening Soul of the Lady M. de R., a chant-royal to the Forehead and Eyes of the same lady, with another to her Lips and noble Chin. In this little piece of ten verses with a refrain I celebrate her Neck and Bosom ; but this composition, so far, no eyes have seen but mine. Here again is a descortz wherein I speak of her Hair, and a certain Jewel she is accustomed to wear in it, showing the blessedness of the jewel's estate, the comfort it may be to the hair, and closing with a very bitter lament that I am not the Jewel. Lastly, I have an alba and sereina to her Hands and Feet, wherein I bend the similitude of the first rose of dawn upon the dewy hills to serve me a good turn. As for her hands, they are naturally the cool palms of evening laid upon the poet's brow. Moreover, here The Reverend Prior put up his hand momen- tarily. *Ah, stay, stay, my young friend. Let us consider one thing at a time. You seem to be a poet with a passion for anatomy ? ' Lanceilhot corrected him. ' It is hardly to be called a passion, Reverend Sir, since the drift of all CHAP, vii LANCEILHOT'S PROGRESS 75 my verse is philosophical and mystical. I should, rather, call it an Intellectual State, a mental Ecstasy. Besides, you forget my Gests of Maximilian, an Epic.' * We will pass by the Epic for the moment,' said the Prior, sitting down. ' Let us consider the Ecstasies. I may, perhaps, conjecture that your " Lady M. de R." and your late resting- place are not distantly connected? ' 'They will soon be most distantly connected, Reverend Sir, unhappily. But at the time of writing they were closely connected.' * The Lady M. de R. is no other than Donna Mabilla de Renny ? ' ' That is so, Reverend Sir.' ' Ah ! Should I now be indiscreet to ask, first, What she thought of your philosophical writings, and, second, What the Lord Bishop of Havilot thought of them ? ' Lanceilhot looked very grave. ' I have already hinted, Reverend Sir,' he replied, ' that my writings have frequently been for my private eye. I read the Lord Bishop two books of my Gests of Maxi- milian ; but though I remained at Joyeulx Saber near three months, there was no opportunity to continue the poem. As to the other matter of which you inquire, I have never concealed from her or her society my lifelong devotion to Donna Mabilla, that glorious lady.' The Prior bowed urbanely. ' And now, Master Paulet,' he said, ' may I know to whom, or to what circumstance, I am indebted for the honour of this interview ? ' 76 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , * You are indebted, Reverend Sir,' said Lanceil- hot with great candour, ' to the fame of your learn- ing, to the desire I have to benefit by it, and to the fact that Donna Mabilla is about to leave Joyeulx Saber.' The Prior could not but bow again. * You deal largely in reasons,' said he. ' I should be the last man to deny their cogency, though, in this case, I should lean particularly upon the last. Now, what do you wish to learn of me ? ' ' Tongues,' said Paulet, * and Music, the Aristotelian Ethics, Astronomy and the use of the Globes, Logic, Mathematics ' Ah, my dear young friend ! cried the Prior, * if you learned so much, no books could hold your Gests. Tackle the Trimum by way of a beginning. You know Latin ? ' ' Yes, Father.' * Good. If you are as serious as you seem, we will make a humanist of you in time. Attending that, however, let me put a delicate question to you.' ' I have a shilling,' said Paulet, who divined him, ' and my manuscripts.' ' I should imagine that those were for a private collection,' said the Prior dryly. ' We must put you upon our foundation, where, luckily, there is a vacancy. I myself will nominate you when I have gone more fully into your recommendations.' * I humbly thank you, Reverend Sir. I have letters from the Lord Bishop, from the Abbot of Graindorge, from the Curate of my native town, and others ' CHAP, vii LANCEILHOTS PROGRESS 77 ' You promise very well, my child,' said the good man. ' But it is the hour of Mass. Will you accompany me ? ' Lanceilhot knelt and kissed the Prior's hand, a dextrous and touching homage which did him no harm. The end of it all was that by dusk the youth found himself arrayed in the green gown of his college ; upon the left shoulder the college arms in a bravery of new red and white ; upon a field argent two files gules, saltirewise, charged with a heart proper within a chain or. Saint Save, as everybody knows, was a deacon who suffered martyrdom under the Vandals for the sake of his learning. He was filed to death hence the University arms. The heart in the chain is, of course, that of Saint Leonard, the famous relic of the College Chapel. In taking leave for some time of this good youth, it may be sufficient to foreshadow of him that he applied himself with zest to the pursuit of learning, attending the time when he might hope to look his lady in the face again. He was young, time meant nothing to him. His mistress might marry her Don John of 'Barsaunter ; but at present he was able to contemplate that calmly enough. He had not got beyond the state of wonder in his love-affairs. The fact of loving was nearly all his joy. So he studied, and said his prayers, and wrote verses. Genius must be denied to Master Paulet ; he was built upon too small a scale to contain that divine fury. What he had for literary equipment was dramatic sympathy, the knack of a quick leap 7 8 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i towards the flame that kindled you a leap so quick that he would outvie you in the dance of your own fancy, usurp your mood and thereafter lead you. This also he had : a deep fund of self-respect. It had always kept him clean. He was really a modest lad in his dealings with women, a speedy blusher, yet one who drew on by his own drawing -back. Mostly he was invited farther than he dared. Very respectful to all women, when he found the one woman of all the world he slipped sidelong into idolatry. She became his more-than-self. He made her in his own image, then coloured her with the fire she lent him. Mabilla de Renny, the wilful little high lady, became an impossible Goddess, a veiled shining Oracle whose priest he was, seeing that the touch of her finger-tips, the very breath of her presence, made of him a swooning visionary. This was his nearest approach to genius : luckily for him he was soon to be three hundred miles from his inspiration. He applied himself to learning, as Saint Save understood it. All his literature was in the letters he wrote, but wisely did not send, to his mistress. He was bold only in thought; such of them as he did dare to a messenger gave him cringing fits to think of ; he hardly could bring himself to open the thin replies he got. These, which began hopefully enough with a fairly long letter, grew more and more guarded, cropt, rare, without news. ' Master Lanceilhot, I am very well in spite of your long letter, and your friend, M. de R.' ; or * Master Lanceilhot, I pray you to spare me your comments CHAP, vii LANCEILHOT'S PROGRESS 79 upon my soul, for which (as I have better reason to know it) I have less respect than you. We have not seen the sun since we left Canhoe. Yestermorn my brother, Messire Bernart, killed a bear. I rejoice to hear of your learned diver- sions. From your good friend, Mabilla.' Last but one came a very short scribble : ' Master Lanceilhot, I am too much concerned to be more than your faithful, M.' This was of a sort to send him frantic. Of the last of all I must speak in its place, which is not yet. Tantalising, too brief, too kind little letters ! in return for which he filled quires of sheepskin with fine penmanship. Upon these, however, and upon certain miniatures (obviously from life) which he found in a great brown book Faifz et Gesfes de la tres-noble, tres-haulte, miser rime et ancienne Maison de Reini pictures in blue and white upon gold of ladies and young knights with proud lips and stiff-poised heads upon such meat he kept his soul alive while in bondage in the learned courts of Leonardsheart. CHAPTER VIII THE RENNYS HEAD FOR THE NORTH THE Campflors cavalcade the Bishop in steel, the Viscount in steel, Mabilla in a green hood, Sorgcs in a tremble, a glancing line of pensels and banneroles, and a train of baggage mules made Saint Save and fifteen farther miles on their first day. They halted for the night at Kains Castle. This is a place on the edge of Barsaunter, Don John's province, which belonged to a vavasour of his and was much at the service of his friends. Don John, the King's brother, himself was there to entertain them : Noel de Kains, the owner of the place, bent a ready knee to the whole party. There were few things that this Prince John did not know of matters touching his interest, fewer still which he affected to know. Before the Bishop went to his bed he received a formal proposal for Mabilla's marriage. She had been betrothed, as you know, at a baby age, but little further had been moved in the affair for one reason or another. Whatever her uncle may have felt, he was too much of a Renny to show any elation. Don 80 CHAP, vin RENNYS GO NORTH 81 John was the King's only brother, by no means out of chances for the throne, a man who might go far. His amours were, at any rate, not flagrant ; he was forty a sound age ; hot- tempered but the Rennys could match him there ; fickle in his friendships. Against that set Mabilla. ' I know no more level-headed woman than that child,' her uncle considered ; ' I could see in her a mate for Don John. He has nerves ; I can credit her with none. She might exasperate him into some act of folly and get a permanent ascendancy while he was re- penting it.' On the whole, he was inclined for a bargain with his Prince. Don John, a gaunt, brown man, with a hide like leather, a starved grin and absurdly long legs, lay like a leaning spear in his chair and watched his companion. His hands were knit behind his head, but he never kept his fingers still. The Bishop sat square as a tower. * Your Highness sees how my family is placed by this new turn of affairs,' he said. ' The heiress, a minor, is in the hold of that bullock Pikpoyntz. He has in all probability murdered my brother Blaise, his wife and my five hopeful nephews. The fact that he did not add the girl to the heap proves that there was a heap. No doubt he means to marry her at leisure. At that rate Coldscaur, our cradle for five centuries, will go to his issue ; Marvilion will be laid to Pikpoyntz. It is a pretty game, so pretty that I dare not punish the assassin (at present).' 'You mean, Bishop,' said Don John, showing a 82 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i his teeth, * that you would defer asking our lord the King to punish ? ' The Bishop bowed shortly. f I beg your Grace to Jet me finish. The stake is too serious. It is Coldscaur, it is all Marvilion. We must tem- porise get back the heiress if we can. If we are too late, he must have her. But in that case we must work for Marvilion. It should be disentailed. To suffer it to remain would be against public policy two shires in one thief's hands ! The largest fief in the realm to be held by the biggest thief ! Mort de Dieu ! ' ' And if that were not suffered,' put in Don John, < in that case, Lord Bishop ? ' 'In that case, my lord, Marvilion would fall to the next heir.' ' The estate is a female fief, I understand ? ' asked the Prince, twitching at the legs. The Bishop bowed. He had him. ' It would fall to your Grace's betrothed, to my late ward Donna Mabilla, who now, by the law of this land, is of age to take it up.' ' Ha ! ' snapped Don John. ' Now do me justice, Bishop.' * I do so, my Lord Prince. Your Highness's betrothal was eleven years ago ; your Highness's proposal twenty minutes.' * I was in absolute ignorance of all this, Bishop honour of a Prince ! ' ' My lord,' said Havilot, * I am sensible both of that, and of the great honour you pay my House. Again, I beg your Highness to observe how we stand. The Earl of Pikpoyntz must be CHAP, vin RENNYS GO NORTH 83 supposed (by us at least) to have compromised the heiress. He must marry her. But there should be (even in my judgment who am no politician) a clear understanding that she cannot bring him a whole Province to add to his own. The man is a common assassin. That alone is enough to secure his outlawry under so just a king as our sovereign lord. If he married the heiress and were then outlawed, policy would be served and justice no less secured for being delayed/ He paused here and looked at his Prince. Don John tapped his teeth. ' You would let him marry the heiress first and proceed to outlaw him after- wards hey ? ' The Bishop, still looking keenly at him, nodded. ' If that were done, Donna Mabilla ' said the Prince. * If that were done, Donna Mabilla becomes Renny of Coldscaur on the instant, my lord,' said the Bishop, not mincing matters. The Prince grinned desperately. * But, outlawry or none/ went on Havilot, * there should be a disentail. The Rennys, my lord, have done their share of sword-work in their day ; but girls cannot wield swords, and priests are considered lucky if they can bear croziers. And girls and priests represent Renny ! My girl is well off in a sense, hath no need of an appanage for any common mating. But she must not come naked to a Prince of the blood.' ' Bishop of Havilot,' said Don John very earnestly, ' if I can watch justice done to your family it will be the happiest sight in the world 84 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i for my eyes, I assure you.' He blinked and writhed as he spoke. The Bishop blinked, but did not writhe. ' We ask for justice at your Grace's hands and no more,' said he. ' You shall have justice,' said Don John, rising. ' I will go to Maintsonge to-morrow, and see my brother.' The Bishop kissed his hand and with- drew. He considered the bargain sufficiently implied. You could hardly get nearer with a Prince of the reigning house. Marvilion, that fair province, with Coldscaur for its inviolate crown, should be Mabilla's in a year, thought he. He decided that he would say nothing of all this to her. She had never spoken of her affianced lord to anybody, had scarcely ever seen the great man since the day when she walked into the chapel a baby and out again a plighted maid. What she thought, what knew, she held. But in her uncle's judgment there was no fear of trouble on her side. Put before her the state of affairs, when they were known to be such and such trust her, she would be discreet. She was a girl who invited departure from custom ; he could depend upon her good sense for no argument, upon her cool head for no sentiment. * It promises, it promises ! ' he chuckled, rubbing his smooth hands together. * Barsaunter is a dry bone for such a running hound as Don John. The savour of Marvilion tilth and pasture will keep his nose to the scent. Besides, he had an eye for the maid. Of such also he should be a pretty judge. I never knew a De CHAP, vin RENNYS GO NORTH 85 Flahault flinch at a beauty yet. And if my Mabilla is not a royal little beauty there are none in this holy realm.' His Reverence thereupon went to bed without the assistance of his chaplain, his reader, or his lackeys. Don John sped them on their way next morning, and then, faithful to his word and interest, himself sped on his. To Mabilla he paid the homage due to a queen of beauty : it had been pretty to see her staid reception of it. He bent his back, he looked like a strung bow in that posture ; he kissed her little fingers, tried his hardest to smile without showing his teeth. Mabilla said very little, yes'd and noed, carefully my-lorded him. At the moment of parting he held her stirrup, later kissed her glove. * The time will be a vigil until your eyes make me festival, madam,' says he. ' According to the vigil speeds the feast, my lord,' said she. * Nay, madam,' he urged her, ' but the Saint blesses the devout kneeler.' ' Ah, my lord,' she laughed at him, ' he cannot give him knees ! ' Trumpet shrilled, the knights shook their spears in salute ; cap in hand the Prince gazed upon his lady's back. It took the Bishop and his train a fortnight to reach Canhoe in Logres ; but we cannot follow them closely. Their weather was superb, and if scenery had then had its present vogue, the traverse could not have failed of delight. But scenery is a solace of ours, whose business has become our tyrant : to the Bishop of Havilot (master of his deeds), to Viscount Bernart, the country showed so much harbourage for stag and hare ; its sedgy rivers 86 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK, were there to be hawked over ; its mountain peaks, austere, meditative, communing with the blue, were weather gauges, hinting rain or a spell of dry. The Bishop pondered his plans, the Viscount had an eye for ambushes ; of all the party Mabilla was happiest, neither loving, hating, nor fearing any. She could not have told you why perhaps she was a heathen without knowing it. The Prince's grinning earnestness, poor Lanceilhot's mystical ecstasies, blew like a flaw from her mind before the salt wind which told her they were never far from the sea. The vagrant clouds bid her thoughts run races, the stretches of bright distance invited her fancy abroad. It was a variegated journey, full of interest to her. Barsaunter passed safely through a bleak sandy stretch, much of it wasted by the sea-waves the country gets greener, the mountains begin : you are now in Pascency see the grey head of Mont Gomeril. Grassy valleys, deep and wet, cropped rolling fells, woods and water in the lowlands, little orchards cut between, ling and blaeberry above ; it is a rich pasturage which seldom belies its name, a country of wind and silence and sheep. Thence by an ever-ascending road you win Logres, all pine woods, heather, and grey rocks. On every rock a castle or town fortified ; the very shepherds here go armed. The first lesson a boy learns is to use the long-bow ; the knife is his by nature. The girls suck blood, it would seem, from their mothers and feed their babies with it from themselves. Such a province is, and must be, dark Logres, ever on the watch against Pikpoyntz its bold neighbour. CHAP, via RENNYS GO NORTH 87 There on a grey crag in the midst stands Canhoe, the head of the Saint Quintin fief, dwelling of the third Renny heiress, Holdis the golden, and sometimes of her guardian uncle, Prince-Bishop Valeric. CHAPTER IX DEEDS OF BLANCHMAINS BUT I return to Speir and a pretty state of things. When Father Sorges, poor quavering soul, had thrown the little lady there into the arms of her page, it would have been Blanchmains's business to keep her there if she had not shown a plain disposition of her own to that end. Renny of the Rennys was Sabine a hot lover, a rooted hater, a block of inflexible resolve to have her way. Rente pas Reini indeed ! By this time she was to all seeming the most sumptuous maid the broad world could hold. Voluptuously formed, deep-coloured, glossed like a peach, her eyes the hot blue of Venetian water, her velvet lips so perfect one would fear to kiss lest one might break their frail wonder, her hair at once long and abundant, fine and strong she was the rich- blooded Renny type carried up to a point, a grave, flawless, fierce-burning image of her cousin Mabilla. Not so adorable, because less woman than pattern of woman, by no means wise, without vivacity or humour or intelligence or wit, she was nevertheless a very woman in this, that she must CHAP, ix DEEDS OF BLANCHMAINS 89 love something, and, loving, give all. It was un- fortunately Firmin whom she loved and to whom she gave what she did give. She found him trust- worthy and built him loveworthy. It might have been a dog, or Blanchmains, or a tree, or Father Sorges, or the Blessed Sacrament in its beginning. It happened to be Firmin. The thing was as artless as crying. Then came along the simpleton Sorges, fired her with shame, and drove her whither we have seen her. Therefore Master Firmin, the handsome young man, was reigning favourite and received the homage due. It appeared to him that he was a breaker of hearts ; he found it pleasanter than breaking horses, a passive exercise. He erected his fine person or laid his length in a snug chair, then those with hearts to sacrifice came and broke them against him. He was admired by Nitidis at a distance she was a shy girl ; in the intervals of more serious business he was much with Blanch- mains. The discreet maid-of-honour would have played go-between had that been possible ; but little Donna Sabine to all but the page was a smooth rock ; she gave no foothold, nor hint of inlet. So Blanchmains had to work upon Firmin to screw him up to the pitch of business. She fed him to make him stout of heart, plied him with good wine to make him heady. She gave him to understand her entirely on his side, and at the same time really served him by keeping Madam Clotilda in the dark. ' Ah, lady,' she would say, holding her heart, 'all I can do is to serve you. 90 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i There is my joy ! ' And serve himself she certainly did, with becks and whispered hints ' My lady is in the rose-garden looking for somebody.' * The little Queen is pouting at her empty court. Quick, in the Blue Closet ! ' and so on. She served him with sage advice ' Ply her now, hardy lad ! she leans, she leans ! ' She kept watch for him, went sentry ; she coughed at the door twice to proclaim Clotilda near, sneezed for Shrike, sang an air when only Nitidis came in sight. At last, on a dark wild night of summer, they two alone on the terrace, all the house blind, * Go, happy lover, up to the bower ! ' she breathed in his ear. * Go, and comfort with apples the sick of love.' This was her crowning stroke ; it was she who provided the ladder of cords ; it was she, endlessly patient, who stood to hearten him as he came breathless down when dawn first trembled. * Good news ? ' she asked him, thrilling. Firmin reeled against her. ' The best, oh ! the best,' he assured her ' ah, my Saviour, she is mine now ! ' The youth was really moved, hid his face upon Blanchmain's shoulder and cried. She embraced him, gave him a merry kiss between the eyes. ' Now the little hooded God be your friend,' she said, with rich laughter in her tones ; ' friendly he has been this night. Eh, but he levels us all ! ' Firmin looked wondering at the live sky. The spell was still upon him. * Oh, Blanchmains,' he whispered, feeling for her hand to stay him, * oh, Blanchmains, my little lady is clean from God. How could I dare ? ' CHAP, ix DEEDS OF BLANCHMAINS 91 ' You know best, my friend,' she answered him, rather drily. ' Experience to teach you was not lacking, if one may believe what one hears.' ' Wantons all ! ' cried Firmin eloquent. ' Wan- tons all ! But she so royal, so meek and lovely O Christ!' ' O Cupid ! ' said the maid-of-honour. ' Come and tell me everything.' She took him to her closet and poured red wine for him as he rhapsodised. Firmin was devotional. 'See now, Blanch- mains, my dear,' he said, { I am on holy ground, I must act holily. We were caught unawares we loved too much eh, just Heaven, how my dear loves me ! She gave herself she fell here these arms held her ! ' He hugged himself, then grew sober. ' Ah, but no more, no more. Never ! I must take her to church I shall burn else deadly sin ! You, Blanchmains, will be our friend ; swear that you will. Loathsome villain that I am ! ' ' Will you wed Renny of Coldscaur, Firmin ? * said Blanchmains with parted lips. Firmin held up his fine head. ' Renny of Coldscaur loves me, mistress. She is royal enough to command it. What else can I do ? ' Blanchmains, with a finger to her lips, said, 'Leave it to me.' Firmin went praying to bed. There was no time to lose : Firmin's virtue might not face such risks as these very long, and, as Blanchmains was shrewd enough to see, the lady loved Firmin, and Firmin for the moment was touched. No time to lose. She did not lose 92 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i an hour. Before morning chapel she was in the still-room, tearful, before Dame Clotilda. The old woman and the young one distrusted each other ; but just now the flood of circumstance whirled them together. The dame overlooked certain flagrant mysteries, the maid stooped to the dame's simplicity. She was soon sitting at the housekeeper's knee, nestling her hand in the other's. * Ah, mother,' she said, with one of her pretty sighs, ' if my lord could return before it is too late!' * Is there mischief abroad, child ? Is there mischief about us ? ' quavered the timorous old soul. Blanchmains hid her face. ' Speak, girl, speak ! ' cried the housekeeper. 1 Fear nothing. I am discretion itself so old and worn ! ' * Then for once I will speak, mother. You cried of mischief ; it is mischief, I fear. Let me tell you ah, if I had dared tell you before ! But it may not yet be too late.' ' Mary and Jesus ! Tell me the truth.' ' It is it is ah, it is of Firmin I would speak, mother.' Dame Clotilda crossed herself with great precision. * Now I am ready for the worst,' said she, and locked her lips. Blanchmains, pale and eager, began to pour out her confession. ' He has got the blind side of the little lady, mother ; he has got the blindest side. She is at his beckon and whistle. He lifts a finger and she lies down ; he lowers an eyebrow and she stands CHAP, ix DEEDS OF BLANCHMAINS 93 up. He asks with a wink, she gives him her cheek ; he purses his mouth, she puts up hers. He takes her hand, she lets him hold it. Will he let go, think you ? Ah, no ! For he has hopes of all. Mother, he will never let go till he has the whole. Mark me, I know. And oh, Heaven and Earth, that such things should be ! ' She hid her face again and with sobs shook her shoulders. Clotilda reeled in her chair. * Ah, ah ! ' she panted, ' it hath brought on my spasms. Quick, child, my drops, my drops ! ' Blanchmains flew for the phial. Clotilda recovered, crossed herself, and took a resolution. ' This very morn, after Mass, I will speak with my lady,' she said. * You have done very right, my child, to speak your heart to me. I love you for it I, who never thought to love you for any- thing.' Blanchmains offered a meek face to be kissed, and was kissed. The dame went on. * I will not reproach my lady. I hope I know my place. But as I believe our lord the Earl hath plans of his own in her regard, my duty is plain first to my lord, at whose cradle I stood when he was a gurgling babe ; next to my little lady, who may be my sovereign lady if his lordship's designs are as I take them ; lastly to that lecherous thief in the Gatehouse, whom I shall live to see swing- ing yet. Now all this, put as I best know how to put it, breathing duty and service, grievous but yet upright, humility sprinkled over all like a heavenly dew as God is my Redeemer, this goeth to my lady this day after Ite missa est. Leave it to me, my dear.' 94 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i The dame leaned back in her chair, wiping her eyes. Blanchmains knelt adoring her. ' Mother,' she said, ' I never knew the blessed- ness of faithful duty until this moment. Oh, teach me your secret. Be patient with me, I shall yet learn ! ' Clotilda enfolded her. ' My dear lamb,' she babbled, l I've the warmest heart, though old, and 'tis large enough for thee and more. I could love thee, my girl.' * And I need your love, mother,' said Mistress Blanchmains, asking with eyes and lips for kisses. She got as many as she would. All fell out in order. The dame's alarms, quavered forth amid sighs, tears, and gaspings, set the quick Renny blood on fire. Sabine, who was indeed royally angry, said very little, being of your dangerously still sort ; but what little she did say shrivelled the old woman like a winter leaf. 'Your place, woman, is to convey my orders to the servants, and not theirs to me,' said Sabine. Woman ! She had called Dame Clotilda woman ! The poor soul scarce knew herself in the term. Blanchmains herself could not have desired more than what followed. Before the peopled windows, in the blare of the sun, Sabine ran to Firmin on the terrace and hung on his breast. All her outraged pride was crying in her heart ; it went to overbrim a river already in flood. None heard what she sobbed at his mouth, though one divined. * Oh, Firmin, Firmin,' it was, ' marry me, be CHAP, ix DEEDS OF BLANCHMAINS 95 my lord ! They slander me, my love ; they dare against me I have only love and you.' ' Sweet soul,' said Firmin, very much moved. 1 1 may not gainsay thee comfort thee, my life.' Blanchmains stept lightly out on to the terrace, and came and touched her lady on the shoulder. Sabine started and turned her face of flame. ' What is this, Blanchmains ? ' ' Dangerous, madam.' ' Do you dare so far ? ' ' I dare more for your service, madam. ' Is this to serve me ? ' ' Surely, madam. They watch you from the house.' Sabine blushed, then recovered herself. c Well, Blanchmains ? ' she asked. Firmin whispered her hotly : ' Trust her, trust her, my queen. She is our good friend.' She urged towards him, doting at his voice ; then checked herself and spoke more freely to the maid. ' What is in your heart, Blanchmains ? Speak it openly.' * This, madam,' replied the low- voiced girl ; ' I would serve you in all things further than I can see my way as yet ; but this household is other-minded. They would serve whom they fear most their lord, serve him with messengers. The posts are open and many, his whereabout is known at the frontier ; he might be here in a week at need.' Firmin began to be troubled ; Blanchmains caught him scanning the windows, the lower 96 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i terraces, the shadows, for hidden spies. She went on. ' My lord hath a long arm, a very sudden dreadful arm. He striketh through many, in the dark and unaware. At evening you pray to Our Lady, you lie down, you sleep ; in the morning Foh ! You lie there gaping, struck secretly. Eh!' and she shivered 'do I not know?' Firmin grew white ; but Sabine grew red. ' Enough of mine have been struck by that treacherous thief whom you call your lord,' said she. 'Now is the near time for striking again. I am Renny of Coldscaur. And I go to the King.' ' But will the King help you, madam ? said Blanchmains doubtfully. * The King hath trouble of his own as I hear.' * The King is my cousin,' said the little lady. ' Cousin ? Oh, Lady of Graces ! ' stammered Firmin, and fell upon his knees. Sabine fell upon hers before him, her love awake and crying. * Never kneel to me, dear lord,' she murmured. She took his face in her hands and guided him to kiss her mouth. Renny doted ! ' Come in, come in, o' God's name ! ' cried Blanchmains, ' or the King will have no cousin by to-morrow.' * Go with Blanchmains, my sweet lady,' Firmin urged her. Sabine obeyed him. Blanchmains, whose one object was to get her lady away, saw now many difficulties in the way of a wedding. The cousin of the King ! And going to the King with Firmin at her hand ! This was CHAP, ix DEEDS OF BLANCHMAINS 97 a risky business ; but Sabine was rooted to it, would not stir without him. ' I love him,' she said. ' I have given him all I have. He is my lord, and I am his wife.' ' Then, madam,' said Blanchmains, * if it must be it shall be. Let me procure his summary dismissal as the first step in the business.' Sabine frowned a good deal over this. It savoured of ruse, and the Rennys had the knack of taking straight roads. * Very well, madam,' said Blanch- mains, ' then let me tell you this. You will be stabbed on the third night of leaving this place if you go to work openly. The Earl of Pik- poyntz is lord of this shire ; you his prisoner.' { It shall be as you propose,' said Sabine, after a pause. Everything was as Blanchmains proposed after this little skirmish. Shrike the Chamberlain obedi- ently gave Firmin his wages and bade him be off. Firmin went to lie hid at Melmerfarrow, a mountain town some twenty miles from Speir. A week was given to the quieting of Dame Clotilda's spasms ; Bubo, the hunchback, was persuaded to act priest he had nothing but minor orders to his credit, but Sabine was royally ignorant of such matters. Then one fine morning the little lady, flushed and bright-eyed, rode up the Valley of Stones at a canter, two grooms (one being Bubo) pounding in her track. She sobered down through Melmer- farrow, which is on the shoulder of the mountain and must be climbed ; and three miles beyond it, where the rocks beset the road, she dismounted. She gave her Mass-book to Bubo, bid the other H 98 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i fellow wait with the horses, and went slowly up the path. Half-way to the top was a little oratory, with a chapel dedicated to Saint Leo a desert place almost covered with bryony and bramble. Here was Firmin, wet with apprehension, bleeding where he had bitten his lips. The red spot seemed to burn on his white face. Bubo went in first, lit the candles on the altar and vested for his iniquity. He dared his mockery of Mass ; Sabine alone of the huddled party was unfaltering. Firmin was abject. Yet the thing was done. Bubo returned to his mate below, and Firmin led his bride into the oratory hard by. It was late before she came down to the horses, dark before she reached Speir. Next day, at dawn, she set out, cloaked and hooded, to join her lover with all the money she could win together in the flap of her saddle. She went alone, unwatched saved byBlanchmains' restless eyes. She was to meet Firmin at Melmerfarrow and ride for the coast. Thence, as she hoped, a smack would take them to Imber's mouth, if not to Maintsonge, the royal city, itself. When she was a speck upon the dusty road, the white-faced girl flew up the Priest's steps like a bird. She could hardly conceal her delight ; she called Shrike to her and took his hand in both hers. ' My friend,' she said, ' guess now what happened while we were snoring.' The black gaped at her. * My lord is here ? ' ' That which will bring him has been done. The little lady is away.' CHAP, ix DEEDS OF BLANCHMAINS 99 ' Good Saints help us ! ' cried Shrike, a Christian when moved. ' Ah, indeed, let them,' she agreed, seldom moved in that direction. ' And do you think she has gone alone, my Shrike ? ' Shrike grinned and snapped his fingers. * Squire Firmin for a hundred pound ! ' ' He has found out the way indeed,' said Blanchmains. Shrike mused. ' I might have guessed it. I should have guessed it : 'tis quite of my matter. Tut, tut, tut ! I'm a fool, missy, for all my fine brains.' ' And I with you, Shrike. What now ? Should we cry, Hunt is up ? Should we fetch home the Earl ? ' Shrike showed the whites of his eyes. ' Ah, missy, missy, never in life ! Eh, the cat, the cat her head in a trap ! Let her feel the teeth ! ' He leapt about, waving his arms and letting off volleys from his fingers. Soon he sobered. * Who's to face the Earl, missy ? Who shall beard him ? ' She took it coolly. * You or I, Shrike. He is not due yet time enough. He should come home by Cantacute, or he may risk Fauconbridge. Stay you here, friend ; meet him boldly when he comes, and never fail of your story. Listen. They went off separately he dismissed for his liberties taken, she after solemn warning from Clotilda and me and you. Give up Bubo's crooked neck, if you choose. But above all, never flinch. I carry the same tale down to Cantacute this very night. Never speak a word to Clotilda be as ignorant as she is ; never so ioo THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i much as look at Nitidis. If she guessed she'd coax it out of you in a corner for you are jelly with women, good Shrike. Remember, and all will be well. Good-bye.' The more Shrike thought of it the more he liked it. His enemy had struck herself lower than he could ever have got her. Lord, Lord, what a tale he could make of it ! He was not a man of feeling for nothing. Dame Clotilda, in high alarms, urged a pursuit. It was easy to hoodwink her with half-a-dozen tales of failure. She relapsed into fearful imbecility, and Shrike, waiting, hugged his treasure. Blanchmains was in a Cantacute bed by the next morning, having done her fifty miles on end. She need not have lathered her horse ; the Earl was not expected for a couple of weeks. But he had sent on Frelus, his lieutenant, with the bulk of his troops. Frelus and Blanchmains were old friends. CHAPTER X BETWEEN CAMPFLORS AND CANHOE To his glorious lady, the Lady Mabilla de Renny, at Canhoe this, for pity. Spell over the whispers of the wind, Soul of my soul, call upon the sea to make more plain his moaning, lean your cheek against pine-stems that their words may thrill your ear, lay in your sweet bosom a flower of the heath : one and all shall declare, Lanceilhot is your true lover. I sit alone thinking ; yet not alone, for I have your image in my heart. When it grows dusk, with silence over all the city, I turn to my heart and say, Open, thou treasure- house, let forth thy treasure. Then on a beam of soft light steppeth out Mabilla, in a blue gown. Neck and arms gleam like moon-rays, pretty head is the moon, and its cloudy bawdekin is chequered with stars. There smiling she stands, her daring self, and I fall a-praying. Thus always goeth my vigil his course. By dawn I am at my books : 'tis your slim finger points the page. You lean over my shoulder ; I have your breath, the living touch of you ; and, c Ah, God ! * I cry, c let me alone.' I go to chapel you hover unseen ; to dinner I hear you laugh at the lector's nasal drone. The stifling after- noons my mates and I spend in class. They yawn and spur each other under the benches ; but I hold my heart fast lest you should fly away. Sweet lady, proud lady, let me kiss the hands that hold my scroll ! 102 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOKI News of the West you shall have. There are come letters of array from the Court, that great store of pro- vision be made in granaries and granges against a winter campaign. On what account, whether for crusade or frank adventure, we cannot learn. My lord Don John may be sought in this. He is still with the King, who holds revelry with jousting in the South parts. Two heretic friars have been burned at Cragarn. Here, in public Disputation before the Chancellor and Deans of Colleges, it was debated : An magno ingenio sit decor Humilitas^ and successfully held against all comers that it was not. I think much of Renny, and at times break into music but, sweet lady, proud lady, there is but one Renny for your slave. LANCEILHOT. To the worthy poet and scholar, Master Lanceilhot Paulet this, at his lodging at Leonardsheart at Saint Save, by a sure hand. I will not take the pastimes you advise, good Lanceil- hot, for the wind, the sea, the pines and the flowers of heath are my loving friends, and I shun to find them impertinent. You also I should shun by rights, and know not how to do if you write me such letters. Fie then, my friend, remember your vow ; cease to protest so much of service and serve me more. Pluck out the little image that lights you to bed. Tu ne cede mails sed contra audentior ito. I will give you news, though we burn no friars. My uncle, the Prince-Bishop, I find to be tall and white-handed, a great smiler, fond of ladies, much my servant. Less a Bishop than a Prince, I think, and less a man than either. He would make a good greyhound for the hall : his manners are fine and he will lie at your feet all day. My cousin Hold is also tall, smiles also, is languid and golden-haired. To me she seems idle, but to my brother the Viscount an aureoled saint. Send Heaven he treat her so ! for I see he is for storming the altar. She, I think, is inclined for more earthy homage. She is a beautiful lady, very kind to LETTERS 103 your friend for whose sake I say not. We are for the enemy shortly, and should break the Pikpoyntz border come Saturday. Already our herald has gone in. You may write to me at Speir, but soberly, I pray you. For this I have a safe messenger, Faunce the reeve, taking writs for the Halimote Court. God be good to you and your friend. M. DE R. Postscriptum. There is great talk here of marrying me to my lord D J . To this I shake the head. God alone knoweth what my destinies are or are not ! If the assassin hath wed my cousin Renny they say she must renounce the fief. It falleth then to me. The greatness of this might tempt me to lift up my head ; yet at times I feel rather that I must bend my knees. Farewell. Pray for your Mabilla. ' His ' Mabilla ! Lanceilhot at Saint Save knelt kissing his letter, with closed aching eyes. Mabilla at the same hour was setting out from Canhoe, hers wide with wonder to see the soaring of her thought. Her heart rose as her thought towered. * Ah, God, the Girdle of Renny, the Robe and the Crown ! And the Crown for me ! ' The great matter of the Prince's proposals had, you perceive, been put to her. The marriage which was to lift her level with the throne was not new : in a sense it had grown up with her. Now that it was near and looming she gulped the Prince while thinking of the principality. Marvilion ! That stately shire, never seen, imaged on that account the more dim-horizoned, having castles and broad forests and fair cities within it Cap- Dieu and Minster Merrow, Fording-cross and Renny Helm ; having above all that wooded io 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i bluff whereon stood, tower by tower, the great hold of the Rennys. All this to be hers ! And she ? She heard the shattering trumpets, then her style: Trh-haulte, tres-puissante, renommee Princesse, Ma Dame Mabilla, par la grace de Dieu Reini de Coldscaur, Dame de Marvilion, cousine de la Vierge Marie, cousine du Roy. Investiture, the golden chain, the solitary glory, her name ennobling her fief ah, well to say, Pray for Mabilla ! She lifted her high little head and clear-eyed fronted the East, where Speir and the enemy of her house stared at the sky from their misty crags. She drew a deep breath, her quick blood leapt in her cheeks, she spurred forward beyond the troop. In and out of the dewy pinewoods which cover Logres like a curtain she led the way, and between her parted lips sucked in the great air. She gathered strength with effort ; it was not all her fancy which showed the prelates her uncles, and the rest of the train, subservient to her humour. They, poor souls, were feeding in her the pride which had always been Renny's undoing. The dome of the Renny crown dazzled them all alike. CHAPTER XI PIKPOYNTZ MUSTERS You may judge Blanchmains as you will, but her spirit shall be judged by the fact that she waited for her lord in the Council Chamber at Cantacute in the full expectation that she would never leave the place alive. She thought he would probably strangle her, since she was a woman. With men she knew his way a crashing blow from his fist in full fore-head, and down went the victim like a steer. He was no stabber, this Earl, carried nothing into battle but his axe ; but his fists were like bludgeons. The girl must have had courage, for though she valued that slim white throat of hers above the whole world, she determined, in her panic, to face what she had reasoned out in cold blood. ' It is a matter of nerves, I fancy,' she said to herself, ' since it is not my death but the shock of his rage I fear.' The blank look, the driving storm besetting his wild eyes, those awful swelling veins in his block of a neck, the working mouth of him ! She had seen him transfigured by rage to a wild beast : she owned to shirking that. Nevertheless she waited, and when he came, spoke. 105 io6 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i At first it had been as if her dreads were prophecies. The hulking red fellow had lurched against the door, then with a howl of broken gutturals sprung forward, caught her by the shoulders, and pinned her to the wall. Blanch- mains quavered, ' Ah, mercy, mercy ! ' ' Mercy, bastard ! ' he raved, shaking her as a dog a rat. ' This is your work, and by Hell you shall pay for it.' His great hands slid up her shoulders, in another moment they would hook at her neck. She staked everything on the last throw. ' Fool ! ' she shrieked at him. ' What am I here for ? You will be too late and learn nothing ! ' The shot told. Pikpoyntz dropped her, and himself dropped into his chair, panting. He stared before him out of starting red eyes, a foam on the beard about his lips. He let the girl pick herself up without an effort to help her. She got on to her feet and stood before him, struggling to master her breath. He took no notice of her, but went on working his tongue and opening and shutting his hairy hands. When she was mistress of her words and breath, she said her say, said it admirably, defending none, accusing none. The Earl sucked it in, and much of his rage with it. His grunts became fewer, his threats of wild death against all and sundry ceased. He began to look at Blanchmains again watching the movements of her gown as she stood before him. There was still a deep cleft between his brows, his fingers still tore at his beard ; but the spell worked. When he sent her for a horn of drink she knew she had won him. She fetched CHAP, xi PIKPOYNTZ MUSTERS 107 it herself, mixed it, held it over her head in front of him, curtsied for a sip, and took it smiling at him with her merry eyes over the brim. Then, when he had drained it dry, she sat on the arm of his chair, with her elbow on his leather-cased shoulder. He let her be there. She was exactly the Dalilah of this fire-red Samson. ' Well ? ' he grunted at length. * What shuffles will you try with me now ? ' She laughed low. ' Later, my Earl, later ! ' 'I must think, monkey. Off with you.' ' No, no, let me stay ! ' And she touched his head. * Let me stay : it is three years. Look now, how white I have kept my hands for you.' He glanced over his shoulder at her held-up hands. * Chalk-white, by the Holy Face ! ' 'You may kiss them, my red lord.' * I have no taste for kisses now, but by Heaven I can't resist you. Come here.' She settled herself in his arms, but was careful to give less than he asked. Soon she sat up. ' Love-making enough, my king. Affairs wait.' * Talk then, you black cat.' ' Listen. The Rennys will be at Speir before long. Their herald has come.' ' I have seen the fellow,' said the Earl ; ' leave the Rennys alone. Can we catch this Mistress Firmin ? ' ' We failed after she had been gone a day. She is at sea.' ' Who dared marry them ? ' ' They are not married, my lord. ' ' How do you know that, girl ? ' io8 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i ' I had it from Bubo.' ' Bubo ? That toad ? Was he in their counsels ? ' ' Ask him, my Earl.' ' I will, by God ! ' 1 All works well for you, my lord. You still hold the fief for your ward, taint or no taint.' ' You are a fool, monkey. If she is not married, she may yet marry.' ' It is your lordship is the fool, not your poor girl. I know that little pig-head. She will never leave her minion.' ' How am I to do, then ? * ' Sweet Virgin, how slow men can be ! You shall get him to leave her.' Pikpoyntz clasped her. ' I take you, my sweet monkey. Slow and certain am I. You shall deal with him. He will follow you.' ' He shall follow me to Coldscaur, and she him. Then ' 4 Ah, ah ! ' came deep and slow from Pikpoyntz ' and then ' She took his great face in her hands and forced him to look at her. ' Earl of Pikpoyntz, Renny of Coldscaur, Lord of Marvilion ! ' she cried and to herself she said ' And I the Countess, O Saviour ! ' She and her thought were smothered in kisses. ' My boy-girl ! ' he laughed in a rapture, ' you have a sweet soft body, but a steel brain, by Our Lord ! ' * No compliments, O my King of the North. Advise.' CHAP, xi PIKPOYNTZ MUSTERS 109 ' I will advise,' said he. ' I do more ; I order. To-morrow you and Frelus shall go to Coldscaur. You shall have a treasury, an army what you will. Set the cage fair, and then decoy the bird for it.' ' That will be easy. They have no money. They are going to the King.' * They mustn't find him, Blanchmains.' ' They will not. Leave it to me. Renny shall be at Coldscaur under your hand.' ' By the Cross, you are a witch ! ' He caught her up and held her like a baby in mid-air. ' Come, my monkey. I have you till to-morrow ; and then to work.' Blanchmains, with Frelus and his troop, rode South to Coldscaur next day, as pretty a piece in a game of diamond cut diamond as you ever saw. She had hoodwinked her huge lover, no doubt ; yet she had been as blind as he. If she, for instance, had known as much of the Renny s as he did, she would not have been in such a hurry to go to Coldscaur. Nor would she have been pleased to understand that her Earl was fully as anxious to get her there as she was to go. Thus diamond cut diamond, as I say. Blanchmains had got rid of Sabine, and believed the way now clear to Coldscaur ; but her master knew better. Sabine was not the only marriageable Renny by any means. And if there was still marrying of heiresses to be done, Blanchmains was best out of the way. It was not the Earl's intention that she should ever see Speir again until he was master of Marvilion jure uxoris. no THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i So soon as she was well away to the South, the Earl himself rode North to Beauchef, where dwelt his aunt the Countess of Gru. She was a hideous old lady, very rich, wrinkled, bearded and wicked- eyed ; but she was full of spirit and had grown old in courts. He trusted her. ' My lady Aunt,' said he, * two or three years ago, as you will remember, I fell foul of Renny. We came to blows ; he got the worst of the scuffle, and I got the heiress. It was time I married whom better than her ? Yes, yes ; but now the little rogue has given me the slip while I have been nursing her inheritance ; she is off with one of my esquires deuce knows whither. She has done for herself, as you will see when I tell you that she believes herself a wife ; but meantime she has nearly done for me. My petition of Wardship and Marriage is still with the King ; the Renny bishops with the Renny heiresses-expectant are at my gates : what is to be done ? I need not tell you that Blaise Renny was a poisonous beast. Did you ever know one of that race who was not ? ' ' Nephew,' said the Countess of Gru, ' you need not tell me anything further. If I am to help you, the less I know of your doings the better. Go away and let me think.' She shut her twink- ling eyes and began to twiddle her thumbs in the way she had. The Earl bowed himself out of her chamber. The old Countess continued to blink and turn thumb over thumb for nearly an hour. Then, touching a hand-bell, to the page who appeared CHAP, xi PIKPOYNTZ MUSTERS 1 1 1 she said, ' Send my nephew to me.' The Earl poked his red head in at the door before the youth had turned to find him. He had been waiting outside. * Nephew,' said she, her eyes tight shut> * I have two ends to serve in this business yours and your honour's. We will not inquire why these ends are two instead of one ; I hope I know what is due to my family, and it would be very strange if I had forgotten my manners. I must try to accommodate both. Your present interest is clearly to get that girl back into Coldscaur. She is to be your ward ; you will have the marrying of her (for what it is worth) ; and, mind you, you will never hold the lands without her. Now I will tell you the whole of my thought. You will do well to look rather carefully at the heiress-expectant ; further, you must humour their Reverences the bishops, and convince them (if you can) of your honesty. May I say that I had rather that your task than mine ? I am an old woman, Pikpoyntz, soon tired. Now let me deal with the interests of honour. I under- stand that the two Renny cousins are coming with their uncles. Very right and proper. These great people know what is due to the head of their house ; for head the little runagate is, rascal or no rascal. The girls are brought in, plainly, to serve about their young cousin and chief, to make a court for her. Well ! they will not find her. They will find you instead a poor exchange, let me add. I know something of your state at Speir, Pikpoyntz ; but I see what I choose to see. The thing will never do. Have you still that white- faced baggage in the house ? ' ii2 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i The Countess of Gru suddenly opened her little eyes and shot them so piercingly at her nephew that the great man shifted his feet. * Mistress Blanchmains has gone to Coldscaur, my lady,' he said. ' Then,' replied the Countess briskly, ' I will go to Speir myself to receive these ladies. I know what is due. The Rennys may be black-hearted, murdering dogs ; but they are the Salt of the earth, and at least chiefly murder each other. As for you, my friend, you will stay away at Cantacute, and not come to Speir until I send for you. Now you may go.' The Earl kissed his aunt's hand and rode away, very well pleased with his affairs. That is why the cavalcade from Canhoe, when it had wound its way up the long road that twice encircles before it reaches the walls of Speir, was received with great ceremony at the Outer Gate, with guard of honour, cloth of estate, squires and ladies, a herd of servants and three heralds. Havilot frowned and Grand-Fe smiled awry ; but fine manners prevailed. Each put on the best face he could when he found himself welcomed in the Hall by the old Countess of Gru, leaning upon her crutched staff, venerable in brocade. ' Ah, my lord Prince-Bishop, I am fortunate to greet a friend,' said she, with a stately little droop of the body. The Prince-Bishop, who knew her well, did her reverence. Bishop Stephen, whom he presented, bowed stiffly. The Countess saw him glare about for his niece and chieftain. ' You CHAP, xi PIKPOYNTZ MUSTERS 113 have two nieces to account for to me, Lord Bishop,' she said as hardy as an old thief ' before I account for the other. Let us know each other.' The Prince-Bishop interposed, led up Mabilla by the hand. ' It is the privilege of an older friend, my lady,' said he. * This is my niece Mabilla from the West. Let wit bow to wisdom.' Mabilla curtsied ; the Countess tapped her cheek on the recovery. ' I hope you are as good as you are handsome, my dear,' says she. Mabilla hoped that the old lady, for her part, might be better. * I shall try to prove it to your ladyship,' she answered, staidly enough. The Countess was delighted. ' I will believe whatever you tell me, my dear,' she said. * Give me a kiss, if you please.' To the tall Donna Hold's curtsey she was civil, but proffered no kisses. 'A lazy fool,' was her private commentary. Viscount Bernart kissed hands. But the Bishop of Havilot was no longer to be denied. * Madam,' he said, ' I pray you to excuse my bluntness. We are not here for our delight, but in the first place to do homage to my niece, Renny of Coldscaur, and in the next to agree betwixt her and my lord of Pikpoyntz, as she may require of us. So far, we can serve neither business ; but one at least may be speedily done.' Though her head shook, though she blinked her sharp eyes, the old lady was his match. She moistened her lips, and then said her say deliberately. ( Your niece, Bishop of Havilot, has chosen of her own will to leave this house. My nephew, i n 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i the Earl of Pikpoyntz, would have been here but that he is searching for her. He will help you to all his knowledge as soon as he can.' Snaking like a leaf, but with a most dauntless eye, the little eldritch figure faced her enemies. The armed force still massed in the courtyard could have sacked the Castle for by her orders there were no more than fifty swords in the whole of it ; yet she was mistress there. Mabilla (greatly enamoured of courage) admired her silently ; but Bishop Stephen broke out again. ' By the Rood, my lady, but this is a weighty message,' he said in his ringing voice, ' and needs an answer too weighty for your ladyship's ears.' * An ear to accord in weight shall be lent it, my lord,' cried the old Countess ; and then * My ladies, my lords, the news is indeed heavy. You must help an old woman to bear the weight of it. But not now, not in riding gear. In the absence of my nephew, the Earl, I beg you to consider that you are my guests, as welcome as you will allow me to make you. Till the hour of supper, mesdames ; my lords, I leave you with my officers. The Chamberlain shall see to your retinue.' She bowed them right and ' left away. So she held the field. CHAPTER XII CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR GOING upstairs between the ranked serving- women, Mabilla encountered at the head of them the appealing gaze of Nitidis appeal with that adoration added which is always a flattery. 'That girl has kind eyes,' thought the lady, and stopping, touched her arm. ' Will you come and serve me, child ? ' said she. ' Pray you, my lady,' replied Nitidis with a falter, and followed. She dismissed her own women and, as soon as they were gone, turned to the trembler with a cheerful friendly face and a hand on each shoulder. The two were much of a height, but Mabilla had the ways as well as the ensign ia of a tall girl. ' Now, my child,' says she, * come tell me all about my cousin Renny/ The maid-of-honour curtsied ; Mabilla slipped an arm round her waist and led her to the window- seat. They sat together thus knit. ' What is your name, child ? ' ' Nitidis, my lady,' said the maid, quick- touched by the familiar use. "5 u6 THE SONG OF RENNY B oo Kl ' Well, Nitidis, tell me everything from the beginning.' Nitidis, dewy-eyed, ardent and voluble, emptied herself of confidence after confidence fact, surmise, deduction, imagination, analogy. It was a hotch - potch, savoursome if confused. The ' dead man's daughter ' who was to ' want for nothing,' the ominous name, Sabine ; the royal observances of the lady who uncovered before God and made men uncover before her, the lonely table in hall, her cold silent ways ; her sublime unconcern with the terrible Earl, then the ministra- tions of Sorges, the letters of Pikpoyntz, the approaching communion, Dame Clotilda solicitous, Shrike abject ; all this made for the enemy's enhancing, proved that if he was an enemy he was a courteous enemy. Mabilla pictured a captive princess wistful figure ; but Pikpoyntz stood behind her deferential. The sketch pleased ; but she required to be convinced. She was a girl who more distrusted her emotional side than despised it. When Nitidis stopped for want of breath, not zeal the cross-questioning began. ' The design is good,' thought Mabilla ; ' now I must dig for the foundations.' ' Was Renny unhappy, Nitidis, do you think ? ' * I cannot say, my lady ; she never spoke to me of her thoughts. She was the quietest little lady you ever saw for hours, ah, days ! she never spoke except to command.' * She spoke with nobody ? ' ' There was but one.' CHAP, xii CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR 117 ' To whom did she speak ? ' * To Firmin, my lady.' * Ah, to Firmin ! Leave Firmin for the present. Did she ever speak to your lord ? ' * Eh, but I have told you, my lady.' ' Nor saw him again after the day she was brought to him ? ' ' No, my lady.' ' Were you one of her women, Nitidis ? Whom else had she ? ' * She had me, my lady, and Blanchmains.' * BJanchmains ? Where is Blanchmains ? ' * I cannot tell you, my lady. She went to my lord at Cantacute.' * Did my cousin ever speak with Blanchmains ? ' 'Ah, no, my lady. At least, not until the end. She did not like Blanchmains.' * Ah. Do you like Blanchmains, Nitidis ? ' The girl started, then blushed, then looked down. Yes, my lady. I love Blanchmains.' ' Who is Blanchmains, Nitidis ? ' * I cannot tell you, my lady. She is said to be daughter of a great man ; but I never heard her speak of him nor of her mother.' 'Ah,' said Mabilla again. 'Oh' and 'Ah,' in infinite variety, are the staple of Campflors language, and run the whole gamut of the passions. After a frowning interval she said, ' Tell me what Blanchmains is to look at.' ' She is a thin girl, my lady, with black hair and eyes and a white face. She has very pretty hands and a soft voice. She was always very kind to me.' n8 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i * And were you kind to her, Nitidis ? ' Nitidis wondered. ' I, my lady ? * she asked. ' I love her. She was very kind to me.' * You Jove easily, child ? ' * I love those who are kind, my lady.' * Will you love me, if I am kind ? ' * Yes, my lady.' 'Then I will be most kind. Now tell me about Firmin, please.' Firmin also took on a gentler hue under the simple girl's recital. It appeared that he was of honourable birth, of handsome face, of great strength and courage, very circumspect. It appeared that the lady certainly led him on. In fine, he seemed a tall, blunt, honest youth who had won his prize upon his merits. * Upon my word,' thought Mabilla, ' cousin Renny may have been justified.' And she remembered that Renny of Coldscaur was not the only high-born lady adored from below. Upon her own bosom, at that moment, lay a letter. ' Sweet lady, proud lady ! ' was the burthen of it : the whole was vocal of a hot heart, no higher blooded than Firmin's, she was sure. And if the letter of a Lanceilhot could be so favoured by one Renny, why not the service of a Firmin by another ? Poor foolish boy ! sighed she, and determined to burn her letter. The fugitives fled to the coast, she learned, intending to get a smack which would take them to Maintsonge, where the King was. They must have reached it by now, must be at sea. But they had very little money, and even less CHAP, xii CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR 119 ability to husband what they had ; so Mabilla judged. ' Thank you, Nitidis,' she said at the end ; * I shall not forget that we are to be friends.' ' Oh, my lady, my lady ! ' cried the warm- hearted girl, in tears. ' I would give all I have to see her safe ! ' Mabilla was touched. 'You are a good girl, Nitidis, and shall have that reward. You shall see her safe, and I will show her to you safe. You may kiss my hand, if you please.' ' Please you, my lady,' said Nitidis, kneeling for the grace. The days passed by without news of Renny or sight of the Red Earl. Bishop Valeric trimmed his nails all the morning, and learned the resources of Speir by a question hazarded here and there ; Viscount Bernart watched the beautiful Donna Hold ; the beautiful Donna Hold affected not to be aware of him ; such talk as there was between them was full of reservations which charged ' Yes ' and * No,' and ' Are you well ? ' with fire. Bishop Stephen, with two esquires, roamed the waste places seeking somebody to* kill ; he saw nothing but birds and sorry sheep. Mabilla was much with the Countess of Gru. Out of the stores of a very fruitful experience that old lady fed her young friend. She plied her with this food for a week. Frankly, she was delighted with the girl. * My dear,' she said, when they were pretty familiar, * I tell you plainly that if your string of ancestors had had as much between them as you 120 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i have in one sparkle of your blue eye, there would have been no legend about the marriage-bed. The trouble would have been to keep it empty. No, no. I grant your greatness. I give you (if you must have him) your Pompilius Arrhenis the Roman Consul ; I give you your besotted pride, your fighting qualities ; I will allow (under protest) your consanguinity with Our Lady the Virgin ; but a grain of your wit would have prevented your slaughtering each other like so many pigs in a pen. Look at my nephew Pikpoyntz. By no means a man of fine intelligence but at least he kills strangers ! ' Mabilla admitted the respect- ability of this trait. The Countess tackled Don John. * So you are to marry the Prince ? I know his Grace very well. I may yet kiss your hand as my sovereign lady. The King's is bad blood- rotten blood. But we women have to learn that our husbands are counters in a game. At first we think they are the game itself. You will find Don John an equivocal counter. He is too womanish for you not to be depended upon.' * But I do not intend to depend upon him, Countess,' Mabilla objected ; * I shall depend upon myself.' 'So you may think, my dear. In that case you will find that you will be the counter and Don John the player. He will depend upon you. Pikpoyntz, now, is a rock. You may quarry in him for ever. Perhaps you will not get much gold ; but you will get no rubbish. You might mend the Constitution with my nephew's head.' Mabilla, like all girls blessed with humour, was only half blessed. She knew not the happiness of CHAP, xii CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR 121 laughing for pity, but could seize a jest well enough that had a sting in it. She laughed now ; and the Countess took another turn. ' I respect the clergy, my dear,' said the old lady, ' without pretending that they inspire me. If they are manly I think, 'Tis pity you are a priest, my fine fellow ! If they are sacerdotal my thought runs, God ! send me a man to deal with ! They are either men spoiled or spoilt men matter of pity or disgust. No offence to their lordships your kinsmen with whom I observe you have not yet picked a quarrel : one at least of them hath a bold heart. But, you will see, they will take a prejudiced view of this affair of yours. Ah, well ! When my red-headed nephew comes, my great, heavy-handed, blundering Pikpoyntz, do you know what I shall do, child ? I shall tap you on the shoulder and say in your ear, lock up your chattels, your jewels, your virginity ; down with your portcullis, out with your fascines of defence, cry, " Ah, saints ! " or " Misericorde ! " but behold, a Man ! ' * I am not sure that I greatly desire to behold such a man as this, Countess,' said Mabilla with a crook in her brows. She had so far kept an open mind upon the Earl of Pikpoyntz. The Countess laughed pleasantly. ' All young maids desire to behold such a man, though few confess it. But my thought was this To conclude this business you are come upon, a man of that sort is much to be desired. Whom have you ? Your half-brother ? An unblooded boy ! Bishop Stephen ? A hot-headed priest ! 122 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i Bishop Valeric ? A soft-headed priest ! I declare, child, 'tis you who should debate this affair with Pikpoyntz ! I would take your side. What is it, after all ? A border fray, one of a dozen. Renny raids Pikpoyntz, Pikpoyntz raids Renny the black cattle spend their nights crossing the passes. There has been war on our southern mark since my great-great-grandfather Rollo came over the sea. Speir has been gutted with fire ; now it is the turn of Coldscaur. To-morrow it will be Speir again, unless a wise little lady of my acquaintance chooses otherwise. But how shall we drum this into Uncle Stephen's mad head ? Pshaw ! As well try to drive the Sar into a sauce- pan. Well, there will be hot words and pray Heaven no worse. As for your little cousin, the present Renny by the grace of God she has taken her part. You know how much she has elected to do for the sake of your inheritance- Enough ! Kiss me, child ! I am tired and must go to sleep.' That evening, however, the Countess of Gru sent word to the Earl of Pikpoyntz that he might come up. He rode in next evening with considerable state, but none saw him till the hour of supper. The Bishops were out hunting, and the Viscount was kissing Holdis's hand. ' Mabilla, child,' said the old Countess of Gru, ' this night I show you a man. Run away now and be dressed ; then come for me, and we will go down together.' Nitidis, as the custom had grown to be, dressed her. ' The Earl your master is here, child,' said CHAP, xii CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR 123 the mistress. 'Yes, my lady,' whispered the maid. ' Has he frightened your voice away, Nitidis ? * ' He is terrible, my lady, when he is crossed.' * What has crossed him now ? ' ' The Lady Renny, my lady.' ' Ah ! Let me now see what I can do.' Then she attended the Countess of Gru, and together they went down the great stairway. The great stairway is very broad, and Mabilla by no means filled it ; yet as she came down, stiff and arrowy beside the hobbling old witch on her arm, she looked a little queen. Bright green velvet was her gown, stamped across the breast with her badge of a White Hart and her motto in Gothic letters, Plus tost Reini qe Reina. Her head was carried proudly ; her hair, pulled upward from the nape of her neck, carried it yet higher. The little glittering crown seemed hers by right, the strung emeralds round her neck to be burning in drifted snow. Serious, reflecting eyes, a tint of rose, a mouth of serious curves : blinking Pik- poyntz, by the fire, devoured her with his eyes. ' By God, what a maid for me ! ' The later golden vision of Donna Hold, smiling, more rosy than her cousin, more tenderly a beauty, did not stir him from his first dream. * I like a stiff" girl,' he thought, ' that is a slip of willow, easy to bend, nothing to break. But the other burning frost Mort dieu ! she'd queen it among the gods ! ' The Countess presented her nephew. The great fire-tinged head bent over her hand. The salutations over, she raised her grave eyes towards i2 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i his and set him blinking again. So by her candid look she urged him to speak. ' I am ashamed to come before you, madam.' * I can believe it, my lord.' * I have failed in my duty to my dead enemy. Yet I have searched two whole shires to find her. While I was making ready her own house, she left mine.' ' What need had her house of making ready, my lord ? ' * There had been war.' ' That is what I wish to know. Was it war, my lord, or ? ' Pikpoyntz raised his voice and hand. * I cry to all witness it was war.' * Let all hear you that can,' said Mabilla ; ' I hear you.' * Do you believe me ? ' * There are none left to gainsay you, my lord.' She kept very cool : he redoubled his protestation. * There is one, madam. It is she whom I have sought, and still seek. Her house is ready, her lands are at peace/ Mabilla still watched him unwinking. Pik- poyntz could not so compose his eyes. But he waited. Then she said again in a very grave voice, ' It was war ? And Renny fell ? ' * It was war/ said the Earl in his beard, ' and he fell.' The pause that followed was broken by a trumpet outside. The great doors were thrown open ; the dark showed gashed by torchlight and its gleam on iron. Then came the clatter of dis- CHAP, xii CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR 125 mount, and then the Bishop of Havilot strode up the hall. After him came his taller brother, booted but not armed ; then Viscount Bernart, who had been to the gates to meet them. Havilot and the Earl met midway and stood and watched each other. * At last, Earl of Pikpoyntz ! ' 4 At your service, Bishop of Havilot.' ' The soonest is the best, my lord.' ' Then that is now,' said the Earl. He returned to the ladies by the fire. ' Mes- dames, affairs will detain my lords and me. I pray you go to supper. My lady of Gru will be chatelaine. Mesdames, I will pay my debt to you when I have earned the right.' Turning to the enemy he said, ' Now, my lords,' and led the way to his Audience Chamber. Bifrons and Quern, two of his captains, and Beausobre, his secretary, attended him. The Bishops had theirs, and the Viscount a young esquire of his household. Pikpoyntz took the lead of affairs so soon as he was seated in his chair. ' My lords,' he said, * you will have learned that the news which disturbed your lordships came upon me with equal shock. I came back to my lands at the time you set foot upon them ; and what to you was one cross the more to me was a disaster, a blow at once to my ambitions and my honour. I will be frank with you, my lords. There had been bad blood between the dead chieftain of your house and myself for many years. I will not heap upon the dead the burden of reproach his fore- fathers may have left him, nor will I bring a 126 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i charge where there is none now to rise and give me the lie. I will say this, my lords. War broke out upon our borders where it had smouldered in my father's time. If I worked to prevent it, it availeth me little now seeing it is waged and over. It was an honourable, equal war. I am not unknown as a captain ; your lordships know the report of Blaise de Renny. If I beat him it was not his fault : I take leave to say it was my merit. Beat him I did, in a fair field, more than once. In a fair field he fell, and with him fell his heir, young Blaise. Do you blame me that I slew a child? My lords, how will you advise a bolt where it shall fall ? How whisper in the arrow's ear, "Save the young man's life, he is Renny's heir " ? Enough of this. As it was with Blaise and young Blaise, so it was with the others. They died on the walls of their house. They were buried together, honourably, in the Minster at Renny Helm, and the monument of their great- ness, of their valour and unhappy death, is there to testify that Gernulf of Pikpoyntz is no lurking enemy. I am not one that stabs, my lord. I work in the open. Mary de Renny slew herself before my eyes. No sharper slid the knife to her heart than to mine. Thus they fell all, save a child. And fairly I say, and fairly tell your lordships, she fell to me with the lands and castles I had won. She was my ward, I had the marrying of her. For four years she has been my faithful charge, wanting for nothing ; queen of my lands and her own, queen of Marvilion and Pikpoyntz now finally at peace. If you doubt of this, if you CHAP, xii CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR 127 think I He, ask my secretary, ask my servants, ask the whole shire : they will answer you/ The Prince- Bishop waved his hand ; but Bishop Stephen folded his arms. The Earl went on. ( I thank my lord the Prince-Bishop. I will now go further with your lordships. This last news has murdered my hopes, for in Renny of Coldscaur I have lost the best witness I could have, the daughter of my beaten foe. More than that. I am of those, my lords, who make too much war to love it and see too little of Peace to weary of her. There was a way open to comfort the borders, to build up my house, to mend the breach in Renny's house, to win honour with justice, and the reward of toil. Our hating houses might have been one. What ! you cry at me, you will make Marvilion and Pikpoyntz one earldom ? To that I say, True : but I make your kinswoman my Countess, and my son shall be equal de Renny and de Salas.' ' Never while I live,' muttered the Bishop of Havilot ; ' never while you can die, you dog.' ' My lords,' said Pikpoyntz, * I will make an end. If I have warred, it has been forced upon me. If I have prevailed, it is God who giveth the victory. If my enemy has fallen, it is an open fate of soldiers. If I could have amended his mishaps and redeemed his loss, but now am frustrate once more it is God's disposition of us. In blaming me you reproach your Maker.' The Earl of Pikpoyntz, a great hand on each knee, sat still, watching the effect of his speech. 128 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i It was not easy to be seen, this effect ; because Bishop Valeric had kept the command of his face, and Bishop Stephen had never had it from the moment of their first confronting. Yet Havilot, when he sprang up to speak, spoke (for very different reasons) the mind of both. * Earl of Pikpoyntz,' said he, with the fever of rage ill-concealed, * your words are fair, but there are no facts to bear them up. This witness you offer us is no witness at all. The only witness is gone. Until she is here the head of my house I shall say nothing. Produce her. You say that you have Wardship, that you have Marriage. We will speak of that when I can believe that there is a ward to be warded or a maid to marry/ c There is a ward for wardship, my good lord,' said Pikpoyntz, choosing his words ; * but, upon my life, there is no maid.' Havilot glared ; Grand- Fe interposed. ' You mean, my lord, that she has married herself to this Firmin ? ' ' I did not say so, my lord Prince.' * What is this ? ' cried Havilot with an oath. * The holy truth, my lord,' Pikpoyntz answered, steady as a rock. c She thought to have married Firmin ; but either Firmin dared not, or he cared not. They are not wedded.' ' You lie, Pikpoyntz,' said the Bishop of Havilot deliberately. The Earl started and touched the handle of his sword. Then he checked himself. Turning to one of his men, he said, * Go fetch me Bubo the page.' CHAP, xii CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR 129 Bubo's panic of confession was wrung from him by his roaring lord. Firmin's threats, bribes, and what not had driven him to his deed. He had shammed priest. Their lordships could see what he was, a poor hunchback. He clung to the most merciful feet he saw and howled for their mercy. They were the young feet of Bernart of Joyeulx Saber, and would have sheltered him perhaps if they had dared ; but as it was, Pikpoyntz spurned him out of the chamber, and turned to Havilot. * Is this witness enough, lord Bishop ? ' Havilot, choking, clenched his rage into his fists, but could not keep it out of his voice. It shook there. * It is witness of infamy here or there, Pikpoyntz ! Infamy black as night all about us ! By Christ my Saviour, I will bottom it though I cut my way with a sword.' ' Peace, brother, peace,' said Grand-F, very white. * We will confer together, if you please.' ' The way is open, my lords,' said Pikpoyntz. ' Beausobre, the door.' So the conference for that day went out in storm. But for Pikpoyntz at least a ray of light showed the hope of new day. When he went to pay his respects to the Countess of Gru, he found Mabilla with her. He bent again before the young girl. * Well, my nephew, what speed with their lord- ships ? ' said the Countess. * Too much on their part, yet too little for me,' he replied. K 130 THE SONG OF RENNY Mabilla rose and looked at him. ' Did you convince my uncle that there had been war, my lord ? ' ' Lady, it is not war that smarts in his blood, but defeat. He is not so proud as you.' * They call her The Proud Lady in her country,' said the Countess, blinking and shaking. * They do well, my lady,' said the Earl. The maid of the steady eyes stood between. ' Neither defeat nor war is shameful, as I read,' said she. Pikpoyntz glowed colour of a flame. Like a fire his hope surged. ' You take my word, madam ! By Heaven, do you take it ? ' She had one hand at her necklace, fingering the emeralds. She looked as delicate as a piece of Sevres biscuit, with her colour of tender rose ; but Pikpoyntz knew better. He thought he had never seen water so deep and still as her thought- ful eyes. Then her breath quickened till her resting hand was like weed, swayed by a brimming tide ; the hand loosed hold of the toy and fell lower ; she was thinking, wondering, daring. The hand fell lower and stayed ; it pressed her heart. She was very young. ' Take my word, madam, take it, take it,' stammered the glaring Earl. ' Take it, and I care for nothing in the world.' The girl still wondered, her lips began to move. The Countess watched her like a cat. * I should be ashamed to be your guest, and to doubt you, my lord,' said Mabilla. Her women came to take her to bed. The CHAP, xii CONCLUSIONS AT SPEIR 131 Countess kissed her twice, Pikpoyntz knelt down. She went without any more words. ' By the God that shall judge me, I have found a woman at last,' said the Earl aloud. * You have found what you are not fit to look upon, as you know quite well,' said his aunt. ' That child is priceless. The God that shall judge you should have no mercy upon you if you misuse that gift. Now go and pray.' But the Earl stayed on, roaring his ecstasies half the night. CHAPTER XIII A FORTIORI BUBO the hunchback, having served the turns of Blanchmains, Firmin, and his master, was hanged at nine o'clock in the morning by the last, as soon as there had been time to think of him. This was Pikpoyntz justice. * I am not Bull of the North for nothing,' would have been the Earl's comment. The fellow had done him by no means a bad turn as things had fallen out, but he had deceived his lord and must pay. He paid directly after morn- ing chapel. Walking up the Long Walk alone after this ceremony, the Earl saw coming towards him a little figure that made his heart jump. Again he swore to himself, as he had sworn every day he had spent with her, * By God, what a maid for me ! ' A mist blew over his eyes so that he could hardly see her after the first shock. No woman and he had seen enough had troubled him so before ; yet she always did. I think that she, in the depths of her bold little breast, was troubled no less. She was very grave and very pale pale to the lips, which, as usual, were dry. 13* CHAP, xni A FORTIORI 133 He took her hand and kissed it. If he had ever worn headgear it would have been off by now. * My lord,' said Mabilla, looking him full in the face, ' I have certain questions to put to you, and have chosen the first moment open to me. I wish to speak of my cousin Renny. Will you hear what I have to say ? ' He bowed his head. ' You have the fullest right to ask, lady, and my first duty is to declare to you. Speak there- fore.' ' You do not know where my cousin is ? ' ' I would give all I have to know it, madam.' ' Why so, my lord ? ' ' That I might take her to Coldscaur.' ' Is that your whole desire concerning her, my lord ? ' * It is now my whole desire. The country is at peace, the castle in good order ; all is ready.' * Is that where you have sent Blanchmains, my lord ? ' The Earl started. What was this ? He had nothing to do, however, but answer. * I have sent her to Coldscaur ; yes.' * My cousin did not love her.' Pikpoyntz now made up his mind. ' She had reason to love her, if she had but known what I suppose she did not know.' ' Who is Blanchmains ? ' ' She is the daughter of your uncle the Prince- Bishop, my lady.' Mabilla coloured deeply and bit her lip. She 134 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i did not venture any further in that direction. Pikpoyntz did. ' She is a lady of great discretion. I can trust her thoroughly. She has with her my lieutenant, Frelus, and a stout garrison. They could hold the Scaur against a host.' * And now Marvilion awaits its lady ? ' the girl repeated while she was trying to regain herself. * It awaits Renny. As such she must go in, for such she is. She shall never fail of all honour I can pay her. She is my ward. I had hoped to make a closer tie between us but I think I may thank God I was put out.' * You had intended, my lord ? ' * I had intended marriage, my lady. I had intended to make a permanent peace between my country and hers. There has never yet been peace there. I had the chance.' Mabilla was greatly affected by this news. She opened her eyes wide, was excited. The Earl of Pikpoyntz, considered abstractly, was a mushroom beside a Renny ; but this Earl, this hard yet honest enemy, this huge fighter gravely seeking peace, was re- spectable. Marvilion and Pikpoyntz what a royal appanage ! Renny had chosen Firmin ! It was like a Renny, and therefore admirable : yet Mabilla sighed, as she considered the Renny crown. ' My cousin chose her own husband, it seems, my lord,' she said. ' As we say, Renie pas Reini. 1 ' But you, my lady, yourself, you say, Plustosl Reini qe Reina, said the Earl in a deep voice. To this she answered nothing. Looking with CHAP, xin A FORTIORI 135 half-shut eyes at the ardent creature before him, he wondered how he could keep his arms from her. Who, O Heaven, would be queen if she could be so rare as this ? Flesh she was, and therein lay her charm for him ; yet flesh made subtle by poignant pride of soul, and therein lay the awe that held him. It held him shaking in every limb before her. She spoke first. ' My lord,' she said, ' you have spoken me very fair. I am glad now that I told you of my trust. I wish my cousin could have known of this. She might have thought longer what she was about. One thing only I must ask you. If she can be found, if she return to her lands, what will be her husband's position towards you ? ' ' Oh, proud little lady, what have I to do to you now ? ' thought he. And then, ' Dare I do it ? ' And then, * My prize ! Is it not worth everything, by our Lord ? ' * He is not her husband, my lady,' he said quietly. Mabilla had not dreamed of this ; it took her off her guard, sent the blood ebbing from her face and then brought it back in a vivid flow. Once more he had made her hand fly to her side. ' Your news is terrible. Do my uncles know of this?' * It is terrible. I told them a week ago. And I have punished those who brought it upon us.' 'You have done well, sir.' She had recovered herself. The flash of the new fact had lit up the girl's path for her. She saw how near it brought 136 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i her to her throne. The Renny crown was in sight : and then recurred her earlier thought Marvilion and Pikpoyntz ! and she looked to go. Pikpoyntz saw her waver, but like a wise man determined to take no profit out of that. He would wait his time, let his weight tell, get others to work for him when the hour for working came. * Your kinsmen refuse me, but you do not refuse me, my lady/ he said soberly. * We are allies in this, that we both seek one person, and for her one thing. Is it not so ? ' 'I think it is,' said Mabilla. And then she looked up at him and held out her hand. He took it and held it as long as he dared, but did not resist her withdrawal. Down upon his knees he dropped, and kissed the thing entrusted before he let go. When she had gone he lifted up his arms towards the sky. ' God send me to Hell if I do more villainy ! ' he groaned, as though he knew how that must be answered. For, indeed, the poor wretch was up to his neck in villainy. Yet what remained to be done he did deliber- ately, as one that goes through a part by rote. He strode back to his castle, into his Council Chamber, and sent a civil message, begging the attendance of their lordships the Bishops. Their lordships kept him on the fret for half-an-hour : then came first the implacable Havilot, then Grand-F poking his head like a stork, then young Bernart of Joyeulx Saber. ' My lords,' said the Earl, ' I am entitled to CHAP, xin A FORTIORI 137 know what has settled down in your lordships* minds since our last conference. Your lordships have had a week to consider it. During that time I have sought my ward diligently ; but un- happily I still seek her.' Havilot stood up with a wagging finger. * Earl of Pikpoyntz,' he said, * we would have you know that the House of Renny is neither friendless nor empty of resource of its own. It hath never yet failed to bite the biter, if not with law upon its side, then without law. In the present case, my lord, the House of Renny hath justice and the Justiciar. It hath the King's writ and the King's self. The alliance that is preparing which is of old preparation needs only to be named to show you how we stand. The heiress - apparent of Coldscaur my niece Donna Mabilla will wed the heir-apparent of the throne. If the King do not justice to his own blood, then there is no justice. Do you follow me, my lord ? ' Pikpoyntz followed only too well. He ground his teeth together, but said nothing. Havilot went on : he was no diplomatist. * By your act since I cannot speak plainer with my host by your act Renny of Coldscaur became a child, a young maid. By your act she came hither ; by your act she hath cast herself away. You tell us that you claim Wardship and Marriage. Wardship you have lost. Marriage remains. We are willing to give you that on terms.' ' Brother, brother,' cried Grand-Fe in a desper- ate stew, ' I beg of you to let me speak. The affair is most delicate.' 138 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i Pikpoyntz, who saw how delicate it was going to be, gave a gross laugh. * You are in a devil of a hurry to get me a boy, my good Bishop,' said the giant, grinning. * You might at least let me choose a clean bed.' 4 My lord, ah, my good lord,' the Prince- Bishop interposed, highly nervous, ' she is still Renny of Coldscaur.' ' She is still a man's mistress, my lord Prince,' the Earl rejoined, keeping a steady eye upon him, ' and she may stop so for me.' There was really no comment whatever to be made upon this, though Bishop Stephen saw his scheme shrivel coil by coil. Pikpoyntz would (as it were) have rolled over on his tongue his adver- sary's undoing, if he had not been too much in earnest on his own account. * My lords,' he said, ' I will tell you what I am prepared to do on terms. It will be for you to decide whether you are prepared to agree to it on terms. Let her keep the Renny fief under my wardship until she is of age. Let Marvilion be laid to Pikpoyntz, and the border quiet. If by the time she is of age I can marry her to some fool well, I will do it and lose the sum of my sword's buying. If I cannot find a fool who is fool enough, she will hold it for life. This I will do upon terms.' * What are these terms of yours, my lord ? ' cried Havilot, at his wits' end. ' I will tell you that when I know myself, my dear lord Bishop,' said the Earl. Then the con- ference broke up. CHAP, xni A FORTIORI 139 If Havilot knew not his will, Mabilla knew. Our young lady was no novice in affairs of the hearts of men. She had read the heart of Pik- poyntz like an open book in the morning's inter- view ; but she had read it as plainly in every hot look, every shift of his ungainly body, every blink of his troubled eyes or mutter of his hoarse voice. She knew that she would have to reckon with it, therefore (being the girl she was) she set to work to read her own. Marvilion and Pikpoyntz ! a goodly fief; a wedge, she thought, driven down to the very navel of the realm ; a broad core of lordship, the realm's marrow it might be. With that, a man. Against it, Barsaunter sad stretch of sand and bleached grey grass ; and, cut off from it, Marvilion. With those, Don John ! From the height at which her birth placed her, all men could be judged upon their merits. Well ! what had she to say here ? She declared to herself that she cared nothing for the merits of men ; she had never held speech with Love when he came knocking at her heart's door, and thought that she might leave him out of account. She loved neither of these men ; she loved no one. But the Renny Crown that great dome of gold which Sabine had put aside ! Ah, she must have that ! It came to her by right ; no need of a Pikpoyntz or Prince John to reach it for her ; but if she had it she must marry, and of the two fates, to be Countess of Pikpoyntz seemed the more tolerable. She knew nothing of love of that she was very sure and regarded marriage as an alliance of two sovereigns of states. She knew that it 140 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i would touch her more nearly than that her mind was no unwritten book ; she knew she would have to reckon with a man ; there would be commerce not to be delegated to a steward. De- liberately she put this out of her head. Such considerations, she thought, were unhealthy. When the time came to act, she would act. She was fully of her friend's mind the Countess of Gru's : her husband must be a counter in her game, and not she in his. So, then, she took deliberate survey of the red Earl. What had he ? Experience ! Ah, there was a thing she could value ! No doubt of his experience ; the man was seamed with it. Mabilla, the young girl, delicately stepping into the world, not so much intending to take posses- sion of it as aware that such was her prerogative Mabilla found this seamed Earl admirable for his scars. He was seamed till he was nearly hideous a red bullet-head cropt close, small reddish eyes which showed her unguessed twink- ling deeps of reminiscence, a great square jaw hedged with a spiky beard (fearful defences of that grim oracle, his tongue), a neck like a bull's, and shoulders which might lift a church porch and not crack. He was six foot three to her poor five. Look at his knotty, hairy hands. What iron threads of what lordship might they not hold ? He never bore shield or helm in warfare, never covered up his hands ; he had beaten the Rennys, pierced the inviolate Scaur ; he was Bull of the North ; and now he sought to break another Renny ! She was riding as she thought CHAP, xin A FORTIORI 141 of these things ; her colour rose high with the gallop, or the indignity of this last flash. She set her little teeth, tightened her lips, and let the sharp breath whistle through her nose. Would he tame her ? The thought that he might try gave her heart ; the conviction that he would try gave her a throb of curiosity. Coming back from her gallop she was handed a letter from Lanceilhot which, in answer to her Canhoe postscript, dealt with marriage. * In a holier state than this of ours,' he wrote, * there was perhaps no marriage ; for love stood for all. But then to Love came Marriage grinning and said, " Give me the ordering of thy house. Thou shalt have ease to suck thy sweets ; let me drudge for thee." Ah, fool ! He hath done it, and now there is no love, for marriage stands for all. My blessed lady, marry thy lean Prince if thou wilt. Thy lovely body will be his, which it will be no more sin in him to take than if a man should spit in the mass-cup before Mass. The grossness can but enhance the glory of the hidden God. Thy soul, lady, thy holy soul like an altar flame burneth upon my heart ! None can rob me of it I have called it mine I hold it fast. Night and day I trim and dress it. Give the Prince thy body ; I have thy soul.' ' Have I then no soul ? ' she thought half whimsically over this wild letter. * What a boy, to share with Don John the possession of me ! ' She thought of his serious pale face, his impossible hot grey eyes, his authority when poetry was in debate, his abject servility when she raised an 1 42 THE SONG OF RENNY, BOOK . eyebrow. What a stupid, brave, clever, good boy ! She felt tenderly, and put his letter in her bosom by habit. Half-an-hour's talk with the old Countess of Gru made her forget its writer and its nest. ' My dear,' said the old lady, breaking in upon her gossip of courts and wild doings under the old Flahault kings, ' my dear, I have been pestered by my huge nephew. He has been here, stamping and raving like a hungry beast. It seems that their Reverences have managed to insult him.' * Is that so hard ? ' asked Mabilla. ' How do you mean, child ? That insult is a light matter to a Renny bishop ? ' * Not so, Countess. I wondered whether it was difficult to find words which would insult the Earl of Pikpoyntz. You seem to imply it/ ' You are a little wretch, and he will be lucky if you make him as miserable as he deserves,' said the Countess in great good humour. ' We have left the road, nevertheless, and must return. Their Reverences, your uncles, it seems, proposed to the Earl of Pikpoyntz that he should find their niece, throttle her paramour, and then marry her himself. They considered this the proper way out of the tangle. What do you say to that, child ? ' Rente pas Reini, my lady, is what I am bound to reply.' ' That, I take it, is what Madam de Renny herself said. She did not wait to be denied. Their Reverences, however, do wait.' ' Have they not been denied, Countess ? ' 4 They no longer proffer the boon, my dear. But Pikpoyntz was about to propose them another. CHAP, xin A FORTIORI 143 He has not done so, at my instance. I said, " My fine fellow, your formalities are proper for every- thing but the end you have in view. If you wish to fail, you will do as you propose. The Bishops will debate your offer. It is politically so good that they will order its acceptance. And that is exactly what they will not get. Is it possible, nephew," I rounded on him, "is it possible that you know so little of the lady you adore as to suppose she will capitulate because a couple of bishops command it?" He gaped at me; I called him a fool. I think now that he agrees with me. What do you say to all this ? ' Mabilla gave her little tapping foot a look askance. * I think, Countess, that a lady who could refuse the commands of two bishops might dare to brave the beseeching of one earl.' * Doubtless, my dear,' said the Countess of Gru. * I understand that she has not deigned an answer to that of a Prince.' * Oh, Countess,' cried Mabilla, ' you are very wise ! I wonder how much of you I understand ? ' And she kissed the old lady. ' More than is good for you, my dear,' said the other. c I am very fond of you, but I'm a wicked old soul for all that.' Mabilla withdrew. Going to bed that night, the Viscount her brother took her aside. In the shadow of the room stood the tall Holdis, blushing and looking down. ' My sister,' says the Viscount, f you may account me the happiest of men.' I 4 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , ' Why so, Bernart ? ' says she. ' For this lovely reason, my dear,' he answered her. Then he took up Hold's hand, kissed and held it. * So, so, my lord ! ' said Mabilla gaily. Then to Hold, * Cousin, are you willing to be my sister ? ' * Please, Mabilla, yes,' said the pretty girl. Mabilla put both hands on her waist and turned her to the light. The tall girl laughed and blushed more deeply. Mabilla read her. 'You will be glorious at Joyeulx Saber, my Hold. The Monk of Mauleon will make coblas all day ; every balcony will hide its lutanist. When you ride out on your white palfrey you will be escorted by a hundred knights in your colours ; no other subject but you will hold the Courts of Love. Saill de la Garde will mope in her tower ; Tibors de la Roche-Percee will be kind to her husband ; Bernart must either turn poet or take to politics. I recommend the latter, for unless he is the best poet in Campflors he will have no chance with you.' ' Oh, cousin Mabilla, how you tease ! I love Bernart only,' cried Donna Hold quickly. ' Oh, cousin Hold, you are a goose ; but I will love you as well as Bernart ! ' laughed the other. The golden Renny stooped and kissed the cheek of the pale Renny, the ' white rose of Campflors,' as the poets called her. ' There is some happiness left us yet in the midst of all this perplexity,' said Mabilla to her brother afterwards. ' Pray, brother, have you CHAP, xiii A FORTIORI 145 settled on any plans in these conferences of yours ? ' 'The great thief,' replied Bernart, 'holds to his booty. Your Uncle Stephen proposed a way out, but he would have none of it.' ' Was it indeed a way out, my dear Bernart r Or only a way in deeper ? ' The Viscount looked quickly at his sister. He was, however, too happy to be intelligent. As always happens to young men in this pass, he turned moralist. ' My dear,' he said, ' I need nothing to com- plete my happiness but the knowledge of your certain establishment. You know the terrible truth concerning your cousin Renny? There is only her life between you and Marvilion. Great feudatories should be broad rooted. You must marry.' * But I am not a great feudatory, Bernart.' * But you will be.' ' I have no objection to broad roots, but I choose that they shall be of my planting.' * You are the betrothed of Don John, my sister.' ' Pardon, Bernart. Don John is betrothed, if at all, to the Bishop of Havilot or to the lady who carried me to church.' ' What is this, sister ? ' ' It is what appears to me the fact, brother.' ' But the alliance has been agreed to.' 'Then the allies must carry it out. I decline to help them.' * You are mad, Mabilla ! ' ' I am not so sure as I once was that I am, my dear Bernart.' L 146 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i * You must speak with your uncle, Mabilla.' * I think it is near time for him to speak with me,' said she. Thus, one by one, the allies (conscious or unconscious) of the Earl of Pikpoyntz bore down upon this girl. The strong man had mass of his own, had made her respect him in a house where every other soul either feared or abhorred him. This was very much. The cleverness of the Countess of Gru consisted in this, that she appeared to expect his rejection by Mabilla ; the very helpful stupidity of Viscount Bernart lay in his confidence that she would carry out her betrothal. Then came Lanceilhot's letter with sophistries to beguile her. She valued that young man's opinion more than she would have cared to confess. His love was a thing to be scorned at leisure, but to be counted on in a pinch. Without knowing it, she used it as a stay. Were trouble in tke wind, she would have gone to him first. So now she read over his letter again before she went to bed, and sat with it in her hands a long time, twisting it, thinking of it. That was love ! Good heavens, the strange matter ! And Pikpoyntz loved her eh, but not like that ! Without formulas she could guess how Pikpoyntz loved her. It was that night she wrote her friend her shortest letter * Master Lanceilhot, I am too much concerned to be more than your faithful, M.' Very characteristically, the more tenderly she felt the less she wrote down. So tenderly did she feel at this hour that while CHAP, xin A FORTIORI 147 she was thinking her hand which held his letter strayed to her lips. The letter rested there before it returned to share her bosom with the silver Christ. Yet in her letter, instead of ' Good Lanceilhot,' she was careful to put ' Master Lanceilhot,' and very gently, very thankfully she lingered on the letters of his name. It seems she had the dog's instinct to bury a treasure. So at least she buried the grain of kindness. She went to sleep that night with a sense of destiny which in itself was the strongest hand raised against her that day. CHAPTER XIV AN armed truce best describes the next few weeks. The Bishops held no colloquy with Pik- poyntz ; Pikpoyntz made them no proposals. To Mabilla he was gravely respectful, but by no means thrust himself upon her. He spent great thought and large sums devising enter- tainments nominally for his guests at large, actually for the youngest of them. Mabilla knew all about that. The best falcon was for her flying, the dropped heron always hers. She opened the dance, she crowned the victors in the games ; she was Queen of Beauty at the great Beauchef tour- nament, where all the knights of Pikpoyntz and Logres shivered lances. The Earl himself, whom no one could have withstood, held off from this jousting. Mabilla admired him for it ; the soured Bishop of Havilot looked his contempt ; Viscount Bernart bore himself very well. In all these affairs Pikpoyntz kept an aston- ishing hold upon himself. Ordinarily as heady as the bull his namesake, he might have been surprised at himself. But he knew what he was 148 PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 149 playing for ; much more than a shire. He was strong enough to hold that and hardy enough to brave King, Prince, and a bench of bishops for such a prize. But now he wanted Mabilla. For her he was now ready to give up the Renny fief ; and so much every look, every stiff phrase, every shuffle of his huge body told her. She began to wonder when he would move in this game of which she was the prize. It was a most interesting game, she thought, still keeping her impersonal view of the whole affair. What strength the giant had ! She could see him sweat sometimes as he checked himself from answering some bitter speech of Havilot's or some impertinence of Joyeulx Saber's. But he did check himself; he seemed to her like some scarred rock in the sea subject to the ceaseless fretting of little waves. Ah, it needed a night of storm to shake him ! The truth was this. After the last meeting of the enemies Bishop Stephen had sent an urgent letter to his ally, Don John, telling him the state of affairs. Madam Sabine, he wrote, had spoilt all their plans ; Pikpoyntz would not marry her, therefore could not be outlawed and hanged immediately afterwards. What was to be done ? The Bishop added his suspicion (it was that of his brother, in fact) that the Earl had another marriage in his mind's eye. This letter, by a very simple device, was read by the Earl of Pikpoyntz long before it reached Don John. When he was master of it he called another conference and made his proposals in form. 150 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i C I beg your lordships to hear me to the end,' he said gravely. * So long as the Lady Renny of Coldscaur is alive and unmarried I claim the marriage of her. Until she is of age I consider her my ward and hold her lands. If I get her married I take good care to secure the fruit of my fortunate warfare ; if she dies unmarried, I beg leave to say that I shall know how to safeguard myself against the next taker. But I put before you the following considerations : * First Marvilion is at peace and should re- main so. ' Second It is at peace because I hold it, and for so long as I hold it. * Third That, large and fair a possession as it is, the addition of another earldom would make it larger and fairer. * Fourth That the next male Renny must needs be of my provision, for if he spring from Donna Sabine I shall choose his father for him. * Whether you agree to these propositions or not, I make them deliberately, after many weeks' reflection. Upon them I base the following proposal, which I make with equal deliberation : The next male Renny shall be of my provision. He shall be Renny of Coldscaur, Lord of Marvilion and Earl of Pikpoyntz, for (if you agree, my lords) I will get him from the body of my wife, Donna Mabilla de Renny.' Bernart sprang to his feet and set hand to sword. ' Never, while I live, by the rood of St. Pol ! ' he swore. Pikpoyntz sat back in his big CHAP. T PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 151 chair with folded arms and looked at him. By that time Havilot was ready for him. 'You have murdered my kinsfolk, betrayed my chief, thieved my patrimony, trailed my good name in the kennel, Pikpoyntz,' he began. Then, with a sudden access of rage, ' You dog, I will get you hanged before I have done with you ! ' Pikpoyntz laughed at him. ' You will need a more present ally than your lurking John of Barsaunter for that work, Havilot,' he said lightly. ' I am a big dog for a cord of your pulling. What says his Grace of Grand-Fe, my neighbour ? ' and he turned to the grey-faced Prince Bishop. His Grace of Grand-Fe was not fond of cut and thrust ; he worked by night. Having cleared his throat, ' I doubt not,' said he, * we shall yet find a way to accord our differences. But it can hardly be the way your lordship proposes. A great alliance has been struck between my Lord Don John and our niece. It is of old standing. Recent events may tend to complete it. My judgment is that the Prince should be a party to any future conferences we have, since he is in a manner nearly touched by them. So much your lordship will admit.' Pikpoyntz laughed again. * My dear lord,' he said, with a shrug, ' all that I am prepared to admit is that the heir of Renny is to be of my provision. I do not need the help of the King's brother in the affair.' Then he yawned and stretched his long arms. It had the effect he intended Havilot strode toward him and shook 152 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOR: a fist in his face. ' I shall get the help of the King's brother in my affair, you cattle reiver ! * * Earl of Pikpoyntz, I will take upon me this quarrel ! ' cried Bernart in a fume. ' You avoided me at the tourney. Let me see if I can force you to terms.' He stepped lightly to him, with a gauntlet swinging ; he cuffed the Earl on the face with it. Pikpoyntz with a howl leaped to his feet ; he was red as fire. How he held himself I cannot guess, for his blood was boiling. But he pulled up within a foot of his man and stood glaring at him. Then he lifted up his big hand, pointed to the door, and to Bernart said shortly, ' Out, cockerel, out ! ' Grand-Fe got the pair of them out at last. At supper that night strife broke out again, deliberately provoked by Joyeulx Saber. The young man was in a high mood, being for the first time in his life at cross-counter with his sister. The fact was that as soon as the morning con- ference was over he had sought her out, driven by that necessity a young man has, after a deed done, to find countenance for it. ' Oh, Mabilla,' cries he, ' the game here is over ! The cattle thief has played his great card and been flouted for his pains. We may cry boot and saddle.' ' How so ? * asks Mabilla, and then he told her. Her answer to his heroics had frozen him. It was that if her uncles took to peddling they must not ask her to learn the trade, and then she said : 4 Have you ever seen the drovers try to get pigs over the bridge at Saint Save ? There is but one way ; the man must pretend he wishes to return CHAP, xiv PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 153 to the market-place. My Uncle Stephen will never drive a pig.' It took two hours with Hold in the orchard to thaw the Viscount. The sight of Mabilla's quizzing brow at supper time fetched him up as stiff as a rod again. Then came the broil. The Prince-Bishop, by way of healing sores, conversed with his host. The talk was of long-bow practice, of which the Earl spoke out of the stores of his experience. He was never a boaster, but gave his facts deliberately. Perhaps they sounded vain-glorious because they sounded far. Bernart listened, fretting for a chance. ' A flying pigeon at fifty yards would be fine work, my lord,' said Grand-Fe. * H'm ! I have done it often,' said the Earl. The Viscount leaned across Hold to speak, and spoke with the shrill, clear voice of bumptious youth. * I have hit a pigeon flying at sixty yards, my Lord of Grand-Fe. True, it was in a cleaner air than this drench.' Pikpoyntz gave a short laugh ; his own mood was none too equable. * Rare air and rare tales come out of the West,' says he to the company at large. The Countess of Gru began to blink, MabiUa to make bread pills. Afterward she drew the Renny crown with her nail on the polished board. The Viscount had a high colour as well as a high head. He now lifted both. ' Does the Earl of Pikpoyntz question either ? ' he asked in the air. * Pest ! ' said the Earl. ' I question nothing. I affirm.' i 5 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , 'You should be a judge of the truth, my lord,' said the Viscount. * I am,' said the Earl. The sledgehammer method of the elder man was damaging. The Prince-Bishop cut in. ' My dear Viscount, I can assure you of this at least, that you are talking to a bowman. I have seen my Lord of Pikpoyntz at the work ah, pardieu, and I have seen his bow ! Did you ever hear of the bow of Ulysses ? ' * Never ! ' said Havilot with emphasis ; but the Viscount tried a colder manner. ' Are we to have tales so rare as that out of Pikpoyntz, my Prince ? ' he asked. 'The air of Campflors cannot support the deeds of poets.' 'Come not to Speir for poetry, my lord/ said the Earl ; ' but if you have need of bows I may supply you.' ' We may bring bows and bowmen at our second coming, my lord,' cried Havilot, flushed. The Earl ignored him. ' I have no poetry here, my lords,' he repeated. ' A bow I have, and on occasion a certain knack with it. It is a pretty toy, your long-bow or so I thought when I was of the age of the Lord Viscount Bernart.' ' It is a toy that can sting, my lord,' shrilled Bernart. ' I have the best reasons in life for believing you, my young lord.' ' And these, sir ? ' ' Eh ! I have done some stinging with them in my time.' ' More tales, my lord, of Ulysses ? ' CHAP, xiv PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 155 * I know not this Ulysses,' said the Earl shortly, ' but this I know, that I do my stinging with a bow, not a tale.' Mabilla smiled. The Viscount jumped up. * With which do you sting me, my lord ? ' He was both hot and angry. Pikpoyntz looked at the ceiling. ' Shrike, come here,' he said. The black came creeping up. * Fetch me my long-bow and a couple of shafts.' He was waited upon in a general silence. Taking the huge black bow in his hands he bent it easily and pushed the cord home with his foot. As he notched his arrow he looked up to the lantern of the roof, saying, ' I will show you how I can sting.' Then he pulled the bow not hard. The arrow shot up into the roof, seemed to slow as it gained the lantern, hung there a moment, turned and dropped downward to the table. Though the disputants were separated by some five paces, the shaft fell directly in front of Joyeulx Saber ; it skewered a boar's head set there exactly in the middle of the skull and buried itself so far as the lump of flesh allowed. ' Finely shot, by the death of God ! ' Havilot could not restrain himself. ' Pretty work, pretty work ! ' this from Grand-Fe. ' Take the bow to my Lord of Joyeulx Saber,' said the Earl to Shrike, and Mabilla's lips parted as she watched. The Viscount overdid the strength ; the arrow stuck in the woodwork of the lantern and was no 156 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i more seen. ' It will find some company up there among the cobwebs,' said the Earl, yawning. Bernart worried the matter to death. Mabilla thought him absurd, and even Havilot and the adoring Hold grew weary. * My lord, it cannot end here,' said the young man. ' I wish it could, then,' the Earl interjected. ' I want my supper.' * You have challenged my sayings, my lord ? ' 'Stuff!' said the Earl. ' I now challenge yours ! ' * As you will and when you will,' said the Earl, * so long as we may sup first.' * Lists, then, my lord,' cried the youth, * lists and a jury and to-morrow ! ' ' I will see to it,' said Pikpoyntz. ' Shrike, have everything ready ! ' Pikpoyntz got two words with Mabilla before bedtime. * This folly of to-morrow has been none of my choosing, madam.' ' Folly, my lord ? It will be great entertain- ment.' * I know not that, lady. There is bad blood at the root of it.' * Can it not be let, my lord ? ' ' Not by me.' ' Then it must be a white tournament.' Pikpoyntz looked at her hard. ' Will you give the prize, my lady ? ' he growled. ' What is the prize ? ' ' It shall be what you please. I will give you entertainment on those terms. Will you do it, madam ? ' CHAP, xiv PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 157 * I will consider/ said she, looking wise. * Good night, my lord.' He watched her go. At the top of the stair she glanced down as she turned and saw him watching her still from under his heavy brows. Betimes next morning the adventure was on foot. It began with a deliberation on both sides out of all measure to the nature of it. The Bishop of Havilot held a colloquy with his champion, the result of which was a visit paid by the Viscount to his men's quarters. The Earl of Pikpoyntz was not seen of any man until the trumpet of onset claimed him, but he too had been with his secretary and lieutenants. When the time came for opening the lists the two bishops, with their nieces, rode down the long walk to the pavilion set at the target end (where the King and guests should sit) ; but they rode, for the first time at Speir, at the head of an armed troop. Pikpoyntz from his window in the tower watched them go. He saw Donna Mabilla in green cloth with a gauze scarf fluttering about her head ; he saw Donna Hold in silver and blue ; then he looked at the horsemen, steel clad, armed with lances and swords, and counted them with his eye. ' Two hundred spears, Beausobre,' he said. The man went out, and the Earl followed almost on his heels. The competitors faced their work Joyeulx Saber, clothed in fine leather delicately worked and tooled, looked too light for it. He had scented gauntlets, a cap jewelled and feathered. The Earl was, as always, in his stained buff jerkin 158 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i and great boots ; as always, he was bare-headed and bare-handed ; he looked the butcher, as always. The long lists were lined with a sprinkling of the household ; the pavilion held the guests on horseback ; the jury sat on a bench before it, and the Prince-Bishop was arbiter. The Renny cavalry acted as guard of honour. There were no soldiery of Pikpoyntz to be seen not a single pike. When the Prince -Bishop raised his hand a trumpet sounded. The Earl stalked out into the lists, his bow in his hand. They were to try for distance first. The lists, exactly measured, were 410 yards from mark to parapet. The parapet gave on to the sheer drop of the rock down into the valley ; a broad white sheet was held across by two pole bearers ; fifty pairs of eyes were ready to see the shafts wing into the valley. Pikpoyntz drew his arrow to the barb and let fly. True enough it flew, a low and steady course ; it lopped the cloth and was marked into the Sar. A flag was run up ; now it was the Viscount's turn. The Viscount used a lighter bow, a longer and lighter shaft, true cloth-yard length. Had there been much wind this might have told against him, but there was very little. Pikpoyntz, chewing his red beard, watched him furtively, with a keenness he could not conceal. He would have scoffed at such an idle game as this if he had not known that the stakes were high. Not for many moments at a time was his eye off the far pavilion. A slim chestnut horse bearing a slim CHAP, xiv PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 159 burden ; the flutter of a pale scarf he had good eyes and could have sworn to the curve of a cheek. The flag answered Bernart as it had answered him. Shot for shot, three times apiece the flag went up. Then came the mark firing, and first the target. At two hundred yards Pikpoyntz was beaten by one point. He heard the distant clapping of hands from the pavilion and got hot, wondering whether a little kissed pair were at that work. It was an odd thing, worthy of remark, that when the young Viscount made a point there was a hum of relief down the line, that when the Earl lost a point there was a sort of shiver (as of wonder how much loss he would bear), and that when he gained face looked into face, but there was no sound. Pikpoyntz himself under- stood and gloried in it he had rather be feared than loved ; he ruled that way. But would Mabilla read it as he did ? Would she find this dreadful loneliness of his admirable ? Come what might, he must win this match. The next mark was the tied pigeon ; the distance one hundred and fifty yards. Bernart killed his first bird by a clean shot through the crop ; Pikpoyntz his, through both eyes. Bernart missed his next ; Pikpoyntz by luck cut the string of his. That put him ahead ; the bird went free. Quick as lightning he shot again, out of his turn, and brought her down at some two hundred and fifty paces an astounding shot. * Foul, foul, foul ! ' shouted Bernart, and galloped up the lists. He claimed the shot ; the jury gave a verdict for their Earl, but the arbiter overruled them it i6o THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i must be the Viscount's. This brought him two points ahead of his adversary, since a foul counted three against you. Pikpoyntz's last chance was the wand splitting at ninety yards. Those who knew their man prepared for ugly weather. His neck was beginning to swell. The Earl grazed his first wand and succeeded in knocking it askew. This counted one for him. Bernart missed. The Earl split it clean ; another being set up, Bernart drew and split it. * Viscount/ said Pikpoyntz, mumbling his words, * follow this if you can/ The Viscount silently watched the shot, and felt that it would be hard to beat. It was one of those hanging shots of his, drawn with force exquisite enough to split the wand, but no more. The shaft actually hung suspended in the cleft stick ; it was quivering still from the jar of impact when Bernart notched his arrow and drew the bow amid absolute quiet ; the line of watchers seemed not to breathe as he aimed. Pikpoyntz, blinking furiously, kept outwardly cool, though inwardly he surged. At the far end the little green rider had moved in advance of her companions and was standing in the stirrup. He saw her blue scarf flapping above all the others. The Viscount drew and shot. His arrow split the Earl's where it hung split it as clean as with a knife and slipped on some twenty spaces. It was an admirable show of nerve the ' Ah ! ' that sighed down the field could not have been repressed. * Death of God ! ' swore the Earl, and fitted CHAP, xiv PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 161 an arrow. Before his triumphant adversary could so much as hold up his hand he had drawn his bow to cracking point and the bolt had sped, singing. A queer commotion in the crowd, a shiver voiced and perfectly audible, made Bernart look about him. He saw great business in the pavilion, horses rearing, men running, then some shouting something was wrong. He ran with all his might down the lists, and then he saw what the Bull of the North had done. He had shot into the pavilion and pinned Donna Mabilla to one of the posts by her silk scarf. Not a hair of her head had been broken ; her horse had not swerved an inch, but the arrow was buried to the feathers, with full half of it beyond the post. The Viscount drove in among the surging crowd like another arrow. He was not long cutting down his sister, even though his rage and scorn set his hand shaking like a girl's. He fumbled with his knife and hacked so savagely at the scarf that Mabilla laughed at him. * You do me more hurt than the Red Earl, Bernart,' she said. She was rather breathless, rather pale, but perfectly gay and not in the least frightened. She heard her raving Uncle Havilot ; she twinkled with merriment to see his purple face and witless hands. Meantime the Viscount had strode out into the middle of the lists. * Stand aside, you there ! ' he shouted with all his might. ' Clear the lists, clear, clear ! ' men cried to each other. Then he was able to look down toward the Earl. Clear enough he stood M 1 62 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i outlined on the pale parched grass ; he had not moved, but stood leaning on his bow, watching his enemy. Bernart aimed dead at him ; Pik- poyntz never budged. The man was entirely fearless even Bernart owned that ; but Mabilla, wild with interest, could have sung it loud. ' This is a man ! This is a man indeed ! ' she told herself, and the thought set her heart a-beating. Not a soul made to cover his lord she saw that and admired the man the more who could be so dreadful at death's gate. Bernart could have killed him like a boar if he had had the mind. But he had no intent to murder. The Earl was bareheaded, but at the other end was booted like a dragoon. Bernart had noticed those great boots of his ; he shot now at his man's foot and pinned him to the turf by the toe of his boot. The moment he was struck the Earl glared round him too late to stop a snigger here and there at the neatness of the vengeance and the stroke. One unfortunate he caught in the act of strangling a grin. ' Come here, you,' he called with a raven's croak ; * loose my boot.' The white wretch had to go, knowing it was his death warrant. He knelt before his lord and did his work. As he crept upright the Earl brought down his fist on the top of his head and dropped him like a stone. * Take that away,' he said to a bystander, and that was all. Then the Viscount came up. * Had I known with what a blackguard I was striving I would have set one of my lackeys to shoot, Earl of Pikpoyntz.' The young man was not master CHAP, xiv PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 163 of himself. Pikpoyntz, however, was perfectly cool. 'You shoot admirably, my lord Viscount,' he said, ' but I will ask you this. If you had been put to such a proof as I if 'you had shot at Donna Hold what would you have made of it?' ' I do not shoot at ladies, my lord/ said the young man. ' Nor do I, pardieu ! I shoot for them,' said the Earl ; * I shoot for a prize.' Messire Bernart, as he turned on his heel, saw. the whole cavalcade from the pavilion approach. Ahead of it came Mabilla, cantering her barb. She had a good deal of colour by now bright splashes of it in her cheeks. Her eyes wandered a little, as if she was scared at herself ; but she did not falter in what she was about. She rode past her brother, not appearing to see him ; she drew rein by the watching Earl. He was all in a sweat, could hardly see out of his eyes ; he bowed awkwardly and stumbled forward toward her ; he kissed her foot. She made a little sign, a quick look down ; he read it, and she suffered him to lift her from the saddle. He had nothing to say, but stood shuffling before her. The armed troop, headed by the two Bishops and Donna Hold, were halted within earshot. Every soul of them heard what followed a momentous conversation for some of them. The girl paled for a moment and put a hand to her side. Her too quick breathing seemed 1 64 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i to alarm her. Then she threw her head back and held the hand out. ' I am told, my lord, that you have asked for this from my uncles.' Pikpoyntz opened his mouth, grew grey ; then plump he knelt upon the grass. ' I do not get up from my knees until you answer me ! Why do you give me so much? ' * Because you are a man.' ' A man ? Not a brute ? ' * All men are brutes, perhaps. But you show yourself a man, having risked that which they tell me you prize.' * And is this the prize ? Is this the prize ? ' * If you call me so, my lord.' The Earl of Pikpoyntz leaped to his feet. The workings of his ungainly joy made him look like a satyr a maimed beast whose one leer has to serve him for joy and sorrow. Which of these passions drove over him now there is no saying. There was a chance he might have fallen raving, * O God, I am vile ! ' have turned, fled the world and beaten himself to heaven in a cloister. Instead, the madness of triumph got hold of him. He sprang forward and caught her in his arms : he en- gulfed her, had her in the air. She learned what it was to be kissed, she lost herself for a moment. He hoisted her high in the air, at the very stretch of his great arms ; she faced the people, saw her uncle's desperate face for a minute. Eh ! but she saw more than that. She saw the sombre glow of the Renny crown. Then Pikpoyntz shouted at the top of his voice : CHAP, xiv PIKPOYNTZ'S WAY 165 ' Ho, you there ! Ho, all of you who serve Pikpoyntz ! This lady is the queen of you, for she is the queen of me she only ! Hats off, men of Pikpoyntz ! On knees, every soul of you ; homage to the Countess ! ' Down they fell to a man. Pikpoyntz set his lady on her feet, and himself fell before her. He kissed her foot ; one by one, faced by the speechless host from the West, the household came up and followed their lord in the devotion. She stood it like a pillar of ice. Then Pikpoyntz drew his long sword and waved it over his head. * God and the Countess Mabilla ! Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! ' he roared. ' God and the Countess ! God and the Count- ess ! ' they echoed with a will. ' Advance, men of Havilot Ha ! Joyeulx Saber ! ' sang out Messire Bernart ; and the spear- men came on. CHAPTER XV THE RENNY WAY PIKPOYNTZ had just time to blow a shrill scream on his horn before he picked up his lady again. With her in his arms he ran back to the archway that gave on to safety and the terrace. There he set her down, but not before he had strained her to his breast and kissed her ardently. * Into the house, my soul,' he said, ' into the house and you are safe. You will find madam my aunt at your service, and a whole shire. I will hold these gentry until my men are out/ * Then madam your aunt must be her own company for a little, my lord,' said Mabilla. * I intend to see you hold them.' She stood on the upper step of the terrace, a gay, fluttering little Bellona in green, and saw the steel cohort come on. There had been, perhaps, no time for her to inquire why the Countess of Gru was ready for her within the walls or why the Pikpoyntz bowmen waited a signal without them. All that came upon her much later. Just now she had enough to see. Pikpoyntz, with squared, grim shoulders and his long blade, 166 THE RENNY WAY 167 filled up the gateway. The homagers of a moment before huddled apart ; her Uncle Havilot, foaming and purple, was now rushing on his destruction. Such it was, for he was blind with rage and blinded his horse with spurring. There were barely twenty yards between him and his foe ; but he drove the spurs into the heels, spurred and spurred again. The white eyes of the beast gleamed like streaks. On he came at a tearing gallop. Pikpoyntz, cool as a night frost, waited for him, chose his last moment and brought his sword down crash on the horse's crest. The poor beast dropped on the very threshold of the gate ; but the Bishop did not stop. He was thrown forward against the wall ; there was a sickening crash. Pikpoyntz picked him up, dead beyond recognition. Next minute he had to drop his burden, for he had the Viscount upon him, and the next his bowmen lined the terrace wall and a company of halberdiers stood behind him in the gate. ' Hola ! halt ! ' cried the Earl. The Prince- Bishop put up his hand and stopped the cavalry. Bernart was hacking furiously at his man. ' Lord Viscount,' said Pikpoyntz, parrying with great coolness, ' I have no intention of killing the brother of my future wife, and even less of being killed by him. I suggest to you that we allow Donna Hold to join her cousin on the terrace. Then we can discuss our affairs unhampered. What do you say ? ' * I say that you are a drain rat whom to kill were to honour. Nevertheless, I will kill you if I can.' The Viscount spoke breathlessly and 168 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , renewed his attack. Pikpoyntz warded a swinging cut, countered with the flat blade and caught the other a lively blow on the sword wrist. The sword flew out of his hand. Pikpoyntz, quick as thought, set his foot upon it. ' Now, young lord, I have you at discretion. Cease to play the fool and I will let you grow to be a man.' He sheathed his own blade as he spoke and walked coolly out to meet the Prince- Bishop. Bernart could have stabbed him between the shoulders, but did not ; Pikpoyntz knew he would not. 'A word with you, Prince-Bishop,' said the Earl. 'It is my wish, my lord,' said Grand -Fe, peering at him through half-shut eyes. ' Need I tell a man of your discernment that I have the whole of your troop at my disposition ? I cannot suppose your lordship so headstrong as your brother ; who yet, poor man, was not strong enough in the head. We will look at him shortly. You do not, of course, forget that I hold a certain pretty hostage of yours, on whose white hands you should look with a lenient eye. Hey, Prince-Bishop ? ' Grand-Fe's lips twitched. 'Where is my child, Pikpoyntz ? ' he said under his breath. ' Hey, but in a position of trust and honour, my good Prince. I have every care for her.' ' Too much, I have sometimes feared, my lord.' ' Fear nothing, my Prince. You need not, at least, if you can instil some sense into that young CHAP, xv THE RENNY WAY 169 gamecock from the West. The lady in both our minds at present will come to no harm in that case.' The Prince-Bishop considered. 4 There shall be no folly on our part, my Lord of Pikpoyntz,' he said, after he had thought. * My poor brother ! My poor, rash brother ! My niece Mabilla, however (it is proper your lordship should remember), is betrothed to a very great person.' ' She does not appear to recognise the contract,' said the Earl. ' She is very young, my lord.' ' But not a minor, I think, Prince ? ' ' Not a minor, it is true. But by all the laws of Church and State affianced.' * Church, 1 have always found, Prince-Bishop, will undo what State hath no taste for. Will your Don John care to wed one who is, after all, only a possible heiress of Coldscaur ? ' * Doth your lordship then care so much ? ' * By my soul, I have never cared for anything if I care not ! ' cried Pikpoyntz. ' But enough of that,' he added. ' I am not here to talk love. I can talk that elsewhere. Have I your lordship's word of honour that we conduct our negotiations without swords ? ' ' You have, my lord,' said Grand-Fe, ' but not here. We must bury our dead. We will go to Canhoe.' * As you please, my dear lord,' said Pikpoyntz, and, bowing, turned away. In the presence of the defaced Bishop Stephen even Messire Bernart veiled his sword. Mabilla came down the steps, i yo THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK. insisted on seeing the poor wreck ; but had to cover her eyes. Havilot had died horribly, and now grinned and squinted in death. The shock of contact with the wall had broken his stiff Renny neck and driven inward the firm Renny jaws till his upper teeth bit his chin. Grand-Fe, very white, knelt and prayed ; Bernart, unmanned, had tears streaming through his fingers ; Mabilla led Hold into the house. Only Pikpoyntz stood, silent and grim and inevitable as the fact ; few forms of death were new to him. Grand-Fe rose from his knees and looked to the lord of the soil for direction. Pikpoyntz nodded his head. * They are coming,' he said. So then servants came and covered the dead man with a cloth and put him on a bier, and so bore him into the chapel of the castle. There they laid him out in state, with gloved and folded hands and a crozier under them. But they kept a napkin over his face. Two friars were fetched over from Beauchef in a hurry to watch ; the chaplain of Speir said a requiem, and at intervals the proper psalms. In the castle Mabilla dismissed her chosen lord and her ally and alone waited the assault which she knew must come. Bernart, of Joyeulx Saber, began it. ' Oh, Mabilla, oh, sister,' says he, ' think what you are about ! There is no stain upon your father's name, nor any of your winning upon that of our common mother ; yet this marriage you are for hath an ugly look in our eyes. What ! you will lie in a bloody bed ; hold his hands who is fresh from dabbling in your own CHAP. XT THE RENNY WAY 171 blood fie ! fie ! Look now, Mabilla, I suppose this gross thief hath slain treacherously six of your own people. What hath he done with the one surviving ? He says that she has given him the slip. Who knows ? Do you believe it ? And say that she has escaped him yet, will he not catch her in the end ? And her end will be what ? She stands between him and your great royalty will he let her stand ? Ah, do you believe it ? Shake off, my dear oh, shake off ! Let us get back to our vineyards, our songs and green thickets of the West, and wash our hands and live innocently. Come, my sister, we are for home ! ' The gener- ous young man had tears in his eyes as he ended an appeal which delicacy forbade him to make more urgent. The man had been chosen by his sister ; he could go no further in decency than call him murderer and thief. Mabilla let him hold her hands ; she smiled, shook her head at him, would not speak till he showed signs of beginning again. Then she interposed. * Ah, Bernart, amic,' she said in their own familiar tongue (which added to his anguish and certainty at once), * ah, Bernart, amic, if we had had the same father as well as mother you would not have spoke me so bitterly, nor I seemed so hard in retort. Bernart, we must go our ways you to Campflors, I to Marvilion. I have chosen, Bernart ; if you were Renny you would know why. I am a girl ; I must marry ; for I am a Renny, and Renny must reign. And since I must be a queen of my own people I must have a king consort ; I must marry a man. So I 172 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i choose not for Don John I will not mix my blood with Flahault's ; but De Salas I will accept of because he has no fear, and if he has remorse does not betray it, and if he sins, sins not in the dark. You call him thief, assassin ; he takes no heed of you why should I ? Enough for me let it be enough for you that I have worked for myself to find a way in this business ; I believe that you wrong him. Let us part in peace, Bernart ! ' But he would not have it. He entreated her, he threatened, he began to command. And then she sent him about his business and would have no more to say. The Prince -Bishop tried a different road, but got no nearer. He warmed upon the subject of Don John ; she said, ' He is a Flahault.' He remembered his profession the Church had affianced her, etc. She replied that if babies were brought to the Church, the Church should not allow them to learn walking, or at least she should keep the door shut. * There is no painted glass over an open door, good uncle,' said she ; ' one sees the sun out there.' Being the man he was, he temporised supposed she would be wed from Joyeulx Saber. No ? Then from his poor house of Canhoe ? ' Your house would be the poorer for my presence, my lord,' she answered, laughing ; ' for if it hold me and my lord it would be beggared of my brother Bernart and cousin Hold.' 'What will you do then, in Heaven's name? ' cried Grand-Fe. ' I shall marry in Heaven's name, I hope,' she said. 'There are churches in Pikpoyntz. CHAP, xv THE RENNY WAY 173 To-day I go to Beauchef with the Countess of Gru.' Grand-Fe had a last shot a raking shot, too. ' Do you know, my child, of the name your chosen husband bears in these parts ? The name of libertine, by my head. There was a lady here before the old Countess of Gru set on foot.' * Ah, yes, indeed,' said Mabilla gravely. ' A lady with a pretty name. Blanchmains it was. Your lord- ship's knowledge of her is of some standing, I think?' ' I know her yes,' said the Prince-Bishop, rather scared. ' And, having trusted my Lord of Pikpoyntz with her, you see no hurt for me in the same care ? ' Her words bit him ; he thought her made of ice. They bit him and beat him. He became a piteous old man all at once. ' If/ he began with a dry tongue, 'if you should see, or hear of, or by chance fall upon some way, get speech with, perhaps, this Blanchmains, I would have you give her this, my child.' He stammered much more than my parentheses will import, and as he handed his niece a small packet he was careful not to look at her. Mabilla was touched. * I will not fail you, dear uncle,' she told him. Then she knelt for his blessing, got it, and kissed him farewell. She saw him but once more. With Hold she took a high hand, being still angry with the Viscount. With her also Hold was cool. ' Good-bye, cousin Mabilla. We are each for a wedding and a crown, it seems. Yours will have more points than mine.' * I had not thought of the crown of Pikpoyntz, i 7 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i I confess,' said Mabilla. ' My lord fights bare- headed, I think.' ' Ah, it is the crown of Renny,' said the bright-eyed Hold, with a sharper tone than usual ; * that is a slippery thing. It hath slipt from poor cousin Sabine ; take care how you walk with it.' She was as smiling, as beautiful, and as lazy as ever ; she did her stabbing with a languid air. Mabilla sniffed the O f D offence. * I will hold the Renny crown as long as I want it, Hold, and then I will give it to you,' she said. ' Ah, my dear,' said Hold, waving it away. Then she kissed the rebel's cheek and trailed away. The whole cavalcade, with bearers for the dead Havilot, took the western road in mid-afternoon. Immediately they were gone she gave the Countess of Gru to understand that they too must set out for Beauchef that night. The old lady twinkled, but, since she could refuse her nothing, agreed. The truth was, Madam Mabilla had no taste for the ardours of courtship none, indeed, for courtship at all. She intended to marry Pikpoyntz, after which let come what pertained ; but she did not intend to be hugged in the fashion of that day's afternoon. The times had been stirring, she stirred with them but, heigho ! the sap was run out ; she must husband the fibre against her need. Until the hour of departure she kept her room, not noticing overmuch that Nitidis was hovering about her. She sat in her window and thought of marriage. It would be idle to pretend that the subject did not interest her. It interested her vastly ; she was very CHAP, xv THE RENNY WAY 175 curious, but not in any such way as to be timid or to get heart beats. Her thought was this : Here I, Mabilla, set the crown of Renny on my head. Is the price too high ? She pinched her lip before she answered. * No ! Too high for most maids, but not too high for me. The man is huge, may be gross ; his way is to carve a way by strokes, to quell with a roar, or, more dreadful still, to glower and say nothing. I meet him at all points. He will not carve me, because he is in love with me ; if he roars I shall be quiet ; if he is silent, if he glowers, I shall certainly laugh. Then he will roar, and the play will begin again ; but it will stop short of carving. It seems to me an advantage that he loves me, and that I love nobody.' Here she sighed, and found Nitidis at her feet. * Good child, good child,' said Mabilla, stroking her cheek. * I believe I do love somebody after all.' ' Him that gave your Ladyship the silver Christ ? ' hazarded the maid. Mabilla blushed, laughed a little and looked out of the window. It seemed, now. that he was remembered, as if she felt herself free to think more tenderly of Master Lanceilhot that doubting pale youth with the fringed and pathetic eyes ; that singing boy who never hid from any one that he loved her with all his little soul. What would he say of all this ? She knew what he would say ; for his tractate upon marriage was lying yet in her bosom, not far from the silver Christ. Her soul was his, quoth he ; therefore Jet Barsaunter and Pikpoyntz bicker for her body. Dear good 176 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i Lanceilhot how he would quail at a lift of the brows, and yet, Madam the Virgin, how he could hector you for a slip in * Vitas hinnuleo ! ' He was the perfect philosopher of Love, who would preach by the hour on the glory of the lover and then flinch and grow pale and flush to tears at a chance word ! Poor dear, good Lanceilhot ! There was a tinge of scorn in her pity ; but she had not forgotten him. ' I believe I will write a letter,' said Mabilla, and got up. It was a very short letter, to this effect : To the honoured poet and worthy clerk, my friend, Master Lanceilhot, etc. Let this be delivered with haste. Good Master Paulet, I greet you and wish you very well. The friendship there is between us moves me to write you my news. My Lord Earl of Pikpoyntz has bid me to a marriage he is to make shortly, and in such sort that I can scarcely refuse to be present. Not in the same sort, yet in great honesty, I in turn bid you to be there also. If you will sing to me again, or if you have observed your promise concerning that Chanson de Reini which you were to make for me, let it come with you to the Earl's marriage supper. But I know not how you stand in such matters. There are many things I know not yet. And so I commend me to your prayers, and you to God. From Beauchef this mid-September. Your loving friend, M. de R. ' Let this letter be despatched by certain messenger, Nitidis,' she said. Nitidis promised ; and then Donna Mabilla left Speir with her own women, in the company of the old Countess of Gru. Pikpoyntz, refused anything higher than her hand, went lower for his comfort, and kissed CHAP, xv THE RENNY WAY 177 her two feet. ' Ah, my lord,' said she with mock ruefulness, ' that is what I shall come to learn, I suppose.' ' Heart of my heart,' cried he, really scandalised, * I would cut my feet off if I thought it ! ' 'It would be simpler to run away on them,' she said. 'Farewell, my good lord.' Pikpoyntz went glowing to prayers, and confessed all his sins to his chaplain that night. The worthy man's hair stood on end and so visibly that the penitent decided it might be prudent to hang him next morning. Then he went out to a rude awakening. Frelus was announced, and came in booted, hot and splashed with mire. ' Well, Frelus ? ' said the Earl. * News, my dread lord a letter.' ' He took and read : " Sovereign and only master of me ! I write joyfully, in good heart. News, news, news ! Our wise hound singleth ! His nose is close to the scent, his tail is a flag ! We have certain news, sure news ! I write more anon. From your poor, faithful bondmaid, Blanchmains." * O God, have mercy ! ' groaned the late ravished penitent to himself. ' Am I to slip in filth for ever ? ' He paced the room, plucking out hand- fuls of beard. Then he turned, terrible, on Frelus. ' Get you back on the instant,' he thundered ; ' get you back, I say ! Keep all of Marvilion within the borders, let no soul cross into Pikpoyntz, and let none from Pikpoyntz enter. It is death for who comes or goes. I will send word anon. Let Madam Blanchmains do as I bade her. Tell her N i 7 8 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i this : " Hunt, hunt, hunt ! And take alive." Do you hear ? Take alive, take alive ! Repeat it.' Frelus shook. His voice shook with him as he chattered : * Hunt, hunt, hunt ! And take alive!' ' Right so,' said his master, * shall you say to her that sent you. Now go.' The Earl ran headlong to the chapel to pray more. But he could not. Blanchmains came about him, fawning, writhing for love Blaise de Renny moved under his shroud Sabine's hateful injured eyes the wry grin of battered Havilot Mabilla, his saint, with lips all grey, stared reproach at him from her death-bed and with one red finger pointed to her heart. Ah, Christ, there was no heart there ! only a horrible hole where a heart had been. He fell flat on the floor of his chapel ; and there the creeping dawn found him. He was for ever at Beauchef during the next month and a half, waiting upon his beloved, with his eyes dogging her ardent steps (and clogging them thereby), spelling for her lips and getting now and then a chance to brush her hand. If he would have talked of what he knew she would have listened by the week together ; but, Heaven help him ! he must become a poet, oil his shock hair, tag his points, slash his doublet, posture and vapour and prance. She would never confess it, but she was near sick of her bargain before it was struck. The settlements he made were lavish, ' ridicu- lous* was her word for them. Fully half Pik- poyntz was in her jointure, and fat manors, market tolls, harbour dues, anchorages, groundages and CHAP, xv THE RENNY WAY 179 such like at Coste Saks and other places in East Mark. He gave her a forest in Logres, which he held by Grand Sergeanty. The lady's reversion to Marvilion was brought into settlement, but he would not touch her lands in Campflors. He gave her absolute rights of appointment to three abbeys, the advowsons of as many churches in Pikpoyntz as she chose, and I know not what else beside. Rich as she had been before, if Marvilion fell as it should she would have the dowry of a queen when the Earl came to be hanged. When these things were done the Countess of Gru took her nephew aside and said : ' Pikpoyntz, if you hope to marry this little lady do you flee the country until the day comes. Fight, rob, ravish, kill whom you choose, but stay not here curling your hair, or you will never get her to church, still less to a better place. I know her.' He obeyed and rode North, nominally on a hunting expedition. CHAPTER XVI CANZON DE REINI PART I THE sereina is the song they sing in Campflors at the going out of the light. When the scented garden is muffled in dark, when the stars are his only candle and the rustling trees his only kind voices, the lover leans against the wall near which, as he believes, his lady pillows her cheek also ; and he begins low, plucking but two shy chords, as if he was afraid to break upon the lovely peace of the world. You would think he might be sad, wrought upon by the emptiness and dark ; but the Campflors lover is never sad. Come the worst, he loves. Nothing can deprive him of that ; and with that for his food the veriest sup of his lady's sight will stay him. It is Love he loves, not a lady ; so his philosophy is unassailable. The beloved may not alone be pillowing behind the jutted balcony ; perhaps that lord her husband is there too ; perhaps she is suckling her second son what then ? It is the holy sable night, it is the galaxy above that snowy flood poured out on a bed of hyacinth it is the crisping trees, the gently stealing night wind ; it is a secret awe he 1 80 CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 1 8 1 feels for one maid's shape, for the turn of one lovely head for this, for these he sighs out the wistful patience of his sereina. She, up there snug abed, hardly hears him, or if she does weaves him into the pleasant tangle of her dream. She lies down complacent ; all is well with her he takes the lute. Her eyelids droop, the hand at her cheek relaxes, slips out ; she is fast he leans against the wall and sings on : The lover with sighing Saith, Day, thou and I are long in dying ! Now, Eve, Gather me close and list while I hope and grieve. Master Lanceilhot Paulet, that assured poet, received his lady's summons while he was engaged pouring Aristotle out of a too viscous Latin into a too fluid vernacular. Aristotle vanished in the process, but the result was very much in the manner of Campflors, since it rendered a thesis of moral philosophy not inappropriate to a schema of love. The moment he received he kissed it ; then, getting up, he put it on the desk before him, knelt down, said a short prayer (the paternoster), got up, crossed himself and stooped to kiss it again. He was like a priest of the altar at the Pax. Finally he felt sufficiently composed to read it, and did so without moving a muscle of his expressive face. This done, without a moment's thought upon so startling a news, he got up and went to the door. He paused here to bestow his letter safely in his bosom before letting in a profane draught ; then he went out into the corridor and down 1 82 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i stairs to the apartments of the Reverend Prior. He knelt to the good man for a blessing, and then ' Reverend Father,' he said, * I crave your licence to go on a journey.' ' Where now, Lanceilhot ? ' asked the Prior. ' I must go to Beauchef, in Pikpoyntz, reverend Father, to a certain castle in those parts.' * Mary of Bethany ! ' cried the Prior, ' that is twenty days' journey.' ' Thirty, my Father,' said Lanceilhot. ' Why, boy, why ! Will you pad for a month ? ' * It will take me six weeks, my Father, the way I must travel.' * Tut-tut- tut !' The Prior was vexed. 'Six weeks to go, six to stay, six to return eighteen weeks. Pest, my young friend ! ' * Your pardon, Reverend Father, it will be less than that twelve weeks and one day.' 4 Hey ! Let me know what this day's work may be which costs you twelve weeks to per- form it.' For answer Lanceilhot took out his letter and offered it in both hands to his master. It was as if he were handing a relic. The Prior read and frowned ; frowned again and read. * If I were you, my friend, I should not pursue this summons,' he reported, with decision. Lanceilhot looked to see if his Reverend Prior had lost his senses. * Not go ! ' he gasped. ' My Father, I do not understand you. How not go ? ' * If you know so well how to go, you know CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 183 how not to go, I suppose. Reverse the process involved.' Lanceilhot had very little sense of the humor- ous, and certainly none for such a business as this. He continued in a voice of awe. * How not go, Father ? It is the day of her marriage, her most sacred marriage.' ' Sacred grandmother ! ' cried the Prior. * Is not that the best reason in the world to be done with this dangling ? ' ' I hardly follow you, Reverend Father. What hath her marriage to do with my love ? ' * God bless us ! Why, everything ! ' Lan- ceilhot smiled. * Ah, no,' said he. * I can prove it to you in a minute. My lady marries. I love her. How connect the two propositions ? They are wholly disparate. Say she loved her husband which, of course, she does not how does that affect my love for her ? Let us not confuse subject and object. And how does it affect her, indeed ? For if she loves not me, what does it matter whom she loves ? In truth and naturally enough, she loves nobody.' * How the deuce do you know that, boy ? ' * It is obvious, my Father. We love always the perfect thing as a lady may love God, or a man a lady. But she is perfect, therefore she loves the perfect thing ; which is to say that she loves herself.' ' And is she not somebody, dolt ? ' * I can only contemplate her soul, my Father, which hath no parts.' 184 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i ' Humph ! ' said the Prior ; ' I recommend you to contemplate her soul from a distance, otherwise there may fall out an argument with my Lord of Pikpoyntz concerning parts.' Lanceilhot set out that evening with a lute, a wallet full of poems and some bread and cheese. He sang his way from hall to cloister, from cloister to hall, until he reached Fauconbridge, which is the border town between Logres and Pikpoyntz. He had had the wit to avoid Marvilion, which otherwise had saved him three weeks' footsoreness. No adventures had befallen him on the way which were at all out of his experience. Two or three giggled confessions of love behind a door or so love and a fluttering pain ; * Just here, good Lanceilhot ah ! feel it for yourself ; a little ruffling from one or two young blades who wished his eyeing and sighing at the devil ; much good cheer from abbey parlours ; enthusiasm and wet eyes from a circle of nodding nuns, these and a tearing patrol of horsemen, who knocked him flying into the mud one dark night, compose his pictures of travel. The patrol scarcely stopped to see what they had dispersed. * On the King's business clear ! ' they yelled at him, and * Room for the Prince's messengers ho ! ' He found out next day that they were a flying post from the Prince-Bishop of Grand-Fe to His Highness Don John. Putting two and two together, he felt it his duty to interfere. He borrowed a horse and pelted after the pelters, caught them outside Quatrepais and accosted them. CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 185 * Good day, my masters,' he said as he rode alongside. * You seek his Grace the Prince ? ' * Who told you that, sprout ? ' * The whole country reports it. You will not find him by that road.' ' How now ? Who and what are you to tell me my business ? ' * One who knows it better than you, sir. I am from the West. Ten nights ago the Prince lay at Saint Save. By now he is at Kains, or maybe Unthank.' * Hope of Heaven, is this true ? ' ' It should be true,' quoth Lanceilhot. He had the satisfaction of seeing the party take a road which must add at least a fortnight to their journey in search of Don John. * If so small a lie can work a great service,' said he to himself, as he rode back, * what may I not do for my blessed lady as I grow more experienced ? I see a career before me holy orders, a pastoral staff, a cardinal's hat ! The love of beautiful ladies should be a wing to a man ; it shall be so to me. And since I love the most beautiful lady in the world, my wing should lift me to the fine blue air she herself breathes.' He swore to himself that it should be so. He would rise, but not by poetry. ' Poetry cannot give me the handling of men. That is your real power. Poetry should inform such dealing, be the sub- stance of it, transfigure and make work lovely ; it is not work enough alone unless it is allied to politics, as where a man makes a packed assembly his instrument and plucks at their heartstrings to 1 86 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i wring a terrible music of events from those. Eh, Lord, Lord ! ' he cried, with clenched lifted-up hands, ' I feel the working of this exalted mood already ! When I sing the song of Renny in the hall of Speir I will rock the foundations of it with the music I shall make ! ' He finished his journey occupied with these great thoughts, and reached Pikpoyntz in mid- November to see the first snow dusting the shoulders of its gaunt fells. Speir also he saw afar off, shining like a cloud, high above the mist. * My lady will be near heaven in her cage,' he said, and pushed on. Beauchef he found to lie in a sheltered valley, a little grey-walled town stooping to a dark river. At its highest point was a many-turreted house, with terraces looking over the vassal burgh. That was the house of the old Countess of Gru. Six months had wrought a change in each, but, while Mabilla wondered over Lanceilhot, he saw her exactly as before. This was because he was a poet and she none. He had once for all made her image, had set it up, prayed daily before it. It would never change. But in him she saw O nothing of the appealing boy, nothing of the craver who had fallen to clasp her knees and flinched at a lifted eye-brow. She saw a pale, serious young man, perfectly respectful, incurably her servant, but seeming to count upon her knowledge of this, not caring to repeat the assurance, and so much master of himself as in some respects to be master of her though neither she nor he guessed it. And there was another CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 187 thing Lanceilhot the poet was his own looking- glass, forever acting a part before it. He was acting before it now when he first met her ; he was * handling men,' and carefully critical how he did it. But Mabilla was as open as the day, had no looking-glass, and could not have acted anything to save her life. Her dismay, therefore, to see the new Lanceilhot put her perfectly at the discretion of the real Lanceilhot. He began to feel the pricking of his wings. She was unfeignedly glad to see him ; she blushed a little, was a little shy. ' Oh, Lan- ceilhot,' it was, ' so you have come ! You are faithful, then ? ' He took her hand, kissed it once, and dropped it gently. ' Lady, you know that I am faithful,' he said. * Yes, yes, I know it, of course. My very good friend indeed. And how did you come ? ' ' On foot, my lady, by way of Fauconbridge. So I was able to do you a service.' * What was this service, Lanceilhot r > Then he told her of the Prince-Bishop's flying messengers whom he had been careful to misdirect. Mabilla was amused, but thoughtful. ' That bodes trouble ahead, my friend.* * I think so,' he replied ; ' but hope now that you will have time to make an ally.' * Does the alliance I am going to make please you, Lanceilhot ? " she asked, without lifting her eyes from her toes. ' My lady,' said Lanceilhot, * it is of the nature of those things which a man must contemplate, if 1 88 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i he can, as a spectacle, since he can neither avert it nor mend it. Winter must follow summer and the night the day ; yet after winter and the night come summer again and day dawn. So we huddle and endure.' * Do you huddle, Lanceilhot ? ' * At least I endure, my lady ; but indeed I do not see how I am worsened. I cannot love you any more, nor serve you the more diligently ; nor can you, I suppose, love me any less.' Her eyes shone full upon him for a moment, full of that divine seriousness she could assume when she was startled. But it was only for a moment ; the next she hung her head. 1 Ah, but you must not talk like that ! ' she said, and began to pluck at the cushion. ' My sacred lady,' said he, looking closely at her, ' let me once more say that I must blink no facts with you. I have not walked six hundred miles for nothing. It is as certain that I love you much and you love me little as that my Christ is upon that chain.' Her silver dress was cut low in the neck ; he saw the chain and knew where the Christ was. This fact, which should have set his temples beating like drums, in his present exalted mood kept him chill as frost. She sprang up with both hands at her bare neck. She was pale and shaking. * Oh, shame, shame, I am ashamed ! Leave me ; I will not speak to you again ! ' He dropped on one knee, and then left her. From afar he saw her that same night when she sat on the da'fs at supper with the Countess of Gru, but he was near enough CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 189 to see that there was no fine silver chain on her neck. She wore a rope of emeralds ; the Christ was certainly not there. * It must be put back,' he told himself, ' otherwise I shall feel that I have betrayed my new wings. Should I tell her of my present hopes and thought ? No, surely. She will know soon enough.' The Countess sent a message down the hall that he was to sing after supper. Sing he did, watching Mabilla all the time. She took no notice of him whatever ; he could hardly be sure that she heard him. Candidly, he would not have blamed her if she had not, for he sang the customary flatteries, as his duty was, to the chatelaine. The ' Lioness of the North ' was the venerable Countess of Gru. Then came reference to an astonishing natural fact. This lioness, according to Lanceilhot, sprang from a mating of eagles at least, there was plain reference to the eyrie at Speir. But from the same portentous bed had come the ' Red Bull of the North,' who, running furiously for a mate, saw a white hind in a ' flowery meadow ' and took her home. This confused zoology pleased the old Countess. It seemed to her new. * Your little poet, my dear, has a bold tongue in his head,' she remarked to her neighbour. ' I hope it may not be in his cheek,' said Mabilla, who was finer than the Countess. ' Of what is my ice-cloaked goddess thinking ? ' pondered Lanceilhot, as he watched her set brows. ' Have I angered her ? God forgive me, but I fear I must do it again ! ' Then he sang a fable 1 9 o THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i in their own tongue. The favourite nymph of the goddess Diana strayed often alone into a grove of flowering thorns. * Love at least is far from me now,' she said. ' My lady's brother, with his piercing songs, cannot fret me here.' Here, in this fragrant place, she would come ; and since there were none to spy her, she would loosen her zone and lie unbusked upon the grass. And one day she felt a stinging near her heart, and looking down saw that she had lain upon a small shoot of thorn, which, with the tender spine of it, had brushed against her side. * Lie close, lie close, my goddess,' said the shoot, * for by thy holy warmth I shall live.' The nymph caressed it and let it lie ; nor did she disdain to come daily to the same place and nourish the pushing plant. But, Oi, Deus ! the shrub grew hardy and the fleshy spines took on a sheath. ' Ahi, my thorn ! ' cried she, * thou hast prickt my side. Is it so thou bitest thy foster-nurse ? ' ' Blessed my lady,' said he then, ' such poor speech have I that in no other sort can I tell thee how thy sacred pains nourish me. Lo you, I am growing to a forest tree. Thou hast given me life ; now let me live to show forth thy praise.' When the tree grew even as he had said, the nymph found him strong to lean upon, and full of the smell of spring ; and thorny though he could be, she could lean all day without smart. For his thorns were for her enemies and his fra- grance and strength forth from her. Immediately this performance was ended Mabilla excused herself to the Countess and CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 191 retired. ' Master Minstrel,' said the latter, * I find your melody much to my taste, though I did not understand a word of your fable. Pray sing it to me in a more reasonable language.' Lanceilhot, bowing, sang a very ordinary little story about a Viscount and a mulberry tree. Every Good Friday morning the mulberry tree bore three berries. The Viscount, who had been a desperate heretic, was converted by this means to believe in the Blessed Trinity and in time became a prior of the Order of the Grand Chartreuse. The Countess was much edified. * A very proper fable indeed,' she said, ' but I hope it has no reference to the ancestry of my future niece.' ' Ah, none in the world, my lady,' Lan- ceilhot assured her. c I had not thought Donna Mabilla so easily affected to devotion,' mused the Countess, ' but no doubt in her native speech the thought comes more poignantly to her.' * 'Tis very like, my lady,' says the sage Lanceilhot. He got no further speech with her until the eve of her wedding day though he spoke at her in song plainly enough. The place got very full of guests once he had a sight of her led out to dance by the huge Earl her betrothed, and bore it with a courage which surprised him- self. But on her wedding eve she sent for him. He found her pale, dark-eyed, adorably beauti- ful, and inclined to keep him at a distance. She was dressed in red, spangled with stars, and the gown was cut low enough to show her bosom. The silver Christ was not there. ' Deus ! ' thought he, ' have I been a fool ? ' 192 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , She motioned him to sit, when he had done his homage, but he would stand. By this means she had to look up at him as she spoke ; nothing she could do could keep a strain of appeal from her fine eyes, nor anything hide the anxiety she felt. He had never seen her nervous before ; it almost unmanned him. She spoke, too, lower than usual. ' Are you to sing the Canzon de Reini to- morrow, Lanceilhot ? ' says she. He bowed his head. 'Part of it, my lady.' ' What part ? ' 'The song of the crown of Renny.' She lighted up. * Ah, that is well ! Of the crown I am to wear ? ' ' Of the crown which you may wear if you choose, my lady,' said Lanceilhot. ' Choose ? Choose ? ' she cried. ' But I have chosen. Am I of a sort, do you think, to re- fuse such a thing ? ' ' Ah, who knoweth before the hour what the crown shall tell ? ' She threw up her head. * I am not one whom the hour may tell, but rather I tell the hour.' ' Ah, who knoweth ? ' he said again. She touched his arm. * Tell me what you will sing to-morrow.' * I sing the song of the crown of Renny. It will be an evening song sereina.' ' Sereina ? Evening ? ' She was dismayed. ' Surely. It will be dark when I pluck the lute string. Shall I sing of dawn in the twilight ? ' CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 193 * Is my crowning a thing of twilight, Lan- ceilhot ? ' He looked at her. ' Your royal head, lady, was made to be lifted up to front the day. Your straight white brows, your hair, the sove- reignty which floateth about you these are your crown. If you superadd another of man's fashion- ing it must obscure that which is of the fashioning of Heaven. So it is twilight, mayhap.' For a moment she faltered ; then she flamed up. ' Never, never ! You talk very foolishly silly cloister dreams you are no better than a sickly monk now. The Renny crown is that of my fathers, of untold ancestry, of sovereign power over man, of pride never broken ! Plustost reini qe reina am I likely to forget that, being who and what I am ? You should know me now, Lanceilhot. I shall never draw back I will go on, although although ah, never mind the cost ! ' She shook the tremble from her brain clenched her hands looked a queen. ' Leave me, Lanceilhot. Sing as you will, you even you will not abate me. Renny calls me ; a sove- reign for the crown, and Renny for his own. Go now.' He went. She stayed with an unkissed hand, and went cold to bed. Next day the whole great household of them rode over the snowy hills to Speir, where the marriage was to be. Lanceilhot, in the ruck, barely saw the plumes on her palfrey's crest. She was so muffled in furs that he could not have known her, nor if they had been thrown off would he have o i 9 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK , found in the staring marbled woman his adorable ' Artemis alert ' of the speaking lips. He thought, when he did see her in all the crusted glory of cloth of silver and jewels, that she had been turned to ice ; and the thought nerved him to hug all the closer what his heart held. The chapel at Speir is not large, but even so it was barely full. There were many ecclesiastics the canons from Beauchef, whose prior was to sing the nuptial Mass ; all the parish priests within a dozen miles, the singing men from Grand-Fe, a few cowled friars minor out of their convent at Montgrace and then the Pikpoyntz knights with their squires, Deir of Deira, the Baron of Withering, Sir John Vigors of Fauconbridge ; Melmer of Melmerfarrow, Hunslete, Perceforest, Cardoil, Vernon and Cantaluce officers of the household, captains of companies, ladies, a pewful of nuns come to pray for their new patron, and so on. The Prince-Bishop stood with his chaplain, cross and train bearers, to give the bride to the bridegroom. She had no other friendly soul of old standing in the throng but he, and one other ; none who had known her as a child, nor any that had ever loved or taken joy in her. The thought of this cut Lanceilhot to the heart for a minute when he saw her come, heralded by trumpets at the door a stiff little lonely image in silver brocade, stuck with gems on brow, fingers and neck. Behind her walked her train-bearers, pages, no women. This desolating, lonely appearance made her seem to him like a figure for high tragedy ; he CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 195 could have sworn her face was but the mask. Always delicately coloured, she looked wan now, seemed as if she walked by rote, with death on her ; he thought she had the carved, expressionless face of an archaic goddess ; the hard-set eyes, rigid mouth, stiff-set head stuck on marble neck, and death-chilled bosom. This horrible remote- ness set her at judging distance ; he watched the espousal as if it had been a dance of mummers. The wedding was followed by her coronation as Countess of Pikpoyntz and the homage of all the feudatories. Mabilla kindled a little at this evidence of royalty which figured a yet more fate- ful election, the burden of a far greater crown. Walking out of the chapel, her hand in her hulk- ing lord's, Lanceilhot hailed the light in her eyes, the little fires which played over her cheeks. He lost his pity in his love, and exulted once more at the treasure he had. ' This poor fool of an Earl thinketh her his ! Queen of Pikpoyntz, said he ; but I say, Queen of Heart-hold, queen by election and divine decree. Oh, to be done with all this mummery ! ' In this mood he stood up in full hall to raise shrill and clear the canzon de Reini. To see the company was to guess the hold he had on them the women with swimming eyes, the knights lean- ing on their elbows ; Pikpoyntz himself in his throne, fiery red and keen as a sword edge, had both hands on his knees, staring eyes and a work- ing mouth. Shrike rolled his white eyeballs and chattered to himself. Music made the black go mad. Of the two Rennys there Grand-Fe was 196 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i ruddy and proud of the long tale of blood and ruin ; but Countess Mabilla was as cold again as a willow in the frost. She neither looked at the singer nor seemed to hear him. Yet every word stabbed her, and once or twice she shook so much that the old Countess of Gru began to watch her. I am no rhapsodist. The canzon de Reini is long, and I must save my breath and yours. It began on a clear crying note, as a warning bell might ; longish lines of monotone which prayed the Trinity to bless the lord and lady of the house, the marriage-bed, the company, and last the singer. ' Jesu's pains that purchased our peace, reive the bride from the burden of wrong ! ' came as a wailed prayer. Lanceilhot struck the chords thrice. The lines shortened, the pace grew hasty as if he were following in the wake of Eudo's black ships ; he thrashed the music as Eudo's oars the sea ; he broke harshly, and then in a shriek of war Eudo the Wolf, stark as a steer, Bitcth the water, the waves with his teeth ; Toothed is the prow watch him and 'ware ; Reini is laired in his loins ! In lines like these with ever a moaning refrain, ' Out, haro ! the race is not run ! ' he conducted the long blood chase of Renny. One by one they trooped through the gather- ing dusk of the hall fate -bitten ghosts in a gloomy place wringing their hands, shuddering, chattering, or howling like the wind in the CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 197 chimney. What guests for a marriage feast ! What candidates for a bloody crown ! * The Greekish wife with blood-wetted locks * ; ' Red Blaise and the murder at night ' ; * Blaise for Blaise, thirst upon thirst'; the Sibyl, the infamous bed ! It seemed by his account that no Renny could die at home for fear of that shameful bed. And so the song cried itself out, to come to the broken Tree and its three Shoots. And the Prince-Bishop sat on in the dark and glowed to think of deeds which he could not possibly perform ; and in the dark also the little crowned bride sat straight in her chair, shaking, and wondered how long she could bear the grinding pain in her brows. He sang of the three shoots (still standing in the twilight) of the race of Renny in a very different voice. At times he whispered it, at times soared high and clear ; but the sound was, as it were, wet with tears ; and at times he seemed to be praying. The burden of it was still, 4 Out, haro ! the race is not run ! ' but into it he read an urgency of his own. * Ah, for Jesu's pains let sin die and the race run clean ! ' The crown was painted horrible soiled with blood. What brows could bear it ? Lawful is lordship, runneth the rune, The crown for the hardy to hate or to kill Ha ! But on Christ behoveth to call. Hardy is she that cleaveth to love, And under her breasts bindeth with bands The giver of gladness, the god-given girdle Lo, she winneth the robe ! Lawful is lordship Love is her lord. 198 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i She setteth her eyes to the sun, and her lips Welcome the wind, and her heart taketh fire Golden the girdle pray it for her ! And there he ended. Upon the hushed com- pany, thrilling in the dark, came the sound of his lute strings as he cut them ; in the dark he escaped. Then they brought torches into the hall, and men looked on each other ; and the Countess of Gru's place was found as empty as that of the bride. Now it was needful that the bride should come in, so that the last ceremony might be done. The bridegroom was to carry her in his arms across the threshold of the inner doors ; the doors were to be shut and the guests to depart. In her chamber the bride took no rest. Nitidis followed her feverish motions with faithful, desperate eyes. The bride stood fidgeting at the window, staring at the blue night, the ghostly white earth, crisping and uncrisping her hands. Sometimes she put one of them quickly into her neck ; sometimes it held her bosom, sometimes her heart below it. She would take a quick turn as if remindful of something, then abandon her purpose and go back to the window. Her agitation grew as her colour took flight. When she was ash colour Nitidis saw her lips separate and heard her begin to pant. She went close to her, thinking she might fall. * Dearest lady,' she dared to say, * dearest, bravest lady.' The bride's wild eyes in their questing about the room fixed on her at last ; and, * Eh, is that you, Nitidis ? Have you not left me ? ' The maid began to cry. ' Sorrow upon him who, knowing you, would CH. xvi CANZON DE REINI PART I 1 99 leave you now ! ' she cried unrestrainedly. The bride steadied herself with opened hands. ' I cannot be sure of any one now,' she said. * I am alone dead alone. Lanceilhot has left me.' ' Never, never ! ' cried Nitidis. * Wait, I will fetch him.' She flew. Lanceilhot, in the gateway, already facing the snow, felt a clutch at his arm, then a fierce voice, * If you are a man and not a little pale devil, you will come to my lady.' So he went, was thrust in, and faced her. She staggered toward him ; he thought she would have been in his arms. 4 Oh, Lanceilhot, one word for me ! One word ! ' * My lady, my lovely Mabilla, my soul ! ' He was kneeling ; she bade him rise. ' My time is almost come,' she said. * I hardly know what I am about ! But I had to see you once before we go our ways. Look, Lanceilhot.' She touched her open neck. He saw the silver chain. * It will never leave me again, Lanceilhot.' He could scarcely trust himself to speak. So they stood and trembled before each other ; and of the two he, whose need was sorer, recovered first. ' Let me see the Christ, Mabilla,' said he, * for by Him we shall both be stronger.' She drew it from her bosom and held it to him ; he kissed it, and she after him before she slipped it home again. Then once more they looked, and once more the trembling was upon them. But he said, * Lady, I go to win you honour ; and do you stay 200 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK i and gather honour ; and let each pray for each.' Then said she, ' Kiss me once, Lanceilhot ' ; and * So I will,' he answered, and knelt and kissed her hand. ' Now go down, Mabilla,' said he, * to your lord in the hall.' Together, with her women about her, they went down. The guests made a lane, and the great Earl came out to meet her. The trumpets brayed, all hands went up ' Ho ! for the Countess Mabilla ! ' ' Countess of Pikpoyntz and my bride/ roared the Earl. Then he picked her up in both arms and strode down the hall to the inner doors. They were flung open, and he with his stiJl burden passed in. The doors were shut. BOOK II MISTRESS OF THE ROBE CHAPTER I THE CANDIDATE THERE is a way by which a man becomes suddenly most vile, where lust of one sort or another leads him for a season, and lust pales before a new fear ; and fear inspires loathing for that which drew him once ; and to quell these two he pampers the brute he has in him. Such a fate befel Firmin the strapping youth who, hungering for Sabine's bloom, itched for her great possession after, and seizing on both ran away with them. After which came satiety of the one and terror lest he should be brought to account for the other ; but the common misfortunes of the road must be brought into settlement. These, unless you have solidity of your own or love's added fire, will beat the spirit out of you as soon as anything. Headlong flight through mountain passes, thence down the eastern slopes to the sea, cost them what money they had. Firmin's high state of blood reputed husband to a great lady cost them their horses. They reached the coast town beggars ; not all the titles in the world could buy them a sup of food. Moreover, being still near 203 204 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK u Pikpoyntz, he dared not trade on titles ; and the absence of a shilling forbade him even mental ruffling. For you can be as lordly with a shilling in your poke as with a hundred only you choose a different field. He would not work, to beg he was ashamed. But Sabine was not at all ashamed. * Let us once find the King, dear love,' she said, ' and we are safe.' She did the begging, went among the spitting sailors on the mole and prayed a passage to Maintsonge. They all proffered it until they heard of the appendage. None would take Firmin unless he would work. There was no way out. He shipped as a common sailor and found, after experience, that to work was better than to be rope's ended. This coarsened him. He was horribly ill it intensified the grudge he began to have against his wife. She had thrust these dangers, degradation, miseries upon him. And she lay snug abed, while he cut his hands to pieces, or clung snivelling to the shrouds. Six months after her flight Sabine lay-in of a boy, having found the mercy of an Ursuline convent at Landeveer. To recount the thorny- ways by which she got so far, dragging her load, would be an idle task, since what was to follow upon her enlargement from her haven would make them seem a light matter. Let it suffice to say that the ship they took at Coste-Salas, after battling with storms and contrary winds for two months, foundered at last in Landeveer Roads, and that she, her Firmin and another hand alone survived. They followed the coast road, begging CHAP, i THE CANDIDATE 205 their way, and reached Landeveer barefooted and, as to her, at the last stretch. Her hour was come when she knew that her will must give way to her body's need. Firmin got her into the Ursu- lines' and there she lay, white and burning, until the Lord had mercy upon her, and delivery indeed ! her pains were drowned at last in mere physical ease, and then in that joy of possession which is like no other on earth. At that time, also, when her lover's love for the poor girl was suffering a flicker of revival as that of the worst of men will for some ten days at that time also Firmin received a warning of what was threatening him ; and from that time her bitter griefs began. The Earl of Pikpoyntz had a long arm. Firmin was lounging in the sundown by the little port (which the mouth of the Hoe River forms) the mid-October gales had given way to October's peaceful death when he was aware of a foreign sailor, a bronzed, ear-ringed, sly-eyed fellow, lounging too, but very disposed to be friendly. The fellow spoke, moved his seat nearer, edged his person as he plied his talk, and at last got up and sat plump by Firmin. Out of his vest he pulls a script, tagged and sealed in red. * D'ye see this, comrade ? ' says he. * Read it.' He thrust it over. ' Nay, nay,' says Firmin, ' I am no scholar.' ' Nay, but look it over,' the man persisted ; ' look it over. It has taken me five score miles by land ; it 'ud take me thrice five score, I do believe. Look you, the seal to it.' As he proffered it again he peered in his new friend's face. Firmin felt his breath, and guessed at the 206 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK H whites of his eyes. The sight of the seal set the blood leaping in his head, singing and surging in his ears. He could not keep it still in his hand. It showed a burning mountain in a river and a motto, which, though he could not read it, he knew well. * Through.' It was the signet of his liege lord, Gernulf de Salas, Earl of Pikpoyntz. ' Ah, Saviour Christ ! ' he gasped, ' where did you get that ? ' The man laughed and thrust it back into his frock, looking cunningly at Firmin all the while. * You look peakish, comrade. Come, we'll find some liquor to set you on your pins.' Strong waters brought his colour back, and his senses. He fenced with the sailor ; they finished the day together and parted drunk, tearfully affectionate. But next morning Firmin's dread lay beside him on the straw, and thence- forward left him only when he could be drunk. Drunk, he was quarrelsome with the foreign sailor ; sober, he slunk out of his way, agonising over what he might have confided ; but drunk or sober, by some miracle of discretion, he never betrayed Sabine. She, poor soul, wondering over her baby, herself a soft -cheeked child again, scarcely noticed the change in him, being so full of her peace until the day came and he with it. He appeared at her bedside, and shortly told her to be ready at dawn for a journey. ' So soon, Firmin ? ' she faltered. ' Never too soon, mistress,' said he, and left her. That melancholy land of dun marshes and reeds lay laggard to the morn, when the fated pair CHAP, i THE CANDIDATE 207 slippered out of the West Port. They were not, apparently, pursued ; but the sailor had reported them to his mistress, and so Blanchmains was enabled to write a letter to Speir. For many a month they crouched among the marshes, begging crusts from shepherds and bargemen, not daring to approach any town. This misery completed what fear had begun. There is none so devastat- ing as that which hangs, but never falls. Firmin had no staying power ; his breeding, such as it had been, slipped off him with his sleek looks, and with them also went his courage. Haggard, hard- bearded, gaunt-eyed, he drank what he could get to win a make-believe. His fear paralysed him. He would not work, he refused point-blank to go down to Maintsonge and the King. He fell ill and Sabine nursed him ; then she fell ill and he let her lie in a shepherd's hut. In mid-winter the baby died ; but another was to be looked for. You might trust him for that. Finally Blanch- mains got wind of them again. In March, a year after the flight, they were heard of in Hammerith, a thriving town of ships and fishing fleets on the coast, not two hundred miles from Coldscaur. Mabilla at this time was a three months' bride, paling for action. But Pikpoyntz kept her close behind the inviolate mountains which bordered his hold. Not a breath of news was suffered from Marvilion at least, not to her ears, and all the comfort Blanchmains could get was the 'hunt, hunt, hunt ! ' she had had before. CHAPTER II TESTIMONY OF THE ROAD FROM what she heard of them then Blanchmains made her plans. Firmin was sodden with misery, haunted by his fear of the Earl, disintegrate. Blanchmains judged him open to assault on the luxurious side. ' The fine youth will be weary of his mistress,' she thought. * He will have beaten the bloom off her, bruised and used her. I should give him another.' So she judged, and sent for Broadfoot Moll from Cap Dieu. In August some eighteen months after her flight Sabine brought a second child into the world, and was desperately ill over the business, so that when Broadfoot Moll, a blowsy, handsome trollop, reached Hammerith she had no difficulty in finding Firmin, but could learn nothing of the much more important wife of Firmin. The youth himself was too drunk to tell her. She found him distilling alcoholic juices in a wine shop, and at first thought that his beery lamentations over his ' dear wife ' pointed to the fact that she was dead. Broadfoot Moll herself was all for beer as your only consoler when affairs baffle you. She had money, believed 208 CHAP, ii TESTIMONY OF THE ROAD 209 she could get more : therefore she stayed where she was, by Firmin's side, and drank her whack while carefully reducing his. In time she got him back to a state bordering on coherence, which taught her better than to believe her affair so simple. Firmin, it seemed, was again a father, by no means averse to the part and disposed to con- gratulate himself as upon an achievement. The child was again a boy, and both were doing well. The fact and the fancies it involved suggested in- nuendoes to Broadfoot Moll very much after her manner. She was a strapping black-eyed gipsy rogue whose conversation did not depend upon speech alone. It was not difficult, accordingly, for her to play the part assigned by her mistress. Firmin was at her feet in a fortnight ; she held him on tenter- hooks for another week before she confessed herself his. From the hour of that avowal, wrung from her amid scrambled kisses and screams, it is more truthful to say that he was hers. Sabine and her little Blaise alas ! a Blaise too surely to die not in a Coldscaur bed existed no more. Firmin knew all the joys of undisputed possession for a time. Then there came in a third to make the time race by in fever snatches. Broadfoot Moll had not ramped through her world without scatter- ing pledges. The discreditable third occupied them till the time when birds pack for flight. Sabine still lay in hospital and still moaned in her sleep when the precious pair lurched out of Hammerith with a party of shouting sailors and a blind fiddler one afternoon, and were never seen in that town p 210 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n again. When the faithful little wife shivered out of the convent gate, hugging her treasure in a cloak which the good nuns had given her, she went straight as a die to the tavern on the quay, where she should have found her lord. She found instead a beady-eyed landlady, who put her from the door without ceremony, and it was only from a loafer in the street that she learned her plight. She found herself saddled with a sucking child, whose sturdy weight already dragged her shoulders together, without a sixpence, with all the shameful truth pealing in her ears into the bargain. What she did is so characteristic of that Renny of Rennys that I must ask your admiration of it as a point of honour (however distorted) punctili- ously performed. She heard the story to the end her informant spared nothing without flinching. I do not think she paled perceptibly ; her colour was naturally high, and not even her accouchement had been able to wear it from her. Not a wink of her serious eyes, nor a catch of the breath, let out either her despair or her shameful consciousness of the man's nods, winks, and nudges. She heard him steadily to the end, then lifted her little head high above her baby and looked full at the sly, shabby rascal before her. * Thank you,' she said. ' I am much in your debt. My husband's affairs have called him way. I am able to follow him now. Good morning.' Ridiculous royal little lady, who gulled not even the lickerous tramp by the tavern wall gave him, indeed, a tale to earn his entrance but CHAP, ii TESTIMONY OF THE ROAD 211 did so far gull yourself that you whipped a spirit in to take you alone your way of sorrows ! I read in you all the annals of your house. Not one of your Blaises and Eudos showed a stiffer back to his friends or blanker front to his enemies. Where they did wickedly you may do foolishly it is all of a piece. And where lust led them love leads you it may be to the same field of torment, since love and lust alike are sown in heat and reaped in tears. But I think your acts are an expia- tion and believe your calm face to be a witness. After all, it is not so easy to say whether she actually realised the dismay which should have overtaken her. Pride acts on the will with greater force than desire ; it is deeper rooted, is more at home, so to put it. The intelligence had fired that into a blaze ; you may very nearly put it that her pride prevented her admitting to her own heart that she was deserted, hideously betrayed, unloved and wholly cut adrift. And this in spite of the fact that from the hour when, alone, distrustful, doubtful, touched, she had been caught unawares by the rascal who was now skulking from her and her load, she had never wavered from the love and the trust she had given him, never doubted him for a moment, in spite of everything his sottish, surly ways, his miserable fits of terror, his blows, his oaths, his most miserable fits of blasphemous railing at God, at her, at their unborn baby. She had chosen him out of her world for honesty ; she had reasoned with herself that his misdeeds were but the excess of that quality at any rate, she was 212 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK his through and through. Her freshness and astonishing beauty had charmed his gross eyes from the first. He had brooded over her, possessed her in thought long before she advanced any nearer than to ordering distance of him. When she drew closer he began to play the only game he knew shamming stupid. You know how amazingly it had succeeded. God help her, she thought she had at last found an honest fellow. Innately he was a craven who, once convinced of his luck, could take his fill of it. Thus he anticipated his marriage and was honestly cloyed a week after it. That left him nothing but his wife's future greatness to trade upon. The long arm of Pikpoyntz cut him out of that, so (as such men will who cannot fall back upon themselves) he learned to lean upon the sham self liquor calls up. Morally this was the end of him. What reached Hammerith was only the simulacrum of a tall youth. It was a cringing entry keeper, a starter at shadows, a poor shifty groper after solaces one who must glut his body with pleasures that it may slit up the issues of the mind. He dared not think he was hunted ; he dared not believe the truth. Only at Landeveer Port, among the roaring sailors and bold-eyed women of the stews, indeed, did he find a refuge from that dread avenger, the terrible Red Earl. Sabine, by reminding him con- tinually of his offence, reminded him no less of his certain end, the gallows. So that not until her time came and she found a haven with the nuns did Firmin begin to take breath ; and with CHAP, ii TESTIMONY OF THE ROAD 213 breath he took to liquor and after liquor to vice. The rest was easy. Blanchmains' plan had been in a fair way to succeed if Broadfoot Moll had kept her head. Unfortunately she precipitated matters, or rather her liberal arms took too wide a sweep. Firmin was not the only admirer to whom she was brought to declare that she was his. Blind Jack, the fiddler (a too old friend), was of the party that went shouting out of the Land Gate, and when they dropped their sailors (duly drugged and robbed) and made with all speed over the East Mark border into Dunelaund, Blind Jack limped on one side of her and Firmin slouched on the other. They made a divagating way over the salt marshes of Dunelaund and were not hard to follow. Sabine came upon them after ten days' travel (much of it in a canal boat, by which she cut into them at an angle) in Dunfleet marshes, not far from that little fishing town where they had been a year before and where her great ancestor, Eudo the Wolf, had been slain five hundred years yet earlier. The fog whisps were trailing off the flat grey lands on the November morning which brought Sabine up with her runaway. By the side of the white road between it and the dyke the three tramps huddled, two of them blinking at the chill dawn. Firmin was lying on one elbow, gnawing alternately a knuckle bone and a hunch of rye bread. That dusty heap of drab covered with a shawl was Broadfoot Moll, dead asleep. Blind Jack the fiddler was perched chirrupping upon a milestone. He was a small, peering, flinching man 2i 4 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOKH whose eyes had been put out for some devilry or other. In his cups he was quarrelsome, but just now, when his companions were dejected, he was full of quips. He held his head high like all his afflicted tribe, and trusted much to his nose. A pan of water was by his side, smoking on a little fire of dry chips ; in it from time to time he dropped an onion, a piece of bacon, or a crust. He whistled and blew on his fingers in the intervals, or flacked his leg to blow the white dust out of his breeches. * Eh, eh ! ' said he, after a time, stopping to snuff the air. f I smell a stranger on the road a stranger, Firmin, my Trojan. You would not like strangers. How if it should be a friend ? ' He snuffed again. Firmin glanced up, but soon returned to his bone. The distant figure drew nearer. ' 'Tis a woman, boy,' pursued Blind Jack, after nosing the scent out ; ' 'tis a slippering, shuffling young woman with a load. A babby, for a guess. A girl with a babby, my brave ! Does that set your wits to work, eh ? ' It did. Firmin glared at him, then looked at the figure. He dropped his bone. Saints alive ! I'm dogged, Jack,' he said. The fiddler flipped his fingers and crowed. 'Eh, eh ! Dogged like a sneaking fox, singled like Master Brock by a terrier cur ' ; he jeered and mocked till Firmin turned on him, white and savage. ' God twist your tongue, ye blind thief! ' The other paid no heed, but snatched up his fiddle and twanged a string or two. Then he began to sing in a canting voice : CHAP, ii TESTIMONY OF THE ROAD 215 Little mistress, little lady, Come and love me where it's shady And the birds sing roundelay Firmin grabbed at his neck. ' Jack, ye little devil, Jack, if ye don't stop I'll slip a knife in your ribs. 'Tis my mistress coming, sure as the grave/ The blind man shrilled with laughter which was not all merriment. ' Ho, boy ! Ho, boy ! 'Tis so, 'tis so. Then perhaps ye'll leave smelling after mine. Sporting rights are sporting rights, by Mary the Virgin ! You keep your missy and I'll keep to mine.' Firmin could not now keep his eyes off Sabine. ' Jack,' he said hoarsely, * Jack ! Can she set the law upon me, d'ye think ? ' Jack spat on the ground. ' If I cud spew ye out like that, ye white leper, I'd do it. You've got a heart made o' mud, ye have. Call yourself a man, ye jelly-blooded mongrel ! Bah, I sicken at ye ! Go and ask her pardon, ye backdoor, pilfering, whining, lying torn cat. Go and grovel and look at the brat you've got on her. Maybe ye'll not have another chance before the gallows gets ye ! Off with ye now, for a dirty-fingered, lickpot sneak, or I'll break the fiddle over the shoulders of ye ! ' The stout little man fairly drove his mate out into the road. Broadfoot Moll, awake now, yawning and rubbing her sleepy brown eyes, grinned her admiration. * Oh, Jack, Jack,' she said softly, * what a little captain ye are ! You're the man I love, Jack, for all your dead eyes. Come and kiss me, Jack.' The fiddler was prompt. 216 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n * 'Tis his mistress come after him, Moll. The shaking hound slipt off after ye and left her behind him in Landeveer Port, and her new-born babby in her shawl. Oh, Moll, Moll, how could ye have the heart to do it ? You've been false to me before now, Christ help ye, and he's a false one through to his back but she was an honest girl, Moll, once, before he gulled her. And now you gull him ! ' Broadfoot Moll hid her face on the fiddler's shoulder. * Don't reproach me, Jack,' she sobbed, ' don't reproach me. I'm too easy with men, and that's the truth. I can't say no, Jack.' ' No, ye can't, ye handsome slut, and that's the Testament truth of it.' He kissed her again with a sigh and went back to stir his broth. Broadfoot Moll put up her tousled hair and fastened the body of her dress with a couple of pins, watching all the while, with a good deal of interest, the greeting of Firmin with his wife and child. This was .the girl she was sent after by her employer. She knew little of the why or who in the business, but guessed a good deal. She saw the meeting, such as it was. Firmin had shuffled into the middle of the road, and there stood with his hands deep in his breeches pockets awaiting Sabine. The girl came gently, almost timidly to him, put her face up to be kissed, made no reproaches, but with shining eyes of pride and a face all rosy and soft, looked down as she opened her shawl. * Oh, Firmin, look what I have brought you,' she said shyly. ' The nuns had him christened. He is Blaise, Firmin. CHAP, ii TESTIMONY OF THE ROAD 217 Is he not splendid ? ' Firmin blinked at his son, then of his own accord he kissed his wife, and they turned and came back together to the two by the dyke. Broadfoot Moll was on her best behaviour. In terms of her reconciliation with her Jack she had slipt her silver ring on the proper finger ; face to face with an undoubted wife (as she believed her) and an almost certain lady born she could be no less than the virtuous woman. To Sabine she was deferential and full of tact ; she called her ' Mistress Firmin,' adored the baby from a distance, was determined to atone for past misdeeds by vigilant strategy now. She shivered when she thought of Blanchmains' keen and quiet face under the news of her late escapade. Sabine met her advances with her usual quiet acceptance of everything, friendly or adverse. She gave you the air of a princess in hiding who recognises that for a time she must abrogate her prerogatives. She never unbent entirely, but she did not keep aloof; she dipped her fingers into Jack's pipkin and fished for an onion or rag of bacon with the others, and when it came to her baby boy's turn she gave him his breakfast with the innocent unconcern of the Madonna. Blind Jack bowed, scraped, and skipped, all nerves and alacrity. He sniffed all about her like a spaniel at a hare's form. ' Ahi ! ' he cried, whistling his words. * Any one can see what you are a lady- ship born ! Any one can see it ah ! ' cried the poor fellow with a moan, 'except me, merciful Lord ; except me ! ' He beat his forehead in his despair ; yet he had seen her as she was best of all the three. 2i 8 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n Broadfoot Moll tuned herself to the wit of the shabby little crew of them. She frankly admitted that the fiddler had only voiced her own suspicions. * If I slip out " my dear " now and then where a madam would come better and a ladyship do no harm ye'll forgive me, my dear, for the sake of the little gentleman you nurse,' she said. * We all have our ups and downs, and mine are downs, my heart, as my husband'll tell ye if ye ask him. But though I be soused in the Pit for the sins o' men I should know a high lady when I saw her an' there might be some in my company there if there's a God to rule the day. So if I greet ye fair and serve ye honest, my dear, ye'll put up with the sliding tongue in me and say, " 'Tis the tender heart of the wench ! " * Oh yes,' said Sabine, * you shall call me what you will. We are all unfortunate together. I think you are very kind to me.' Moll's foolish eyes were filled with tears, and tears choked her utterance ; but she snatched up Sabine's hand to kiss. Blind Jack was delighted, insisted on his share, got and saluted Sabine's hand as if he had been a courtier ; then he turned to his mistress with a zest. Firmin had no kissing ; he scowled apart. Broadfoot Moll now turned to affairs. Where were they ? Where should they go ? The fiddler knew everything, blind as he was. They were now some five miles north by west of Dunfleet, twenty miles east of Beatonshoe. Beatonshoe lay in the middle of Dunelaund ; his advice was that they should make for Beatonshoe fine city, very charitable, full of convents, the centre of the CHAP, ii TESTIMONY OF THE ROAD 219 shire, where you would hear all the news for miles about. Beatonshoe happened to be one of the places where, as Moll knew, Blanchmains would have a spy. She remembered the name of the meeting -place appointed. She agreed. Firmin had nothing to say, but made it appear that where Broadfoot Moll went he would go. Sabine, when asked what she thought, for answer looked at Firmin. * Good, then, my dears ; we're for Beatonshoe,' said the bouncing girl, and they were soon on the road. I pass over much misery to get them to Beatonshoe which finally they saw in the violet haze : Beatonshoe, a city on a low hill, with a great church tower, the landmark of all that shire of marshes and reeds. They crept into a town full of soldiery King's men they were, too but none molested them nor took any heed. They were so many more to the drab tale of camp-followers. Moll, Sabine and the child got a shelter in a house of Poor Clares ; the two men herded where they could in the entries and gateways of the wind-swept streets. There was nothing to hold them together. The moment they had left their women the fiddler went one way and Firmin another. But Firmin was never very far from the Clares' gate. He was thus enabled to see Moll creep out after dark and to follow her to the tavern of ' The Holy Ghost,' a not too reputable haunt of the dregs of Beatonshoe. The King's soldiers pervaded the streets, but Moll had no eyes for soldiers just then. Nor had she, as he was to find out, an eye for Firmin. CHAPTER III THE TAVERN OF 'THE HOLY GHOST THAT night at Beatonshoe was dark and squally with a hot south-west wind too hot for the end of November. Firmin sweated freely as he squeezed among the jostling crowds of Three Kings Street, partly by effort to overtake his woman, partly by the strain upon him to know where she was. The only light there was came from the few guttering lamps outside the houses or before the image of some saint or another. The streets were narrow and filled from side to side : the soldiers were in the town all the town came out to see them. Firmin, in a perfect fever of jealous anxiety, hunted for Broadfoot Moll. By the flare from an open tavern door he saw her, discreetly (but, alas ! provocatively) shawled. He saw her stopped by four arquebusiers abreast, of whom one coolly drew open the fold of her cloak to look at her. Firmin, breathless, gained on her by this delay. He was amazed to see her entreat- ing them to let her pass * for the sake of the Virgin.' He saw her appeal to a shrined image in the wall above her where that holy lady held CHAP, in IN A TAVERN 221 out her Son, and a little floating wick showed the dust on the faded wreaths hanging there. He saw the prayer prevail. The men let her on and reeled into the already packed wine shop. When at last he saw her turn out of Three Kings Street into one smaller and darker he sighed his thanks to Heaven, knowing that he had her now. In and out of the small creaks of light he made after her. Once he saw her stop just beyond one such stream, evidently that she might see who was following her without herself being seen. Firmin accordingly pulled up just short of it. They both waited, looking at each other's dark envelope. By this time Firmin knew that she was going upon some secret business of her own. He had got so besotted upon the woman that it never entered his head this could be anything but unfaithfulness to him. His passion for her was, of course, perverted appetite wholly a matter of sense. He knew well enough what she had been, what she was, what she must and would be to the end of her squalid chapter ; none of this mattered. It was sense and sense only that goaded him ; let her be to out- ward sight and seeming his alone he could be content. Follow her now he must. He heard her at last creep on along the edge of the houses, and after a little he too went on. She seemed to know her way perfectly. Flagrantly detected lie ! She had affected to know nothing of the place when it was under discussion. He raged and swore under his breath ; then he began to wonder whither he was being 222 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n led. He felt himself ah, he had his knife ! It should be for her or any one else whom she let touch her this night that also he swore to. Then he saw his chance. Moll stooped to pick a stone out of her shoe. Firmin sprang forward and had her by the shoulders. As she raised herself with a gasp of fear he turned her round and caught her in his arms. 1 Moll, my Moll ! my pretty delight ! ' the doting fool began, mumbling at her cheeks. It was now Broadfoot Moll's turn to swear. * Let me go, you greedy villain ! ' she panted, struggling to free herself. * By the Lord, my Saviour, Firmin, if you hold on to me I'll slice you for it. Let me go, let me go, or I'll raise the watch ! ' Firmin dropped her at this. They faced each other, out of breath and temper and measure alike. ' Tell me where you're going, Moll,' he said in his throat. She shook a hand in his face. 4 I'll tell you where you're going, my man, and that's to hell this very night, if you come near me again. I'm tired of this, you sick dog, you ! Get back to your wife and child and leave me my way.' '.It's you I want, Moll, Lord help me ! ' he began to blubber. ' If you throw me off now, after what's been between us this long time, I won't answer for me or you. That's a holy truth, Moll. I care for nothing in the world but you. I'm a beggar, and a sodden beggar at that ; I'll go to hell, but I'll take you with me. It's you I want you, you, you ! ' CHAP, in IN A TAVERN 223 The passion in the fellow set him screaming at her. She saw that she must go on another beat. She came near him, therefore, holding out her two hands to be taken in his. * There, there, lad,' she said, ' don't take on that gait. Why, you must be crazy to be set on Gypsy Moll anybody's money. Let me go ; I'm not worth the love of even you, lad.' But the look she caught in the burning eyes of him showed her words' emptiness. She was pretty hardy, yet she had to lower her own before it. ' Moll,' he whispered, ' listen to this. I loved my mistress once, but it was nothing to this. It eats me up ; I've neither rest nor peace. You can make me hate myself, but not leave of wanting you. Now look at this. Tell me where you are going and what to do, and I swear by the Sacred Name I'll not follow you farther than the door you enter. I'll not, indeed. Are you going to be untrue to me by your errand ? ' * No. That I swear.' * Are you going to meet a man ? ' * It may be a man. I don't know.' ' Who is the man ? ' ' How can I tell you when I don't know whether 'tis a man or not ? ' * Where are you going ? ' To the sign of " The Holy Ghost." ' 4 A beer-shop ? ' ' Sort of that.' * You have sworn, Moll ? ' * I'll swear again if you like that I'm for no dishonesty ah,' she gasped and swallowed, then 224 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK went on * none of that sort at least. I shall be a clean woman this night, Firmin.' ' Kiss me, Moll, and I'll let you go.' ' There, there quick ! * He strained her to him and then pushed her away. ' By the Mass, I love till I hate, I do believe,' he groaned. * Now go on. I'll stay for you at the door.' There was no help for it ; she had to leave it so. The tavern of ' The Holy Ghost ' was really a vault under the church of that name. It had no windows, but a plain door painted green and rubbed black by many a discreditable palm. Above this hung an oil lamp and a gilt dove for sign. The street was as dark as all of its class ; there were no loafers by the green door. Men and sometimes a woman or two went in ; no one seemed to come out. There was no noise. Towering above them rose the thicker blackness which declared the great Holy Ghost Church served by the Poor Men of God. Moll stopped her companion at the church porch, a deep hiding-place. ' Stay you here, Firmin. I shall not be long.' ' I'll wait. Remember.' 'Yes, yes.' Moll crept on and pushed open the green door. A broad beam of light covered her for a moment ; then all was dark again. Firmin's very first act was a lie. He did not wait in the porch, but went to the green door and crouched himself there. He could not keep quiet, so fell to biting his nails. The time sped CHAP, in IN A TAVERN 225 on at the racing speed of his thoughts, if thoughts they can be called which stormed like clouds across his brain. One or two belated revellers, three soldiers with a woman, all reeling ; two women who went furtively, started at the brunt of his shadow and then tried to brave him with a blasphemy ; a few others, habitues. Later than all these came to his ear the tap of a stick on the cobbles which he had learned to loathe, the quick chasing sniffs which he had reason to fear Blind Jack going his rounds. Firmin slunk into the farthest corner and waited, pale and nervous. The fiddler came on the line of his tapping stick, found the balustrade, the steps, by its help. He nosed desperately all about him, to Firmin's terror, but apparently the fumes of cider and beer blotted all other smells. After a little hesitation he went down the steps and pushed himself through the green door. The door closed on him, but not before Firmin had heard the roar of welcome. There were harsh women's voices in it, which set him shaking again. Almost immediately after- ward he heard the stamp of Jack's foot and the scraping of his fiddle. Craning his ear to the door, he heard them pushing the trestle tables and benches out of the way. They were going to dance. Very soon he knew that they were dancing, from which time all sense of measure, caution, or desire left him. He was at the mercy of a roaring blaze a red rage. It was in the stress of that that a new desire, that of killing, came to him and never left him till it was done. That once become an intent, 226 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n he grew calmer, preternaturally wise and deliberate. He took out his knife, honed it on the step, gave it an edge on his boot. Then he turned it up his sleeve, pulled his hat down upon his eyes, and pushed open the great door. The room he saw was very long and was vaulted. Obviously it had been part of the crypt of the church. The corners were dark, for there was but one lamp a huge flaring oil thing hung upon a chain in the middle of the room. Jack the fiddler sat high on a table, playing his maddest ; a mug of liquor was by his foot, but though he looked to have need of it the froth was yet on it. Below him a room full of panting rascals whirled and capered or chased each other in and out of the pack. It was neither a sane nor a shameful sight merely gross. For Firmin it was nothing but so much cover for his game. He looked about for Broadfoot Moll, guessing from what he knew of her that one of the alcoves would hold her. At last he caught sight of her in the arms of a gigantic halberdier, half dead with exertion, a flushed, disorderly Venus, the spoil of a beery Mars. Fiercely as he hated her for thus putting the crown to his temple of hatred, he could not but hold back a moment before he went to mar this piece of work. The exuberant charms of the woman were enough to shake a stronger man. It was because he felt himself so weak before her that he went on. As she lay, half swooning with drink, fatigue and love, in her soldier's arms, Firmin marked exactly where she was namely, against a buttress, the second on the left beyond CHAP, in IN A TAVERN 227 the lamp. She would never see him ; he had no fear of any other. He pushed open the door and slipped in among the frantic dancers. Elbowing his way between them, he reached the centre of the vault ; there he stood under the lamp, un- noticed of any of the throng. He was, as you know, pretty tall ; he ascer- tained by reaching up his arm that with a jump he could touch the wick of the light. At a moment chosen for him, as it seemed, by blind Jack ; at a stamp from him, a flourish and a shriek from the fiddle, Firmin took off his cap, made his jump and extinguished the light. Screams and stifled laughter, scrambling, kissing and chasing drowned his next move. Broadfoot Moll's voice, drowsy with love, guided him now. He stumbled forward over prostrate forms, battled among men and women fighting, elbowing and hugging, toward the sleepy voice which said : ' But I do love ye, sweetheart, I do, I do.' He knew her very breath as he stood before her in the dark. He felt her breast with his hand ; then he stabbed below it, stabbed deep, turned and fled for the door. He heard her wet sob then her ' Oh, Tom, Tom, I'm stabbed. Love me, Tom. I'm dying ' ; then the thud of her body on the floor and the hoarse cry of her lover. He heard no more, gained the street, and fled like the wind away. Broadfoot Moll had died in harness, poor soul ! Blind Jack's high voice rose wailing above the uproar ' There's been bloody work among ye ; I heard her fall ! Who's done it ? Where's my 228 THE SONG OF KENNY splendid girl? Where's my Moll?' He alone of the panic-struck herd could find his way. He knelt down and felt the woman's face * Ah, 'tis my girl they've hit. "Pis my pretty lass ! ' he whispered with a break in his dry voice. He felt over her body and shuddered at the mess. ' Wet, pah ! ' Then he threw himself upon her and whispered between his kisses ' O my dear, my dear ! Are ye going, Molly ? Will ye leave me, dear?' and such -like babble. The dying girl moaned out the truth. * Love ruined me, I ruined you, and now I've done wi' love, Jack.' * Who done it on ye, Moll ? Who done it ? Tell me that before ye go.' * Firmin did it, Jack. I might 'a known he would.' ' Ah, the gallows rat he shall answer for it.' * Stick him for me, Jack.' ' I'll spoil him slower nor that, Molly. He shall madden first.' 1 Take the girl to ah, I'm done ! Take her with ye, Jack ! ' * His girl, Molly ? And the baby ? ' * Yes, yes. Ah, Mother of God ! Kiss me, Jack. ' * Eh, my pretty one ! Eh, my pretty dove ! ' He rose up. The relit room saw then his sightless agony, dry as an east wind. He solemnly cursed his enemy. ' May these hands rot if they feel not that dog's neck before day dawning ! May hell burn me if it burn not him first ! Make way there ; I'm going to do my work in the open.' Through a lane of them he went CHAP, in IN A TAVERN 229 to the tune of his stick. No one stopped him. Some good soul laid a crucifix on the woman's breast, folded her hands, shut down her eyes, threw a sheet over her. They did a great trade at the tavern of * The Holy Ghost ' that night. Sabine was sleeping on the floor of the Clares hospice. She was roused by a touch upon her shoulder. * My child,' said the portress, * a man naming himself your husband waits for you at the gate. He says you must take the road with him upon the instant.' ' Good, my sister ; I will come.' ' It is midnight, my child. A blowy and rainy night. Can you not wait ? ' ' No, sister ; I must go if he needs me.' ' Must it be so ? Will you take some bread with you ? ' * I would like that. Thank you, sister.' * Come with me, then. I will give it you at the gate.' ' Yes, I am quite ready.' ' Ah, child, you need not trouble about your tread. These poor souls will not wake for that.' So they went together. The white face of Firmin was at the gate. * Come, come, for the love of God ! ' he whis- pered. ' I must be out of this.' ' I am quite ready, Firmin. Good-night, my sister.' ' Good-night, dear child. May Our Blessed Lord have you in His care, and Our Lady and all saints ! ' 230 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n ' Thank you, thank you, sister. Pray for us. Good-night.' ' Come, come, come,' urged Firmin, looking scared. They hurried on toward the Morton gate. When they approached it they found it shut. ' Who are you ? Where are you for ? Whence ? ' said the sentry. * Name of Firmin ; for Morton Wold ; from the Clares' hostel.' * Got your pass ? ' * From the sisters ? Yes. Here,' said Sabine. The man read it by the light of his lantern. Nosing in the dark, Blind Jack waited and thrilled. * Pass on,' said the sentry as he opened the gate. * What ! Three of you ? ' he asked. ' Yes,' said Sabine. * Saints, Sabine, who's the third ? ' Firmin sweated with fright. * Oh, Firmin, our little Blaise ! ' Firmin swore for his relief. Then they went forward against the rising wind. The rain drove in their faces, and Sabine closed her shawl round her little Blaise. Blind Jack sat himself down on a heap of stones. * He shall hear the music o' my little stick above the wind,' he said to himself, ' when he's gone his quarter of a mile.' He sat the time out, winking and nodding to himself. If it had been light you might have seen his raised brows and expostulating smile, as if he were arguing a reductio ad absurdum. CHAPTER IV MORTON DYKE WHEN they got down the little hill upon which stood the city, away from the clustered hovels, wine-shops, beer-shops, guest-houses, etc., which always collect at the gates, it was not until they were fairly on the plain that they felt the full force of the wind. It came swooping across those dreary flats, strong, steady and hot, bringing with it the rain. It was pitchy dark, but the way could not be missed ; there was but one to go the Roman road, the road of the West, which ran straight for Morton Wold, some sixty miles, before it split into three, respectively for Breault, Cragarn, Minster Merrow. For Firmin the fugitive, therefore, it was a case for speed. The marshes were cut off from him by broad black dykes ; there was simply no more cover than the screaming reeds could spare him. He knew this as well as anybody, and pushed on with all the strength fear could lend him. At the end of a mile or so the pace told upon Sabine, burdened as she was. She began to flag ; a cry for stay was twisted from her. ' Ah, Firmin^ 331 232 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n I cannot go so fast ! ' He was ahead of her, but shame made him stop ; the night hid his cursing face. f For God's sake, push, can't you ? ' he shouted down the wind. While he waited for her a faint sound caught his ear faint, very far off. His heart jumped enough to take his breath away. He caught Sabine by the arm. * Hark ! Listen, listen ! What is that sound ? ' She listened painfully. * There is nothing, Firmin. Why are you so terrified ? ' ' Hush ! Listen again. I swear I heard some- thing.' They both stood still ; a sudden grip of his hand made the girl cry out. * Oh, Firmin, you are hurting me ! ' ' There it is ! There it is 1 ' he whispered. ' Hark ! Do you hear it now ? ' She did. * Why, it sounds like the blind man's stick.' Firmin gave a cry. She accepted the augury. * Dearest,' she pleaded, * dearest, may we not travel alone again ? I think we are happier to- gether we three. Let us go on. You do not want to wait for them, Firmin ? ' * Ah, God ! ' he groaned, and shuddered. * No, no, no ! Let us run, Sabine let us run. Give me the baby.' * No, no ; I will carry him. He is quite quiet. He knows me. Come.' They started at a trot and so struggled for another mile. Then Sabine had to give in, to Firmin's unconcealed agony. * For the Lord's sake, come ! ' CHAP, iv MORTON DYKE 2 33 c Firmin, I cannot. I will stay here. You go on, and I will join you at the first village we pass. Wait for me there.' Firmin did not stay to talk. He was gone before her words were done. Sabine, dropping with fatigue, fell at the side of the road. Half an hour later she woke with a start. Tap tap tap sounded close by. Blind Jack came slip- ping along after his stick, muttering to himself. * Now, my heart, now, my pretty lass ! Now be cheery ! ' She could see nothing. It seemed as if he was talking to his wench, and so, no doubt, he was. The taps faded from her as the fiddler went on and she sank asleep again. Meanwhile Firmin was flying for his life. He trotted for a couple of miles and then brought up gasping. He leaned his hands on his knees and sobbed to get his breath. His head spun. Then he heard the fatal tapping again upon his track. This set the doomed wretch staggering another mile. He rested there, because he needs must. On he went again at the touch of his goad ; it came to resting every half mile ; every quarter. The stick gained upon him ; soon he could hear it as he shambled. He had a panic, rushed for the reeds on his right ; there were none they had been cut. On his left there were a few. Trying for them, he missed his footing and soused one leg into the mud up to the knee. This was quite enough to make his brain blind. He gave a hoarse cry, clutched frantically about, splashed, gasped. The tapping stick ceased. Blind Jack had heard him. When 234 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n it began again not hastened in the least, but steady as a clock Firmin had gained the bank and was limping the road again. The clog of mud and water on his left leg hindered him ter- ribly now he knew that he was running a losing race. He began to fail at the knees, actually dropped once, twice. The second time he could hear the blind man's eager sniffing as he nosed out the scent. By his next frantic act he lost himself, for he gave a shrill cry and plunged off to the left. He took, indeed, to the water. As he clung half in, half out, the stick which had seemed latterly to deafen him became muffled. It was almost a relief physically, was actual ease but he knew that his foe was on the grass. It is probable that his little remaining sense froze in his head at this point. What awoke him was the grip of a hand upon his hair. * Ahi, ahi ! It is well met, dear friend,' said the wheezy voice of Blind Jack. * Mercy, mercy my wife and child ! ' This was hardly audible, but Blind Jack caught it up. * Eh, the wife and child of him ! So loved and tended eh, eh, eh ! ' * Mercy, mercy ' * And I'm goin' to be merciful, for I'm goin* back for 'em. Three mile ago I past 'em if sound and smell can tell me anything. And they're all I've got, merciful Lord, to go by, except a hand in a dog's pelt, merciful Lord, and a gaudy strong wrist/ He gave a shake to his victim. * Now, you hearken to me, you white-galled CHAP, iv MORTON DYKE 235 hound,' he said. ' 'Tis a sinner speaks to the dirt at his feet. You're no sinner, my man, having no guts you're just a clod of muck, you are carrion and muck that the crows would turn at. An' you've fouled all you come near and by the living witness of the holy bread you'll foul no more. Muck ye are, Firmin, an' I'm goin' to drown you in muck. If the water '11 have him, merciful Lord ! ' ' My wife ah, my child ' But his exe- cutioner gave him. a shake. * Gr-r-r you sick dog souse, will ye ! ' He pushed him deep, his arm stiffened and held like a bar of metal. His work over, he got up and wiped the sweat from his face. ' 'Tis a work well done,' said he to himself. 'Now what comes next ? ' He meditated. Then he perked up his head and sniffed. His quick ear had caught some- thing on the road. ' Some one coming into town,' said he, * an' I'm not in the mood for strangers. Wait now, wait now, till I see. 'Tis a man, a young man, an' a quick- hearted young man. He's got something to take him into town. A woman, merciful Lord ! Hark ye, now. By the heavens, he's singing. His heart's on fire for love of a lady. Well, he'll never hurt me ! He's for ladies, not for dead dogs and their slayers.' He rose up on one knee, still listening. Then he gave a jump, slapped his thigh, sprang to his feet. 'Yonder'll be a heart full of mercy an' pity. He'll do my business. I'll board him, by 236 THE SONG OF RENNY POOKH the Mass ! ' Jack began to whistle. He was quite himself again all rage had gone into the black mud round Firmin's neck. A light, springing step came down the wind nearer and nearer. * Ho-ho, ahoy ! ' the fiddler called. The step ceased. ' Who goes there ? ' ' A friend, and a blind one at that.' * Good. Where are you, blind friend ? ' 4 Ten paces to your right.' The step began again slowly. The fiddler struck the road with his stick. * Here you are,' he said. * No offence, friend, if I use my feelers ? ' 'Feel away, my man.' Blind Jack felt the stranger over face, breast, and thighs, muttering comments as he went. 4 H'm, h'm smooth as a girl man's shoulders man's breast velvet tunic, by the Lord ! Dagger ? That's your sort for the road. Man's pair of legs. Man it is ! You're none too old for the road, master ? ' 'No. I'm not very old yet. What do you want ? ' * I might want your name, friend.' ' I keep that for older friends.' ' Quite right, quite right, master. Now, have ye any mercy in your heart, or is it all blocked up wi' love and charity ? ' * I hope I am merciful.' * Then mercy you shall do. Three miles along this road, on your left as you go, you'll come CHAP, iv MORTON DYKE 2 37 upon a girl an' a babby. Now a man's been drowned here, the father o' that babby. You go up to that young woman and you say, " Sabine, my dear," says you, " your man's fell into the dyke and got drowned. Now you come along o' me," says you, " an' I'll never leave ye ! " That's what you'll say.' ' My good friend, I shall say nothing of the sort, I assure you. To begin with, it would be the speech of a brute.' ' Oh, wrap it how you will,' said the fiddler ' put it up in a bit of your velvet. It'll have to come out in the end, ye know.' * Next,' went on the stranger, * it would be a lie, for there is no probability of my remain- ing with the young woman and her baby. It is not my baby.' ' Right, right, young master. Take her where ye like, but never leave her at the side of the road with a drowned husband handy.' * Is he handy ? ' 'Well, in truth he is none too handy. The black mud's got him, or the black eels. She'll never see him again and that's as sure as hell, an' a vasty deal better for her.' 4 What will she do, then ? ' ' Eh, eh, that's for you to settle,' said the blind man cheerfully. The other laughed. 4 You are a cool hand, my friend,' said he. * I'm dead blind,' said Jack. The other started and covered his eyes. ' Ah, pitiful, pitiful ! Forgive me. I had for- gotten. Yes, then I will look after them. I will 238 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n get them into a convent till I can arrange some- thing else.' Blind Jack took his hand. 'You're a fine young fellow,' he said. ' Now I'll tell you some- thing else. Don't take her into Beatonshoe. Take her North.' ' Why North ? ' ' I cannot tell you anything save this. She's a North Marvilion gal.' ' How do you know ? ' * I've heard her speak of the shire, and one I knew better than her God rest her, she died this blessed night ! she came from those parts out o' the city of Cap-Dieu. For there I loved her when I had my eyes and there I lost my eyes and she her soul merciful Lord ! ' 'Well, I am for the North myself,' said the stranger. ' I am going to the Honeybornes.' ' Ah,' sniffed Jack, ' and which of 'em ? ' ' Honeyborne Cuthbert, I think.' ' You'll be in good company, young man. There is a prince o' the blood royal in that little town.' ' So I believe. Well, I will go now. Three miles, you say ? ' ' Matter o' three. Mind ye, ye'll be doin' the Lord's work.' ' I hope so, I hope so. Good-night.* ' Good-night to ye, lad.' They struck off" in opposite ways. A faint grey light was struggling against the rain when the seeker and the sought met each other. The seeker saw a muffled figure dragging CHAP, iv MORTON DYKE 239 on the road, the sought-for stopped doubtfully at sight of him and waited. The seeker came up to her, taking off his cap. ' I think I am sent to look for you,' he said. ' I am looking for my husband, sir,' she replied. He could not see her face, but he found her voice very patient. ' Then it is you I am sent to find, madam. Let us sit down on these stones.' Wondering, she followed him. They sat down, and Sabine rocked her baby. ' Madam, I cannot see your face, but by your voice I judge you to be a Christian and gently born.' ' I am both of these, sir.' ' Have you ever thought, madam, that we can be neither of these things without payment ? ' * I know it very well,' said Sabine, beginning to tremble. ' We never know the full price. Much has been asked of you. Perhaps you have much to give. If so, much may still be required. Did you love your husband ? ' ' O sir ! O sir ! ' She began to cry. ' Ah, my poor lady, what can I say to that ? ' ' He was my husband. He is dead oh, oh, oh!' He could hear her tears falling ; his own were not far off. The whole truth must come out. ' I met a blind man in the dark, who stopped me and told me to find you. From him I learned what I am sure is true. When it is light we will go to make sure, if we must. But I am sure it is true, unless the man was mad. He seemed to 240 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n know you and your husband. He told me the manner of his death. I suppose he must have missed the road there are dykes in this country. But you know that. Ah, madam, madam,' he broke out with a sob, ' believe how distressed I am ! ' She could answer nothing, but must needs go on wringing her hands. He tried another tack. * The child will look to learn of his father from you, madam,' he said. The poor girl felt the stab of the irony, innocently as it was dealt. It was rude, but it helped her. Her counsellor went on : ' The Lord who takes away also gives,' he said. * It is no small thing to be mother of a child. And you will learn to be father too, for I know that you have a great heart.' He saw her bend down and kiss the hidden face over and over. He knew then that he had helped her. Presently she looked up. He could just see the rings of dark which were her eyes. * You are very kind to me,' she said. * Who are you ? ' ' My name is Lanceilhot Paulet, madam.' * Mine is Firmin. Will you take us to ' ' Ah, will you go there ? ' 'Yes, yes, I must.' They found in the disordered turf, torn-up reeds, and crumbled banks of the dyke inferential proof. Then Sabine, with a cry, found proof positive Firmin's green felt hat, like a dark bubble in the scum. No need to look for more of him. CHAP, iv MORTON DYKE 241 When her passion of weeping was done, in the light of a wet dawn they took the road together. By the end of a couple of miles Paulet was carrying the baby in his cloak and Sabine had his staff to help her feet. CHAPTER V THE EYE OF PAULET WHEN Paulet received his lady's letter he blamed himself for not having kept His eye upon Don John of Barsaunter. She by no means ceased to be his lady because she was Countess of Pikpoyntz. That was not at all the fashion of the time. Therefore Don John was still his rival ; therefore his eye should have been upon Don John. ' My blessed lady writes with a light heart,' he thought, * but I am sure she is straining her eyes. " There is like to be trouble," she says, which, from her, is assurance that there is trouble already. " For fear this miscarry " can a letter, then, not get through ? At that rate he is in force. He has not been in the West since she was here also. If, therefore, he has an army together, 'tis out of King's Hold. I should strike for the midlands if I want to find him, through Breaute and on to Morton.' This he did. But at Morton he lost his way and came, as you have seen, little short of Beatonshoe in his endeavours to reach Honeyborne. He had had a fair road of it as far as Cleyhunger, 242 CHAP, v THE EYE OF PAULET 243 for both Breaute and Marvilion are smiling, sleepy shires. There was hardly a night for him without a bed in a great house castle or monastery thanks to his gift of music and modest way. He made his traverse to Cleyhunger, on the borders of the marsh, in fifteen days. Then came the Jean hours on the heels of the fat, through which he had to pinch as he could. A haystack for a night's lodging and a wet day to follow took the briskness out of him ; his steps flagged under the uncertainty of his going. It was then that he determined for Beatonshoe, not because he believed it in his way, for he knew it was out, but for the sake of some definite mark ahead of him. Finding at his last stage that he had fifteen miles yet to go, he shook the rain out of his eyes and trudged out into the dark. That brought him up against Sabine, changed his plans, and made his fortune. So runs our luck. Poet irrevocably as he was, Lanceilhot was much struck with his first fair view of Sabine. It was broad daylight ; the rain had stopped. There was even a watery gleam of sun shivering over the marshes. He proposed breakfast he had some bread and three or four apples in his wallet. She agreed, being too weak to deny him. They stopped, accordingly, by some pollarded willows, where there was also an approach to the dyke made for the use of watering cattle. Paulet took off his cloak and spread it for her to sit upon. ' First I must wash as well as I can,' said she. That was how he saw her. Sabine took off her shawl, unpinned and shook 244 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n loose her hair, turned her sleeves up to the elbows, and went down to the dyke. Corbet was amazed at her beauty. He had never seen anything so calm and sad, at once so meek and so noble, out of an altar-piece. She was just such a divine child, chosen to be woman and made mother, as some Tuscan had painted for the great church at Saint Save. Grave, far-searching, heavy-lidded eyes, a mouth which seemed quivering for tears, face of pure oval framed in heavy hair and her colouring, heaven and earth ! pure and downy, glowing as a child's. He could have knelt before her and said his Ave, Virgo. He watched her intently, every movement of her beautiful body. To himself he admitted, * My own dear lady is not so radiant as this miraculous child.' And his heart smote him for his disloyalty till he made haste to remember that it was his Mabilla's clear humanity hearted in the god which made her all she was to him. So, Mabilla's due being paid, he could honestly admire what was before him. ' After all's said,' he thought, ' there is a likeness here between my lady and this child one of those most subtle likenesses which lies in the chance turning of the head, or, more likely, in the half-discerned moulding of it ; a thing most difficult to see when seen, unmistakable. ' It is nothing that they have the same short lip, the same dark hair, the same height and glorious shape though there my blessed lady is more imperiously conqueror. But to my thinking both walk as if they not scorned, but did not heed CHAP, v THE EYE OF PAULET 245 the earth as if, indeed, they had been born above it and knew not what they trod. This is very singular but perhaps not so singular as their kinship would be.' Sabine came back at this, rosy from her bath. ' I am quite ready now,' she said, having lost, not the poignancy of her sorrow, but her lack of control ; ' will you let me take my little Blaise ? ' Paulet started as if he had been stung. ' Did you call him Blaise ? ' * Yes. Blaise is his name.' ' Blaise Firmin ? ' ' Yes.' Over their meal they discussed their plans. Sabine said that she was not decided what she should do. ' How should you have decided ? ' cried Lanceilhot. She signed, conquered her tears and went on to say, ' There is little to decide. I am destitute, and my baby must live.' ' If you are destitute,' cried Paulet, ' I thank God that you met me, for I am not yet destitute. I have enough to take the two of us to Honey- borne, or even to Cap-Dieu.' Now it was Sabine's turn to jump. * Are you going to Cap-Dieu ? ' He almost smiled to see how his chance shot had told. ' I may find my affair at Honeyborne Cuthbert delay me. But that once done, I must go farther and should pass by Cap-Dieu. If I could serve you also I should be glad.' Sabine thought for a little. Afterwards she 246 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n said slowly, * I think I will go with you to Cap- Dieu.' ' Do you know it, madam ? ' * Yes. I could stay there.' She began to give her little one his breakfast, and the subject was dropped. But Paulet's curiosity was awake. He watched his companion intently, straining to find the likeness he had fancied to see. * It may be racial,' he reflected, ' as the grey eyes and pale faces of Campflors are. Plainly she is from North Marvilion, and I suppose there are others there besides Rennys. North Marvilion is one of the largest shires in the kingdom. What beats me, however, is her baby Blaise. It is a most unusual name ; indeed, I know of no others than that terrible red line of Rennys. There again, though, it is possibly local. Renny is king of the shire. His name would be spread all over it, in his honour. How many brats go ruffling as Maximilian o' these days? If we fathered them all on the King it would go hard with him. Besides, this poor little tramp but there is the look of my sovereign lady. Who is there of hers ? Ah, sorrowful Christ, there was a marriage of which I could not sing in the Canzon de Reini ! What was that ? Let me think. There were three cousins my mistress, Madonna Hold she was that tall golden rod who mated with another, even so. The third the third ! The third made a shameful marriage so-called a page from the hall won her favours, they said and she was the heiress, she who fled with the page from that chilly Speir. And this young CHAP, v THE EYE OF PAULET 247 woman here hath the Renny look of spurning, and a boy whom she names Blaise Firmin ; " at present," saith she. Firmin, then, was that page's name ! She is his wife, heiress of Coldscaur ! By the Sacred Face, if this should be true ! ' He bided his time and watched his companion while awaiting his opportunity. It was night by the time they hoped to see the three branching roads, and a shelter had to be found in a straggling hamlet called Three Ways. No chance turn of the talk which was mostly his monologue had Jed him to what he sought ; but he was pretty sure now with whom he had to deal. The belief sent his spirits up with a bound. Whenever he thought, * Here, by the grace of God, walk I by Mabilla's kinswoman ; here, if I will, I may touch a hand which hath the same fountain of blood as she ; here I march abreast of one who has kissed and held my Mabilla close in arms ! ' at such thoughts the heart of Paulet gave a great bound and stood still afterwards till he lost his breath. He made himself Sabine's slave, carried her little Blaise. mile after mile, poured out his money, service, words, music to cheer or sustain her ; nor did he weary to find that she took it from him with the serene acquiescence of princes. This was to him convincing proof that he was indeed in commerce with a Renny. It was like Mabilla in her despotic moods, as he knew well enough. He redoubled his service. They spent the night on the tables of the Three Ways beer-shop it was nothing more, breakfasted there, and next morning had the 248 THE SONG OF RENNY delight of striking northward on the Minster Merrow road. The country brightened as they did. They were out of the marshes and among the thick hedgerows, the elms, the well -tilled fields and hazel copses of Marvilion. Between Three Ways and Rewish, where they were to turn north again for the Honeybornes, Paulet bought a donkey for Sabine. After that they went at better speed, and in three more days saw the spire of Honeyborne Cuthbert and on all sides of the town the tents and ensigns of Don John's army. Ordinarily Sabine was the least anxious of women. Some- times Paulet doubted of her intelligence, but he as often had to acknowledge that he had done her a wrong. She very seldom spoke at all, but when she did it was undoubtedly to the point. At view of the white innumerable tents, however, she did her wondering aloud. * Why, there are more soldiers here ! * she exclaimed. ' Are there soldiers all the road from Beatonshoe to here ? ' ' I believe they go farther still,' said he. ' A man at Rewish told me they stretch to Minster Merrow.' ' Ah ! Then they corner the border of my of North Marvilion, where we would go. Why is that ? ' * I believe the King levies a war.' 1 A war ? With whom ? ' * With one in the North a great man.' * Not with Ger ' She was fiercely keen at last. CHAP, v THE EYE OF PAULET 249 'With the Earl of Pikpoyntz, madam,' said Lanceilhot. ' Ah, ah ! ' she sighed, ' that is well done at last.' She urged her donkey forward as if she wished to be among the tents. 4 Hold, hold,' said Paulet. ' We must advise what we do here. The leader of these troops is Don John of Barsaunter.' Sabine started. < Well ? ' she asked. Well ? He is the King's brother is it not so ? ' ' He is the King's brother, truly enough. But he is no friend of mine, and no friend of my friends.' ' He will be a friend of mine if he wars with the Earl of Pikpoyntz,' said Sabine quietly. * But not of mine, madam,' cried Paulet, out of himself ; ' for in so doing he will be warring with my friends.' Sabine stopped and looked down at her com- panion. She had grown hard as granite. * Is Gernulf de Salas your friend, Master Paulet ? ' Lanceilhot crossed himself. ' God forgive me, but I hate him. Yet I must be on his side.' Sabine, white as a sheet, lifted up her hand. Her voice rose clear as a bell. * No honest woman can be a friend to such as Gernulf,' she cried. And again she called out, ' Look at me, the mother of this child. Before my young eyes Gernulf slew my father, in sight of me he slew, one after another, my three brothers. With deadly treachery he did it ; at a feast ; guests should he and his have been at my father's table. 250 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK u In my sight he stood up and watched my mother stab herself with my father's sword. Me, then, he took with them to his castle in the North. Will you be friend of such a man ? Then you will be no friend to me and mine, for I am Renny of Coldscaur, and the blood of my fathers is ice within me at the sight of what I have seen. And never from that day unto this have I revealed one word of what I know no, not to my husband. But to you I say it because you declare yourself the friend of a villain. Now let us part, in peace if that be possible.' Paulet was reeling under this assault when he saw that Sabine meant what she said. She was going direct towards the tents of a man whom he knew, hated, and feared, a man, more- over, who was the enemy of her blood, just as Gernulf may have been. He jumped forward and caught at the donkey's bridle. Sabine's eyes flamed ; she looked as if she could have struck him down. * Hit me if you choose, madam,' said he, * but you must listen before or after your blow.' ' What have you to say to me, sir ? ' ' This to begin with, that, having brought you so far on the way to safety, you must not hold me responsible for this end to our journey together.' Sabine looked a little ashamed of herself at this. However, she corrected herself of that weakness and said nothing. Paulet continued. * Next, I have to correct a misapprehension on your part. I can well believe all that you say CHAP.V THE EYE OF PAULET 251 of the Earl of Pikpoyntz, for little as I have seen of him I have disliked it. He is no friend of mine, as I told you, nor can he ever be. But a friend I have at his house of Speir nevertheless, and she is the Countess of Pikpoyntz.' ' Countess of Pikpoyntz ? ' echoed Sabine blankly. * Countess of Pikpoyntz, madam. She is my dear and honoured friend. And of you also she should be the friend, for she is your cousin.' Sabine lost her breath with her wits. * Has one dared ' she began. ' I speak of the Lady Mabilla, madam. She it is who has dared, for the sake of Renny of Coldscaur, what she would have recoiled from as an insult to Mabilla de Renny.' Again Sabine's rage got the better of her judgment. She flared up for her retort. 'It is a strange way to serve me, forsooth, to marry my father's assassin.' ' Madam,' put in Paulet, c will you tell me from whom she could have heard of your father's fate, beyond yourself and Gernulf, who were both present ? As to the Earl, you may guess what he would make of the story. And for yourself, you will remember that you were not at Speir when your cousin went thither. You had already left it with your husband.' He brought the red colour back into her cheeks again not for anger this time, but to signal her confusion. When she spoke again it was as Mistress Firmin. ' You are in the right, sir, and I, it seems, am in the wrong. I acquit my cousin Mabilla of THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n a fault of judgment which would have been a crime. But I do not see yet how she thought to serve me by what she did. Gernulf has withheld from me my inheritance ' * I understood that you were in his tutelage,' put in Paulet. ' So it is said. Let it be so for talking's sake. Well?' ' I do not know what was in madam's mind,' said Paulet, rather posed ; ' but I see this, that there is assurance of one of the Renny blood holding Coldscaur, whatever be the issue between you and Gernulf.' * Grateful service to me, sir,' cried Sabine, trembling. ' I think I may be better served in these tents. I am not at all disposed to favour usurpations by members of my house, and for the future shall remember the lady whom you befriend as Countess of Pikpoyntz. I beg you to loose my bridle, sir.' Poor Paulet might have reminded her that it was, in fact, his own bridle, as the beast was his also ; but this did not occur to him. It is curious what the little lady's assumptions obtained her. What he did was that futile thing, to beat against her perversity. ' Before you go, madam, from one who has done his best to serve you, I must ask you to remember that these tents belong to Don John of Barsaunter. He is the King's brother, my prince and yours, it is true. He is, however, here with a distinct object.' ' The object, sir ? ' CHAP.V THE EYE OF PAULET 253 ' The object is the Countess of Pikpoyntz.' * I have told you already, sir, that I know nothing and care nothing for the Countess of Pikpoyntz. He appears to be warring against the usurpers of my estate, and is, therefore, on my side and that of my son. I have been much beholden to you in the past, and make no doubt that it will be in my power to prove my sense of that. I regret that I can be beholden to you no more. Please to stand aside.' He did stand, watching with folded arms the girl riding, as he confidently believed, to her own destruction. What he knew of Don John assured him that Mabilla would never have drawn him to so desperate a venture if she had not appeared to him as gilded already with the Renny fief. He was certain as he could be that the Prince would clear the little mother and child out of his path. Now he could not love Sabine, but he thought that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen out of a church picture, and he knew that her patience and courage were beyond any praises of his. She had that indescribable gallantry which he adored in Mabilla. It was every whit as present in Sabine, he knew not adorably and not so saliently ; it was latent a passive, stoic gallantry. He supposed all the Rennys to have it. Her mulishness made him sick with rage gallantry pushed to such a point becomes fatuous, insensate, almost idiotic. ' Accursed little fool ! ' he cried out in despair, and could have bitten his tongue out, for she was of Mabilla's blood. And, * Ah,' he admitted, half 254 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK whimsically the next minute, ' I should not like to maintain that my beloved would not have done precisely the same thing. She would have gone sooner, and no donkey could have paced her there quick enough ; but she would have gone for all that.' But, gracious Heaven ! the little creature mule or demi-god, whichever she were had left him a skein to unravel. What on earth was he to do ? Don John and his lumbering machina- tions of artillery, horse, foot and the rest of them were as nothing while at Speir that red-beaked vulture ravened his white hind. Think what his beloved had done ! In what claws was she even now gripped ! She Mabilla married to the treacherous assassin of her kinsfolk, forced to side with him in more butchery to keep that which he had filched ! And tied for her life as far as Paulet was concerned ; for he knew without argument that he could not do anything in this business. According to his instincts of honour he, being the lover of his wife, could neither speak to her against her husband nor dare anything against the husband's life. That was the code of Campflors honour, in which he had been born and bred. Poet, man of Campflors, lover of Mabilla, he must wit- ness her martyrdom and do nothing. Might he not by any means kill Gernulf ? He did think this out, and decided that there were two possible events which would justify him in that ; the first was a danger to his lady, the second an attack upon himself. Observe that he took a very serious view of his relations with his Countess CHAP.V THE EYE OF PAULET 255 Mabilla. He loved her, she was his mistress that would do for a relation, he hoped. Gernulf or none, he must still love her, she still command him. At this rate he must go on to Speir, where the troubles pressed hardest, and wait for his chance. By hook or by crook he must not leave that place so long as Gernulf and Mabilla were together. If they left together he must go also. That is the conclusion he came to after a hard two hours' thinking. He sat thinking so intently that he hardly noticed a continuous stream of soldiery passing along his road on their way to the camp. Had he done so he would have seen that the royal arms were not on the banneroles, but instead a red saltire. Lifting his head from his hands at the end, however, he did see something, and watched with a good deal of admiration the passing of the general with his starK The general was a tall young man, blue-eyed, hawk-nosed, and with a fair pointed beard. He had a white and green surcoat over his armour, and on his helmet a hooded falcon. ' The man is as light as a leopard,' he thought. He even took the trouble to inquire of a follower his name and degrees. The fellow gaped at him. * Why, my little buck,' said he, ' that is the great Earl of Hauterive, by name Prosper, and by deed the most prosperous fighting gentleman in these broad realms.' ' Ah,' said Paulet as he thanked the man, ' I have heard of him.' He was to hear more. CHAPTER VI DON JOHN'S ALLIANCES IN the camp by Honeyborne Cuthbert and in the Prince's pavilion compliments passed. * My dear lord,' said Don John of Barsaunter, with his most pleasant smile, ' I make you heartily welcome. You were always magnanimous.' Prosper of Hauterive bowed to his Prince's hand. 'I have followed the summons, sir. I could do no less.' Don John hungered over him. ' Ah, my Lord of Hauterive, I could ask no more nor expect so much of some I could name ! Well, we will not commit ourselves. I take this from you as proof that all is well between us.' ' I hope so, sir.' * What differences we have left shall be buried in our enemies' graves eh, my Lord of Hauterive ? ' Prosper bowed again. * I may learn from that, sir, that our lord the King has enemies ? ' Don John bit his lip. ' What other enemies could we have, Hauterive, but my brother's ? ' 256 CHAP, vi DON JOHN'S ALLIANCES 257 ' Quite so, sir. What indeed ? May I know next against whom we are to proceed ? ' ' You may. It is Gernulf of Pikpoyntz.' ' Ah ! Gernulf of Pikpoyntz.' ' Do you know him, Hauterive ? ' ' We have met, sir ; but not for some years.' The Prince leaned back in his chair, stretching his long body across the tent. 'Perhaps if you had met him during those years he would not have got into the mischief he has. He has been playing the ferret poaching.' Prosper waited. The Prince went on. ' You have heard of the Rennys, Hauterive ? ' ' We have all heard of them, sir.' * It was there he poached. He stole over his border, it seems, and ambushed his men below Coldscaur. He went forward with some half- dozen, ostensibly for the hospitality of the place. But he left not a Renny alive in it, for he murdered all but one, and her he stole, for other purposes.' Prosper of Hauterive whistled below his breath. * I beg you to go on, sir. This is interesting.' * Is it not ? Well, he brought in his ambushed cut-throats and, at a given signal, some thousands more pushed over the border. North Marvilion was his. His next move was to apply for a grant of Wardship and Marriage of the Renny heiress whom he had stolen, observe. That was some five years ago. But you know His Majesty's caution. He has not got that grant. The young lady is in reality still the King's ward. My brother's delay has served the course of justice, you observe.' * I remember that His Majesty was otherwise s 258 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK u engaged at that time, sir,' said Hauterive, with a gentle smile. This was not lost upon Don John. ' My dear Hauterive,' he said, jumping upright in his seat, 4 you are too loyal a servant of the Crown to bear the King a grudge. My brother has the weak- nesses of a man. I hope your Countess made a good journey to High March ? ' *A very good journey, thank you, sir. Shall we resume ? ' 4 We will.' The Prince resumed his lounging attitude and inspected his brown hands as he talked. ' Pending the granting of the wardship, Gernulf was much engaged in his new domains ; the young lady was no less busy in his old ones, it seems. At any rate, she ran away with a page boy and has never been seen or heard of since.' The devil ! ' * Oh, I agree with you, Hauterive ! But pray wait. The Rennys hear of these affairs. Stephen of Havilot sets out with his Renny niece, Donna Mabilla, picks up that old galliard of a Grand-Fe at Canhoe, also with a Renny niece, and on they go to Speir. Gernulf meets them at the gate. " Very sorry, your Reverences and ladies," says he, " but the little heiress is gone off with a lackey." Hauterive leaned forward. * One moment, sir,' said he. ' Did the lady marry the lackey ? ' * It appears that she did. She intended to, and it is known where they went to church. The rest is curious. Shall I go on ? ' ' Pray, sir.' ' By some shift or set of shifts, Gernulf who CHAP, vi DON JOHN'S ALLIANCES 259 is as sharp as a fox, as you know got the Rennys to accept his version of the affair ; he told them a tale of honourable warfare between him and Coldscaur. It appears that the disgrace of the heiress had left them at his mercy. Their game now was to preserve the fief for the next in succession.' 'Ah!' * They, therefore, married the heiress-presump- tive, Donna Mabilla, to the assassin of her blood relations. In ignorance, no doubt but picture it ! And now His Majesty, feeling that the cup of the man's infamy is full, has determined to endure no more.' The two men looked at each other. Don John could not conceal his keenness. Prosper spoke next very quietly. ' Whatever punishment His Majesty may deal out will not be too much, sir, for such a case as this. But ' ' Well, Hauterive, well ? Speak your mind, man.' ' I will say then, sir, that His Majesty's zeal is the more welcome in that it is rare.' The Prince looked annoyed, grew red ; then his face cleared as if by magic. ' My dear Hauterive, I will be frank with you. I worked upon my brother's feelings.' ' Ah. It is to your Highness the realm is in debt, then ? ' The Prince bowed his head, and resumed. ' I know my brother better then anybody, I think. I put the case before him of that infamous marriage. 260 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK He was interested. He asked for particulars, He did not know the young lady so indecorously hustled into Gernulf's bed and throne. I was able to satisfy him.' ' You were able to satisfy him, sir ? ' * Yes. I happened to have a miniature of her which had been done by Sanese the Tuscan in my own country.' * Eh, eh ! ' said Prosper to himself. * It seems we are coming to the point at last.' Aloud he said, ' And that touched His Majesty ? ' ' You know my brother ? It did touch him. But it touched things much nearer my desires. Justice, namely, upon this murderer, this robber for that is what our Gernulf is at bottom.' ' Hum,' said Prosper, half aloud, ' and what is to be our order of affairs now, I wonder ? ' ' I have sent him the King's writ of outlawry and a summons to surrender North Marvilion to myself. He replies to this that neither he nor his Countess can venture far from the bor- der, which is unsettled, forsooth ! It is like to be unsettled until he does leave it. Neither will they guarantee my safe passage to the North. Yours, however, they will undertake. They will receive you, with ten men, to parley. Now, Hauterive, will you go ? ' Prosper thought for a little. 'Yes, sir,' he said simply, at the end. The Prince rose. ' Very good. Here is the safe conduct the fellow has sent for you. He seems to have counted upon your going/ ' He knows me,' said Prosper. CHAP, vi DON JOHN'S ALLIANCES 261 4 Ah ! ' the Prince laughed. ' There I have the advantage of you, for he knows not me. Do you know his wife, Hauterive ? ' 'Yes, sir,' came a very quick answer. 'Do you ? ' ' Oh,' said Don John, as carelessly as he knew, * I may have met her at Joyeulx Saber. It is very near my border, as you will remember.' Prosper was bowing himself out. ' When will you start, Hauterive ? ' the Prince asked him. ' In half an hour, sir,' said the Lord of Hau- terive, who never wasted time. ' You are the man of all the world for me ! ' cried the Prince, and clapped him on the shoulder. Prosper left the royal pavilion. Before his allotted half-hour was up came a breathless messenger to his end of the camp. ' His Highness is asking for you, my lord. Upon the instant,' said the man, gasping. ' I will come upon the instant.' ' What's in the wind now ? ' thought he as he went. He very soon knew. He found the Prince not alone in his quarters. Before him and his writing table stood a young girl with a shawl over her head and a baby in her arms. Prosper could not see her face. He was never surprised (or said he was not) at anything ; but I think he started at Don John's news. ' Earl of Hauterive,' said his Prince, ' this lady is the Lady Sabine ah Firmin, born Renny of Coldscaur. Do you understand ? ' 262 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n * I understand your Highness to say so/ Prosper was content to say. ' Tell my lord your story, madam,' said the Prince irritably. His nerves were playing the deuce with him ; he fidgeted with every member of his body. Sabine turned slowly round to face Hauterive. She kept a steady eye upon him as she said, * There is no need to tell my story to win the Earl of Hauterive's belief. We are no strangers to each other.' Prosper went forward and kissed her ex- tended hand. * There is no need at all, madam. Ten i years ago my wife was sponsor for you at your baptism. 1 You were younger then, and I think happier. But I have not forgotten you, and what a man may do for you I shall do now.' ' Thank you, my lord. I am very well friended now/ said the poor child, with brimming eyes for she was one of those whom only kind- ness touches ; but, ' H'm ! I am not so sure of that/ said the Earl to himself. ' I am about to set forward upon your business at this moment, Madame de Renny. I shall find your cousin at Speir.' Thus Prosper. Her answer could not amaze him. She stiffened like a frozen flower as she replied, ' The Countess of Pikpoyntz is no kin of mine, nor ever can be/ Prosper's sharp eye saw the Prince embarrassed, saw him wring at his nails with his teeth. * Well, well, madam, we will do our best for you ; but 1 The baptism of the great, like other offices of the Church, was bent to the convenience of the great. CHAP, vi DON JOHN'S ALLIANCES 263 we must not quarrel with more than we can help.' Thus Don John unavoidably. * If I could get a word with that unhappy little lady alone it would be a world to her,' ran Prosper's thought. * This lean wolf has his own game to play and it is not her game, pardieu ! She will be an awkward piece. He'll be for discarding, I take it.' He looked again at John of Barsaunter, to see him horribly restless, nibbling away at his nails for life. There was nothing to do but as he did. 4 At any rate, madam,' said he, ' I shall be able to use your name with good effect in my dealings up there. The fact that you are with the royal army, the army of justice and retri- bution, will not fail to strengthen the cause we have so much at heart the cause, let me add, in which his Royal Highness' disinterested love for the realm plays so distinguished a part. I cannot leave you in better hands, madam, and so I shall report at Speir.' He did not wait to look at the Prince's face a study, however, which would have afforded him some entertainment but withdrew to his own quarters ; and a quarter of an hour after his time he rode out for the North with his ten men. Lanceilhot Paulet had started on his own account some hours previously, but being with- out a safe conduct, paradoxical as it may sound, made much better pace. ' I am a poor soldier,' he admitted to himself ; * let us see if I am a better tactician. I will begin by making a little retreat.' He counted his money. The Abbeys 264 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n of Breaut6 had been generous, as became a musical race at the feet of a boy voiced like a flute. He had still five gold pieces and some silver money. One of his gold pieces he devoted to the purchase of a donkey from a crew of shabby camp-followers he met on his way to Minster Merrow. For a very little silver he was able to procure a cloak, slouch hat, and pilgrim's wallet. Then he dis- carded his shoes, struck his donkey smartly on the rump with an ash plant, and cantered away to Minster Merrow. To all who met or ques- tioned him he spoke in French. He was bound for the wondrous shrine of Our Lady of Health at Quatrepais the glory of those parts. This generally sufficed him, and Minster Merrow, with its soaring white church, broad river, and rock- bound citadel, was safely skirted. From there he took the road to Quatrepais. Edging along the North Marvilion border with circumspection he made the mountain ways of Logres unmolested. It was winter, but the snowfall had not been very severe as yet. The passes were open. He arrived at Fauconbridge on Epiphany Day, and heard Mass with a swelling heart which told him that he was but a day's ride from Speir. He had nothing to conceal. On the contrary, he had the Countess' signet to show. On the morrow of the Epiphany he crossed the border without a check, dropped his disguise, put on his shoes, sold his donkey, and got a seat in a sleigh which, with six mules to draw it, was about to pull across to the castle. In his proper character he stood in the gateway craving admission to the hall for the delight of CHAP, vi DON JOHN'S ALLIANCES 265 all within. The advent of a troubadour from the South was a great matter. He was welcomed, as a matter of course, by maids and men alike to a roaring fire, meat, mead, and a promise of the Countess of Pikpoyntz's earliest leisure. He thus arrived more than a week before his lordship the Earl of Hauterive, who had nearly a hundred miles less to go. That unfortunate nobleman was, in fact, the victim of diplomatic delays designed for his honour. At the border of North Marvilion he had to receive an address and join a procession of the Mayor, Alderman, and Jurats of the city of Cap- Dieu, who had journeyed out in their robes of office to meet and escort him to their city. They rejoiced over him for nearly three days, and made him understand that their lord paramount, the Earl of Pikpoyntz, would be cut to the heart if they omitted any respect to an ambassador of such acknowledged eminence. From there he must go to Caunce-Renny ; more ceremonies this time religious. It was Christmas. All the reeves of all the neighbourhood thronged in more addresses, in which unswerving loyalty to the King his master was tempered by unflinching regard for the dignity of the Lord Paramount. He did not get on to Cantacute till three days after Paulet had warmed himself at Speir. On his way he saw the gaunt grey towers of Coldscaur the only eminence in that level plain, which is North Marvilion. At Cantacute, under the mountains, the ceremonies reached a climax. Snow covered the parade- ground a foot deep. No matter, it must be 266 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n swept away that the garrison might parade for the great envoy's inspection. It did parade, and the great envoy was forced to confess that Ger- nulf's men were worthy ; too worthy for Don John's, he thought, and fully numbersome for his. Their archers were magnificent long, lithe men ; runners all of them, who worked the long bow-like machines. The cavalry he could not so much admire * too much of the mountain thief and too little of the barber about them,' was his private comment. Their beasts, too, were very well for the Pikpoyntz ridges and ravines, but would be outflanked in the low Marvilion plains and common fields. Finally, under a gigantic escort (with a most detestable band of pipers) he was suffered to reach Speir, having talked more in his four weeks than ever in his life before, and told more lies than he could dare to plead allowance of at the last day. Gernulf, whose hope had been either to dis- gust or flatter him for in the former case he reckoned he would have turned back, and in the latter might be more amenable to treatment was not there to meet him, for reasons which will be detailed in their place ; but he had no call to miss ceremony. Upon a purple cloth, under a purple canopy, between files of the resplendent household the Earl walked up to the castle. Backward, bare- headed, before him went Shrike. Paulet, who was the least curious of the assembly, compared the guest with his absent host. He thought of the wild beast combats he had seen in his own country, Southern Botetort, and in Gloverne, when some CHAP, vi DON JOHN'S ALLIANCES 267 saint had to be honoured or an earl's daughter happily married. They had pitted boar and gaze hound sometimes. Well ! here lived the jowled boar tusks, fire-rimmed eyes and all ; and here, come to search him out, slipped along the limber hound, hiding under his sinuous ease of limb a jaw of steel and eyes wary for the spring. Countess Mabilla, almost hidden in her state, welcomed him in the great hall. But why she welcomed him alone, and with what heart she did it, must now be related. CHAPTER VII THE COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ By her passage from virgin to wife Mabilla de Renny had gained more than her body's crown. More assured as was her beauty, more superb her bearing, her hardy mind gave promise of being her most perfect part. She had, in fact (and so to put it), limed the field of her soul with her experiences and ridded it of some very charming weeds. One of these was the fiction that there was no such thing as love at any rate, in her economy. While all the mysteries of maiden- hood had been exposed for brawling commonplace, here was the strange spectacle before her of a hulking creature of appetite, a border chieftain, ' Bull of the North,' and so on, wallowing in sticky ecstasies which would have shamed a boy of twenty. If love could play such a trick as this on a man of desperate action, might not love have something to say to her, too, some day ? She preserved a little wonder. There was still an unknown something which she might hold for splendid. It was true that, little in that sort as she had looked for from marriage, she had found 268 CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 269 less, but at times when she turned a candid, discerning eye upon her Earl she was almost awed by the witness of such a tumble. Frankly, after it had ceased to flatter her, when (as the next stage) it ceased to amuse her, she found it pitiable. Gernulf had won her toleration, even her esteem, by his gallantry of attack. True, he came with a crown in his hand, but he had shown a sword in the other, which had inclined her at the end. Now a man who wins by the sword should hold by the sword such a girl as this. If she is to be ruled at all it is not by kindness. Mabilla was not a shrew, but there was a shrewish grain in her blood ; she was as swift as the wind ; swiftness would gain, muddiness lose her. Something very like the contempt she used to feel for her weak little poet hardened her heart against her fawning giant. ' Will you please,' she wrote to Paulet early in her honeymoon, 'to contrive me a sharp sirvente, my poet ? It should be a dialogue between Hercules and Omphale, wherein the lady tells the hero that she would like to break the distaff over his shoulders. I think I can make some use of it.' He had complied with a good will, but the drug was too subtle for the patient. She felt inclined to write to Bernart for a spur. At first she could not fail of being flattered. The man was not a mere fire-eater ; she very soon found out how he ruled his fee. It was by hand rather than word ; more often a look sufficed. She was mated to a born ruler, a king of men, she was apt to think. Here, then, was her king 270 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n of men, bewitched by his beautiful and spirited young wife, hugging the chains that bound him, playing the combed savage to perfection. Mabilla always thought soberly of herself when she thought at all, but it is idle to deny that she was flattered. Her critical instinct was drugged ; she repaid his devotions with her brightest looks. The man bathed in her happiness as a bird trails its wings in the sun. When he was not with her, which was seldom, he went about roaring love songs. He gave enormously to the Church, the poor, the monks. He broke out in fine clothes like a new accepted lover, scented his hair, tried to coax his spiky beard. He thus succeeded in darning up the ragged royalty which she had found so much to her mind that she had overlooked the rents in it. Gernulf, for all he looked a battered ruffian, might yet have been a hero. This oily, tagged and bespangled Earl of Pikpoyntz looked what in truth he was, a daw at home over a gibbet, but ill at ease in a court. Mabilla held off at this transformation ; Gernulf redoubled his efforts to please. He got her to read to him ; then one day, blushing like a girl, he stammered out some verses which he had made to her shining eyes. He had observed for himself that they had the wet brilliancy of the stars, and said so in three limping stanzas. Mabilla, merciless, laughed till she cried. She allowed him to kiss her cheek the poor wretch had narrowed himself down to that and her hand by three weeks' polishing of his person and gravely set to work patching the rhythm. In return she read him Paulet's sirvente, CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 271 and, that failing, wrote some verses of her own, in which (though even he could not fail to read the malice) he took enormous pride. He went so far as to recite them to his friends in the hall. She had to stop this. By the end of her moon she was bored to the verge of alarm. What was to be the end of it ? How could she whip a spirit into this dull-blooded mass ? Yet all this while he was playing the rogue against her in secret, sometimes (be it said for him) with hot tears in his eyes, often with groans, always with frantic vigils before the crucifix in the chapel to atone for what the day had brought or was about to bring forth. On those nights he absented himself from her altogether. She was thankful but puzzled. Once she found a shirt of his streaked with dry blood, and gradually the tale got about that the grim blasphemer was a flagellant. Shrike, with white eyes of terror, confessed to Nitidis that he had seen his master at it in the grey of the morning. The faithful Nitidis brought it all to her mistress. Mabilla was interested. * Love gives very strange pleasures,' she said with a curving lip ; Nitidis was able to agree with her heartily. The truth was the man would have been rid of the whole hateful business of Sabine and her Firmin if he could, but his affairs were too many for him. Love had cleaned his mind, but he must needs go on fouling his fingers. Mabilla was perpetually asking for news of her cousin Renny. She wanted to go out herself to find her, she more than once decided to go to 272 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK Coldscaur. She would have found Blanchmains there ! Pikpoyntz had to lie like a Jesuit to keep her away. He was in constant correspondence with Blanchmains, with Frelus (who was then at Landeveer), with the Prince - Bishop, with his agents at court, who were trying to press on the patent of Wardship and Marriage. His only hope was that Sabine, wherever she might be or go, would keep away from Coldscaur. If she got there, if Mabilla by any remote chance heard that she was there, nothing that he could do could keep the two apart. And if they met now Sabine, the only witness to his act, whom he could not bend to his way, would tell the truth. That would be more than his temporal ruin it would send him straight to a worse hell than God could provide, the blank horror of utter shame in the eyes of his goddess and, actually, in his own eyes ! He knew he could not afford that. Therefore, to save his self-respect he had to go on destroying it patch by patch, had to scheme, shift, lie ; and because he was in love at last he became protagonist in a secret tragedy of his own framing ; he prayed, sweated, watched out nights and cut his great body raw with a scourge. Then came the news of Don John, which has been related already. This, which at first blush bade fair to be his finishing, at second turned to relieve a part of his strain. It awoke the partisan in Mabilla ; it tied his wife to his side. She hated Don John, and grudged (with Renny spirit) his intromission into the Rennys' affairs. She became more friendly; he even looked for more favours than a brush of CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 273 her cool cheek. He grew boisterously happy, left off his discipline, at times forgot his miserable traffickings with honour. When she at last told him her reading of the play, of what had passed between Don John and her Uncle Stephen, Gernulf believed another honeymoon had risen. He was wax in her hands ; she did what she liked moved all the pieces on the board. Nevertheless, possession of Sabine became of the utmost moment. He wrote urgent letters to Blanchmains to find, to get Sabine at all cost. He wrote again and again. His miseries began anew with the first of them, grew so sharp indeed that there were times when he was on the point of confessing the whole story to his wife. What withheld him was not her anger, not to see her eyes all a green flame, but her scorn to watch the cloaking of her in burning ice. If she fell angry with him he could have braved her anger would call to anger and remorse be blinded in blows ; but scorn in a solitary fighter does not devour like a fire, paralyses rather, numbs you slowly upwards like a frost. He had no champion at his call to face that. Nor was this the worst. To save himself from her scorn he had to earn more of it. All his lies to her hitherto had been tacit. Now they became explicit. He was driven to bluster point-blank denials of the charges in the King's writ. He had to pose openly to her as the benefactor of the Rennys, who had been forced into an unjust war to save himself, and had only killed Blaise de Renny because Blaise de Renny's sword was at his own throat. All this T 274 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK a he had said before to the two Bishops ; but you may lie to a bishop with a cool head where you cannot lie to the woman whom you adore. And Mabilla now began to be restive again wanted to go to Coldscaur, changed her mind about holding off Don John, wished to have him up at Speir. Lies again for Gernulf. He was never sure how much she believed of what he told her he was a bad liar under her clear gaze. She had intervals of frowning meditation, looked at him in a puzzled way, which sent his heart to his mouth. * If you have done no wrong, I cannot under- stand why we should not go direct to the King,' she said. ' Ah, my life,' he said brokenly, ' I have made enemies at court. The King is not my friend.' ' Enemies ! ' she cried. ' Friends ! Am I to learn you are afraid of your enemies, or dependent on your friends ? ' He shook out an oath at this. ' No, by God ! you are not to learn that of me.' ' So I should have said a month ago,' she ob- served with what might have been sarcasm, and was at least reproof. She never let him alone about Sabine now. Was she found yet ? Was Coldscaur ready for her reception ? Who had Coldscaur in charge ? Blanchmains ? Who under heaven was this Blanchmains ? She would like an interview with Blanchmains. The borders disturbed ? Pray did his lordship suppose she was frightened of the borders? She must assume she was no wife for him if she were, etc., etc. Gernulf 's life had CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 275 become one long ache. He felt himself being winnowed like grain. Unfortunately the very part which had attracted her was that which the fan blew away ; what remained might be nutritious food, but it was not what she had chosen. He knew this in a dim, miserable way, and knew that she knew it also. And know she did. By Christmas time she was profoundly disillusioned. Gernulf loomed in her eyes now as a poltroon ; .he threatened to appear a shuffler too. She began to fret over all this. What made it worse was that the Renny crown she had done so much to secure was still in danger. She hardly dared confess to herself that the threat might become a reality for all her lord could (or would) do to prevent it. Whatever attraction the man had had for her and it had been a real one was by now sloughed off him like a snake's discarded skin. She began, indeed, to think him uncommonly like a snake, except that he appeared to have no fangs. ' A blind worm, perhaps, is nearer the mark,' she laughed in her bitterness. By the time Epiphany was come and gone she had ceased to be a wife in anything but name. She was quite friendly, still allowed him her cheek when it would have been conspicuous to refuse it, and was able to see the man's miserable state of desire without a pang. Meantime, she was slowly turning over in her mind various plans of independent action, when Lanceilhot Paulet's name was announced to her as she sat with her women in the hall. It brought a flame into her 276 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n cheeks, a pure fire of simple expectancy. *The one of all others ! ' she cried, clapping her hands. ' At once, Shrike, if you please. At once ! * The black slid away, grinning and muttering to him- self. ' Pleasure, pleasure, pleasure for the little Countess at last ! ' was the substance of his self- communing. In her close-fitting gown of blue and frosted white, in her snowy wimple and towering head dress, with her neck jewel, rings and morsed cloak of gold brocade, he thought her an unapproach- able divinity reared up high on a shrine unveiled for worship. But when he approached, bowing with his old air of diffident reserve, he found her in a tender mood, a prey to reminiscences, for all her fence of stiff degree. She dismissed her women, grew gentle to see the mist -cloud on his eyes, gave him her hand, and seemed loath to take it back again. ' Oh, Lanceilhot,' she said simply, * it is good to see a friend in the winter ! Come and sit by the fire. We must talk.' Nor would she suffer him to drop her hand till they were in the inglenook together. ' Now, tell me at once, please, why you have come ? No, no ; if that is your only reason I don't want to hear it. Did you guess I was tired of being married ? Did you think I might be homesick ? Ah, and I am. How did you come creep out of the college window, or get out for a walk on the ramparts and run away ? Answer me, please, Lanceilhot, at once. Tell me what you have composed more of the Canzon de Reini ? Ah ! ' and her eyes grew dewy ; ' ah ! CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 277 what will be the end of the Canzon de Reini, I wonder? Oh, Lanceilhot, I am puzzled I am horribly puzzled ! Never mind. Let me look at you again.' She looked him critically over, up and down. * Stand up, please, Lanceilhot. Now ! Lanceilhot, you are losing your good looks. All boys do. You used to be charming ; you know that very well. You are really almost a man. When you have a beard, Lanceilhot, we will never see each other again. Promise me that.' She ran on, chattering like a girl of fifteen to her bosom friend, and only stopped when she was out of breath. ' Oh, Lanceilhot, I have asked you too many questions,' she laughed, blushing. 'But you must answer them all by degrees. First, why did you come all this way in the winter? A plain answer, please.' ' I came, madam, because I promised.* ' Promised ! ' She tossed her head. ' Pray what did you promise, and to whom ? ' ' To you, madam. I said that whenever you needed me I would come on the instant.' ' But what told you that I needed you, sir ? * 'Your letter, madam. It hinted at no more than the truth.' * My letter ? Which I mean, what letter ? ' Lanceilhot produced from his bosom a packet which was, perhaps, bigger than it should have been. Mabilla smiled shyly. ' Have I written you all those letters ? ' she asked, not without a flicker of malice. Lanceilhot's answer was prompt but confusing. He kissed the packet. 278 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n * This is the letter, madam.' She hardly looked at it. * Ah, about Don John. Yes, indeed. So you come to protect me from the Prince ? ' ' I am incurably your servant, madam. And serve you I shall.' * How, Lanceilhot ? ' ' I know not yet the state of your affairs, madam ; but I know something of the state of his.' 'Tell me.' ' Your cousin, Madonna Sabine de Renny, is with the Prince.' She started, turned white, and clapped hand to side. ' Ah, ah ! I must think, I must think. That is certainly news.' She had grown older ; the pretty colour, the sparkle and the flutter died out. ' Tell me if her ' she braved the lie ' husband is with her.' * He is dead, madam.' 1 Dead ! ' She looked frightened. Paulet hastened to guide her thoughts (as he believed) straight. ' Yes, madam. He met with an accident one dark night in Dunelaund. He missed the road and stumbled into the dyke. I think he was drunk.' ' Pah ! That is near the truth, I do not doubt. Well ? ' * I could not dissuade your cousin, madam.' * Dissuade her ! ' shrilled Mabilla. * Ah, but she must be saved. She must come to us at all cost at any cost. Lanceilhot ! ' she put her CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 279 hand upon the young man's shoulder 'Lanceilhot, here is work for me to do at last. Oh, you cannot know how I have wanted work,' she sighed. ' We will go and take her away.' She was all aglow again, a splendidly ardent creature ; but Lanceilhot's trouble chilled her a little. 'Ah, it seems I must go alone ! ' Paulet got up at this to face her. * Madam, I would go with you over the edge of the world. But this is useless worse. She will not see you.' Mabilla wondered at his words. ' Why ? ' she asked. Paulet was not quite prepared to answer. * Ah, madam, how should I know ? But it is true.' * I do not understand,' she faltered. * What have I done ? ' Paulet took courage. ' I think it may be that your marriage I think she regards my lord as an enemy possibly I do not know, of course.' ' But Gernulf is her friend ! Has always been her friend ! This is impossible. He is even now hunting for her to set her at Coldscaur. The place is all prepared. There is something strange in all this, Lanceilhot. Have you told me all you know ? ' He forced himself to meet her keen gaze ; forced himself to lie. He dared not tell her the truth about her husband's deeds. So he lied to her. * I have told you all, madam.' 'Then I must see the Earl this moment.' This was a hard saying for him. 280 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n * Will you tell the Earl where your cousin is, madam ? ' ' Why, of course ! ' She was amazed ; then something in his look held her. ' Should I not tell him ? What more have you to say ? ' Suddenly she caught at his arm. { Lanceilhot, you have not told me everything. Why should I not tell the Earl ? ' ' Madonna, think of this,' said the desperate youth. 'The Prince is my lord's enemy, be- cause, as you very well know, he comes against him for sake of you. The Prince holds to you as his betrothed. Will you put your lord into his enemy's hand ? * Mabilla gave a deep sigh of relief before she allowed her lip to curl to her scorn. ' If Gernulf cannot defend himself against his enemies he is no lord of me, Lanceilhot,' said she. * I shall certainly tell him at once.' ' Ah, tell him then, madam,' cried poor Paulet. He kept his groans to himself. Mabilla clapped her hands for Shrike. * Tell my lord that I must see him on the instant,' she said to the black. In a few minutes Gernulf came down the hall. Lanceilhot, eyeing him keenly, did not fail to notice signs of his harassed estate. The Earl showed a wild eye, a mouth strained to cracking point. He could not keep his fingers quiet, reminded his critic of Don John in that. Still he was the same burly outlaw with the same heavy tread, and looked as prompt for a stabbing-bout in the open as any man still unhanged. It was CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 281 significant to notice how Shrike whipped out of his way as he strode through the door. Gernulf came straight down the hall to where his wife sat. He took no notice what- ever of Paulet (who had risen at his approach), but, standing before Mabilla, said in his curt way : * At your ladyship's service.' My lord,' said Mabilla, c my friend, Master Lanceilhot Paulet, has come hither from the Middle Shires with news of great moment. It seemed to me that you should know it without delay. Master Paulet has been through our enemies' camp.' Gernulf flashed a hot eye upon the youth. ' Speak, sir,' said he. * My lord,' said Paulet, * it so befell that between Beatonshoe and Morton Wold, in Dune- laund, I met and was able to serve Madonna Renny of Coldscaur. She was in great trouble. Her husband had been drowned, she was alone with her young child in desolation and the dark. I think she lacked any means of living. At my instance she set out under my care for Cap-Dieu, which is in her own country, and where she has friends. At Honeyborne Cuthbert, which is on the way, we fell in with the force of Don John of Barsaunter some five thousand men of all arms, well found and provisioned against the winter. Between us two arose a contention, friendly at first, but afterward waxing somewhat harsh, whether she should claim the protection of the Prince or come with me to the more loving 282 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK attention of your most noble lady. This was the course I urged upon the Lady de Renny.' ' Well, sir ? ' said Gernulf in a whisper. He was pale for such a furnace of a man, but the great burnt patches on his cheeks shone still like blood. ' My lord, all my entreaties were fruitless. I could do nothing. The lady went to Don John's quarters, and I came here. At the very time of our discussion reinforcements three thousand men from the South came into camp. They were led, as I was told, by Earl Prosper of Hauterive.' He stopped because he found that neither Gernulf nor Mabilla was listening. The Earl was gnawing his beard, watching (but furtively) his wife ; the Countess openly stared at her husband until she could bear it no longer. ' Well, my lord,' she broke out in a fume, * have you nothing to say ? Can you not even thank Master Paulet for his timely message ? ' Gernulf at this shot up his head with all his old spirit. * I leave for Marvilion to-day. Your ladyship will not forget that the Earl of Hauterive may be here before I return. It is possible that I may meet him on the way. In that case he will not come on here. But if I should miss him I must ask you to deal with him. We will talk of this before I set out. Meantime I will ask you to have me excused. Master Paulet, be so good as to follow me.' He kissed his wife's hand and went to the library. Lanceilhot turned to his beloved lady for a sign. * Yes, go, Lanceilhot,' she said in rather a weary voice. ' Go, my friend. CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 283 We shall have plenty of time to talk and arrange matters. No, I will go too.' She called for Nitidis, then turned to Paulet again. ' Leave me, dear friend, for the time.' He took her hand and held it against her feeble efforts to be free. She seemed embarrassed, as if struggling between will and inclination. Some swift impulse (self-pity, it may have been) drew her to what she did to urge towards him till her cheek touched his shoulder. ' I am glad you have come, Lanceilhot,' she said in a whisper. He fell at her feet and covered her hand with kisses. At that moment Shrike crossed the hall and Nitidis came in at another door. Paulet was up in a moment, but in such a transport of delight as to have no head. Mabilla was, however, equal to the strait. 'Shrike, show Master Paulet to my lord. I am going to my chamber, Nitidis.' He found Gernulf with his secretary, tearing and burning papers. The Earl could not read, but it was easy to see that he knew what he was about. He seemed to have a wonderful eye for the landscape of a sheet. Lanceilhot waited respectfully at the door ; Gernulf kept him there for a quarter of an hour before he became obviously aware of him. Then he said, ' Come back in half an hour, Martin ' ; and to Paulet, * Now, sir, we will have a little more talk, if you please.' Martin left them alone together. Gernulf got up and walked to the fire. After a longish scrutiny of his visitor, he said shortly : ' You met the lady by Beatonshoe ? ' ' I did.' 284 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n ' Who had drowned the man who took her away ? ' 'Nobody, so far as I know.' * Did you see him drown ? ' 'No.' * Who told you he was drowned ? ' ' A blind man with a fiddle whom I met on my road.' ' You are certain he is drowned ? ' ' I have the man's word and the assurance of my eyes.' * Why were you going up to Marvilion ? ' 'To ascertain Don John's movements.' * Who told you he was moving ? ' ' My lady the Countess.' * Eight thousand men ? ' ' With the Hauterive force, yes.' * H'm. You are the youth who writes verses the troubadour hey ? ' ' I am a troubadour, my lord, and now a scholar of Saint Save/ ' You have known my lady formerly ? ' 'She is my friend and benefactress/ * You regard her well-being, hey ? ' * I regard nothing else/ ' We'll see about that. Now attend to me, Paulet. What reason did Donna Sabine give for not coming here with you ? Tell me the whole truth, Paulet, or, by God, I'll cut you down/ Lanceilhot paled but stood firm. ' You will get nothing from me by threats, my lord. Your other hint was shrewder/ * What do you mean ? ' CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKPOYNTZ 285 ' Out of my regard for her ladyship's well- being I will tell you what I would never tell her. Nor will you, I believe. The Lady de Renny gave me as a reason for avoiding her cousin that my Lady Mabilla had married the man who treacherously slew her father and her three young brothers, who saw her mother stab herself, and spared her own life only for ends hardly less shameful than these. Hence the Lady de Renny judged the Countess of Pikpoyntz by her know- ledge of the Earl.' Lanceilhot spoke slowly and deliberately, with his eye fixed upon his adversary. Gernulf never moved a muscle. He was so quiet indeed that those who knew him would have grown really alarmed. Paulet knew him not. There must have been a strain, however, for in the course of a turn or two about the room Paulet saw him (when his back was turned) wipe his forehead with his hand. But his voice did not betray him. Presently he turned and stood over Lanceilhot, breathing very short. * I have exposed all this balderdash to the persons concerned,' he said, ' and shall not now expose it to you, who are not concerned. But there is one more thing. You told me that you did not intend to speak of these matters to my lady. Am I right ? ' * You are right, my lord ; I could sooner slit my tongue.' ' Under what circumstances ? ' ' Under any conceivable circumstances. I cannot imagine an hour coming when it should be necessary.' 286 THE SONG OF RENNY BOOK n * Do you threaten me, fellow ? ' said the Earl. ' No, my lord.' ' Then what is the hour of which you say that you cannot imagine it ? You mean that you can imagine it, I suppose ? ' * I said that I could not imagine the hour com- ing, my lord. I can imagine the hour, of course.' ' What is your hour, sir ? Never quibble with me ! ' cried Gernulf, in a shaking fit. Lanceilhot looked him full in the face. * The hour when I could help her in no other way, my lord,' said he. Gernulf stared, then dropped a heavy hand upon his shoulder. There was no doubt about his ferocity now ; he was cold with it. ' See here, my little petticoat skulker,' said he, ' my wife befriends you, and you know well enough that her pleasure is a law to me. But when that hour which you imagine so finely comes indeed, I advise you to be out of my reach.' ' I hope it may never come, my lord. I have told you that I cannot believe it will come.' ' You may well hope it, young man. Now leave me. I have business.' He roared for Martin as Paulet left him. It may be that Lanceilhot would not have been so bold if he had known how far he had tempted his enemy enemy he plainly was. But Pikpoyntz, who had never loved anybody before, now loved his young wife, and on her account he simply dared nothing against the minstrel. It never entered his head to be jealous of him ; all his fury against the boy was that here was another CHAP, vii COUNTESS OF PIKFOYNTZ 287 holder of his secrets those black vaults of his own soul were slit by another candle beam. The man was desperate, not enraged. Desperate, hag- ridden with the knowledge of what he had done and of what (God have mercy !) he had now to do, he came in before his wife, booted for his winter ride. Frenzy driving him, he picked her up in his huge arms as if she were a doll, lifted her clean off her feet, strained her (desperately hungry) against his breast ; so, between his broken gaspings of misery, love, and self-scorn, he kissed her cold face over and over again. She, taken by surprise, lay where she was caught without a struggle. There was indeed nothing to do but endure what was the strong O O man's right. She was, however, harder than stone against him, her love long dead, her anger and disgust whistling like a frozen wind through her nose. Against her rocky resentment he beat in vain. ' Ah, my bride, my life, my heart ! ' he mumbled, and fell again to his kisses and sobs. ' Please to put me down, my lord ; you are hurting me,' quoth she. Beaten, he set her on her feet ; he held off, panting ; he stood by watching her with wild looks. ' Do you know whether I love you, Mabilla ? ' He twisted for breath. ' I have never doubted it, my lord.' ' Will you drive me out like this ? ' ' I drive no one but myself. The proposal to go is your own or your honour's.' ' Honour, Mabilla ! ' ' Honour, my lord. Is it foolish to name honour to the Earl of Pikpoyntz ? '