when denise of the hermitage went down to draw water at the spring at the edge of the beech wood, she saw the light of a fire flashing out through the blue gloom of the april dusk. it was far away—that fire, almost on the horizon, a knot of tawny colour seen between the dark slopes of two high hills. yet though it was so far away denise could see the long flames moving, sometimes shooting upwards, or bending and sweeping towards the ground.
denise stood and watched these flames that waved and flickered yonder through the dusk where the smoke spread out between the hills into a kind of pearly haze. it was so still under the boughs of the great beeches that the distant fire seemed strange and ghostly, burning without a sound. the little pool where denise had filled her pitcher was not more silent, the pool fed by an invisible spring, and believed to be miraculous and holy.
yet though those far flames were so silent, denise could set a sound to them, a crackling roar that would be very real to those who looked on the thing as on a sacrifice. there would be many watchers on the hills that night, sullen and silent folk to whom that blaze would speak like a war cresset teased by the wind on some great lord’s tower. peter of savoy’s riders, those hired “spears” from over the sea, gascons, flemings, bretons, were out to keep the king’s peace in the rapes of pevensey and of hastings. denise knew that private war had been let loose, for had she not heard from the priest of goldspur, and from aymery the manor lord, that many of the lesser gentry and the cinque port towns were calling for earl simon? the pot that had long been simmering, had boiled over of a sudden. and those who had scalded toes had only their own perversity to thank.
in such a fashion began the barons’ war in many a quiet corner of the land. lawyers might orate and scribble, but when men quarrelled over a great issue, and the heart of a people was full of bitterness and discontent, the rush was towards the primitive ordeal of the sword. “god—and the king!”—“earl simon and the charter!” these two rallying cries cut off brother from brother, and father from son. there had been years of verbiage, oath breaking, famine, peculation, and cynical corruption in high places. the law was no law, the king’s oath a byword in brothels and in taverns. the great father—even the pope—had had both fists in the english money pots. poitevins, provençals, and italians had scrambled together. the country was sick of it. men who were in grim earnest hastened to get to blows.
as denise, half hermitess, half saint, went back through the beech wood, the fire, like a great red brazier, still shone out on her, latticed by the black boughs, or hidden for a moment behind a tree bole. and though the wood was as still and solemn as a temple, it seemed full of a hushed and listening dread, waiting for the wind that should come roaring through the tops of the trees. unrest was upon the hills, and in the deeps of the valleys. denise felt it as she might have felt the nearness of thunder on a sultry night in june.
but if no wind stirred in the wood that night, there were other sounds more human and more passionate than the voice of the wind. denise had said her prayers in her cell when the dead leaves under the beech trees whispered with the moving of many feet. indistinct figures went in and out among the tree boles, the muttering of voices mingling with the rustle of the leaves. a full moon had risen, and begun to throw long slants of light into the darkness of the wood, outlining the black branches, and splashing the trunks of the trees with silver. in and out, through the still moonlight and the shadows, came the moving figures whose feet filled the whole wood with the shiver of dead leaves.
they straggled along by twos and threes, some silent and morose, others talking with the quick muttering intensity of men who have given and taken blows. a darker core moved along the woodland path in the midst of this scattered company. men were carrying a litter of boughs piled upon the trunks of two young ash trees. the moonlight played intermittently upon the men about the litter, showing so many white faces, intent and silent, and a body that lay upon the bed of boughs with a shield covering its face.
a breadth of clear sky in the thick of the wood showed them that they were close on the glade where denise of the forest had her cell. the place was sacred and full of mystery to the woodlanders of those parts, and the scattered figures drew together under a tree where the path came out of the wood into the glade. only the litter of boughs and the men with it went forward into the moonlight; the rest held aloof like dogs left by their master at the door of a church.
the men who carried the litter set it down outside the gate in the wattle fence that shut in denise’s garden. there was some whispering, but the men’s voices were no longer harsh and angry. grimbald, the parish priest, sent them back into the wood to wait. two men remained beside the litter, one standing a little apart with a cloak wrapped round him, and a hood drawn forward over his face.
grimbald, the priest from goldspur village, opened the gate, and went up the path paved with rough, flat stones that led to the cell. denise had heard the sound of voices, and the rustling of the dead leaves in the wood. grimbald’s voice warned her that they were friends.
“sancta denise,” he said, crossing himself, “ora pro nobis.”
the door opened, under the broad black eaves of the hermitage. denise stood there on the threshold, wearing a grey cloak that shone white in the light of the moon. her hair clouded past her shoulders to her knees. it was miraculous hair, red as rust in the shade, but burning in the sunlight with a sheen of gold. denise herself was miraculous, and this beech wood of hers was said to be full of many marvels. people who came for holy water from her pool, or to be treated by her for sickness, swore that they had seen a moving radiance, like a marsh fire, in the wood, and heard the voices of angels and the murmur of their wings. denise was famed for her powers of healing. she knew all the precious herbs, and the touch of her hands could bring a blessing.
grimbald told her the news.
“it is waleran de monceaux’s lad,” he said. “come and see, sanctissima, whether god will be merciful.”
she bent forward and looked into grimbald’s face.
“there is war with us—then?”
grimbald spread his arms.
“peter of savoy sent out his free-lances from pevensey. they were too strong for us. the lad was shot through the body when they drove us into the woods.”
“i saw a fire—about dusk.”
“waleran’s hall—and outhouses! that was the end of it.”
he stood aside, and denise went down the path, her bare feet making no sound upon the stones. aymery, lord of the manor of goldspur, knelt in the grass beside the litter holding the lad’s cold hands. waleran still stood aloof, his face hidden under his hood. no one spoke to him. they left him alone, knowing his mood, and the manner of man that he was.
denise went on her knees beside the litter, her two hands putting back the masses of her hair. aymery lifted the shield from the lad’s face. the sleeve of his hauberk brushed against denise’s cloak. she glanced round at him, and their eyes smiled faintly at one another.
“we brought the boy to you. the arrow drove right through him. you can feel the point under his tunic.”
denise laid a hand over the lad’s heart. there was not a flicker of movement there, but she could feel the arrow’s head standing out a hand’s breadth beyond the ribs. the lad must have died very quickly.
“he is dead,” she said to the man at her side.
aymery was staring at the boy’s face. he turned, and glanced meaningly at the figure that stood apart in silent isolation.
“it is waleran,” he said in a whisper, “he would not believe the worst.”
denise gave a little shudder of pity. aymery turned, and met her eyes.
“pray for the boy, denise. what is death, but a miracle! and an hour ago——”
she spread her hands helplessly.
“lord, death is beyond me; i am not blessed with so much power. someone must tell him.”
“the pity of it!”
and she echoed him.
“the pity of it!”
a compassionate humility made her bow her head over the rough litter, for there was no place for the smaller remembrance of self in the conscious awe of her own helplessness. denise had healed sick people, but she who could play the lady of healing, knew herself human in the presence of death.
“tell him,” she said, “it is almost shame to me that you should have brought the boy here.”
aymery covered the lad’s face again with the shield.
“pray for waleran,” he said.
“for the living rather than the dead.”
aymery rose and joined grimbald the priest, who was standing by the gate. denise still knelt beside the litter, holding the dead boy’s hands. and if compassion could have given him life, compassion for that silent man who stood aloof, life might have flowed miraculously from denise’s body, and spread like fire into the limbs of the dead.
grimbald left aymery, and crossed the grass to where waleran stood, waleran that sturdy man with the fierce red shock of hair. waleran had been the first mesne lord in those parts to bristle his mane against count peter of savoy. this hardihood had lost him his only child, and made a bonfire of his home, though he would not believe at first that the boy was dead.
aymery of goldspur turned again to denise. he could see that she was praying, and his eyes, that were frosty with the cold anger of a strong man helpless in the face of death, flashed suddenly as he saw the moonlight touching denise’s hair.
grimbald had waleran by the shoulders. they heard a short, sharp oath scatter the priest’s whisperings as a puff of wind scatters a handful of feathers.
“dead!”
there was the sound of heavy breathing.
“let me alone! am i a fool of a girl?”
“patience, brother.”
“patience be cursed! what is the use of an idiot saint if an arrow between the ribs is too much for her?”
denise let the boy’s hands fall; aymery saw her bow her head, and heard her whisper words that he could not catch. then waleran came forward, swinging his arms as though to keep off grimbald who towered beside him like a great ship. waleran stopped at the foot of the litter, and stood staring at the shield that covered the dead boy’s face. some impulse drove him to his knees, and he began to feel for the arrow, breathing heavily through set teeth.
denise’s nearness seemed to come between him and the savage tenderness of a dog for its dead whelp. her humility and her compassion were not tuned to the cry of nature.
“get up,” he said. “this is my affair.”
he leant forward, and pushed her back with a rough thrust of the open hand. aymery caught denise, and drew her aside.
“forgive——”
his arms lingered about her like the arms of a lover.
“lord, i understand.”
“that arrow has stricken two hearts.”
her eyes looked into aymery’s as he let her go.
“god have pity,” she said.
waleran had broken off the head of the arrow. he held it up in the moonlight, and his hood fell back from his face. the three who watched him saw his face contorted with laughter, though no sound came from the open mouth.
he ran the arrow’s head through his cloak, as a woman pins her tunic with a splinter of bone.
“here is a keepsake,” he said. “lord, but i shall cherish it! they have lit a candle for the boy, yonder. some day i shall hang a bell on a rope, and ring him a passing.”
he scrambled up, swaggering, and shaking his shoulders. it was his way of carrying the burden that the night had laid on him. he shouted to the men, roughly, and they came out from the shadows of the trees.
when they had lifted the litter, waleran jerked himself on to it, and putting the shield aside, sat fingering his boy’s face.
“a puff of wind, and the candle is out,” he said.
the litter swayed under his weight.
“spill me, you fools, and i shall have something to say to you. off with you. to-morrow we must put this poor pigeon under the grass.”
the men moved away, and grimbald would have followed them, but waleran ordered him back.
“have i nothing better to do than to cut my own throat!” he said. “shifts and cassocks are no good for me. the puppy is mine, by god! let no one meddle between him and me.”
grimbald followed them no farther, and heard the swish of their feet die away through the dead leaves into the darkness.
in an hour from their first coming the beech wood was silent and empty, and denise’s cell lay with its dark thatch like an islet in the midst of a quiet mere. not a ripple of sound played over the surface of the night. aymery and grimbald had gone to warn their own people that death was abroad on the white horse. and denise, sitting on her bed, wakeful, and filled with a great pity for waleran and the lad, felt that the stealthy glamour of the moonlight was cold and unreal. if her compassion followed waleran, a feeling more deep and more mysterious followed aymery under the boughs of the beeches. yet this feeling of denise’s was as miraculous as the moonlight which she thought so cold and mute.
the two men made their way through the wood by a broad green ride, and stood listening where the heathland began for any sound that might steal out of the vast silence of the night. grimbald’s great head, with its gaunt, eagle face, the colour of smoked oak, had the full moon behind it for a halo. aymery of goldspur stood a little below him on the hillside, leaning on his sword. his thoughts were back among the trees about denise’s glade, those towering trees whose boughs seemed hung with the stars.
below them stretched wastes of whin and heather, hills black with forests, valleys full of moonlit mist. they could see the sea shining in the distance, a whole land beneath them, ghostly, strange, and still.
“it is all quiet yonder.”
grimbald’s head was like the head of a hawk, alert and very watchful.
“they have done enough for one night,” he said.
“to make us keep troth with the king!”
both were silent for a moment. grimbald spoke the thought that was uppermost in aymery’s mind.
“it is no longer safe for the girl alone, yonder,” he said.
aymery, that man with the iron mouth and the square chin, and eyes the colour of the winter sea, spread his shoulders as an archer spreads them before drawing a six-foot bow.
“i will see to it,” he said quietly. “nothing must happen to denise.”
