Martin Valliant slept at the foot of the tower stairway with Mellis’s sword beside him. He fell asleep with one hand gripping the hilt, like a child clutching a toy.
Mellis did not have to wake him that morning, for he was up before the birds had begun their orisons, his heart full of the great adventure that life had thrust upon him. He had taken it solemnly, like a young man before his knighthood, or a soldier setting forth on a Crusade, and all that he did that morning in the gray of the dawn betrayed the symbolical passion of the lover. He was to enter upon a new state before he touched that white harness, and so he went to the mere, stripped off his clothes, and bathed in the water. Then he knelt awhile, grave-eyed and strong, watching the sun rise on the new day, while the birds were a choir invisible.
When Mellis came down from her chamber she found him in the garden with the harness spread out upon the leather sack, so that the wet grass should not tarnish it. He had cut his cassock short above the knees, and was holding the salade in his hands and staring at it like a crystal gazer.
He flushed, and glanced at her with an air of bafflement.
“These iron clothes are new to me.”
Mellis did not smile at his predicament, though she guessed that he had no knowledge of how to arm himself.
“You must try the feel of it,” she said, “for a man should test himself with the weight of his harness. Four hands are needed for such a toilet. When we have eaten I will play the page to you.”
She was as good as her word, and the arming of Martin Valliant was an event in the life of the garden. Mellis made him seat himself upon the bench, while she picked up the pieces one by one and taught him his lesson by buckling them on with her own hands. First came the breast- and back-plates, the pauldrons and gorget, the vam-braces and rear-braces. Then she made him stand up.
“You may call that half-harness; a man can move lightly and fight on foot, but when bowmen are about, a man-at-arms should be sheathed from top to toe.”
Next she buckled on tassets, loin-guard, cuishes, greaves and solerets, set the salade on his head, and slung the green shield by its strap about his neck.
“Now, man of the sword!”
She stood back and surveyed him.
“Yes, it is better than I had hoped. You are a bigger man than my poor brother, but the harness covers you. Of course you should be wearing a wadded coat to save all chafing, and hose of good wool.”
Her eyes lit up as she looked him over, and she held her head proudly.
“I have no spear to give you, though I doubt not that you will make a better beginning with the sword—if needs be. Try the joints, Martin.”
He walked up and down before her, raised his arms, spread them wide, folded them over his chest. He seemed made for such heavy harness; the strong, sweeping movements of his limbs were not crabbed or clogged by it.
“The thing is like an iron skin.”
“Ah! it was made by a fine armorer. The joints are perfect. And the weight of it?”
“I’ll swear I could run or leap.”
“You are fresh as yet. A man must wear such harness for a day to learn where it irks him. And so I am thinking that I will leave you to master it. There is work for me in the Forest.”
He unhelmed himself, and his blue eyes looked at her questioningly.
“What! You are venturing abroad?”
“Yes; I shall take the horse, and your wallet full of food.”
“Why must you go?”
“Why, brother-in-arms, because we are not the only people on God’s earth who thirst to humble the Lord of Troy. We have friends in the Forest, and I must see them—take counsel, and plan what can be done. They were waiting for friends from France, and for poor Gilbert to give the word.”
He answered her with sudden fire.
“I carry your brother’s sword and wear his harness. It is my right to go.”
She smiled at him with quiet eyes.
“Dear man, that would not help us; you could not prove, as yet, that you are in the secret. Besides, all the wheels of it are in my head. I shall ride to Badger Hill and see John Falconer; he holds the reins in the Forest.”
“But what of the Lord of Troy? Those dead men——”
“What does he know as yet? He may send out riders, but I know the Forest better than any man that Roger Bland can count on. I shall not be caught in a snare. Moreover, Martin Valliant, I leave you to guard our stronghold and the precious gear in that cellar.”
He was very loth to let her go alone, and bitterly against it, though he saw the wisdom of her argument.
“My heart mislikes this venture.”
“You run to meet a ghost,” she said. “I shall come to no harm, believe me.”
She had her way, and he went to open the gate and lower the bridge while she put on a cloak and hood, and filled the wallet with food. She joined him on the causeway, where he stood scanning the woods mistrustfully.
“I would to God I might go with you.”
Her eyes looked into his.
“Your heart goes with me. Bear with that harness, for your bones will ache not a little. And keep good guard.”
He watched her cross the grassland toward the thicket where they had hidden the horse. Woodmere seemed to lack sunlight of a sudden, and his heart felt heavy when the trees hid her.
Nor were Martin’s fears for her safety the mere idle qualms of a man in love. There was a saddling of horses at Troy Castle, and Fulk de Lisle, Roger Bland’s bravo, was shut up with him in my lord’s closet.
Vance’s archer man, who had escaped Martin Valliant’s spade, had come in the night before, after losing his way in the Forest. His tale lost nothing in the telling. Mellis Dale had stabbed the Forest Warden with her poniard, and her paramour, the priest, had then beaten him, and John Bunce, to death. If my lord doubted it, let him send men to the Black Moor, and they would find the bodies.
So Fulk de Lisle had his orders. He was a gay, swashbuckling devil, very handsome, very debonair, a great man with his weapons. He stood before the Lord of Troy, leaning on his sword, his black hair curled under his flat red hat, his sword belt bossed with gold. He wore no armor save a cuirass, and light greaves; the blue sleeves of his doublet were puffed with crimson; his hose were striped red and blue.
“Take thirty men; let them ride in three troops. Go yourself with one troop to the Black Moor; send Peter Rich with ten men to Badger Hill, and Swartz with the rest to Woodmere. I have sent messengers to Gawdy Town. I want the wench and the priest, both of them. And Vance’s body had better be brought in.”
Fulk de Lisle turned to go. This was work that pleased him. The Forest had been dull and law-abiding for many months.
“Wait!”
Fulk faced about.
“My lord?”
“How do you think to know the girl when you see her?”
“They say she is dark and vixenish, with eyes that bid a man stand back, a well-favored wench.”
“Tush! Any pretty jade would do for you, man!”
“Oldham, the archer, can recognize them both.”
“He cannot be in three places at once, Sir Fulk de Lisle.”
“He shall go with me. Swartz and Rich shall have orders to take and bring in any likely looking damsel.”
“Yes, leave it at that. Waste no time. I am not patient when such tricks are played me.”
So Fulk de Lisle and his men rode out from Troy Castle. They were lightly armed for fast riding, and ten of them shouldered cross-bows instead of spears. They kept together till they reached Red Heath, where Peter Rich and Swartz broke off with their two troops with guides for Woodmere and Badger Hill.
Meanwhile Mellis was on her way to John Falconer’s house at Badger Hill. She sighted it about nine o’clock, a great, low, black-beamed, white-plastered place, walled around with gray stone, on the side of a sandy hill. Fir woods, dark as midnight, climbed skywards behind it; the farm lands lay in the valley to the south, but elsewhere the soil was poor, and grew nothing but gorse and heather.
Mellis rode over the heath and up the hill to the house. A gawk of a boy, who was cleaning harness outside the stable doorway, stared at her with a face like sodden dough. She reined up in the courtyard and called to him.
“Is Master Falconer here?”
“Sure!”
The boy never budged.
“Tell Master Falconer that I am waiting.”
“Who be—I?”
“Run, you dolt, or I will get you a whipping.”
He vanished down a slope that led under one wing of the house, and in half a minute John Falconer came out to her. He was like the hill he lived on—a gray badger of a man, grim, reticent, yet kindly. His short neck made the breadth of his shoulders more apparent. His legs were bowed and immensely strong. John Falconer was a piece of the Forest. His hair and beard were the color of beech mast, sanded with gray.
“Do you know me?”
His eyes brightened like a dog’s.
“God’s death! Is it you?”
“My own and very self. And poor Gilbert—you have heard?”
He looked grim.
“God hearten you, child! But what has happened?”
The boy reappeared, and proceeded to stare at them, while he picked his teeth with a straw. Nor was John Falconer aware of the youngster’s presence until he saw Mellis’s eyes prompting him to turn his head.
The man of Badger Hill gave a kind of growl, and the child disappeared with a flutter of brown legs.
“I had to find you, John, but I am loth to be seen here by any stray fool.”
“The men are in the fields.”
“But that boy?”
“He has no tongue when it pleases me.”
She glanced at the pine woods.
“If your dinner can wait I will talk to you up there.”
He nodded.
“Wise wench!”
Mellis fastened her horse to a tree, and she and John Falconer walked to and fro along one of the black aisles. She had much to tell him, and he seemed to grow grimmer the longer he listened. His comments were short, gruff growls and an occasional terse judgment.
“Vance dead! May he burn like pitch! The priest turned outlaw! What next? You have made him your man? Nay—I mislike that. A black Benedictine! Lord, but we are in for a storm!”
John Falconer frightened most people, but he did not frighten Mellis. She had known him since she was a toddler of three, to be picked up and carried on his shoulder.
“Whether you like it or not, John, these things cannot be helped. Vance has made us run when we would have walked. As to Martin Valliant, I would stake my right hand on his keeping faith with us. And now—will you rally to us? We can hold Woodmere till the whole Forest flaunts the Red Rose.”
“I would we had word from France.”
“It cannot be helped. If our people are loth to move—well, I will disappear, go and live in one of those old quarry holes by the Rondel.”
He answered her doggedly.
“No. I am with you, if I lose my old head for it. I am not so young as I was, and I would get my blow in at Roger Bland before I am stiff in the back. I will ride out to-night and warn our friends, and by to-morrow we shall be able to throw a garrison into Woodmere.”
“Stubborn, trusty oak!”
Falconer smiled grimly.
“There are many men who lust to feel their poniards in Roger Bland’s throat. I pray that mine may have that honor.”
Mellis did not tarry there much longer. Her work was done for the day; she could leave the Forest folk to John Falconer. She chose a different track for her homeward ride—a way that plunged through the pine woods and turned south again by Witch’s Cross. And she was saved by her caution, for half an hour after she had left Badger Hill Peter Rich and his men came riding along the track she had used in the morning.
They found John Falconer at his dinner, and well warned as to their business. He was bluff and easy with Peter Rich, had ale drawn for the men and water for their horses.
Rich did not beat about his business.
“This is a hanging job for any fool who meddles. We are after old Dale’s daughter.”
“Tut, man! She has been in France these seven years.”
“That is a good bit of brag, John Falconer. Come, now; I have no wish to ride the high horse; the girl has been here; let us have the truth.”
Falconer told his lie with square-faced hardihood.
“I have not seen Mellis Dale for seven years. You can search the house.”
Rich had it searched to salve his conscience. His men found nothing—not even the stable boy, who was shut up in the venison hutch in a dark corner of the larder, and far too much in terror of John Falconer to betray himself.
Peter Rich drank ale while his men were at work. He took his failure philosophically, and got back into the saddle.
“It has saved me pulling you by the beard, John Falconer.”
“My beard may be at your service—some day.”
They grinned at each other like fierce dogs, and Peter Rich rode off. But he left two men in the woods to watch the place, which was a trick of no great moment, for John Falconer guessed that he would be watched.
“Thank God the girl left betimes, and by the other road. And God grant she may not find a trap at Woodmere House.”