Chapter XXVII
The beech wood filled with sudden movement, and its blackness was like a storm cloud sending out a vague and hollow muttering. Dark shapes came hurrying out of the gloom beyond the gray trunks, the shapes of men and horses that took on color, fierceness, life. There was the rattle of harness, the flashing of steel. John Rich and his riders came out at the gallop.
A piece of tapestry seemed unrolled, so swiftly did things happen. The very power of movement was taken away from Martin Valliant. He saw all that passed as though it were in a dream, the black figure of John Rich and his horse going at the gallop with spear leveled, the men behind him strung out in a half circle and all rushing like the wind. There was Mellis’s white face, helpless, hesitating, like a piece of apple blossom floating on the blackness of a pool. Young Nigel Blount, sword in air, was shouting to his men, who had turned tail and were running for the shelter of the woods. Then Rich’s spear smote right through Nigel Blount’s body. Martin heard the lad’s scream, saw him twist like a puppet on a wire, and tumble backwards, dragging the point of Rich’s spear to the ground. The riders swept around Mellis; she seemed to sink out of sight in the thick of the crowd.
Martin Valliant awoke. He uttered a great cry, and rushed toward the little turret where the stairway opened upon the leads. As he reached it Peter Swartz caught him by the sword belt.
“Stay, you fool!”
Martin tried to thrust him off, but Swartz kept his hold.
“No, no, my friend, knock my teeth out if it pleases you, but if your head’s on fire mine had better do the thinking.”
“Let go, man.”
“And see you rush out there and be ridden down and spitted like that poor popinjay! Thirty to one are heavy odds, Martin Valliant.”
“Let go, curse you.”
“And hold on, say I. Listen to reason, man, and use your wits. You’ll not help that girl by getting yourself killed.”
“The strength of God is in me.”
“And the brains of a sheep! The game is not lost and won yet, but it will be if you go rushing out like a mad bull. Cunning, man—cunning and patience.”
Martin stood irresolute, his eyes full of wrath and yearning.
“If I must die, I’ll die now, Swartz.”
“Oh, good fool, set your teeth and bide your time! It is no time for dying. What use would a dead man be to the child out yonder? Set your teeth, Martin Valliant; play the grim dog who can watch and wait.”
He laid his arm across Martin’s shoulders and drew him aside.
“Why, man, I’m with you, and you will thank me to-morrow for this. And here are we squabbling and scuffling when we should be watching like hawks. Come—we must match John Rich for cunning.”
Martin Valliant surrendered, but he covered his face with his sword-arm and stood shaking like a man with the ague.
Meanwhile John Rich was riding back at his leisure, the bridle of Mellis’s horse over his wrist. Ten of his men had gone in pursuit of the foresters from Bloody Rood, and two more had dismounted, taken young Blount’s body by the heels, and were dragging it down to the mere. John Rich brought his horse close to the bridge-head, and his trumpeter blew a summons.
“A parley, Valliant.”
Martin straightened himself, with a sudden shining of the eyes. He saw Mellis sitting her horse beside John Rich, pale, motionless, tragically calm. She looked up toward the tower, and Martin fancied that she smiled; he felt that his heart would break for her.
“If they would take me and let her go!”
Swartz scoffed at his madness.
“My Lord of Troy is no honey-pot, to catch flies and let them escape as they please. Have nothing to say to John Rich; let him blow his trumpet till the fellow’s cheeks burst.”
Martin stood forward, resting his hands on the pommel of his sword. John Rich hailed him.
“Hallo, there! Come down and open the gate. The game is played out.”
Martin Valliant’s eyes were fixed on Mellis’s face. He was wondering whether she despised him for not rushing out to strike a blow for her—whether she thought him a coward. Swartz had crouched down behind the wall, and was watching Martin narrowly.
“Steady, brother. That child has brave eyes and a fine heart. She will understand. Tell Rich to go to the devil.”
Martin stood like a statue, and Rich bellowed again:
“Have done with this fooling. Will you give us the place, or are we to take it?”
Martin was waiting for something, and that something came. He saw Mellis raise her head proudly; he saw her mouth open; her voice reached out to him across the water:
“Stand fast, Martin Valliant!”
He raised the cross of his sword and kissed it as a sign to her.
“To the death!” he called to her.
And John Rich, accepting the defiance, turned his horse and rode back with Mellis to the beech wood.
Now John Rich was a man of method. He posted a guard of ten men to cover the bridge, and two more to patrol the banks of the mere. The rest disappeared into the woods, shed their harness, and took to ax and saw, for John Rich had brought a tumbril laden with ropes, a ladder, tools, balks of timber, and such-like gear from Troy Castle. The matter was to be undertaken stolidly and with thoroughness. He set his men at building a couple of rafts or floats that could be dragged down to the mere after dark. Half his party would pole themselves over to attack the house, while the rest held the causeway.
Martin kept watch upon the tower, and Swartz remained with him out of a new-born spirit of comradeship. A great restlessness tormented Martin Valliant. He could no longer see his love, nor guess what might have befallen her, and his soul suffered in a lover’s purgatory. All the past years had been blotted out; he had lived just seven days since this woman had come into his life, with those eyes of hers dark as the forest and her lips red as the rose. Great storms of tenderness and wrath swept through him. He was tortured by vivid memories of her, flashes of her that hurt his soul, the miraculous way her dark eyes would fill with golden lights, her plaintive look when she was sad, the little dimple in her cheek, the way her lips moved, the shape of her fingers, the curve of her chin, the falling of her dark hair over her ears. These vivid flashes of her intoxicated, maddened him. He wanted to pour himself out, die for her, spend his great love, and make her feel it.
Swartz watched Martin closely as he went restlessly to and fro, or stood and stared at the beech wood as though it held both heaven and hell.
“Patience, brother.”
Martin turned on him with furious eyes.
“Patience! Man, man, I burn—I burn!”
“Keep your torch alight; there is no harm in it. With the night will come your hope.”
“Night?”
“Things may be done by a desperate man at night.”
“True. I can swim the moat.”
He stood and brooded with a face that spelled death for some one. His love and his helplessness scorched him like flame. He could have choked Swartz for telling him to wait, though in his heart he knew that Swartz was right.
Sometimes he would start, fancying that he had heard Mellis calling to him:
“Martin—Martin Valliant!”
He would turn on Swartz:
“Did you hear?”
“Nothing, my son—nothing.”
Swartz was laconic, implacable. He had made himself a little peephole by loosening some of the stones with his dagger and levering them out. This squint of his commanded the beech wood, and he watched it like a dog waiting for a rat.
“Thunder!”
Martin turned and saw him kneeling with his eye close to the hole. His lips were stretched tight over his teeth.
“Are you behind me, man? What do you see?”
Martin faced sharply toward the beech wood. A man had ridden out from the shade—a man in a red doublet slashed and puffed with blue, a red hat on his head, his legs and thighs cased in white armor. He was a very tall man, and he sat his horse with a certain swaggering grace. In his right hand he carried a light switch.
Swartz spat hate at him.
“Hell hound, swaggerer, bully.”
Martin looked puzzled.
“I have not seen that fellow before.”
“And I have seen him too often. What, you have lived in these parts and know not Messire Fulk de Lisle?”
Martin’s forehead wrinkled itself.
“Fulk de Lisle! A great gentleman in my Lord of Troy’s service.”
“A great gentleman! God help you, Martin Valliant, and God help— Enough. This clinches it. I have often itched to cut that man’s throat, though I have served with him.”
Martin Valliant’s eyes filled with a sudden fury of understanding.
“Why is he here?”
“To play any devil’s trick that pleases him. You do not know Messire Fulk de Lisle. Rich is a saint beside him. The debonair, filthy, malicious devil! Why, I could tell you— Oh! to hell with the beast!”
He twisted around and looked up into Martin Valliant’s face.
“Man, can you stand torture?”
“Speak out!”
“Supposing he brings the child—and tries to break you by—shaming her?”
Martin’s face was like a white flame.
“God! It’s beyond belief! Why should he?”
Swartz grimaced.
“Because he is Fulk de Lisle; because he has a foul cleverness and a liking for such things. My Lord of Troy would laugh at such a comedy. God and the Saints, I wonder now why I have lived with such men!”