Martin Valliant and Swartz went back to the tower, for a stage had been set and the play was about to begin with the wracking of a man’s soul.
Martin leaned against the battlement, his face turned toward the great beech wood, and his eyes fixed on the green bower that Rich’s men had built. He had taken Swartz’s words to heart; he was hardening himself, preparing to bear his torture without flinching and without uttering a sound. He thought of the day when he had hung on the cross to prove himself stronger than Kate Succory’s youth, and how the physical pain was as nothing to this torment of the soul. Swartz sat close to him with his back to the wall, and Swartz’s face was very grim. He had changed sides, turned rebel; he was a good hound, and no cur.
Fulk de Lisle had vanished into the beech wood, but in a short while his red figure reappeared. He stood leaning with one hand against a tree trunk as though waiting for some order of his to be obeyed, and Martin Valliant watched him with steady eyes, letting his anger gather like deep water behind a dam.
Something white glimmered under the trees. It drew nearer, and was led forth into the sunlight close to where Fulk de Lisle stood waiting. Martin Valliant covered his eyes with his forearm, and Swartz, who had put his eye to his squint-hole, rolled aside, and stared at the sky.
Martin Valliant said never a word. A new and wonderful strength seemed to come to him; he uncovered his eyes, stood up calmly with a face that was like a great white light. His lips moved, but no sound came.
They had fastened a rope about Mellis’s neck, and the man who held the end of the rope had crowned himself with a wreath of wild flowers. Another fellow who walked behind had a garland on his spear. Fulk de Lisle’s allegory burned itself into Martin Valliant’s brain. This beautiful nakedness was to be sacrificed to shame him.
Old Swartz was cursing to himself. He glanced up at Martin and stared in an awed way at the man’s white and shining face.
He saw Martin cross himself.
“Some day I shall kill that man,” he said, as though he were praying; “I shall not die till I have killed him.”
Mellis was led through the long grass to the green bower. She looked at the ground, but once her eyes lifted to the tower with one tremulous glance of appeal. And Martin’s soul struggled like a live thing in a cage.
“It shall not happen!” he said. “By the greatness of God, it shall not happen!”
The men led her into the bower and made her lie down upon the bed. One of them tossed a riding-cloak over her. They cut the rope into four pieces, and tied her by her wrists and ankles to the four stakes. Their work was done; they threw their garlands on the ground, and went off laughing and looking mockingly at Woodmere tower.
Martin was watching Fulk de Lisle, who came pacing with all the airs of a great lord toward the place where Mellis lay.
“What a chance to shoot the red devil!”
Swartz rubbed his hands together.
“Ah! I thought so.”
De Lisle was playing a part, and his swaggering was mere whimsical insolence. He marched up and down in front of the lodge of leaves, pointing his toes and cocking his head, the male thing in possession. A servant came down from the wood with a silver cup full of wine, and Fulk de Lisle made a great parade of his drinking. He walked into the bower and drank to Mellis, turned again, and drank to Martin on the tower. He was in high favor with himself. Life was a dissolute jest.
Martin Valliant heard Swartz whispering to him.
“Have you come by any plan, brother?”
“Only that I am going yonder to-night.”
His face was gray and hard as a winter dawn.
“I can better that plan.”
“How?”
“They will be too much on the alert to give you an honest chance. If you open the gate and cross the bridge they will be waiting for you. We must make them face two ways—scare them a little.”
“Go on.”
“I have my horn with me. Picture us stripped, comrade, you with a sharp knife, and I with my horn. We swim the moat after dark, and before the moon is up. I creep through the grass into the woods, get around behind the gentry, blow my horn like the last trump, and shout to my imaginary men to cut the rogues to pieces. We must trust to them getting a trifle ruffled. You will have to take your chance of saving the child.”
Martin stared at him fixedly.
“Why are you doing this?”
“Why? Why do we eat and sleep, man? Because we must. To cheat that red rogue over there is as natural as eating. Thunder! but I have forgotten one thing. The girl would not be able to swim.”
Martin hid his knowledge.
“I could carry her over. That is nothing.”
“Love could carry the moon! What say you to my plan, Martin Valliant?”
Martin stooped and caught Swartz by the shoulders.
“And I was near killing you two days ago!”
“Hard blows have begun many a good friendship. My heart’s with you, Martin Valliant.”
And so it was agreed between them, that they should try this desperate venture when darkness came.
To Martin Valliant it seemed very long in the coming, though the shadow of the tower lengthened itself across the water till it touched the grassland beyond the mere. He watched the fish leaping in the water, and the swallows skimming the surface and calling shrilly to each other. As for the sunset, it seemed to set the earth afire and make everything burn with miraculous color, so that the grasslands were a great green carpet dusted with precious stones, and the beech trees all glowing with yellow light. In that little shelter of leaves Mellis lay white and still like a sweet saint sleeping in a tomb cut out of crystal, while Martin Valliant’s fierce restlessness longed for all this beauty to be blotted out. He could have pulled the sun down out of the sky, and thrown it into the mere for the quicker quenching of the day.
Fulk de Lisle had had a seat made of sods and branches on the edge of the wood, and he sat there like a great lord while the men built two fires, one for themselves and one for their captains, and with the coming of the darkness these two fires were like great red eyes under the black brow of the beech wood. A pot was slung over the flames, and a table set for Fulk de Lisle and John Rich, and covered with a white cloth. The shelter of leaves lay a hundred paces or more away from the fires and beyond the edge of the light. It showed as a dark blur on the open grassland.
Martin Valliant had been stripping off his harness, but Swartz was still on the watch.
“They are guarding the causeway. Fulk de Lisle would not lose his supper for any woman. It is time we made a beginning.”
Martin gathered up his armor, and they went down into the courtyard. Swartz was fumbling at the points of his hose.
“Curse these knots! Give me your knife, man.”
He cut himself out of his clothes, chuckling fiercely. Martin had laid his armor and his sword beside the postern leading into the garden; he had stripped himself of everything save his short cassock, for the thing would not spoil his swimming, and it hid the whiteness of his body. Old Swartz came out haired like an ape, his horn slung to his neck by a stout cord.
“Here is your knife, man. We had best take to the water on the farther side, and paddle across softly.”
They passed through the orchard where the grass and weeds brushed their knees, and Swartz talked in a whisper.
“Crawl around and get as near as you can to the child. Then, wait—and have patience. I shall have to make a wide sweep. When you hear me blowing my horn and shouting, you must be ready to make your dash.”
Martin Valliant was grimly cool.
“I shall waste no time,” he said.
They stood for a moment to look at the two fires and the men gathered around them. The blaze lit the trunks of the beech trees and made the lower branches shine like brass. A man was fishing meat out of the iron pot with a dagger. Fulk de Lisle’s red figure was the color of blood; he had a cup in his hand and was about to drink.
“While gluttons eat, wise men are up and doing. The hour is ripe for us.”
They struck the water on the far side of the island, where willows grew.
“Well, God’s good luck to us, comrade.”
Their hands met. Then Martin let himself down into the water, and Swartz followed him. They paddled slowly and softly across with hardly a splash, Martin swimming with his knife in his right hand. The mere was as black as a well, and the willows hid them from the men who watched the causeway.
When they reached the shallows under the farther bank they crouched and listened. There was no shouting; no alarm—not a sound save the faint lapping of a few ripples among the reeds and sedges. Martin climbed out, and gave Swartz his hand. There was a thorn tree growing within a few paces of the water, and they took cover under it before parting.
“Give me a minute’s start, Valliant. I shall make a track well out into the open, and then turn toward the woods. God grant the mud has not got into this horn of mine.”
He slipped away into the long grass, and Martin knew that all that he held most dear hung on the good faith of Peter Swartz.