Mellis knew the ways, and through all the heat of the day she guided Martin southwards toward the Rondel river, picking up the wild tracks and never faltering in her choice. They kept to the woods, and avoided the open heaths, sometimes following a brown stream that flickered under the green shadows and leaving it when it left the woods. Not a living creature did they see save a few deer far down a deep glade, a hawk searching for food, and once, a gray-green snake basking on a bank in the sun.
A gloom seemed to have fallen on the Forest, and even the young foliage looked darker, heavier, less bright with the freshness of spring. The open woods were full of a listening sadness, a mysterious expectancy; for Death was out, Death and the Lord of Troy. Yet Mellis was touched by no such melancholy, no sinister forebodings; her man’s life was in her hands, her eyes were keen and watchful; danger gave a sparkle to her beauty; the day’s need steadied her heart.
Martin Valliant watched her, and marveled. He forgot his wounds in looking at her forest-shaded face with its clean, clear comeliness, its alert, proud self-trust. There was nothing more wonderful than her eyes and the way they filled with light when meeting his. Their color seemed so elusive, changing from blue to black, and sometimes they were all a-glimmer like water touched by the sun. He looked at her lips, her white throat, her hair, the hands that held the reins, and had to tell himself that she was his. Every part of her seemed a piece of enchantment. She was so fair in his eyes that the thought of touching her seemed sacrilege.
He found her smiling at him shyly.
“Have we lost our tongues, dear man?”
“So much has happened, and you——”
“And I?”
“Sometimes I think that you do not belong to this world, that you will vanish away.”
She looked at him intently, curiously, for it seemed to her that his mood foreshadowed some solemn and subtle fancy that was working in his heart. He desired her, and yet did not desire her. The glamour of a mystical self-renunciation was not dead in Martin Valliant.
“I am flesh and blood, God be thanked for it.”
He half closed his eyes.
“I see more than that.”
She colored.
“See the woman in me. For it is the man in you that has made me dream dreams.”
They rode in silence for a while, but both were conscious of a listening tenderness, a mysterious and unsolved unrest.
“Martin?”
He glanced at her gravely.
“Life and Death march on either side of us. We have to take thought for to-morrow and to-morrow’s morrow. It will not be easy.”
She saw his eyes grow dark and deep.
“Nor is life easy, child. I hold your soul in pledge, and this place is full of our enemies. And what am I but a broken man, an outcast?”
“You are my love,” she said simply.
He did not speak for a moment, and there were lines on his forehead.
“Is God satisfied? Does He look on us as two children? I could show Him my heart—without fear—and yet——”
“Well?”
“I could die and not be afraid. But life is yours, and the beauty and the sweetness thereof, and where is the chalice for such wine? Are my hands fit to carry it?”
“I ask for no other hands. Let God judge.”
Martin rode at her side, sunk in deep thought. He had not forgotten Peter Swartz and the inn of the Crossed Keys at Gawdy Town. Life and liberty might lie that way, escape from the vengeance of my Lord of Troy, and from the curses of the brethren of Paradise; but it would be at the cost of exile, of wanderings in a strange land. Was Mellis made for such a life? Was not her very beauty too rich and perilous? Moreover, all hope had not vanished for her out of England; Richmond was on the seas; the Red Rose might yet out-flower the White.
Mellis was waiting on his meditations. Her mind was most obstinately made up; she was no green child or the victim of fanciful tenors; life had taught her much; the rough wisdom begotten of her adventures had been wedded to the sure instincts of the woman. Martin Valliant was her man; he was strong, and could keep her from the hands of other men, for she had no waywardness, no wish to change her lovers. Some women are born to be courtesans, but Mellis was not one of them.
“Still thinking, Martin?”
He hesitated, and then told her of Swartz, and the inn at Gawdy Town. Her eyes brightened.
“Good Swartz! Good comrade! Why, that is a plan worth trying when matters look so desperate. The men of Gawdy Town have no great love for my Lord of Troy.”
Martin looked at her in astonishment, for the brave adventurousness of her face betrayed no fear of the future.
“Mellis. Have you considered?”
“Everything. More than you can guess, dear lad. Why, I am wiser than you are, and tougher in the ways of the world. We should find ourselves in France, taking the open road, sleeping in all manner of odd places, sometimes begging, sometimes singing for pay. The great vagabond life! But Swartz was right. Strong men soon jostle free, get a higher seat than their fellows. I have wandered; I know what can be done. Martin Valliant was born to fight and to rule.”
But she had not won him yet. His mystical love still glimpsed self-sacrifice, renunciation.
It was before they came to the Rondel river that they sighted a forester’s cottage in a deep hollow under the woods. Mellis knew the place, and after scanning it awhile turned her horse toward it.
“Jeremy Marvel lived there—a good fellow. He may sell us what we need.”
She smiled at Martin’s blank face.
“Yes. I have a little money. I am quite shrewd, good sir. I kept it under my bed at Woodmere, and a little money is the best friend in the world.”
They rode down to the cottage and found it deserted, for Jeremy Marvel had sent his wife and babes across the river before marching to Woodmere with his bow. Martin had to force the door, and Mellis abetted him.
“The place will be burned or plundered, so let your conscience be easy. And Jeremy had many a good thing from my father.”
Their needs were simple, food and raiment, and they found both. Mellis went smiling into the little bed-chamber, and the great cupboard there gave a plain russet gown, a hooded cloak, rough hose, and a pair of shoes. She flung a green doublet and gray woolen hose out to Martin, and shut herself into the good folks’ room. Fulk de Lisle’s red cloak was stuffed up the stone chimney, and Martin found one of brown kersey to replace it, hanging on a nail beside an oak press.
When Mellis came out to him she was the laughing country wench in russet, her hair tied with a green ribbon, her feet in rough shoes. Martin’s raiment kept hers company. He had discovered a green cloth cap with a raven’s feather stuck into it, and the thing hid that still too obvious tonsure of his.
“Good-day to you, Goodman Martin.”
He looked at her dearly.
“Fine clothes do not make the woman.”
“That is rank heresy, dear man; but if it contents you, I will not complain.”
The larder gave them bread and honey, and Martin went with a pitcher to the well. They sat down at Jeremy Marvel’s table, and when they had ended the meal, Mellis left a piece of silver there to quiet her own conscience.
“I doubt whether it will ever reach the poor clown’s pocket.”
Which was true, for Jeremy Marvel lay dead on Bracknell Plain.
Before they sallied Mellis took some linen from the press for the dressing of Martin’s wounds. Moreover, a loaf of bread was useful plunder, though Martin had found bread and meat and half a spiced cake in Fulk de Lisle’s saddle-bag. Mellis also insisted on his taking the pitcher.
“Sling it to your saddle. We may bless it to-night.”
The sun was low in the west when they struck the Rondel flowing between two broad stretches of wild grassland—grassland that was all white with ox-eyed daisies. They had to follow the river for a while, searching for a ford where ruffled water marked the shallows. Mellis’s eyes were watching for a cairn of stones that had been built by a hermit a century ago to show the depth of the river in winter.
She pointed it out at last.
“I thought that I had not strayed.”
The stretch of sand below the bank was smooth and unscarred; no one had crossed by that ford for many days, and Mellis uttered a cry of relief.
“This is the nearest way to Gawdy Town, and we are the first over. We shall be there before the news of Bracknell Plain. That comes of being bred in these parts.”
They splashed across, and let their horses drink before climbing the farther bank. The grassland south of the river rose in great green sweeps to touch the wild woods east of Bloody Rood. A soft breeze sent patches of wavering green moving over the silver of the feathered grass tops and the flowers. Here and there a lark rose from its nest, or a plover went wheeling and complaining.
A gradual silence had fallen on Martin Valliant. As the sun sank low and the light grew more mysterious, his mood seemed to deepen toward a passionate and wondering mysticism. He saw Mellis in a glamor of gold, and his love bent toward a solemn sadness. A deep pity for her touched him—an infinite tenderness. She became for him a symbol, a beautiful pure child too wonderful to be sacrificed to the common life of the world. A new awe of her stole over him, and he was afraid. What was he that he should take her and her love? What could he offer her? What had he to give? Surely she was not made for the rough pilgrimage that might be his, and he could not trade upon her generous courage.
Moreover, Martin Valliant fell to a sudden stroke of superstition. Would he not carry a curse? And would not Mellis be entangled in it? He might bring her a great unhappiness, dim all the radiance of her youth and desire. What right had he to join her life to his? There was such a thing as “right of sanctuary”; he could lodge here in some religious house where she would be safe till the times proved themselves, and the land turned again to peace. He would have been honest with her and with himself; bitter wounds would heal; God could not say that he had sinned against her.
The green half-light of the woods seemed in sympathy with this mood of his. He would not let himself look at Mellis, for he was afraid to meet her eyes.
“My man is weary?”
She challenged his silence, watching him with steady eyes. But he would not confess to her, and she had to puzzle out the meaning of his sudden melancholy. Mellis asked no questions, grew silent in turn, nor was she long in discovering to herself the thoughts and emotions that troubled him.
Perhaps she had foreseen this generous obstinacy of his, counted on having to combat it, for women fly from hill to hill while men labor through the valleys.
The woods thinned about them, and they found themselves in a soft, green glade on the brow of a high hill, with the sunset shining in on them, and bits of blue forest visible in the distance. Mellis reined in. She was beginning to gather the subtle threads of life into her own hands.
“Here is our camping ground. It will serve us for to-night. We passed a spring five minutes ago, a spring of clear water.”
She dismounted.
“To-morrow night we shall be in Gawdy Town, if no one says us nay.”