the men of sussex were on the march, and father merlin rode on a white mule, with fulk on a forest pony beside him, and the sussex men wondered who the priest’s prisoner might be, for fulk was lashed to the beast he rode, and his head was swathed up in white linen. father merlin rode softly, smiling upon these children who were to lay all the lords and gentlemen of england in the dust. when the chance served he talked to fulk, using a scathing, ironical, and tempting tongue, and hinting at adventures that tended towards both heaven and hell.
isoult of the rose also went with this great company of the poor, mounted upon a black horse that had been stolen out of somebody’s stable. she had put off her gay colours and rode in russet, though the red leather shoes remained. they had given her a pony to carry her lute and her baggage, and guy the stallion marched at no great distance like a sergeant-at-arms, with fat blanche trailing sulkily after him.
isoult was a silent woman that morning, but her eyes were very watchful and missed little that was to be seen. june had come; the woods were like great green clouds against the blue; the bracken was frothing round the oak stems, and lush grass stood knee-deep in the meadows. not only was it thundery weather, but a blight seemed on the land, an oppressive stillness, an invisible terror that waited in the hot and stagnant woodland. other companies of the poor had been on the march before them, and had left the slime of their track behind—a burnt barn here and there, an empty manor-house with the gate broken and the house door hanging askew on its hinges, and once, the body of a man with a black face dangling from a tree. the country-side seemed very empty, save at some tavern or intake where a knot of noisy oafs with bills and cudgels in their hands waited to join the great company of the poor.
very often isoult was in the thick of these marching boors, and her nostrils showed the subtle shadow of an incipient scorn. the day was steamy, and the mob smelt and sweated, shouted and swore, spat, jostled, cracked coarse jokes, and drank out of bottles. its breath was not pleasant. the hairy faces were leering and cruel, and their exultation belched in the face of the morning. all along the track she heard them bawling:
“when adam delved and eve span,
where was then the gentleman?”
“hinds!” she thought. “where was all your insolent, sweating dust! i could half wish you at the mercy of a hundred galloping spears!”
moreover, some of them crowded about her, and hot faces were smeary with a gloating thought of her comeliness. she saw the dull lust in their eyes, and her pride became ice. they were like cattle jostling, leaping, bellowing. now and again the shrill and screaming laughter of a woman eddied up. there was one huge fellow with a purple birth-mark covering half his face, who strode along carrying a small cask as a drum, and beating it with a hammer. he shouted perpetually with the voice of a cow that has been separated from its calf, “death to all the lords and gentles!” and when he shouted his mouth looked like a red sore.
late in the day they were crossing a lonely valley, where a stream ran between willows and aspens. a mill-house, built of timber and white plaster and thatched with straw, stood in the thick of an orchard about a hundred paces above the ford, and isoult saw a dozen men break away and make for the mill-house. the fore-hoofs of her horse were, in the water when she heard a woman’s scream, a scream that was smothered instantly as though a big hand had been clapped over the screamer’s mouth.
the men near isoult laughed.
“old bill o’ mead barrel will be first in, i wager you.”
she turned her horse sharply, scattered the men, and rode through the grassland along the edge of the stream, and leaving her horse at the gate by the footbridge, crossed over by the planking that passed close to the mill-wheel. there was a little garden of flowers and herbs in front of the house, and from within came the cries of a woman.
isoult’s voice was merciless.
“back, you dogs!”
her right hand was armed, but the men fell away sheepishly from before the steel of her scorn. a woman lay cowering in a corner, and the big fellow with the purple face who had been beating the barrel like a drum was standing over her with a torn piece of cloth in one hand.
isoult beckoned the woman.
“come.”
she twisted past the big man, and, half crawling, fled to isoult’s knees. and the men let her go, standing mute and balked, avoiding each other’s eyes.
isoult pointed the woman over the bridge.
“go; take to the woods. hide while the wild swine are abroad.”
she kissed isoult’s hand and fled.
isoult waited on the footbridge, but the men hung back in the mill-house, for her scorn had sobered them.
turning to cross the bridge, she found merlin riding up on his white mule between the willows and aspens. his cowl fell back as he dismounted, and he was showing his teeth like a horse minded to bite.
isoult called to him.
“merlin, are your swine to root as they please?”
he made light of it, sneeringly.
“keep away from the sty, isoult; your nose is too delicate. things must happen. i will speak to the fools.”
as he passed her on the bridge their eyes crossed like swords.
“sing to our hooded falcon to-night, my daughter. it may be that i have softened his heart.”
she gave merlin no answer, but, remounting her horse, rode back slowly towards the ford.
a halt was called under the edge of a crimson sunset that overtopped the black plumes of a forest of firs. isoult left her horse with guy the stallion, and walked towards the spot where merlin’s white mule was tethered, and where men were pitching a rough hide tent.
merlin came out to her and his eyes were enigmatical.
“the lute and the voice and the eyes may serve,” he said; “and yet, isoult, why should i trust you?”
“because my wrongs were great, and because i should be a worse enemy than friend.”
“the falcon is hidden away over yonder. he shall have wine and meat, and a fair woman to sing to him.”
“no spying upon us, merlin. let me play with him as i please.”
she found fulk in a green dell on the edge of the wood, nearly a furlong from the place where the men of sussex were camped for the night. he was sitting amid the bracken under a fir tree, ankles and wrists lashed together, his face masked by the linen swathings. two men with bows over their knees were squatting on the edge of the dell, their faces half hidden by scarlet hoods. isoult guessed that merlin had followed her, and, glancing back, she caught sight of his grey figure moving amid the trunks of the firs. he called to the two men on the edge of the dell, and they arose and left fulk and isoult alone together.
“good comrade, i am to sing to the king’s brother at merlin’s desire, but not to a man muffled up like a leper.”
she put her lute on the ground, and, kneeling behind him, unfastened the linen band that covered his face.
“wrists and ankles might also be free!”
he answered her without turning his head.
“i am not to be tempted.”
she smiled from her vantage point, and, throwing the linen aside, sat down close to him among the bracken. a stone bottle of wine and a clean cloth full of bread and meat had been sent to fulk by father merlin.
“let us eat and drink, comrade; and then i will sing to you.”
he glanced at her as though he took her to be mocking him, and she remembered his helpless hands.
“i must not untie you, or merlin would be suspicious. the wood is full of eyes. but my hands can serve for both of us.”
she fed him and gave him the wine to drink, and though she laughed over it a little, to fulk it was a fool’s business, and he was shy of her eyes and hands. his grim face sought to hold her at arm’s length, though the redness of her mouth tormented him.
dusk was falling, and the fir wood behind them began to grow very black against the sky. the sussex men were lighting fires in the valley, and making a great uproar like the noise of beasts at feeding time. isoult’s eyes grew restless, and kept watching the darkening wood.
“fulk, shall i sing?”
“you were sent to sing.”
she reached for her lute, which lay between them.
“merlin is a grey ghost, ready to haunt us. i must sing, for he may be listening.”
her eyes had strangeness, mystery; they were eyes that whispered, and drew him aside into the intimate shadow of her plotting.
“listen, and live.”
she struck a few thin, plaintive notes, and her voice was a mere murmur:
“pride goes with a valiant heart;
honour is my desire.
i would not ride with patchwork men
when a kingdom is on fire.”
her fingers leapt suddenly to a crackling and jaunty tune, and she began to sing some ditty that went like a drunken horseman galloping a young horse. it was for merlin that she sang—merlin, whose presence she felt away yonder in the near shadows of the fir wood.
from the valley came a roaring of voices shouting the old refrain, and isoult dashed her own empty ditty aside like a cup of bad wine:
“when adam delved and eve span,
where was then the gentleman?”
“listen,” and her chin went up scornfully. “listen to the dogs howling! i have heard it all day.”
fulk watched the little black figures jerking round the fires.
“some day they shall discover the why and the wherefore,” he said.
“as for me, has my pride turned against them already? i tell you that one day has been sufficient, with the sweat and the smell of these cattle.”
“so fickle—and so soon!”
“sometimes one sees the truth very suddenly; these unclean beasts were made for the yoke and the goad.”
his eyes were ironical.
“and yet, isoult, you were sent to tempt me.”
“it is true. and i was ready to tell you the truth. i—in my turn—have been tempted.”
“by merlin?”
“yes, and no. i’ll not tell you my story. no man yet has earned a right to that. but this much i will breathe to you. i was driven like a bird over the sea, and the hate and wrath in my heart were bitter against all those who called themselves of gentle blood, and whose pride was a mere ruffian’s castle. who succoured and saved me in those evil days? a burner of charcoal, a cook’s boy, and a harlot! they were chivalrous when the great ones were lustful and treacherous. so i swore a feud against all men who carried a device upon their shields, all those who wore gilded spurs. hence, many adventures and a voice that has sung to the poor.”
in the dusk under the trees her eyes held his, and from her red mouth the words came with the vehemence of a rhapsody. fulk felt like the strings of her lute swept by the fingers of that dim hand that now rested among the bracken. the pale vehemence of her beauty called to the man in him with the clashing of cymbals and the wailing of flutes.
he thrust his face nearer to hers, almost fiercely.
“isoult, have a care; i am no mere boy.”
she drew in a deep breath.
“a boy? you, with that fierce mouth and eyes like a hawk’s! the naked soul of a woman calls only to the naked soul of a man. i’m not one to plead and wheedle. what did merlin desire? that i should debauch you into playing the king.”
he set his jaw at her, and his hands strained at the thongs.
“i guessed it.”
“and i, at first, thought of it as a great adventure, as of two falcons soaring together into the blue. but now i see the shine of your pride, and my pride is bright as yours.”
he felt a strange stirring of his blood.
“well—what then?”
she thrust out her hands.
“no one will persuade you, not even isoult of the rose, nor will she stoop to’t. therefore, merlin will grow savage, and fulk of the forest will lose his head.”
he smiled at her with a grim and challenging approval.
“you reason well.”
“i may reason better. the hands that helped to spread the net may unfasten it again. look not like that. i make no bargain; my pride is as good as yours.”
he spoke in a hard whisper.
“and i ask nothing—nothing of you, isoult. but if you play this game on merlin, you’ll suffer—where i——”
she moved closer to him, her eyes shining.
“what a stiffnecked boy it is, with a wit as stiff as a sword-blade. why, the woman in me is three times as wise as the man in you. merlin—ssst!—i can fool any merlin!”
his grey face threatened her in the dusk.
“and fool me—also!”
“easily in some ways, if i would. and yet—i could not.”
they stared at each other a moment, breathless, irreconcilable, wondering—two proud birds hovering breast to breast. desire played like summer lightning. each saw the other’s pale face flash out of the darkness of dreams wreathed with a wreath of flame.
fulk opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. in the wood they heard a sharp crackling of dead twigs, and the harsh voice of a man muttering out prayers.
“merlin!”
she sprang up, snatched her lute, and slipped away among the trees.