by John Buchan
For certain these were dies tenebrarum, for the snow still tarried, though its shadow darkened. On his journeys Peter was accompanied by six of the Avelard men-at-arms, and by Dickon, mounted on a grey palfrey, and wearing the black and gold Avelard liveries. The hill country lay in a gloom, which was not a fog, for distances could be perceived, but everything was drained of colour and frozen into a tenebrous monotony. Daily the sky seemed to sink nearer the earth. The first utter silence had gone. Now, though there was no wind, the trees and grasses shook and shivered eerily as if some tremor had passed through the ground. It was weather to lie heavy on a man’s spirits, for not only was the cold enough to freeze the marrow, but there seemed to be in the air a dull foreboding. The Avelard varlets never whistled or sang; there was no merriment at the wayside taverns; the horses, well fed on grain and therefore likely to be fractious in the cold air, now plodded like oxen; the sheep had been brought in from the wolds to wattled shelters, where they huddled shivering with scared eyes.
One afternoon on the road between Avelard and Colne Peter saw an encampment by the wayside — half a dozen shelters of boughs and straw around a great fire which burned cheerfully in the brume. Tending it was a man with a vast fat face and a paunch like a promontory, in whom he recognised Timothy Penny-farthing, him whom they called True Timothy, the master of the palliards. Peter bade his men ride on with Dickon, and turned aside to the blaze.
It was as if he had trod on a wasps’ nest. Timothy, unperturbed, continued to feed the fire, but from the beehive shelters appeared a swarm of foul faces and verminous rags, and the glitter of many knives.
Peter sat his horse and waited, till Timothy turned his face towards him, which was not till he had adjusted properly an iron kettle.
“How far is it to the skirts of Wychwood?” he asked.
“As far as to Peter’s Gate,” came the answer, delivered cavalierly, almost insolently.
“Alack,” said Peter, “I . . . shall . . . not . . . be . . . there . . . in . . . time.”
The words wrought a miracle. Every foul head disappeared into its burrow, and Timothy’s flitch of a face assumed an expression of gravity and respect. He came forward from the fire, and bent his forehead till it touched Peter’s left stirrup. Then he led him a little way apart.
“You have the Word, master. Have you also the message? Solomon Darking told us that the hour for it was nigh.”
“Nigh, but not yet. My command is that you and all wandering men be ready against the feast of St Lucy.”
“Your command, my lord? Then are you he we look for?”
“The same. The same who with Darking attended your parliament at Little Greece.”
“Yon forest lad! Soft in the wits, said Darking. ‘Twas a good jape to put upon the Upright Men.” Timothy chuckled. “Have you any orders for us palliards?”
“Not yet. How go things underground in England?”
“We be awake — awake like badgers in April. When the hour comes, there will be a fine stirring among our old bones. The word has gone out among the Upright Men from the Black Mountain to Ivinghoe Beacon, and south to the seashore, and north to the Derwent dales. There be much ado, likewise, among the great folk, but that your lordship knows better than me. . . . There is one piece of news I had but this morning. They say that the King’s grace is disquieted about the westlands, and may come himself to cast an eye over them. They say it is his purpose to keep Christmas at Woodstock.”
Peter cried out. “I had heard nothing of that.”
The palliard shook his head wisely. “True it may be, natheless. I had it from a sure hand. ‘Twill serve our purpose nobly, my lord. ‘Tis better if the fox blunder into the hounds than to have to dig him out of his earth.”
“Let the word go out,” said Peter, “that any further news of this be brought to me at Avelard.”
Timothy nodded.
“It shall go by Solomon Darking.” Then he sniffed the air. “There is but one danger to your cause, my lord. This devil’s weather may upset the wisest plan of lording and vagabond, for there is no striving against the evil humour of the skies.”
“What do you make of it?” Peter cast his eye over the darkening landscape, which seemed void of life as a sepulchre.
“There will be snow,” was the answer, “a cruel weight of snow. Look ye, the hedgehog, when he snuggles down in winter-time, makes two vents to his cell, one north, one south. He will stop up neither except for the sternest need. Now he hath stopped up the north vent. We have seen it in every wood, for we know his ways and often dig him out for our supper, since a winter hedgehog will fry like an eel in his own fat. That means snow such as you and I have not known, for the thing has not happened in my lifetime, though I have heard my father tell how he saw it in the black winter of ‘87. . . . I will tell you another thing. The dotterels have all gone from High Cotswold. When they come in flocks it means good weather, but when they leave it means death to beast and man.”
“Snow might serve our purpose well,” said Peter.
“Ay, a modest snow, with a frost to bind it. That were noble weather for armed men. But not mountains of snow which smother the roads, and above all not melting snow. Your folk will come from far places and must ford many streams. I dread the melting wind which makes seas of rivers and lakes of valleys. Robin Hood feared little above ground, but he feared the thaw-wind.”
That night came a message from Darking, who was in south Cotswold near the Stroud valley, and begged that Peter should go to him to meet certain doubting squires of those parts. Lord Avelard approved. “They are small folk in that quarter,” he said, “and therefore the more jealous. ‘Twere well to confirm their loyalty by a sight of you.”
So early next morning Peter set out — this time unattended, for the journey was short, and he proposed to return well before the darkening.
To his surprise Sabine declared that she would accompany him for part of the road. She wished to accustom two young eyases to the hood, and to try the mettle of a new Norway falcon. So, with a couple of falconers in attendance, the two rode out of Avelard towards the scarp of the hills and the open country. It meant for Peter some slight deviation from his route, which should have lain nearer the valley bottom. The girl was muffled in furs, her horse had a frieze blanket beneath its saddle, and on her head she wore a close-fitting bonnet of white ermine.
The weather was changing. The clouds hung closer to earth than ever, but it was no longer a still cold. Something which was less a wind than an icy shiver seemed to be coming out of the north. There was a deathly oppression in it, which weighted Peter’s spirits and kept the chattering falconers dumb. Sabine alone did not appear to feel it. Her cheeks glowed, her eyes sparkled within their ermine cincture. She looked the one thing alive in a world of death.
The hawking proved a farce. For one thing there was no game. Not a rabbit stirred from the clumps of furze, or hare from the bracken; there was nowhere the flutter of a wing or the rustle of a moving beast. The hawks, too, behaved oddly. The eyases clung dully to their leashes, as if they were mewing, and seemed to have no wish to get rid of their rufter-hoods. The splendid Norway tiercel, when cast free, instead of ringing up the sky, returned to its perch after a short wavering flight, as if it sought the protection of man. There was no chance of serving it by showing a quarry, for there was no quarry to show. The cold bit into the bone, and every now and then came that ominous shudder from the northern sky.
Even Sabine’s youth and health were not proof against the oppression.
“The world is dead,” she said, and there was awe in her light tones. “I and my hawks must needs go home, for they cannot hunt in a desert.”
Then something in the muffled sky and the menacing air frightened her.
“This is no weather to be out in, my lord,” she turned to Peter. “Come home with us, for there is mischief afoot. I can hear its hoofs drumming on the hills.” There was anxiety in her eye, almost kindness.
“I must k
eep tryst,” said Peter. “But I will be back at Avelard within four hours, and I think I will forestall the snow.”
“At any rate, take one of my men with you,” she pled.
He shook his head. “I thank you for your kindness, mistress. But he would only delay me, since I am better mounted. But do you go back to the fireside, and have a hot posset ready for my return. I am like to be chilly enough.”
“A wilful man must have his way,” she said, as she swung her horse round. “Heaven send the snow tarries. If it come, take the valley road home, for these hills will be death.”
Peter set spurs to his horse, and as his pace quickened the air cut his face like a file. But he did not regard it, for his heart was hot within him. Longing for Sabine engulfed him like a flood. The sudden kindness in her eyes, her glowing figure, instinct with youth and life among the drooping hawks and pinched falconers, her soft voice which was like a fire in the winter cold — these things made him sick with regret. Here was a woman who was life incarnate, and he had renounced her for a scruple. Here was one who would be like a lamp in the darkness that awaited him, and he had rejected that light. . . . He choked down the thoughts, but they made a weight on his heart and a confusion in his brain.
He reached the appointed place by noon, and found Darking in the company of a half-dozen loutish squires who had been passing the time with dice and strong ale. It is likely that the sight of Peter was well fitted to impress them, for he came among them ruddy from the road, and his preoccupation made his manner high and his speech peremptory as befitted Buckingham’s son. There was no trace of the Oseney clerk in the young lord who spoke as one accustomed to obedience, and gave orders as sharp and clear as a huntsman’s call to his hounds. Nor was he without graciousness — the graciousness of one who is ready to give favours since he is too great to seek them. He could see Darking’s eye on him in the conclave, and in that eye there was a pleased surprise.
Peter drank a cup with the company, and then called for his horse. “I must haste me back to Avelard,” he told the gaping squires, “for there are many tasks before me, and the weather threatens.”
Darking looked anxious. “I will accompany my lord,” he said. “I think the snows will break ere the dark.”
The others disputed. One older man maintained that there would be no fall for twenty-four hours, and his neighbours agreed with him. “The heavens have been frozen,” he said, “and now they are melting, but the drip of them will not reach us before to-morrow.”
“You will stay here,” Peter told Darking, “and complete the business of which you have told me. These are not the times to think about weather.”
Darking was still anxious. “You will take the low road, my lord? There are woods there which will give shelter if the snow overtakes you.”
Five minutes later, his horse refreshed by a mash of grain and hot ale, Peter swung out of the manor gates and rode south along the lower slopes of the hills. He was back again among the bitter thoughts of the morning, but their sting was less sharp. Sabine was no longer the melting figure that had tortured his fancy on his outward ride. . . . He remembered now the hard agate edge of her. She sought that which he could not give her — the giving of which would mean the loss for ever of his peace. That was the naked fact, and there was no road round it. And yet, if she were only a Delilah to tempt him, why did the memory of her so hearten him? Why did the thought of her seem to brace him to a keener life, a manlier resolution, if to love her was to lose his soul?
He was in a wood now, one of the patches of native forest which clad the western slopes of Cotswold. He knew that the hour was no more than two o’clock in the afternoon, but already the darkness seemed to be falling. The sky, seen through the leafless canopy of oaks, was the sky of night, though below there was light enough near the ground to discern the path. . . .
A memory cut like a sunbeam into the entanglements of his thought. It was the memory of some words of St Augustine. How did they go? Nondum amabam et amare amabam; quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare. The wise Father had known his mood. Was not this his own case? “I did not yet love, but I sought something to love, for I was in love with love.” And then there flowed in on him other recollections, the tale of Eros and Psyche, the wandering soul and the wandering heart brought at last together. . . . He had been hungering for something of which Sabine had been only a shadow.
A strange solemn joy took possession of him. He was being weaned from the lesser that he might attain the greater. The sight of Lovell’s bones had shattered one kind of earthly ambition, and now in the girl he had renounced another. He felt a great tenderness warm him so that the cold, which he had felt acutely at the start of the afternoon’s journey, seemed a trivial thing. . . .
He noticed that the snow had begun. A thin powder was filtering down through the branches.
The road left the patch of wood for open hill, and there he rode into a new world. It was dark with a misty white gloom, for the air was thick with snow. The powder had changed to heavy flakes, but he saw them only on his horse’s neck and on his saddle, for what descended seemed to be a solid thing, as if a cloud had taken material form and enveloped the earth. The weight of it pressed down on him like a blanket, and he noted that the ground seemed to be rising towards him. Already his horse’s feet were sunk above the hocks. “At this pace,” he thought, “there will be six feet of snow in an hour, and I shall assuredly be buried.”
Presently the wall did not drop vertically, but seemed to sway towards him, as if under the compulsion of a secret wind. The impact took the breath from him, and his horse stumbled. He felt himself encrusted with ice, which filled eyes and mouth and nose, and sent cold fingers under his garments. These swaying onrushes were intermittent, but at the impact of each his horse crouched and slipped, and he bent his head as if to avoid a blow. There was as yet no wind — only a shivering of earth and sky. “It looks as if I must find a shelter,” he thought — and there was no fear in his heart, but a comfortable confusion—”for another hour of this will destroy me.”
He was among trees again, but he only knew it by the struggles of his horse among the lower scrub and the scraping of laden branches in his face. . . . And then the shuddering, which had bent the snowfall against him like a billow, changed to a fury of wind. He was in a patch of forest at the foot of a cleeve of the hills, and the northern blast, from which the slopes had hitherto sheltered him, swept down the cleeve as through a funnel. The trees bent on him and shook off avalanches. He felt himself smothered, stifled, his wits dazed by the ceaseless lashing of boughs and the steady buffets of the snow. His horse was in desperate case, for the track had long been lost, and the two floundered among dead trunks and holes, with no purpose except to escape, though it were only for a moment, that torturing blast.
He tried to think, to plan. Progress was impossible — was there no chance of a shelter? . . . But this wood seemed to be swept to its roots, for the turmoil in the air was matched by a like turmoil on the ground, where the snow was being swirled by the wind into fantastic heaps and hollows. His head was confused, but his heart was calm. “This looks like death,” he thought. “This beast of mine will soon go down, and we shall both lie cold in a drift.”
What time he parted company with his horse he did not know. The struggle for mere breath was so cruel that he was scarcely conscious of the rest of his body. But somewhere in a drift the animal slipped and did not rise, and Peter must have been thrown, and gone forward on foot, under the impulse which demanded movement to escape from torment. At any rate he found himself engulfed to the middle in whirling snow, every step a task for Hercules. . . . He had a pain in his left shoulder, where some branch had struck him. Of this he was dimly conscious, and he was conscious too of a great weakness. It would have been despair if he had had any fear; but fear there was none, so it was only weakness — a creeping lassitude which bade him drop down and sleep. But as there was no shelter anywhere he could not sleep, because of the sting of
the gale, so he kept moving like a marionette whose limbs are jerked by some alien power. “If I once lie down, I shall never rise,” he told himself, with conviction but without panic. It did not seem to matter greatly — if only this blizzard would stop scourging him.
He stumbled into an aisle of the forest where, by some freak of the wind, the ground had been swept almost bare of snow. Here his limbs moved more freely, and this freedom brought a momentary clearness to his brain. . . . He knew that he was very near the end of his strength; if he dropped here on the bare ground he would freeze to death, if in the drifts he would soon be buried. His spirit seemed to hover above him, careless and incurious, watching the antics of his feeble body. The misery now was less acute, for his senses were numbing. It occurred to him that this was an occasion for prayer — occurred merely as a notion of the mind, without any tremor of the heart. The prayer which came to his lips was that invocation to the Mother of God which had been his favourite in childhood:
“Imperatrix supernorum,
Superatrix infernorum.”
*****
Suddenly there came a great peace in the world. The inferno of the gale seemed to be stilled, and the darkness to lighten . . . something lifted from his brain and his eyes opened. He saw that he was in a forest aisle like a cave in an ice-wall, and before him a light was glowing. And in that light was a figure. . . .
Once a Florentine, who had come to Oxford to study a codex in Duke Humphry’s library, had told him of the great statues of the Greeks, destroyed these thousand years by barbarian hands. The Athene of the Parthenon, he said, had been no colourless pale marble, but had had a face of ivory, and eyes of flaming jewels, and delicate tresses of wrought gold. Peter had dreamed of this marvel, and now in this icy place it stood before him. . . . It was a woman’s figure, a woman with a celestial face, helmed and panoplied with gold, her garments shining with other colours than those of earth. In her face was a great peace and a great gentleness. . . . He had one half-moment of clarity. “Am I dead?” he asked, “and in Paradise?” He told himself that that could not be, for he was conscious of an aching left shoulder, and the blessed do not suffer pain.