"Call me Sylvia," she murmured.
"Sylvia," I said, liking its sound.
"My father was Gyles de Montclair," she said.
"Is he dead?" I asked.
"How do I know?" she returned. "In six years he may have died in bed or been killed in battle. I was left motherless at five, and my father took a Spanish woman to wife, a wandering dancer. The noble Montclair! He had brought her home from a fair. When she grew too fat with high living to dance, her sport was to beat me and make faces at me. So I ran away when I was nine. Some gypsies, who knew me, found me and took me back; and that woman met them at the gate and paid them a bag of silver pieces to take me far and far away. The gypsies treated me very well, but were afraid that I might be discovered with them, so they sold me to the jongleurs two years ago. And now I am here. You will not sell me, dear Mark?"
I swore a resounding oath at that. I clapped a hand to my knife.
"When you quit my care, it will be only at your own wish," I cried. "And I will take you to your father, if that be your pleasure; and I will show him the rights of the matter. I do not fear the Spanish woman. Where is your home, Sylvia?"
She did not know. It was six bitter years, and hundreds of weary journeys away. It was a wide house of stone and great timbers, with a high tower of stone, and a deep moat. Her father's village lay within bowshot, with a little river winding through it. But if the river had a name, she had never heard it, or had forgotten it.
"It may be on the way to Camelot," I said hopefully.
She crept into the shelter I had built for her, and I lay down near the entrance to it on an armful of old heather.
My thoughts were racing—but to what goal? My situation might well have caused even a man of the world a measure of bewilderment and anxiety. Here I was but a day's flight from Brother Ambrose, and already I had a damosel on my hands! A frightened child-damosel. I could protect her from wild beasts and wild people, of that I felt confident—but how was I to feed her? Why had I not thought to bring away a whole back-load of scones and smoke-cured venison?
I was disturbed by a rustling within the shelter, and next by a hand on my face. It was the girl.
"Methinks there is a viper in my bed," she whispered.
I crept within and made chaff of the fern and heather of her couch with a stout stick. I backed out, and she crawled in. I lay down again, but not for long. Again the rustling, and again the fumbling of the light but hard little hand. And again the whisper.
"Dear Mark, there's a spider in that horrid den!"
In hunting for the spider, I all but knocked the place to pieces. Then I crawled back to my own nest and fell asleep in the blink of an eye. But it was not restful sleep. I fought with a masked robber, and discovered the face of Brother Ambrose behind the mask; I fled from a unicorn, with the girl Sylvia in my arms.
Chapter Three
I Kill a Jongleur
I awoke in the chill dawn. Shadows and mists of night clung black and white in the glens and gullies, but sunlight washed and overspilled the mountains. I glimpsed gold on my breast, but not of the rising sun. I looked, twisting my neck—and remembered yesterday. The damosel lay close beside me, with her bright head nested in the hollow of my left shoulder. She was asleep. She breathed without sound, but I could feel the gentle stir of her breathing against my heart. My heart raced, but its galloping did not seem to disturb her. I shifted my position a little, softly, softly. At last I got to my feet without awaking her.
We broke our fast on scones and cold water.
"I was afraid, last night," said the damosel, giving me a fleeting but clear-eyed glance. "But not of vipers and spiders, dear Mark. I am not afraid of such small things, nor even mice. My fear was that you might escape me if I let you out of my sight; and as I could not watch you in the dark, nor with my eyes closed in sleep, I had to touch you. I had to keep in touch with you, asleep and awake. You sleep like a log, good Mark."
"I gave you my word—but let it pass!" I muttered.
I was embarrassed; and to change the subject, I asked what had brought those jongleurs so far from their world of towns and fairs. Then I heard a tale of crimes, robberies and murders, which those three had committed against men and women and children, and of desperate flights from avengers.
"David stabbed an old man and a little boy to death ten days since, who had come upon him killing a sheep and made shrill outcry," she concluded.
"David? Is he the loon who plays the flute?" I asked.
"And throws knives," she said. "And whips me. He beat me yesterday. No, it was the day before."
"Why did he beat you?" I asked in a thick voice.
"I would not be his wife," she whispered.
Heat and cold went through me. I burned with the black flame and black frost of loathing and hate. I turned my eyes from her bright bowed head—and only in the nick of time. I came to my feet quicker than thought, staff in hand.
He stood not ten paces off—the loathly jongleur. He had a short sword in his right hand, and a terrible grin on his face. I felt nothing of fear. I had killed a wild boar, a wolf, a wild bull. I felt nothing but hate. He moved suddenly and fast, but I moved faster. I struck first, and leaped aside, turning, and struck again. He staggered, and I flailed him again, and he lost his sword. Now he snarled and spat blood and curses. A long knife appeared in his hand. The bones of his upflung hand cracked like dry twigs to the stroke of my iron-shod staff. I hurled him down and struck downward, but he twisted aside on the ground, and now there was a knife in his left hand. It flashed upward— but even as it ripped my right cheek, I struck again with all my strength and loathing.
I stood and stared, breathing hard. Blood ran down my face and neck, unheeded. I heard nothing of the girl Sylvia, and did not turn my head to look for her. My eyes and thoughts were upon the dead jongleur. Wolf and boar and bull I had killed in honest fury of combat, for my dear life's preservation; but I had killed this man in hate, and without thought of my own life. I had killed him against odds of weapons. So fierce and deadly and calculating was my hate that I could have killed him with my empty fingers.
I went to a little spring, and knelt and bathed my shallow wound until the bleeding stopped. The clear water was all red by then, and I felt weak and weary. I moved aside and hunched on a tussock of fern; and then I saw Sylvia for the first time since my sudden awareness of the jongleur. Now she was kneeling at the little spring, as I had knelt there, but instead of laving her face, she was washing something between her hands—washing, wringing, dipping and wringing again. Squinting, I saw that it was a strip from her tunic—from that short tunic which could ill spare even an inch of its stuff. A moment later, she stumbled up and came to me at a wavering run and tied the cold, moist bandage around my face with fumbling fingers. Then she crouched beside me, but did not look at me.
"He—that dirty rogue—will never touch you again," I said.
She did not speak; but, and still without meeting my glance, she pulled up on a thin cord at her neck and brought into view a little knife in a doeskin sheath. She drew it from the sheath and turned it about in her hand, regarding it fixedly and curiously. Suddenly she turned a little and set the point of the knife quickly and lightly to my arm. I winced at the prick of it. She uttered a strange, short, mirthless note of laughter. She spoke then, but still without bringing her glance to mine.
"If you had not killed him, I would have killed him. It is sharp enough, isn't it? He felt the point of it yesterday. Nay, the day before yesterday. I was ready—but could I have kept awake always? And then you came. I was ready; and had he killed you, I would have killed him—dead throughout eternity—had it taken a thousand stabs."
She sheathed the little knife.
"I do not need it now," she said, still with averted eyes. "You may have it, good Mark."
"Nay, keep it," I said. "There may be more fights, and I may be killed yet."
She dropped the little knife back into its hiding-place.
"He was a knife-thrower," she ran on in a low voice. "He was very skillful. I stood against a door, and he stuck knives in the wood all around me. Sometimes he cut me a little, so that my blood ran on the door, just for sport. It made the people laugh, to see me wince and bleed, and to hear my cries."
I sprang to my feet.
"God rot him! And may every fool who laughed at that sport roast in hell!" I cried.
At that, she flung herself against me in an outburst of sobs and tears, and clung to me, pressing her face to my breast: but before my astonished arms could enfold her, she had sprung away. She stood with her back to me, stifling her sobs.
I let it go at that. I too was shaken. In silence, I gathered up the short sword and the longest knife. Then we went from that dread place. We traveled rough ways for hours, moving and stumbling close together and sometimes touching hands, but without exchange of word or look. I began to feel remorse at having cursed the dead jongleur's immortal soul. I was glad and proud of the killing, but misdoubted the rightness of the cursing. Dear Brother Ambrose would have killed him, under the circumstances, but would have left him uncursed. I had given him his earthly deserts, but who was I to damn his dirty soul? Brother Ambrose was the better Christian of the two of us.
I sat down on a mossy rock and pressed a hand to my bandaged cheek. The damosel turned and came back to me and laid an anxious hand on my shoulder.
"Does it hurt, poor Mark?"" she asked.
"Nay, it is my conscience that hurts me," I said.
She withdrew her hand.
"For slaying that—that jongleur?"
"Nay, I suffer no remorse for the slaying! Had there been six of him, I would have slain all, with God's help— and so perish all who have ever caused you pain or fear! But to curse his lousy soul was unchristian."
The hand returned to my shoulder.
"It was already cursed," she murmured. "One more curse will damn him no further; one less would not save him. Forget him, dear Mark. It is your poor face I worry about. Come to this little well and let me dress your wound again."
I could have laughed at that, but she was serious. We went, hand in hand, to where ice-cold water trickled from the ferny base of a great rock. She was a long time, but gentle beyond describing, about the task of removing, wetting, and returning the bandage to its place. When it was done, we stood and smiled uncertainly.
"It is time to eat," I said.
But my wallet was empty; we had eaten all the scones. I had nothing to offer her. I was filled with shame, though empty otherwise. I cut two short cudgels of thorn, and hunted to the right and the left. I spied a big jack hare on his haunches, and I knocked him over with the first throw. I was proud, but Sylvia covered her eyes with a hand. I went aside and skinned and dressed the thin, sinewy carcass. With a flint and a knife, dust of dry fern and twigs of old heather, I made fire. When the roasting was done, the damosel came and sat beside me, and I carved her the best pieces. It proved tough, dry, and tasteless, but we were thankful for it.
Chapter Four
"That Was a Kiss"
"And now will you kill me a wolf, dear Mark?" she asked, licking her fingers daintily.
She held them in air, glancing around, then wiped them dry on the breast of my leather tunic. The act did not offend me. I saw nothing unmannerly in it.
"But you would not eat a wolf?" I protested.
She laughed at that, and so I laughed too.
"Nay, 'tis the skin I want, stupid Mark. I need a cloak, or something of the kind. This tunic is too short and scant, I think. Or are my legs too long?"
She looked at me anxiously and inquiringly. Her eyes were not like any other I had ever seen, unless I had forgotten them since babyhood. They were not like Brother Ambrose's, though his were brave and clear and kind, nor like any beast's or bird's. I cannot say what they were like, save only that they were beautiful and that I felt a desire to look at them more often than I dared to; though why it was a question of daring I did not then know, in my ignorance and innocence of life and the great world.
"My poor legs are too thin," she said. "And they are bruised and welted. Look at this welt. But he is dead now, that grinning devil—dead at your hands."
I nodded my head and stared at my hands, opening and closing them. They were strong and square. I did not look at my companion's legs, nor at any part of her. A voice within me warned that the less I looked at her, the better my chances of enjoying peace of mind and calm of spirit.
"You don't like my looks," she murmured.
I kept silent.
"Nor anything about me," she added.
I retorted angrily: "Then why did I slay the jongleur?"
"He would have killed you, else," she said.
"Nay, 'twas for you—little fool!" I shouted at her, red of face, and hurt of heart and vanity.
Then I bowed my head for shame. She came and knelt beside me, and laid an arm across my shoulders.
"Then you do not hate me, dear Mark?" she murmured.
I shook my hanging head.
"It may even be that you like me?"
I nodded.
"And you will not desert me?" "God strike me dead first!" I cried.
I felt a hard little hand under my chin, raising my head. I did not resist. Her eyes were close to mine. They were all I could see, as if the whole spring world of sunshine and blossom and crag and leaf had been drowned in their bright and shadowy depths. I was drowning too, and closed my eyes. I felt her lips on mine; and my heart wrenched and labored in my side as if it were breaking. Lips and arm were withdrawn. I opened my eyes like a diver returning to the surface from the depths of a mountain tarn.
Sylvia was standing a pace or two away, with her back to me.
"That was a kiss," she said, without turning.
I said nothing. I knew nothing of kisses.
She continued: "Hereafter, though queens love you, never will you receive or give a kiss, but that first kiss of mine will slip between her lips and yours."
"So be it!" I muttered; and then I cried "Queens?" and laughed like a fool.
My heart and brains were alike shaken and jumbled in wild and sweet confusion. Verses from "The Song of Queen Gwyn" came to me with meanings never guessed before. The damosel turned and looked at me, with arched and anxious brows for a moment, then with a strange smile. I mastered my extraordinary emotions, and stood up and went and collected my sword and staff and knives. I did not look at Sylvia, though I felt her enigmatic gaze and smile upon me. I flourished the sword.
"And now for the wolf!" I cried, with feigned enthusiasm.
Chapter Five
Man or Warlock?
I went ahead by crooked ways, and Sylvia followed close. We walked a long time, in silence. Not once did I look behind me, but my ears did not miss a step of her light feet on moss or sod or stone. We had come three leagues or more from the ashes of our fire and the bones of the roasted hare, when my companion screamed. I turned, and beheld a shape out of a nightmare. The blood chilled in my veins and my scalp crawled—but I drew the sword and flung myself between it and Sylvia.
The monster's head was encased in rusted iron, which I knew for a helmet with a closed vizard, by Brother Ambrose's talk of such things. There was a glint of pale, crazed eyes behind the bars of the vizard. On the broad breast bulged a curved plate of rusty iron, from beneath which hung wolf- and wildcat-skins. The long arms and legs were half uncovered, save for their own hair like long gray moss. They were gnarled and kinked like wind-clawing roots of an ancient oak uptorn by flood and storm. They were like the legs of a hunter-spider. One knotted hand gripped the cross-hilt of a long straight sword. The other held aloft a human skull as white as chalk in the sunshine.
Sylvia trembled against my back.
"Tis a warlock!" she whispered.
That was my thought too, but I strove against it.
"Uncover to Sir Bevan, whose quest was the Questing Beast," said the monster.
The voice was li
ke a winter wind in the smoke-hole. The language was not of the wild mountaineers. It was one of the two which Brother Ambrose had taught me—not the monkish, bookish Latin, but the speech of Royal Camelot, and the world of ladies and knights and troubadours. My blood warmed a little; for it must be human, after all, however mad; some ancient knight lost and gone mad in the wilderness. And I had heard tales of the Questing Beast from Brother Ambrose.
"Nay, fool, I am not Sir Bevan," he cried, as if he had read my thought. "This is Sir Bevan, the noble and forsaken knight of the Sweating Skull. Uncover to him, rogue!"
I heard Sylvia gabbling desperate prayers with her face between my shoulderblades. I doffed my cap to the grinning skull.
"I am Young Roland," said the old madman. "I am that faithless squire. Sir Bevan, this peerless knight, and my unworthy self, pursued the Questing Beast through days and nights and weary weeks, and at last into the accursed mountains and to the Mere of Herons. There, bewitched, I turned aside. There I failed him. For mad nights and days I was bedeviled and bedamned by a hell-spawned water-sprite—a girl as white and smooth as Easter lilies and red-lipped like roses—fairer than any Christian damosel—but green of eyes and hair, and soulless, and with a flame of hellfire in her white breast instead of a heart.
"And when she fled my arms, with mocking laughter, I sought Sir Bevan and my Christian duty again. I found him—but dead and dismembered, his head here, his heart there, his limbs hacked and scattered. His great horse had suffered a like fate. But a score of savages were dead too, some speared through, some cut in halves, one rib-crushed as if by arms of iron, for Sir Bevan was a mighty man of his hands. Remaining mountaineers set upon me in swarms, but I still had my horse, and was armed and ready. I spitted the savages like larks—three on my spear at a time—before my horse was hamstrung and brought down. Then a dozen fell to my sword. And now, horseless and with Sir Bevan's death on my conscience, I bide here and hereabouts, and hunt and slay unchristened savages in loving memory of this betrayed knight, and to the glory of God. But of late years, I have found but few to slay, and now I can find none at all, though I search high and low. But if you are of these foul and unshaved heathens, I must deal with you."
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