Star Boy came to an easy stop in a narrow glade and heaved a gusty breath. I dismounted and eased the girths, then ran eyes and hands over him from face to tail, from knees to hocks, to find that he had suffered nothing worse than a few minor scratches from hollies, thorns, and brambles. Then I listened for sounds of pursuit, but heard nothing more than our own breathings and the natural sounds of the forest. If crossbow quarrels had been loosed after us, as doubtless they had been, I had heard nothing of them in the leafy tumult of our flight. But in truth I felt no fear of those three knaves now, but only a harsh contempt for them. I had mastered and bedeviled them all the way between castle and forest, for all who looked to see, and then outwitted them; and I knew that if I had only them to worry about, my horse and I might remain where we were indefinitely, in perfect safety.
But I was not so dull as to believe that I had won to safety, even for a few hours, by escaping from those three foreigners. Sir Osbert had a few more of the same sort in his pay; and of the household and chief tenantry a full score were Normans now. Only such ancients as Nick Pottle indoors, and hinds, herdsmen, and woodwards of field and forest, were of the old bloods and loyalty. There might be a general pursuit under way at this moment; for surely my behavior in the open fields had convinced Sir Osbert of the uselessness of his crafty scheming. If I were to die of bolt or blade now, there could be no pretending an accident of the chase, for I had unmasked him to friend and foe alike in my violent flight.
All this was clear enough to me, but Roger's part in it puzzled me, and I could only suppose that his conscience was more tender than his father's. Doubtless he would sit easier in my place, and sleep easier within my ancestral walls, as a result of his warnings. Whatever my fate, and whether known or unknown to him, he would consider himself clean of blood-guilt. He had charged me to keep the three rogues in front of me, to break away from them in the wood and then ride hard and far; and I had done just that—and here I was, and still alive. I had to admit to myself that his warnings, even more than old Nick Pottle's, had convinced me of the imminence of my peril and so saved me from the crossbow quarrels which his smiling father had planned for me.
"Gramercy, dear Roger," I said, and laughed uncertainly. "You have washed your hands of my blood, whatever may befall me later. You told me how to outwit the murderers, and then to ride hard and far; and here I am, scatheless. And now I will ride far and farther, with God's permission and help—clear out of Dragonland, if I live so long—homeless and disinherited. But if there be any mercy and justice left under heaven, I shall some day ride home again."
I looked around me. No woodward or poaching gypsy knew this wilderness of hill and dale, mere and river and massy forest, as I knew it. I made a quick decision to go into the Har Hills, which formed the eastward boundary of Dragonland. Their eastward slopes and the lands beyond lay in the vast lordship of Devereaux, of which I knew nothing save by hearsay. But in ancient times, before the first Norman and the first Devereaux, the crowns and both slopes of those mighty hills and leagues of country beyond had been Pendragon land.
I moved off, bidding Star Boy follow me. Upon coming to a small stream which flowed from the hills, I mounted and rode into it. The water broke about Star Boy's knees as he plodded against the current. He stood and drank, straddling his forelegs a little, then plodded on. As we advanced, the water gradually ran swifter and the boulders in its bed grew larger. After an hour or so of this, Star Boy turned to the right and scrambled ashore of his own accord. We kept to the course of the stream, and within sound of its broken but ever-strengthening song, until the sun marked high noon. Then I got down again, loosed the girths wholly this time, and pulled the saddle off and set it on the ground.
The colt shook himself like a dog. I unbridled him, and he straightway rolled in the fern with a mighty flourish of formidable legs and hooves. I glanced down at the saddle, and for the first time, noticed the fat wallet strapped to one side of its high peak and the leather bottle hung on the other side. I knelt and investigated. The wallet contained three wheaten scones, slices and drumsticks of roasted fowl secured in a linen napkin, and half a dozen plum tartlets similarly wrapped and somewhat crushed. This was Nick Pottle's doing, I knew, for he had been acquainted with my taste for plum tartlets ever since my infancy. The leather bottle was full of our rarest old mead.
"Gramercy, good Nick!" I cried, and made two bites of a tartlet.
I drank sparingly from the bottle, ate half a scone, gnawed two drumsticks to the bone and disposed of another tartlet, then went to the stream and drank my fill. Stair Boy cropped white mountain clover. I repacked the wallet. And suddenly and sharply, as if a voice had spoken in my ear, I remembered the purse which Roger de Montfoi had given me. I took it from the pouch at my belt and untied it and shook the contents into the palm of my left hand. Five silver coins, and the six bejeweled rings that I had so often, in my childhood, admired on my mother's slender fingers! Roger had spoken the truth.
More puzzled than before, I returned coins and rings to the purse and it to my pouch. A little later I called Star Boy in from his grazing and saddled and bitted him; and we resumed our way into the Hills of Har, by climbing glens between hanging woods, through coppices of tough young thorn and holly and over heathery knolls. Red deer sprang away from us. Grouse puffed up and whirred to right and left from under our very feet. We came upon a great red boar at his truffle-hunting under an oak. I was on my feet, with Star Boy at my heels, when we came upon him. He wheeled and faced us, and I recoiled against the colt. The boar stood, and Star Boy stood, and I scrambled to the saddle. The beast's yellow tushes curved up a full span and more from the hinges of his earthy snout, and his little red eyes burned out at us from behind and between them. And here I was with no other weapon about me than the little knife which I had employed at breakfast!
I felt Star Boy quiver under me, and knew that all his muscles were ready for quick and violent action; but whether in flight or fight I could not guess, but in flight I hoped. The boar made the decision. He wheeled and plunged into the underbrush and went crashing away; and it was neither flight nor fight for us, glory be to the saints! I think that Star Boy felt the same about it, by the way he expelled his breath and relaxed his muscles. After that, I kept a sharper outlook to our front and both flanks, for there were white bulls as well as red boars in these wild ancient hills. According to the bards, it was somewhere hereabouts that the greatest of all great Pendragons had achieved the trophy from which I had quaffed my ale at breakfast.
* * *
We were in strange country now, the wildest I had ever known. These were mountains, not hills. Grim crags gloomed over us, and eagles screamed and soared from the crags. Star Boy kept close to me when I was on foot, which was most of the time now. Well before sunset, I chose a place for the night and eased Stair Boy of saddle and bridle, to crop wild clover among clumps of fern and knuckles of rock at his pleasure. I cut me a cudgel and a stout eight-foot staff of thorn from a coppice nearby, and gathered dry fern and heather for my bed. I made the bed in a place with rocks on three sides of it—rocks high and steep enough to keep off any attack save of eagle or wildcat. I supped on bread, fowl, a tartlet, a long draught of water, and a short draught from the leather bottle. Star Boy came nuzzling up and coaxed a scone and a tartlet out of me, against my better judgment.
It was a chilly night, and I retired early, with fern and heather over me as well as under me, and cudgel and staff handy. I gazed straight up at the stars; and soon they began to dance and drift, and I slept and dreamed of smiling Sir Osbert, scowling Roger, trembling Nick Pottle, and the red eyes and tushes of that wild boar, all mixed up. I woke with a start and sat up, cudgel in hand. God assoil me, what was this pressing against my side? ... It was only Star Boy, with all his twelve hundredweight of affectionate brawn and bone disposed peacefully and confidingly beside me. Thanking my guardian angels that he had done it without stepping on me, I closed my eyes again. . . .
We
were up and on our way again at dawn, and on the height-of-land by sunrise, and well down the far slope and deep in Devereaux country before noon. Now I felt fairly safe from pursuit; but fears of what lay before me began to breed and take shape. There was starvation, for one menace. The wallet would soon be empty—and what then? How long would I last on a diet of bramble berries and haws, if I failed to find a human habitation before long? And what if I happened upon murderers and thieves? This was not Dragonland. The woodwards and charcoal-burners, even the poaching outlaws, might be Normans or worse in this strange wilderness.
I reflected dismally that I had been wiser, maybe, to have remained on my own side of the mountains, where the poor and the outlawed at least were my friends. There, befriended and abetted by the poor and furtive, and roving gypsies—the riffraff of the world, in Norman eyes—I might elude Sir Osbert till he thought me dead, or fled forever, and so forgot me. But it was too late now, with the Hills of Har behind me, for idle lamentation. If I had fled too fast and far and thoughtlessly from the peril I knew, nevertheless the unknown perils before me must be discovered, and faced and suffered, or avoided, as Fate would have it.
Chapter Two
The Damosel Blanche
I ate sparingly at midday, but even so there was little left in the wallet—a few scraps of meat, two tartlets, and half a scone. I climbed a tall fir and looked abroad in every direction but that from which I had come, and saw only the rolling roofs and jagged spires of the forest: no thin feather of smoke to suggest fire beneath a pot, nor any little patch to suggest a man-made clearing.
These slopes were less rugged than those we had ascended; and the little stream we followed now was, after its first rocky spurts and tumbles, a gentle thing as compared with the brawler we had left on the other side of the height-of-land. It soon looped, with no more than an occasional riffle and splash, between low banks of hazel and willow and fern. So I kept to the saddle, when once mounted after dinner, for a league or more. I let Star Boy do the work. He had dined more fully than I had, and would surely sup fuller; and when I thought of tomorrow's breakfasts, I envied him.
"Youll have no more than skin and bones to carry on your fat back yet, lad, unless I'm fed or murdered within the next few days," I told him.
And so we went a league or more, following the ever more softly flowing brook among thickets of willow and hazel, and clumps of sweet fern and smoke-blue drifts of Michaelmas daisies. Star Boy picked his way discreetly and yet maintained a good pace, while I sagged loosely in the high saddle, my thoughts gloomy and bitter and confused.
Star Boy came to a sudden stop, that jerked me out of my unhappy reverie. He tossed his head high, turned it to the right and pricked his ears sharply forward. I looked and harkened in the same direction, which was toward the stream a few yards off. I heard a faint sound that might be— but I knew was not—the sobbing murmur of the stream. My first thought, quick as a flash, was of a naiad. (Such creatures—nymphs of water and wood and heath—were ever at the back or front of my mind.) I dismounted quickly and, noiselessly as a falling leaf, stole to the colt's head and charged him, in a ghost of a whisper, to stand still and silent. Then I moved stealthily toward the sound, though the thumping of my heart now deafened my ears to it.
I parted the last pliant screen. My heart jumped and stood still and my breath failed in my nostrils. . . . Naiads, so I had been told, were clothed only in spray or mist, if anything, and dryads in leaves or gossamer, when clothed at all; but this one wore a garment of white samite. She crouched with her back to the stream and her hands to her face, and russet tresses lay loose about her quaking shoulders. How long she would have remained so, and I stock-still and staring, if Star Boy had not come forward, thrust forth his head and snorted in astonishment, I do not know. She straightened up on her knees, lowered her hands and stared at me, then at the colt, and at me again.
"Have my prayers been answered?" she whispered.
Naiads don't pray, I thought, crazily. Or to devils, if they do. Nor speak with human tongues; but this one lisped in Norman French. Then I bestirred my stiff wits and muscles, but not to much effect. I croaked like a raven and doffed my leather cap.
"I prayed to Saint Anthony—for I am lost," she whispered, still staring incredulously.
This must be a damosel, I thought. But I had as little personal knowledge of damosels as of nymphs or dryads. Of wenches and simple maids I was not entirely ignorant, but all I knew of damosels was from books and hearsay. I advanced a pace from the bushes, halted again, and bowed. Star Boy advanced with me, passed me by half his length and lowered his outthrust head to the damosel. Still kneeling, she took his muzzle between her hands.
"A noble horse!" she cried softly. "A cavalier's great charger!" and she pressed a cheek to his nose.
At that, I advanced all the way and found my tongue.
"He is my colt—and the best in the land."
Smiling at me, she got lightly to her feet; and I saw that the skirt of her gown was muddied and bedraggled.
"You are a cavalier?" she queried, lowering her glance shyly.
Did she mistake me for a churl? Me, Patrick Pendragon! My outraged pride filled my eyes with tears. "And what are you?" I cried.
She looked at me again, and quickly away again.
"But I knew it—a cavalier in very truth! I did not doubt it. You are the answer to my prayer. Do not be—angry. But you are so young. And to find you in this dreadful wilderness!"
She fairly gabbled in her embarrassed haste. But I was not pacified. So young, she said. God's wounds! Hunted from my castle and lands I might be, but I was still a gentleman, and eighteen and large for my age, by my halidom! I brushed the moisture of offended dignity from my eyes.
"And what are you?" I asked again, bitterly. "Naiad or dryad or human maid—how do I know what you are— alone and weeping and bedraggled here?"
"I am human," she whispered. "I outrode my companions—and while I rested, my jennet ran away and left me. My name is Blanche."
Mollified, I told her that I would see her safely home, and that she might ride Star Boy all the way. She thanked me gently, and still with her eyes downcast. I wanted to see those eyes again, for I was wondering about their color. I had thought them green at the first look, and blue at the next, and just now green again. I had heard, or read, that though human eyes may rightly change from blue to green and back again, and even to gray and the mixed hues of moss agates, only unhuman eyes, and those of witches and warlocks who had given their souls to Satan, could turn from blue or green to red. She called herself human—but did not every soulless witch do the like, in the bewitching of unwary mortals? Or might not a water sprite or dryad appear, to mortal eye, to be garbed in white samite instead of in mist or gossamer? She had called herself Blanche. What more likely then that she was the White Damosel of Copel, who was known in some lands, and in some ancient songs, by the name of La Belle Dame sans Merci?
"Permit me to help you onto the saddle," I said; and I placed a hand on the right and on the left side of her round waist, in readiness to lift her and to gaze searchingly into her eyes, for a glimmer of red, while about it: but at the touch, and the realization that my thumbs all but met in front and my fingertips behind, my wits and muscles alike ceased to function.
"Wait—I am hungry," she sighed, without looking at me.
Hungry! God help us! All my doubts as to her mortality fled at that word, but it did nothing to relieve my distress of spirit. In truth, I felt worse than I had before it was spoken; for it would seem that such a threat to one's soul as I had but now feared for mine, may be easier for a young man to face than a reminder of an empty stomach.
"We set out at sunrise—and I have fasted since then," she whispered, and sighed again.
I pictured the broken scone, the scraps of fowl, and the two remaining tartlets, and sighed also. Then, calling up all my power of will, I withdrew my hands and turned from her to the wallet hanging limp from the horn of the sad
dle.
"It is not much," I mumbled, handing her the broken loaf.
I did not look at her, but I heard the crunch of teeth on crust; and that innocent and homely sound disturbed me strangely. I felt anger first—against poor old Nick Pottle for not having packed a great sack instead of a mere wallet, against her for having ridden so far and losing her jennet at the last; and then angry shame for myself. What a poor knave was I—what a disgrace to my blood and name that I should have suffered myself to be chased and frightened into a situation in which I had nothing but broken bread and meat and two squashed tartlets to offer a hungry damosel. Or naiad or dryad or fatal enchantress—what matter which, so long as she was lost and alone and in need of food!
I did not watch her eat, but when I guessed that the half scone was finished, I gave her the napkin containing a wing and a few scraps of fowl. She made short work of them. Then, and still without looking at her, so sharp was my humiliation, I gave her the tartlets.
"That is all," I mumbled.
A minute later I ventured to look at her. She was regarding me shyly, from beneath dropped lids, and at the same time licking plum jam from her fingers; and at that sight—but the blessed saints only know why!—my heart leaped and my spirit soared and I laughed right out. She opened her eyes wide, and as blue as the sky; and her face bloomed pink as eglantine; and she laughed too, but like a high, tossing chime of little bells. She fell silent, and veiled her eyes again, and again I glanced aside.
"Now I must take you home," I said; and once more I placed my hands on her waist to lift her to the saddle, but stood blinking at them and it instead, in mazy wonder that they all but spanned it.
The Merriest Knight Page 50