The Merriest Knight

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

  We decided to starve out the family and garrison of the castle, for they had only their stores and what horses had survived our arrows, while we had the beef and mutton and venison of field and forest, and pork both wild and tame, and the granary and mill, to draw upon. More bowmen joined us. After dark, a watch was posted all around the moat and at its very edge.

  The gypsy and I were resting by the hearth of a farm kitchen, when Stark came to us, breathing fast.

  "Lord, I caught a rogue beside the moat," he whispered. "There were three, but two got away. The old lord and the damosel got away. They were in a little boat. He was a strong and stubborn rogue."

  "Take your time, my friend Stark, or our noble Lord Patrick will be as confused as yourself, not to mention this poor tinker," said the gypsy.

  Stark retold the story. He was at the edge of the moat, and was struck on his new breastplate by the haft of a dagger, the blade breaking short off. He grappled with the fellow and soon had him down and by the throat; and then the rascal begged for mercy, and promised him a great reward to be let go, for he had brought the old lord and the damosel across in a boat and must take them over the mountains to the protection of Sir Osbert de Montfoi; the old lord had a green wound in one leg, taken by mishap in the chase a few days ago and could not go fast or far without help, and so would make a rich man of him upon his, Rudolph's, advice.

  And while Stark reflected, the tricky knave got him by the throat, but soon lost that advantage. And when Stark went down to the water he found a little boat, empty. And he discovered two sets of footprints beside Rudolph's in the mud, and one was of very small feet. So he had made haste to tell his lord of this thing.

  "And what of Rudolph?" asked Captain Tinker, flashing his teeth and his earrings.

  "The stubborn knave!" muttered Stark. "By the time I got his fingers off my windpipe, he was dead."

  The gypsy nodded, then eyed me reflectively.

  "With mighty Simon trussed in the cow-shed here, and the old tyrant and the damosel lost in the wilderness, where they will perish of starvation, if nothing worse, the hateful race and rule of the bloody Devereaux perish and pass," he declaimed sententiously.

  "I have been told of another son," I said, for lack of anything else to say.

  "The gay Lord Guy," he sneered. "When he comes home—if he ever thinks of it and can find the road—it will be to discover his castle under your dragon banner and Ben Tinker its high seneschal."

  "I want no castle but my own," I said.

  "And you shall have your own too, my dear lord," he said. "Tomorrow, or the day after, these knaves will surrender. Then we will march westward and over the hills, join with Ralph the Forester, and lay siege to that old fox your stepfather with five score English bows."

  "Gramercy," I said.

  "But for that vagabond rogue Philip and the gullibility of good Stark here and his kind, we would have dealt with Sir Osbert first," he added.

  He got to his feet, said that he must make the rounds and see Tom Miller on a matter of wheaten meal and the brewer on the subject of strong ale, and left the kitchen. But Stark remained.

  "Are you a skillful tracker, good Stark?" I asked.

  "I have tracked a doe on dry moss, lord," he answered.

  "In the dark?"

  "I have eyes like a cat, lord."

  "I am thinking of that Norman—and his daughter— footloose behind us. The gypsy may be wrong about them. They may win all the way through to Dragon Castle in their desperation, and then Sir Osbert will send to right and left for help—even to Beaufort and the St. Clairs—against our arrival. They must be stopped. We must stop them."

  Stark muttered: "Alive or dead!"

  I sprang up and gripped his neck with my right hand.

  "Harm so much as a hair of her head, rogue, and you will curse the day you were born!"

  He sagged to the clay floor and groveled at my feet. I raised him by the neck and shook him.

  "Lead on now! Nay, fetch all the good wife's cooked meats and loaves in a poke first."

  I released him, staggering. I girded on my belt then, with Dragon-killer and two daggers, and strode to where the woman and Stark were in violent dispute over a boiled ham. I flashed silver crowns and pennies in my palm, at sight of which she relinquished the ham and Stark thrust it into a bag. I gave her the coins and charged her grimly with a message for Ben Tinker.

  "Tell the gypsy captain to join me at Ralph Forester's, and to look well to my horse Star Boy and bring him to me there."

  We stole away, each with a bow and quiver and a full poke on his back. It was a night of misted stars and no moon. Stark soon found the tracks of the large and small Norman boots at the edge of the moat, and from there we followed them into a ditch and along the ditch to a coppice. From there, with Stark down on all fours at times, we won to a spur of the forest. He lost the tracks, but found them again in a sedgy hollow, only to lose them again and find them again. But he gave up at last, in a grove of pines floored with dry needles. There we lay down and waited for morning. After sunrise, we went forward at a fair pace and with few checks, and were on the first rising slopes of the Hills of Har well before noon. A little later, at the top of a bank above a fast stream, Stark checked and pointed and whispered.

  "Look! The wet stones! We are close upon them!" I looked and saw wet footmarks on three flat stones in midstream.

  He brought his bow to his front and strung it, and reached for an arrow. I seized the reaching hand.

  "Did I save you from the tinker to have to break your neck myself, fool?"

  He whined a warning of crossbows, but I was in no mood to hear or heed. Mind and heart were strangely disturbed, and my mouth was even dryer than it had been at the onset of Lord Simon. I pushed him aside and sprang past him and down the bank.

  "Stand!" screamed a desperate high voice.

  I was in midstream then, with one foot on a rock and the other leg knee-deep in the swift water—but I stood. And I looked, and stared agape at what I saw. There, not ten paces away, was a lad with a crossbow in his hands. Nay, it was a mere boy—but boy or lad, he was not what I had looked to see. He was in stained leather and wool, like a scullion or stableboy. I gaped at the weapon, the short bow of which was bent to the full. But though it had been aimed at me when first glimpsed by me, it was lowered now and wavering.

  "You?" he cried.

  I drew up my wet leg and stood with both feet on the rock. I had nothing to say, but felt a profound disappointment. Stark came splashing, and mounted beside me; whereupon, for want of words, I grasped him by the nape and shook him hard.

  The scullion on the banks said: "I saw Philip on your horse and thought he had killed you."

  "Who are you?" I cried, then laid hold of Stark again and cried: "Do you know this saucy boy, fool?"

  "The damosel!" he gasped. "Mercy, lord! I thought you wanted her."

  "You lie!" I cried, and released him with a fling.

  He staggered, splashing, righted himself halfway between me and the lad with the crossbow, and stood with his back to me.

  "Lady, he is my master," he wailed. "Pendragon, the English lord. He cut Sir Philip in two pieces—that false knight—at one stroke. And he bade me track you down and bring him to you. And now he is gone mad."

  "Let be, rogue!" exclaimed the lad. "You did well. Go tend your natural lord now. He lies helpless in the brake back here, sore spent."

  "No lord of mine now, that old Norman!" protested Stark.

  "Peace, fellow!" I cried. "Do as you are bid. You have a stone bottle in your poke. Give the Norman drink. Do as you would be done by."

  He looked back at me, then waded ashore and up the bank and into the bushes. I left my rock and waded ashore too.

  "You are not that damosel," I said.

  "They cropped my head and stained my face and clothed me as you see," she whispered, not looking at me. "That my father and I might escape to Sir Osbert. Why have you hunted us down?"

  I ha
d no answer for that. I took the crossbow from her hands and tossed it aside.

  "Help us now and my father will give you half his lands," she sighed.

  "Half his lands!" I sneered. "I have lands of my own, and a castle too—and there will be no Osbert Montfoi nor any other Norman in Dragon Castle by the time you reach it."

  "You do not like me now," she sighed.

  "If that was you, I never liked you. Why should I like you, then or now? And since then I have slain your lover and taken your brother captive."

  "He was not my lover."

  "So you say, damosel. And I think he would not be if he could see you now. But he is dead, and of my hands, and sees nothing."

  She put her hands to her face and wept. Stark reappeared at that moment.

  "Lord, his wound is open and bleeding again," he told me. "If we but leave him lay, he will be dead in no time, and his soul before God with all his crimes upon it, and no need for us to lift a hand against him."

  I went to the Norman with him, and it was as he said. I pulled off my jerkin, and my shirt of fine linen after it. I cut a sleeve from the shirt and tied it tight around Hugo Devereaux's bleeding leg, below the knee and above the wound. That pitiless harsh lord winced and cried out, and opened his eyes.

  "Peace, Norman—and thank God it is not a bowstring round your neck!" I snarled at him.

  He moaned and closed his eyes. I donned my jerkin, then tore the shirt to strips and took them down to the stream. The damosel still had her hands to her face. I gave her no heed, but washed the strips of linen in the spring-cold water, then took them back to the moaning Norman and bound his wound with them. Stark looked on idly, with a puckered smile that was at once stupid and sly. In rising and turning, I bumped against the damosel, who must have followed me up from the stream. Now her face was all smirched, where tears had washed the dark stain away in streaks.

  "He was not my lover!" she cried, sobbing. "Rouse my father and ask him. I feared him—and my father too—and Simon. And I hated him."

  She pushed past me, stooped over the unconscious lord and laid both hands on his shoulders.

  "Let be!" I said harshly. "Would you kill him—your own father—to shake a last lie from him?"

  I pulled her up and back, roughly. I turned and eyed Stark with a look that unpuckered his sly smile.

  "What now, lord?" he whined, cringing.

  "To the tinker's cave. And by the shortest way. Do you know it?"

  "Yes, lord. It is not far."

  "I will see to the sick Norman, and you will carry everything else."

  Stark went in front, with both our bows and quivers and heavy bags of provender on his back, and I followed with the stricken Devereaux in my arms; and the damosel, all unheeded, came last. I had to lay my burden down often, to rest both myself and him. We reached the gypsy's cave well before sunset, and found it as we had left it; and the Norman lord was still alive.

  Stark and I ate heartily, but the damosel would not touch the good food. As for her father, he parted his lips whenever the mouth of the stone bottle was held to them, but not once did he open his eyes. There was still light in the sky when I sent Stark away with word for Ben Tinker to look for me at his cave on his road to Dragonland. The fellow went willingly. I made beds of dry fern within the cave for the damosel and her father, and carried him in and laid him down. She helped me pull the fern, but I gave her no heed, and she did not speak. I made my own bed between the mouth of the cave and the screening thicket, and lay there with Dragon-killer bare at my right hand. For a long time I turned restlessly, but I slept at last.

  I awoke as if at a voice in my ear, but I was alone. The sun was new-risen, and fern and sere leaf and bark and twig all gleamed white with frost, and the air was still and silent. For a minute I did not know where I was or how I had come here. Then I entered the cave. The new beds were near the front of it.

  "Are you awake?" I asked; and got no answer.

  I fumbled forward; stooped low and discovered the damosel crouched over her father. I touched her lightly on a shoulder, whereat she raised her head.

  "He is sped," she whispered, and sank her head again.

  "Christ assoil him!" I whispered.

  I extended a hand again, and then the other hand, and laid hold of her middle lightly and raised her gently to her feet: and now I could only think of how my thumbs and fingertips all but met around her. She turned in my hands, and I tightened them. Her face was naught but a pale blur in the gloom.

  I croaked: "You loved Philip de Courtville. And I killed him. And if he rose from the dead, I would slay him again. If you did not love him, why did you cry out to him?"

  She moaned: "I don't know—but not for love. Then I cried out to you—cried louder after you—not to leave me— to wait for me. But you heeded not—as if you did not hear—and rode away."

  "I heard," I croaked. "I heard your cries: 'Philip! Philip!' D'ye think me deaf—and a fool to boot?"

  I loosed my hands from her and turned and stumbled forth from gloom to level sunlight.

  Chapter Seven

  Treachery

  I wandered restlessly for hours, but to and fro and around and about, never beyond bowshot of the cave and yet always out of sight of it in screening underbrush. Once the damosel called to me, but I remained silent and hidden. She cried my name, "Patrick, Patrick," in a plaintive voice—but she soon gave over. I returned to the cave before noon and found her outside it. She must have washed her face, for all the dark stains were gone, but there were tears still on her cheeks. I gave her but a quick look, and she did not so much as glance at me. But she spoke, in a mere whisper.

  "I feared that you had left me."

  "If I left you, you might well fear," I said, harshly.

  She bowed her head and twisted her hands together. They were clean now and looked strangely small and white at the ends of the scullion sleeves.

  "We must—a grave must be—made," she whispered.

  "Stark will soon be back," I said, kindly enough.

  I brought one of the bags of meat and bread to her, and we sat on the ground on either side of it. She only nibbled the heel of a loaf, and I did but little better. I thought of reminding her of her appetite at the time of our first meeting, when she had emptied my wallet of its last scrap and crumb, but changed my mind. Or was it my heart that checked me? She was small and helpless; her father lay dead, her brother was my captive, and her home was beleaguered by her enemies, who were my friends; and now she, not I, was the hunted one. And she looked so poor and forsaken and piteous, nibbling at that crust, that my heart twisted. The crust was softened by her tears—a bitter sauce. And so, though I thought of Philip de Courtville and so of cruel truths to be said to her, I got to my feet and left her.

  Slow hours passed, and the churl Stark did not appear. The sun sank, and yet he did not come. I made a little arbor for the damosel within two paces of the cave's mouth, and charged her to dart back into safety at any threat of danger. We both ate again, but still in a sad silence; after which I made my own bed on the farther side of the thicket. But it was long before I lay down, and after that it was long before I slept, for I was worried at Stark's absence and even more fretted of heart and mind by something I could not, or would not, give a name to. But I slept at last; and though my dreams were wild and confused, my sleep must have been sound indeed, for I required a rude awaking.

  I was jerked to my feet by strong hands. I tried to strike out even before I opened my eyes, but only to find that my wrists were bound together in front of me. I tried to kick then, but only to learn that my feet were hobbled, and by so short a cord that my own violence threw me down upon my face. I twisted onto the flat of my shoulders and struck upward with both feet close together. I felt them hit, and heard a savage grunt of surprise and discomfort.

  My eyes were wide open by now, God knows, but as the light was only vague starshine, I saw but vaguely. A large shape rolled in the fern, and I flung myself upon it. ... I put u
p a fight, but it was a losing one from the start. With bound wrists and hobbled feet, and outnumbered too, what else could I expect? Overcome at last, I lay still. Battered and bruised I was, but I believed all my bones to be intact; and I knew, and was as puzzled at as grateful for the fact, that no deadlier weapon than a cudgel had been used upon me.

  "Up with you, fool!" snarled a voice I had heard before; again I was jerked roughly to my hobbled feet.

  And now I saw his face. He was Simon Devereaux, my captive. And now I became aware, for the first time, of something in the grip of my bound hands. I raised it and stared at it, for seconds in bewilderment and disbelief, then in sickening and scorching anger and hate. It was a leather jerkin; and though it was ripped from top to bottom, I knew it: Stark's jerkin! I dropped it to the ground and set my feet on it.

  "Dog eats dog," jeered the Norman. "Saxon eats Saxon. Dogs will be dogs."

  "His dirty leather shirt came away in my hands," I said, in a splinter of voice. "It will be his dirty hide next. But not in my hands. The gypsy will attend to him. I am neither gypsy nor Norman. As for you, Simon Devereaux, why not slay me—with my sword, since I took yours in fair fight— now that my hands are tied?" I sneered. "With Stark holding me from behind, you might hack me to death—butcher me somehow—tumbler though you be."

  After a long pause, the Norman chuckled wickedly.

  "I'm not to be tempted. You are for Sir Osbert to dispose of; and I mean to get you to him on your own feet. He should consider you fair payment for a brief period of harborage and hospitality. I'm quite sure that you will wish yourself dead of my hands, by sharp steel, before he has done with you."