"Here, gallants, you will learn why Saint Jehan Baptist lost his head, which will presently be conveyed before you, by a Nubian slave, on a charger of pure gold, with a blast of trumpets that shall stir each worm in King Herod's body. The whole as played before the King's own Majesty at Hautarroy, before His Eminence the Cardinal Count at Estragon, before the noble Dukes of Saulte, Camors, Ahun, Baraine, and Volsberghe, each in their several duchies, and – passing beyond the borders of this realm – before the Archduke Adalbert in his great hold of Harenheim. Here on my finger you see a ring, set with an opal rainbow-tinted, cast to me by the Archduke's self; who being fallen into a grievous melancholy whereby his life was endangered, had not smiled for the space of three months, until beholding these my puppets in the Mystery of the Flood he stirred in his chair, voiced a mighty hiccough, and laughed until he wept. Whereupon he would have retained my services, but that I replied after this wise: Most renowned and puissant Prince, whose sword has shattered the Muscovite heathen to the great contentment and admiration of all Christian men, I who was born in Basse Honoy must return thither, now that rebellion of a black-hearted and ungrateful peasantry has drowned in its own recreant blood, so that roads are once more safe for honest wayfarers and valuable puppets; press not upon me the discomfort of refusal of an offer so unlooked for and magnanimous! Whereat the archduchess applauded me, casting with her own dainty hand a purse of gold which I in part expended on new spiked crowns for Herod and Herodias, presently revealed…"
"A dreary wind bag – but the ring has merit," said Gandulf under his breath.
Joris made no reply; he glanced at the smooth horn hilt of the showman's formidable dagger, and raised his heavy-lidded eyes again in time to see Herodias swim out beside her daughter. The showman's rousing periods were cut off; up against silence when the first squeak of Salome.
"There is a fire in all my veins. I think, dame, I could dance forever."
"A truce to folly, girl; stand still and listen. Know you this Jehan of the asses' skins, this beautiful mad prophet who dips men in water of Jordan?"
Salome stood still and listened; so did Joris, with face gone white and chill beneath its sunburn. Herodias gestured to a voice that even dead Brother Eugenius had found marvellously rich and sweet; for Joris there could be no two such voices in the realm or in the world.
"What is amiss?" came Gandulf's curious whisper.
"Nothing," growled Joris. "Put off your tray – go and bring wine and pasties. Go!"
Gandulf went. On his return he found the play broken off; Joris was now sole audience, and Guelf Reinager was not disposed to tire his troupe for delectation of one lounging peddler. Four shapes emerged from the back of the red-and-yellow booth: a fat old harridan, a thin sickly looking girl, a bearded crook-backed dwarf – and last of all a graceful prowling figure in dove-gray hooded cape, with tunic, hose, and shoes of the same colour.
Gandulf saw Joris stride across tumbled wares. The gray-clad player had a woman's hips, and laid a woman's hand upon the arm of the forward-stepping showman.
"Stuff me with stones and bake me dry," said Gandulf to himself, "if that pink-faced man-woman be not Red Anne. What now?"
He tightened grip on a bottle neck, and padded up to his chieftain's side in time to hear the first words of that greeting.
"Stand back, Guelf," commanded the rare voice. "This is my friend – or was, in peril two years past. But I do not know his name."
Steadfastly Joris and Anne regarded one another; their companions looked from face to face and were award of the mystery in the encounter.
"Tell me," asked Joris blandly, "tell me, since you know me – are all these, too, your friends?"
"Friends proven," said Red Anne. "But who are you?"
"That you shall learn if you bid them step aside."
Tall Anne stood pondering. Beneath level auburn brows her eyes were pansy-blue; set far apart, they focussed with startling directness. Joris they almost disembodied, yet somewhere his craft sustained him. He even had time to learn how needless to Anne's loveliness was that wild splendour of hair now hidden by the close-drawn hood.
"Such a dire secret, is it?" she intoned. "What if I told the market warden?"
"One thing only would delight him more."
"And that?"
"If any should betray your presence here."
Red Anne grinned boyishly, with a snap of strong white teeth. Her hands were linked behind her, and her feet widely planted; Joris grew dreadfully aware of the charm beyond her beauty – the charm half comradely and half maternal, that lulled the madness of the Butcher Count and ruled his savage riders, that stilled brutality and spread good will wherever this red-haired creature spoke and moved.
"No need to wait for stake and gallows before this confession be made," Anne murmured. "Will it keep till nightfall?"
"Gladly."
"Then come to the Sign of the Leopard when compline rings; ask at the courtyard entry for Guelf Reinager's niece."
"Niece!" exclaimed Joris softly; but his eyes never left the rosy enchanting face, and only Gandulf marked the humorous twitch of the showman's bitten lips.
"Ay, niece," repeated the girl, with mischief in a dimple. "By that style am I known there. Will you come?"
"By God, I will. Gramercy, Lady Anne."
"Ill-chosen oath – but no oath can contend with such a mystery. See, folks are coming again to jeer at Herod. Farewell, and do not doff your hat."
"You will be welcome – then," growled Guelf Reinager. "Meanwhile–"
Red Anne slopped round the corner of the booth; Joris and Guelf exchanged a steady stare. Each mad his face a mask; the showman's eyelids were first to fall, but Joris felt that he had not compelled their falling.
"Success to Herod and Salome, friend," he said. "Gandulf, we eat elsewhere."
And as the pair of them moved slowly off, Joris increased his comrade's bewilderment.
"Come to the well," he said blithely. "No wine for Joris this afternoon."
Behind them Guelf Reinager's lifted voice was suddenly blurred by the lilt of his drum: to-rat, ta-rat, ta-rattle-ta-plat – ta-rattle-ta-plat, ta-rat, ta-rat … ta-RAT!
* * * *
Throughout the hours of the afternoon tall Joris peddled his wares in a half dream; sometimes when his voice was silent his lips moved, but neither Gandulf nor any other of his men had heard him speak of the runes bought two years earlier in that same market square – runes which had captured and held his heart and now marched bravely through his head.
By birth a serf, by mingled blood deprived of servile resignation, Joris had grown to his eighteenth year in a forester's hut a mile from the great hold of Montcarneau, that guarded flat and fertile lands amid the Forest of Nordanay. There as a boy he throve on scraps and kicks and curses, until the day when his mother's husband chased him down the clearing with a flail, so that stripling Joris rounded a corner and ran his chin against the silver stirrup of a nobleman whose horse trod softly upon sand amid the gorse and pines. The furious serf arrived to find horseman and lad regarding with some interest each other's aquiline fairness and pale blue heavy-lidded eyes.
"Whose son are you?" asked the brother of the Count of Montcarneau.
"Morgain's-by-the-Ford."
"How old?"
"Twelve years, my lord."
"Eh, is it thirteen years since? What can you do?"
"Cut and carry wood and turf and bracken. Gather the dung from the priest's dovecote. Drive the cattle to water, and the swine to food. Scare the birds from the crops. Last winter I slung a stone at a wolf, and stunned her, and slew her with a hatchet."
"Enough, Bariareus of the hundred hands. Why does he chase you?"
"To beat me. Every morning he beats me, and at night as well if the bailiff has beaten him. To-day I flung my broth at him."
"His jowl bears witness to it. Why?"
"He calls my mother 'witch'"
"H'm. she could enchant upon a time. Come here, s
oup face."
The serf shambled miserably forward.
"Hearken to me. Beat you this lad in future no more than once a month. He will keep tally for you. Cut him a yew bow, four feet long at the most, and send him to the butts with it to-morrow. When he is fifteen bring him before me again. By then he should be beating you, so you have no incentive to forget. Boy, this coin to your mother; tell her as years go by we may find something in you."
As years went by they found in Joris a very skilfull archer, a conjuror with horse and hound, a verderer sage and apt and fleet. In his care hunted elderly churchmen and high-born youths, the guests and pages of Montcarneau; a hard-riding abbot taught him to read and write, and a duke's barber trimmed his first beard to its point. When Joris was twenty-one the count's brother died, and the count gambled his verderer away to the dour Chevalier de Medrincourt, throwing in the person of widowed Morgain that Joris might not leave his mother behind him.
So Joris entered Basse Honoy, to find a stricter clergy and irksome restraint of pleasure in matters of wine and women. Coming first to commanding stature and then to iron strength, and conscious always of servitude, he became a notable bully; to elbow freemen into gutter ministered to his pride, and any tavern about Medrincourt would fill when news went round that Joris was baiting some luckless stranger with deft throws of his hunting knives.
One joint he had in his strong man's armour, and that was love for his mother. She, torn from her ford, found little joy among strangers; also she missed the sound of weirs that had grown into part of the forest silence around the hut where Joris was born. Joris knew no homesickness, and sough by gifts to hearten her. So, when the chevalier sent him to buy prick-spurs and hunting harness at a Hastain Midsummer Fair, Joris lounged somewhat sheepishly between booths decked to tempt the burhgers' womankind.
There he first saw Red Anne – her face alight with argument, her hair a blot of blinding hue against the sun-bitten limestone of the market cross. He was then twenty-two, and she seventeen; across a flame of orange silk the pansy-coloured eyes worked their prime havoc in the heart of Joris.
"Indeed," the girl confessed, "I have not much to show a gallant fairing for his mother. Your kind is scarce – though none the worse therefore. See, here is gray and tawny. I count your mother fortunate."
Her calm and smiling friendliness bore down the man's first swaggering impulse, and somehow foiled his second swift intention to ensnare her interest by talking of his mother. Lastly it broke his reserve, so that he leaned forward, fingering the stuff where Anne's brown fingers had warmed it, mumbling a confidence before he was aware.
"Nay, she has food and shelter, but she is sick at heart. Shy of her rougher speech, belike, and too old to outgrow it. And now she wanders alone in the woods, talking aloud to the birds and little beasts. Sometimes they follow her in at our door. Why, even a weasel–"
Red Anne's gaze sank to the Medrincourt device – lozengy, argent and sable – sewn in shape of a shield on the breast of the verderer's green tunic; then she looked gravely up again, and Joris cut off his speech as though with a knife. Glancing to left and right, he leaned further across the counter; his voice roughened with anger and sank in self-disgust.
"Four crowns for the gray? Take four and a half, and forget what I have said."
Anne, too, looked about them; none could have overheard. Then her gaze came full against his own, and somewhere in him Joris quailed. This was not woman to man, but mind to mind.
"Fool!" she said, softly yet stormily. "I tell no tales."
Joris summoned his wonted hardihood and stared at her unwinklingly for a moment.
"By God," he exclaimed, "I believe you do not. And I am not one to believe what I cannot test. Your pardon."
"It is nothing," returned the girl, "but bid your mother take heed."
When Joris had gathered up his roll of silk she looked at him merrily enough, but the raillery natural between his sort and hers died curiously upon his lips. He doffed his peaked and pointed hat, glad of its silver medal and pheasant's tail feather; and as he moved away he wished confusedly that half the pleasures of his earliest manhood had never been.
That night he mocked at himself and her, drowning his unaccustomed emotion in wine. A bargain of spurs put the first drink in him; others followed, and Joris became stern and sad, a man unmoved by all the red hair in the world. Until the following noon he slept dead drunk in a stable; when next he sought the fair ground Red Anne and her booth had vanished. None of those whom he questioned knew – or if they knew they would not tell – why the red-haired girl should vanish on the first night of a three-day fair; nor did Joris care to press his queries very far. Of Anne he found no trace, and of his need to see her no immediate surcease; for the first time in his life he knew the agony of a frustration not to be avenged by muscle or by steel. All he could learn amounted to this – that Red Anne came and went with silks between the greater fairs of Basse Honoy.
While Joris stared at the cobbles that Anne had lately trodden, there came a tug at his cloak and a gentle hail beside him. Turning, her recognized Ingolard – the one-legged gleeman Ingolard, whose silvery voice and silvery hair were part of all festivities at Hastain. Ingolard sat on the steps of the market cross, smiling shyly all over his brown and wrinkled face, raising a dirty forefinger from an open scroll on his knee to point as with accusation at the bright hair of Joris.
"Stranger, you bear true gold, piped Ingolard most civilly. "Buy these strange runes that treat of gold and red. Ay, red and gold and black."
"What is it?" demanded the verderer, bending to snatch aloft the tattered skin. "What is this foolery?"
"No foolery indeed," rose Ingolard's shocked tenor. "It is honest prophecy of doom to be accomplished in these parts by one who shall come to rule therein."
Joris listened and sneered and read; and midway in his reading he spun round and searched the faces of those near him. His hard eyes widened, and his free hand fell to his dagger hilt; for he seemed to have heard close by him the deep laugh of Red Anne. Baffled and scowling, he turned again, and his thin lips moved delicately to the swing of couplets in faded purple ink.
"Black and gold
Red shall hold.
"Gold and red
At hand are led,
"Yet separated
"Till years be sped.
"Red shall sin
For black to grin;
"Black and red
In the same bed.
"Gold shall sunder
And black shall blunder.
"Red shall run
Ere all be done.
"Black shall be riven
And gold give
To re new-shriven."
Thrice Joris read the runes from beginning to end; then he looked down into the bright and confident and tranquil face of Gleeman Ingolard.
"Whence had you these?" he growled.
"From the ancient who taught me my lore. He was afflicted with swooning fits and hours of strange prevision; and in a swooning fit he lately died. But he told me concerning these runes that glory awaited bright red and bright gold in Basse Honoy; and never have I seen so bright a gold as yours.; You name I know not, stranger; but I think you are one of the men for whom the world was made."
Stirring and elfin-shrill the words assailed bold Joris. He who feared no man living, and spared for God and Devil alike an occasional shrug or grimace, felt self-assurance blossom into faith – faith in the sword of Joris, who being a serf might not yet bear a sword at all.
The Chevalier de Medrincourt brooked scant delay in even a favourite servant, and that mid-afternoon saw Joris eating up the leagues of Basse Honoy with his long huntsman's stride; but the parchment lay in his bosom, and the blood of a great house sang in his ears of bastard's luck in the dark game of life. What if the runes were obscure, with their promises of rivalry and separation? Joris felt in his bones that some strange power of events, a power apart from god or Devil as priest and warlock knew
them, had linked his life with Anne's and marked him for power and glory.
And from that first awareness of devotion Joris bore a sense of Red Anne's voice and form and movement that shaped a fragrant core amid the stress and turbulence of his new life. That new life came swiftly upon him, for Anne's warning at Hastain was not pointless; Morgain, derided by her neighbours because she was foreign and slow of speech, answered their jeers with mutterings of hatred. Tales of her converse with bird and beast ran through the village of Medrincourt; cattle plague brought priest and mob to her door and Joris was trapped and bound and guarded while they tried his mother for witchcraft. Chevalier and men-at-arms were sorry for him; they drugged his wine and laid him senseless at the hour when Morgain was strangled at the stake.
For a week the verderer moved among his kind with civil manners and face like carven sandstone. Then by accident or design, he met the fat sub-prior who had condemned her. Rage marred the handling of his hatchet; the churchman had time to moan the first words of a Paternoster, and thereafter Joris could not abide the speaking of Latin. For long enough, indeed, no Latin troubled his ears; nothing was left but flight across country before the dogs he tended were set upon his trail.
Outlawed and excommunicate, he skulked in the uplands and wildwood of Honoy, knowing faintness of hunger and sweat of peril and hatred of all mankind, save only the Red Anne who came to haunt his dreams. During his first six months of solitude he found, three leagues southwest of Pont-de-Foy, a crag whose grassy lip gave a view of twenty moles of rugged moor and forest. Thereby a limestone chasm held caves and water; in such upflung country the winds were never still, and smoke of fires kindled in the depth was easily scattered and lost. Of that grim fastness Joris made a base, and by ones and twos he drew about him a band of outlaws and broken men; so that presently they began to say of northern Neustria that it mad many rocks but only one Rock.
Joris of the Rock [The Neustrian Cycle, Book II] (Forgotten Fantasy Library) Page 5