Juhel gulped; a golden glory suffused the moment, to fade with the flash of Folquin's tow-bright hair across the trim sward of the cloister garth. But he had caught at Folquin's fingers, squeezing them hard; and then he turned away, hiding the gift as Folquin had hidden it, and wondering if the two of them would ever meet again.
"He will go as page to the Count of Montcarneau," mused Juhel. "Barberghe and Montcarneau are friends. I hope–"
then he came shyly out among the Bargerghe surcoats, and presently he sat on a patient gelding that was more at ease than himself among the trampling destriers. For a moment Juhel wished he could have seen the completion of Brother Leo's V; then he squared his shoulders and set his teeth and waved gaily enough to kind old Brother Adrian who stood by the outer gateway.
The cavalcade moved forward. Immediately in front of Juhel flapped and bellied the great chevron banner; at times it seemed to hide the half of his familiar world. And indeed the red-and-black device hid most of Juhel's joys from him for many days to come.
Once he turned in his saddle, and caught a farewell glimpse of the priory towers. Then the gelding stumbled and nearly threw him, and the man-at-arms behind laughed loudly at his fright.
The ballad book slipped down over his stomach, and head no power to stay an inner sinking behind it. Yet somewhere in him Juhel knew there were good things far beyond the range of life in the gray-walled enclosure of Saint-Eloy-over-Hardonek.
CHAPTER VII. GRAMBERGE AND THE SINGING STONES
On the day when Juhel rode out into the world, Joris moved from winter quarters, determined to collect the hides and horns hidden during the previous summer in sandy caves beneath the mountain Dondunor. The winter had been bitter; Easter drew near, but snow still flecked the topmost ridges of the hills. Gandulf, with twenty chosen men, was left to hold the Rock and its approaches; so that just over a hundred sturdy outlaws, with forty pack ponies, followed Joris and Red Anne across the secret ford near Pont-de-Foy.
They made their passage in dawnlight, when Varne ran like dim steel between the blur of the misted woods, that were brown at hand and blue-gray in the distance; and Joris, glancing aside at Anne's untroubled profile, felt a swift stir of exultation that he strode thus companioned on his first venture of the new year.
"Will you and Lys," he growled to his love, "ride ponies over the water – over the running water?"
"Ay, that we will," said Anne, setting her hand on his sword hilt. "But once across we are men, Joris, asking no further privilege."
"You will ride to the Singing Stones at least?"
"No. This time it is in my mind to walk. Will you come to the Sabbath on Good Friday night? The council of Good Friday Eve we must attend alone."
"As you will. And my men?"
"No more than one or two, and of the trustiest. We want no brawling. Madoc, Adelgar, old Osmund…"
"Madoc must stay in charge by Dondunor. Adelgar had best second him. I will bring Osmund and Rufin and Romarec, unless–"
"Rufin?" repeated Red Anne; and she rounded on Lys with a face grown suddenly cruel.
"There comes a merry Sabbath," she told the girl. "Joris and Rufin will dance with us; are you content?"
"That will be merry indeed," said Lys composedly; and Joris wondered for a moment why Red Anne should abate the displeasure which had hitherto guarded Lys from Rufin. In the riot of a Sabbath the sandy-haired rogue would no doubt have his way; but Joris saw no harm in that. Lys he disliked and rather despised; if her dagger parted Rufin's ribs he would forgive her, but her private woes meant nothing to one for whom the world was made.
Yet that night in the forest, and on the following morning when he took a two-day farewell of Red Anne, Joris noted a change in Lys. She showed more liveliness and colour than he had before found in her; and she sang and jested blithely, no longer avoiding Rufin, so that Joris shared the mild surprise which Ivo expressed in his hearing.
"What ails you, Lys?" demanded the boy as they made ready to leave the camp. "You are strangely glad."
Lys put her pretty head on one side and pouted lips to her flute.
Tirra-lirra-loo, she played, and smiled across at Ivo where he sat cleaning his sword.
"It is spring," said Lys, with a tremor as of laughter in her clear, high voice. "The spring, when lambs leap and buds thrust; the spring, when youths lose their hearts and maidens lose their heads; the spring, when all the world goes kissing, even to Judas Iscariot."
Ivo laughed, but Lys somehow reminded Joris of a fine dagger blade perilously bent. When Red Anne and her two companions disappeared toward the northwest, Joris struck camp and drove straight westward with his file of laden pack ponies. His intention was to halt ten miles from the Singing Stones, and to slip away from his men on the afternoon of Holy Thursday; but Holy Thursday at midmorning brought him Red Anne again.
* * * *
On foot, in green cloth, she left him; in soft black leather, astride a foaming sweating mare, she returned. Horse and rider burst so suddenly into sight over the crest of a near grassy ridge that lounging men cried out and snatched at their weapons. Joris, inspecting his ill-cured hides, stood as though frozen; this was the Valkyr who once had hunted with Lorin de Campscapel.
"Come with me, Joris," she called, resplendent in fury. "Bring all your men and sack Gramberge; pluck Lys from the priest's house and halve the jewels she stole from me."
"Gramberge? Lys? Jewels?" growled Joris of the Rock.
"Yes and yes and yes. Last night she fled from the Stones, leaving my wallet empty. We hunted her across heather; in the dawn we tracked her down the moor's edge and saw the priest of Gramberge drag her into his dwelling. The jewels are the last of the jewels of Campscapel. I took them when we fled – rubies and diamonds too. The bailiff we slew, and two others; but the little priest withstood us, and I gave him a period to yield up my little sister in Lilith, promising that if he did not you should come by noon and put the place to pillage. Three hinds set off to Ger for help; them we finished with arrows. The rest I bade hide in the church, giving them surety of safety there. Ivo and four of the coven have bows, and surround the hamlet. This is the bailiff's horse. Will you come?"
A score of the outlaws heard the first appeal, and two-score – so quickly they gathered – listened to the second. Joris had not moved, except to take one pace aside when the trembling mare drooped head and slavered on his booted instep.
To gratify Anne's private vengeance; to recover for her the jewels whose very existence she had hidden from him; to let her pledge his sword as though he were her servant; to feel the disadvantage at which she held him in face of his following – four separate reluctances gripped coldly at his spirit. Then Rufin spoke.
"Gramberge is a scant three miles from Ger," said Rufin. "That warlock count–"
For the Viscount Raoul had succeeded his uncle, and men went very warily within his jurisdiction; but Anne beat with clenched fist upon the pommel of her saddle, and her figure, trim and sturdy in its strange costume, stiffened against the windy upland sky.
"Leave Rufin with the hides, since he is afraid!" she cried.
"I will come with you, Lady Anne!" promised Adelgar, standing close to the woman's stirrup.
"And I – and I – and I," added other voices.
"The word is with Joris only," said Madoc, softly but clearly.
"Tell em one thing," demanded Joris, as though Red Anne and he were alone. "Why did you not break in yourselves and drag that little hell-cat forth?"
he had his leader's moment then; for the first time since he knew her, Red Anne's eyes darkened with diffidence.
"To each his power," came her sullen response; and Joris learned at last the limit of her courage. Immediately she was his woman again – his woman, turning to him for her own justification – and faint scorn edged the laugh with which he spun on his heel.
"Unload saddles and packs together!" he roared. "Pile them here and leave them; we shall have more gear by nightfall. I am
no Easterling or Campscapel, and to-day I tweak the tail of the new Count of Ger!"
A cheer resounded from the ranges; ten minutes later the outlaw throng was streaming swiftly northward, those on foot gripping belt or scabbard of those who rode the barebacked ponies. This was a country unfamiliar to Joris, but Anne knew it thoroughly; sometimes mounted, sometimes leading her mare, she guided the human wolf pack to end what her coven began.
Joris and she barely spoke throughout that three-hour scramble, but once she turned to the man and smiled to see his long legs trailing in bracken.
"Do not grudge me my jewels," she said. "I kept them in case you tired of me; but now it is less the jewels I seek than the blood of that thieving vixen yonder."
"You plagued her soundly before she fled," grunted the man in his beard.
"Ay. She would have it I disgraced myself by taking you for a lover."
"Now did she, by the chimes of hell?" laughed Joris of the Rock.
* * * *
Sea wind salted the outlaws' lips as they tethered the ponies among twisted thorns to leeward of the northernmost crest of the moors of Nordanay. Red Anne alone kept hold of her bridle, leading the mare to the hummocky edge of the eight-hundred-foot incline of screes and ling and brushwood. Clear in the gray noon lay Gramberge; something fluttered on the roof of the squat belfry tower that stood apart from the little church, but otherwise the hamlet seemed deserted.
"The hinds have dragged their gear to the alter," called Anne, "but I warrant they left the new count's sheep and corn outside."
"To-day I tweak his tail, that valiant little lordling," said Joris once more, eyeing the towers of Ger which rose, against steel-coloured sea, above the swell of gorse-strewn pasture that hid cliff edge and town and castled promontory. "There are some here will gladly brand my name in his parchment rolls. Madoc, is all secure?"
"All tethered and secure," said dark Madoc, unslinging a bow with glee in his hatchet face.
"Then hearken!" bellowed Joris, turning to face his horde. "Any man taking the girl Lys renders her first to Red Anne or to me. Then she is Rufin's and no other's. And now let none outpace me till I bid him. No harm to the church or those therein; all else is for your sport. Upon Gramberge, Haro!"
"Haro!" came the hundredfold echo; and the outlaws poured downhill.
"Horses in the priest's orchard," gasped Anne, as she guided the stumbling mare. "They were not there when I left to find you."
"Guests at the wedding of Lys," boomed Joris, happy in rapid action. "Now who comes running here?"
for as the shouting, laughing throng swarmed on the breathless slope, a figure black as Red Anne's own danced from the thickets below them.
"Ivo, with tidings," said Anne. But even then Joris was startled to see the cloven cut of Ivo's shoes, the tufted tail tucked up in Ivo's belt, and strangest of all, the helmet that swung by a strap at Ivo's shoulder – a helmet of sable of leather, camailed with cloth and vizored with the dried and eyeless mask of a great mastiff.
Ivo was flushed with climbing and running; his eyes were grimly amused as he stared uphill at that armed avalanche. "The belfry is held," he cried, "and Lys well guarded within. Barely the quarter of an hour ago four men – two of rank, two squires – and a crimson-clad woman spurred in as if from Guarenal. They paused at the priest's house, took him and Lys therefrom, awaiting your coming – all but the squires, who rode from Ger, but were ambushed by Rioc and Blanche on the hill brow there."
"You saw them fall?" snapped Joris, halting to listen.
"Both of them!"
"And their horses?"
"Caught and somewhere hidden," Ivo responded, grinning hardily up at him. "We have seen none else attempt to get through since those we slew after dawn. The serfs are barred in the church. Someone rang the peal of exorcism for nigh on a full hour, but the hill and the wind are against its being heard at Ger. If any come that way, Rioc will warn you."
With a wave of his hand Joris plunged forward and downward; the sloping woods grew full of oaths and crashing footfall, of foul jests loudly voiced and bump or rattle of steel.
Anne leaped to her saddle when undergrowth yielded to pasture; first of them all she reached the church, reining the mare back on her haunches to shout at the pallid faces crouching behind the windows. Joris ramped through the near orchard, swinging his sword in response to her beckoning gesture; beneath black skullcap and bright braided hair Anne's eyes were hard and joyful in a glowing face.
"By Mahound, man," she clamoured, "that little belfry holds your fortune. There is the Count of Ger, with Reine, old Guarenal's granddaughter, and Enguerrand du Veranger, his march lieutenant. Carry them into the hills, and Nordanay shall crawl to you. Only render me Lys – it is all the thank I ask."
"You shall have your thanks," grated Joris, observing the belfry shrewdly as the tail of his power came bounding across the half-ploughed fields.
The building was thirty-five feet high, and reared with an eye to defence, for the roof was stoutly battlemented, the single door narrow and iron-studded, and no window more than a slit impossible of entry. Joris laughed once, and wheeled on his lieutenants.
"Hither axes!" he thundered. "This meat is tenderer raw than roast! Rufin, a ram and ladders; Madoc, iron to break the mortar out and pegs to mount upon; bowmen, rake the slits and let no head show on the roof. Axes amain!"
Here and there they ran at his bidding; Osmund led the ax party, and as they neared the entry the man behind Osmund screamed and stamped to a burst of his comrades' laughter; for a long arrow whizzed from the slit above the door and pinned his foot to a grave mound.
All about the belfry swirled and bayed the outlaws; some stood on their comrades; shoulders to drive spears into the slits, but the latter were plugged with wood, and roof tiles skimmed the parapet to crash among the besiegers. Loud rang the ax blows on the door; presently Rufin and his party came staggering from the woodpile, bearing a great log that should reenforce the axes. Picks clinked at the mortar, and bowmen stood well back, drawing hard that their shafts might not injure comrades on the far side of the belfry. The one archer within was shooting with leisurely skill; three men were arrow-smitten to death before the seventh shock of the ram beat in the door and roused a yell of triumph.
Down thudded the log, its bearers scattering right and left to let their comrades pour close arrow sleet into the gloom beyond the wreckage. Feathered butts bristled in the doorway, revealing a crisscrossed fragment of a harrow that swung loosely within the opening. Axmen ran forward again to finish their work; pikes drove the dangling lumber upward and inward, and a first man dived beneath it – to stumble forward with a split skull and cumber the way with his body.
A dozen crowded to take his place, but the sheltered swordsmen made murderous play behind the narrow opening. Outlaws hindered each other, dancing and thrusting in vain; a second corpse sprawled on the first, a third fell back and was trodden beneath the shouting press.
"By the chimes of hell!" roared Joris. "Are two mad popinjays to hold you up forever? Scatter again for bowshot, and bring me a dozen bucklers!"
"Popinjays!" croaked old Osmund, nursing a bleeding arm as he turned to confront his chief. "Give you joy of such popinjays; they fight like fiends from – hell!"
Osmund shuddered and gestured oddly; above the fiery nose of his pig's eyes grew hurt and astonished. Still mumbling at Joris, he swayed and fell flat on his face; between his shoulder blades stood up an arrow from the slit above the belfry door.
Joris gave an angry chuckle and stood aside out of range; Madoc, grasping his chief's intention, was already fixing the bucklers upon pike heads, that the defenders might be pushed bodily backward from the entry. And now Adelgar was binding three short ladders together; and still Red Anne sat her horse by the church porch, watching her lover's leaguer and guarding the serfs and their children.
Madoc's siege cat lurched forward, a blind eight-foot beast of wood and hide and steel. Decked with belfry arrows
, its snout felt for the doorway; a long lunge and a great yell, and the casing bucklers vanished within, the pike shafts splaying and crossing as the crew of four crushed forward among them. Madoc was close behind, setting his hands on the doorposts to check the hampering mob that would have followed too quickly.
Adelgar's ladder was laid to the western wall; Adelgar bounded up it, shouting something unheard amid the din. Quick as lightning a sword smote from between the merlons above him; Joris saw blood and brains on the fleshy hawk's face as Adelgar crashed backward. More than one problem, it seemed, was to be solved by this day's work.
But the second and third and fourth men up the ladder went the way of Adelgar. A dozen archers watched to trap the swordsman who held the parapet; but he dodged and fought like a maniac, with arrows whistling over his head and outlaw after outlaw dropping to his blows.
Madoc was gone inside now, and others with him, but Joris could see them still battling in the ground-floor space of the belfry. Maybe an inner door was held, or a winding stair had checked them where the cat could not be used… The thing was growing ludicrous, and Joris halted only to choose which way he might show how a belfry should be stormed.
Then he chuckled again, for the defender of the roof had torn a guisarme from a fallen man, but lost his own sword in the act; and a second ladder was going against the wall.
"Not beside the first, you fools!" roared Joris, starting forward; but already four men were loading the rungs, and the din was terrific. High over all soared a girl's shrieking; Joris, his victory half assured, halted in fascination to see the guisarme hook drive the topmost rung of the second ladder away from the crenel where it lodged. The first climber grabbed at the blade, but the ladder had already overbalanced; yelling and clinging, the four described their ghastly quarter circle, thudding hideously to the grass amid their dodging comrades.
"Set us again!" thundered Joris, marking an outlaw on the still-standing ladder grapple with the man beyond the parapet; but as he reached the broken bodies a hand fell roughly on his shoulder, and he found himself staring into Rufin's convulsed and villainous face.
Joris of the Rock [The Neustrian Cycle, Book II] (Forgotten Fantasy Library) Page 14