The Fortunes of Garin by Mary Johnston (romantic novels in english .txt) 📖

exquisiteness of daring as he had had it in the land beyond the sea.... He found himself, in one of those periods of stillness between assaults, alone by the watch-tower above the castle garden. He had left Aimar at the barbican, Rainier he had sent upon some errand. It was nearing sunset, and the trees in the garden had an autumn tint. The year wheeled downward.

Garin, mounting the watch-tower, found upon the summit a mantled figure, leaning against the battlement overlooking the wide prospect. A moment, and he saw that it was the princess and would have withdrawn. But Audiart called him back. In the[235] garden below waited a page and an attendant of whom the princess was fond—the dark-eyed girl who told stories well. But for the rest there held a solitude. She had come from the White Tower to taste this quiet and to look afar, to bathe her senses in this stillness after clamour, and to feel overhead the enemyless expanse.

“You are welcome, Sir Garin of the Golden Island!” she said, and turned toward him. “I watched you lead the sally yesterday. No brave poet ever made men more one with him than you did then—”

Garin came to her side, bent and kissed her mantle edge where her arm brought it against the battlement. “Princess of Roche-de-Frêne!” he said, “watching you, in this war, all men turn brave and poets.”

He had spoken as he felt. But, “No!” said the Princess Audiart. “No man turns what he is not.” She looked again at the wide prospect. “My heart aches,” she said, “because of all the misery! At times I would that I knew—”

She rested her brow upon her hands. The sun touched the mountains, jagged and sharp, shaped long ago by central fires. The castle and town of Roche-de-Frêne were bathed in a golden light. The princess uncovered her eyes. “Well! we travel as we may, or as the inner will doth will.—How long do you think that this castle will go untaken by Montmaure?”

“I think that it will go forever untaken by Montmaure.”

[236]

“He is strong—he has old strength.... But I came to the garden and the watch-tower not to think of that and of how the battle goes.... Look at the violet stealing up from the plain.”

“In the morning comes the sun once more! I believe in light.”

“Yea! so do I.” She looked from the cloud-shapes of the western sky to the clear fields of the east and the deeps overhead. Her gaze stayed there a moment, then dropped, a slow sailing bird, to the garden trees below the tower, the late flowers, and the sunburned turf. “The autumn air.... I like that—have always liked it.... In the hurly-burly of this siege, you think yet of the Fair Goal?”

“Yes, lady.”

“Listen to the convent-bells! That is the Convent of Saint Blandina.... Pierol, down there, has a lute. I am tired. I would rest for an hour and forget blood and crying voices. I would think of fairer things. I would forget Montmaure. Let us go down under the trees, and I will listen to your singing of your Fair Goal.”

They descended the tower-stair and came into the garden. Here was a tall cypress and a seat beneath it for the princess, and a lower one for the singer. Pierol gave the lute, then with the dark-eyed girl drew back into the shade of myrtles. Garin touched the strings, but when he sang it was of love itself.

The Princess Audiart listened, wrapped in her mantle. When the song was ended, “That is of love[237] itself, and beautiful it was!—Now sing of your own love.”

Garin obeyed. When it was done, “That is loveliness!” said the Princess. “This very moment that fair lady has you, doubtless, in her thought.”

“She whom I sing, lady, and call the Fair Goal, has never seen me. She knows not that such a man lives.”

“What!” exclaimed the princess and turned upon him. “You have seen her once, and she has not seen you at all! You know not her true name nor her home, and she knows not that you are in life! Now, by my faith—”

She broke off, sitting staring at him with a strangely vivid face. “I have heard troubadours sing of such loves,” she said slowly, “but I have not believed them. Such loves seemed neither real, nor greatly desirable to be made real. It was to me like other pretences.... But you, Sir Garin of the Golden Island, I hold to be honest—”

Garin laid the lute upon the earth beside him. He looked at the trees of the garden, and he seemed to see again a nightingale that flew from shade to shade and sang with a sweetness that ravished. “If I know my own heart,” he said, “it loves with reality!” And as he spoke came the first confusion, strangeness, and doubt, the first sense of something new, or added. It was faint—so underneath that only the palest dawn-light of it came over the horizon of the mind—so far and speechless that Garin knew not[238] what it was, only divined that something was there. Whatever recognition occurred was of something not unpleasing, something that, were it nearer, might be known for wealth. Yet there was an admixture of pain and doubt of himself. He fell silent, faint lines between his brows.

The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne likewise sat without speaking. A colour was in her cheek and her eyes had strange depths. There was softness in them, but also force and will. She looked a being with courage to name her ends to herself and power to reach them.

The dusk was coming, the small winged creatures that harboured in the castle garden were at their vesper chirping. The page Pierol and the dark-eyed girl whispered among the myrtles.

The princess rose. “I am not so tired nor so melancholy now! I thank you for your singing, Sir Garin.”

“I would, my princess,” answered Garin, “that, like the singers of old, I might build walls where they are broken! I would that, with armèd hand, I might bring you victory!”

“One paladin alone no longer does that,” said Audiart. “If we win, we all have part—you and Sir Aimar and Lord Stephen, for whom I grieve, and all the valiant chivalry and those who fight afoot. And Thibaut Canteleu and every brave townsman. And the women who are so brave, ready and constant. And the children who hush their crying. All[239] have part—all! Account must be taken, too, of my father’s jester, who, the other day, penned a cartel to Montmaure. He tied it to an arrow and shot it from the point of highest danger. And it was a scullion who threw down the ladder from the northern wall. All share. The value is in each!”

“And you, my Lady Audiart, have you no part?”

“I take account of myself as well. Yes, I, too, have part.”

She turned her face toward the myrtles. “Come, Pierol—Maeut!” then spoke again to Garin of the Golden Island. “It seems to me sad that the Fair Goal, whoever she be, wherever she bides, should know naught of you! Did you perish to-morrow in Roche-de-Frêne, her tears would not flow. If she were laughing, her laughter would not break. No sense of loss where is no sense of possession! This siege never threats her happiness—so little do you know of each other!” Her voice had a faint note of scorn, with something else that could not be read.

“That is true,” said Garin, and was once more conscious of that appeal beyond the horizon, under seas. He felt that there had been some birth, and that it was a thing not unsweet or passionless. It seemed other than aught that had come before into his life. And yet, immediately, he saw again and loved again the inaccessible, veiled figure, the traveller from far away,—it had fixed itself in his mind that she was a traveller from far away,—the lady who had been the guest of Our Lady in Egypt![240] He loved, he thought, more strongly, if that might be, than before. And again came the note of pain and bewilderment. “It is true, my princess! And still I think that in some hidden way—hidden to her and to me—she knows and answers!” He took the lute from the grass and drew from it a deep and thrilling strain. “So,” he said, “is the thought of her among my heart-strings.”

The princess drew her mantle about her. “Let us go,” she said. “To-night I hold council. There is a thing that must be decided, whether to do it or not to do it.”

They left the garden, Maeut and Pierol following.

Garin was not among the barons and the knights in the great hall when the council was held. He might have been so, but he chose absence. The castle was so vast—there were so many buildings within the ring of its wall—that it lodged a host. He, with Aimar, their squires and men-at-arms, had quarters toward the northern face. Here he came, there being a half moon, and all the giant place in black and silver. But he did not enter his lodging or call to Aimar or to Rainier. He went on to where a wooden stair was built against the wall. Here stood a sentinel to whom he gave the word, then, passing, climbed the stair. At the top was space where twenty might stand, and a catapult be worked. Here, too, a soldier kept guard. Garin gave him good-evening, and the man recognized him.

“Sir Garin of the Black Castle, I was behind you[241] in the sally yesterday! Thumb of Saint Lazarus! yonder was enough to make dead blood leap!”

Garin gave him answer, then crossed to the battlements, and leaning his folded arms upon the stone, looked forth into the night. This angle of the castle turned from the crowded town. The wall was built on sheer rock, and below the rock was the moat; beyond the moat rose scattered houses, and then the ultimate strong wall enclosing all, town and castle alike. And below, on the plain, was Montmaure, islanding Roche-de-Frêne.

The autumn air struck cool. Montmaure had camp-fires flaring here and flaring there, making red-gold blurs in the night. Garin, watching these, came, full-force, upon an awareness of fresh misliking for Montmaure—for Jaufre de Montmaure; misliking so strong that it came close to hatred. He had misliked him before, calling him private no less than public foe. But that feeling had been tame to this.

The inner atmosphere thickened and darkened. Could he have forged material lightning, Jaufre might then have perished. He stood staring at the red flare upon the horizon. His lips moved. “Jaufre, Jaufre! would you have the princess?”

The autumn wind blew against him. Overhead, the moon came out from clouds and blanched the platform where he stood and the long line of the wall. He turned, and looking to the huge castle, saw the rays silver the White Tower. He knew that this was where the princess lived. Hate went out of Garin’s[242] heart and out of his eyes. “What is this,” he cried, but not aloud, “what is this that has come to me?”

He stayed a long while on the platform, that was now in light and now in shadow, for the sky had fleets of clouds. But at last he said good-night to the pacing sentinel, and, descending the stair, went to his lodging. Here, before the door, watched one of his own men. “Has Sir Aimar returned, Jean the Talkative?”

“No, lord,” said Jean from Castel-Noir. “He sent to find you, but no one knew where—It seems that all the lords and famous knights have been called into hall. Moreover, there are townsmen in the great court, and the mayor is inside with the lords. The bishop came up the hill at supper-time with a long train. There was a monk here, an hour agone, who said that there had been a miracle down there in the cathedral. One Father Eustace, who is very holy, was kneeling before Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne, and he put up his hands to her, like a child to his mother, and he said ‘Blessed, Divine Lady, when will Roche-de-Frêne have peace and happiness?’ Then, lord, what favour was granted to the holy man! Our Lady’s lips opened smilingly, and words came out of them in a sweet and gracious voice, to this effect: ‘When those two wed.’ Holy Eustace fell in a swoon, so wonderful was the thing, and when he came to went to my lord the bishop. Whereupon—”

But, “Talk less, Jean—talk less!” said Sir Garin, and went by, leaving Jean staring. Within the[243] house, stretched upon the floor of the great lower room, lay his men asleep. They needed sleep; all in Roche-de-Frêne knew the strain of watching overtime, of fighting by day and by night. Two only whispered in a corner, by a guttering candle. These springing up as Garin entered proved to be Rainier and the younger squire of Aimar, the elder being with his master. “Stay till I call you,” said Garin to Rainier, and passing between the slumbering forms, ascended the stair to