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

and there was no town here for sleeping in and no great castle that stood. When the sun was low in the western sky they set the princess’s pavilion, and one for her ladies, at the edge of a wood. A murmuring stream went by; there were two great pine trees and the fire that was lighted made bronze pillars of their trunks. Something in them brought into Audiart’s mind the Palestine pillars before the shrine of Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne.

The sun was a golden ball, close to the horizon.[354] Wrapped in her mantle, she sat on a stone by the fire and watched it. Her ladies, perceiving that she wished to be alone, kept within the pavilions. Beauvoisin and his knights sat or reclined about their fire farther down the stream. Farther yet a third great fire blazed for the squires and men-at-arms. Upon a jutting mound a knight and a squire sat their horses, motionless as statues, watching that naught of ill came near the pavilions.

One upon the bank of the stream drew farther from the knights’ fire and nearer to that of the princess, then stood where she might see him. She turned her head as if she felt him there.

“Come to the fire, Sir Garin,” she said.

Garin came. “My Lady Audiart, may I speak? I have a favour to beg.”

She nodded her head. “What do you wish, Sir Garin?”

Garin stood before her, and the light played over and about him. “We are on land that Raimbaut the Six-fingered held, whose squire I was. Not many leagues from this wood is Castel-Noir, where I was born and where my brother, if it be that he yet lives, abides. I would see him again, and I would rest with him for a time and help him bring our fief back to well-being and well-doing.—What I ask, my Lady Audiart, is that in the morning I may turn aside to Castel-Noir and rest there.”

The princess sat very still upon the stone. The golden sun had slipped to half an orb; wood and hill[355] stretched dark, the voice of the stream changed key. Audiart seemed to ponder that request. Her hand shaded her face. At last, “We have word that ere we reach the Convent of Our Lady in Egypt there will meet us a great company of our own lords and knights. So, with them and with our friends here, we are to make glittering entry into Roche-de-Frêne.... I do not prize the glitter, but so is the custom, and so will it be done. Now if I have wrought much for Roche-de-Frêne, I know not, but I am glad. But if I have done aught, you have done it, too, for I think that I could not have reached Duke Richard without you. That is known now by others, and will be more fully known.... Will you not ride still to Roche-de-Frêne and take your share of what sober triumph is preparing?”

“Do you bid me do so, my Lady Audiart?”

“I do not bid you. I will for you to do according to your own will.”

“Then I will not go now to Roche-de-Frêne, but I will go to Castel-Noir.”

The princess sat with her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand. She sat very still, her eyes upon the winter glow behind the winter woods. “As you will, Garin of the Golden Island,” she said at last. Her voice had in it light and shadow. She sat still and Garin stood as still, by the fire. All around them was its light and the light in the sky that made a bright dusk.

He spoke. “The Convent of Our Lady in Egypt.[356] Martinmas, eight years ago, I was in Roche-de-Frêne. I heard Bishop Ugo preach and I knelt in the church before Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne. Then I went to the inn for my horse. There, passers-by asked me if I was for the feast-day jousts and revels in the castle lists. I said No, I could not stay. Then they said that there sat to judge the contest the Princess Alazais, and beside her, the Princess Audiart. I had no reason to think them mistaken. Were they right, or were they wrong? Were you there in Roche-de-Frêne?”

“Martinmas, eight years ago?—No, I was not in Roche-de-Frêne, though I came back to the castle very soon. I was at Our Lady in Egypt.”

“Ah God!” said Garin with strong emotion. “How beautiful are Thy circles that Thou drawest!”

She looked at him with parted lips. “Now, I will ask a question! I wearied, that autumn, of nuns’ ways and waiting ladies’ ways and my own ways. One day I said, ‘I will go be a shepherdess and taste the true earth!’” A smile hovered. “Faith! the experiment was short!—Now, my question.—Being a shepherdess, I was like to taste shepherdess’s fare in this so knightly world. Then came by a true knight, though his dress and estate were those of a squire.—My question:—I asked him, that day, ‘Where is your home?’ He answered, that squire, and I thought that he told the truth,—‘I dwell by the sea, a long way from here.’—Sir Garin de Castel-Noir, that was squire to Raimbaut the Six-fingered,[357] neither dwelling nor serving by the sea but among hills, and not far away but near at hand, tell me now and tell me truly—”

“Jael the herd, I am punished! I thought to myself, ‘I am in danger from that false knight who will certainly seek me.’”

“Ah, I see!” said the princess; and she laughed at him in scorn.

“It is an ill thing,” said Garin, “to mistrust and to lie! I make no plea, my Lady Audiart, save that I do not always so.”

“Certes, no! I believe you there.... Let it go by.... That shepherdess could not, after all, be to you for trustworthiness like your Fair Goal—”

She ceased abruptly upon the name. The colour glowed in the west, the colour played and leaped in the faggot fire, the colour quivered in their own faces. Light that was not outer light brightened in their eyes. Their frames trembled, their tissues seemed to themselves and to each other to grow fine and luminous. There had been a shock, and all the world was different.

Garin spoke. “On a Tuesday you were Jael the herd. On a Thursday, in the middle of the day, you came with your ladies to a lawn by the stream that flows by Our Lady in Egypt—the lawn of the plane, the poplar and the cedar, the stone chair beneath the cedar, and the tall thick laurels rounding all.” He was knight and poet and singer now—Garin of the Golden Island—knight and poet and singer and[358] another besides. “A nightingale had sung me into covert there. I followed it down the stream, from grove to grove, and it sung me into covert there. The laurels were about me. I rested so close to the cedar—so close to the stone chair! One played a harp—you moved with your ladies to the water’s edge—you came up the lawn again to the three trees. You were robed in blue, my princess; your veil was long and threaded with silver and gold, and it hid your face. I never saw your face that day—nor for long years afterward! You sat in the stone chair—”

“Stop!” said the Princess Audiart. She sat perfectly still in the rich dusk. Air and countenance had a strange hush, a moment of expressionless waiting. Then uprushed the dawn. He saw the memory awaken, the wings of knowledge outstretch. “Ah, my God!” she whispered. “As I sat there, the strangest breath came over me—sense of a presence near as myself—” The rose in her face became carnation, she sprang to her feet, turned aside. The fire came between her and Garin; she paced up and down in the shadowy space between the tree-trunks that were like the Saracen pillars.

Moments passed, then she returned and stood beside the stone.

Garin bent his knee. “My Lady Audiart, you, and only you, in woman form, became to me her whom for years I have sung, naming her the Fair Goal.... I left that covert soon, going away without[359] sound. I only saw you veiled, but all is as I have said.... But now, before I go to Castel-Noir, there is more that I would tell to you.”

“Speak at your will,” said the princess.

“Do you remember one evening in the castle garden—first upon the watch-tower, and then in the garden, and you were weary of war and all its thoughts, and bade me take Pierol’s lute and sing? I sang, and you said, ‘Sing of the Fair Goal.’ I sang—and there and then came that sense of doubleness and yet one.... It came—it made for me confusion and marvel, pain, delight. It plunged me into a mist, where for a time I wandered. After that it strengthened—strengthened—strengthened!... At first, I fought it in my mind, for I thought it disloyalty. I fought, but before this day I had ceased to fight, or to think it disloyalty. Before we came to Angoulême—and afterwards.... I knew not how it might be—God knoweth I knew not how it might be—but my lady whom I worshipped afar, and my princess and my liege were one! I knew that, though still I thought I saw impossibilities—They did not matter, there was something higher that dissolved impossibilities.... I saw again the Fair Goal, and my heart sang louder, and all my heart was hers as it had been, only more deeply so—more deeply so! And still it is so—still it is the same—only with the power, I think, of growing forever!” He rose, came close to her, kneeled again and put the edge of her mantle to his lips. “And[360] now, Princess of Roche-de-Frêne, I take my leave and go to Castel-Noir. I am knight of yours. If ever I may serve you, do you but call my name! Adieu—adieu—adieu!”

She regarded him with a great depth and beauty of look. “Adieu, now, Sir Garin of the Black Castle—Sir Garin of the Golden Island! Do you know how much there is to do in Roche-de-Frêne—and how, for a long time, perhaps, one must think only of the people and the land that stood this war, and of all that must be builded again?... Adieu now—adieu now! Do not go from lands of Roche-de-Frêne without my leave.”

The dark was come, the bright stars burned above the trees. There was a movement from the knights’ fire—Beauvoisin coming to the princess’s pavilions to enquire if all was well before the camp lay down to sleep.

Garin felt her clasped hands against his brow, felt her cheek close, close to his. “Go now,” she breathed. “Go now, my truest friend! What comes after winter?—Why, spring comes after winter!”

[361]