Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard Part 53

"I came to speak with you."

"Even so?" She barely heard the words for the din of his great hammer.

"You are unmannerly, Smith."

"Speak then," said he, dropping his tools, "and never forget, maid, that it is not I invited this encounter."

At that she cried out hotly, "Does not your shop invite trade?"

"Ay; but what's that to you?"

"My only purpose in talking with you," she said in a flame of wrath. "I require what you have, but I would rather buy it of any man than you."

"What do you require?"

"That!" She pointed to the sword.

"I cannot sell it. It is a young knight's blade I am mending against the jousting."

"Have you no other?"

"You cannot give me my price," said the Red Smith.

She took from her girdle the little purse containing all her store. "Do you think I am here to bargain? There's more than your price."

"However much it be," said Harding, "it is too little."

"Then say no more that I cannot buy of you, but rather that you will not sell to me."

"And yet that is as the Proud Rosalind shall please."

She flushed deeply, and as though in shame of seeming ashamed said firmly, "No, Smith, it is not in my hands. For I have offered you every penny I possess."

"I do not ask for pence." Harding left his anvil and stepped outside and stood close, gazing hard upon her face. "You have a thing I will take in exchange for my sword, a very simple thing. Women part with it most lightly, I have learned. The loveliest hold it cheap at the price of a golden gawd. How easily then will you barter it for an inch or so of steel!"

"What need of so many words?" she said with a scornful lip, that quivered in her own despite at his nearness. "Name the thing you want."

"A kiss from your mouth, Proud Rosalind."

It was as though the request had turned her into ice. When she could speak she said, "Smith, for your inch of steel you have asked what I would not part with to ransom my soul."

She turned and left him and Harding went back to his work and laughed softly in his beard. "Dream on, my gold queen up yonder," said he, and blew on his waning fires. "You are not the metal I work in," said he, and the river rang again to his hammer on the steel.

But Rosalind went rapidly down to the waterside saying in her heart, "Now I will see whether I cannot get me a lordlier weapon of a better craftsman than you, and at my own price, Red Smith." And when she had come to the ferry she laid her full purse on the bank and cried softly into the night:

"Wayland Smith, give me a sword!"

And then she went away for awhile, and paced the fields till the first light glimmered on the east; and not daring to wait longer for fear of encountering early risers, she turned back to the ferry. And there, shining in the dawn, she found such a blade as made the father in her soul exult. In all its glorious fashioning and splendid temper the hand of the G.o.d was manifest. And in the gra.s.s beside it lay her purse, of its full store lightened by one penny-piece.

Now to this tale of legends revived and then forgotten, gossips' tales of Wishing-Pools and Snow-white Harts and a G.o.d who worked in the dark, we must begin to add the legend of the Rusty Knight. It lasted little longer than the three months of that strange summer of sports within the castle-walls of Amberley. It was at the jousting on Midsummer Day that he first was seen. The lists were open and the roll of knights had answered to their names, and cried in all men's ears their ladies'

praises; and nine in ten cried Maudlin. And as the last knight spoke, there suddenly stood in the great gateway an unknown man with his vizard closed, and his coming was greeted with a roar of laughter. For he was clothed from head to foot in antique arms, battered and rusted like old pots and pans that have seen a twelvemonths' weather in a ditch. Out of the merriment occasioned by his appearance, certain of the spectators began to cry, "A champion! a champion!" And others nudged with their elbows, chuckling, "It is the Queen's jester."

But the newcomer stood his ground unflinchingly, and when he could be heard cried fiercely, "They who call me jester shall find they jest before their time. I claim by my kingly birth to take part in this day's fray; and men shall meet me to their rue!"

"By what name shall we know you?" he was asked.

"You shall call me the Knight of the Royal Heart," he said.

"And whose cause do you serve?"

"Hers whose beauty outshines the five-fold beauty in the Queen's Gallery," said he, "hers who was mistress here and wrongly ousted--the most peerless lady of Suss.e.x, Proud Rosalind."

With that the stranger drew forth and flourished a blade of so surpa.s.sing a kind that the knights, in whom scorn had vanquished mirth, found envy vanquishing scorn. As for the ladies, they had ceased to smile at the mention of Rosalind, whom none had seen, though all had heard of the girl who had been turned from her ruin at Maudlin's whim; and that this ragged lady should be vaunted over their heads was an insult only equaled by the presence among their shining champions of the Rusty Knight. For by this name only was he spoken thereafter.

Now you may think that the imperious stranger who warned his opponents against laughing before their time, might well have been warned against crowing before his. And alas! it transpired that he crowed not as the c.o.c.k crows, who knows the sun will rise; for at the first clash he fell, almost unnoticed. And when the combatants disengaged, he had disappeared. He was a subject for much mirth that evening; though the men rankled for his sword and the women for a sight of his lady.

But from this day there was not a jousting held in Maudlin's revels at which the Rusty Knight did not appear; and none from which he bore away the crown. The procedure was always the same: at the last instant he appeared in his ignominious arms, and stung the mockers to silence by the glory of his sword and his undaunted proclamation of his lady. So ardent was his manner that it was difficult not to believe him a conqueror among men and her the loveliest of women, until the fray began; when he was instantly overcome, and in the confusion managed to escape. He was so cunning in this that though traps were laid to catch him he was never traced. By degrees he became, instead of a joke, a thorn in the flesh. It was the women now who itched to see his face, and the men who desired to find out the Proud Rosalind; for by his repeated a.s.sertion her beauty came to be believed in, and if the ladies still spoke slightingly of her, the lords in their thoughts did not.

But the summer drew to its close without unraveling the mystery. The Rusty Knight was never followed nor the Proud Rosalind found. And now they were on the eve of a different hunting.

For now all the days were to be given up to the pursuit of the rumored hart, whom none had yet beheld; and Queen Maudlin said, "For a month we will hunt by day and dance by night, and if by that time no man can boast of bringing the hart to bay and no woman of owning his antlers, we will acknowledge ourselves outwitted; and so go back to Adur. And it may prove that we have been brought to Arun by an idle tale, to hunt a myth; but be that as it may, see to your bowstrings, for to-morrow we ride forth."

And the men laid by their swords and filled their quivers.

And in the midnight Rosalind came once more from her secret lair to Bury, and laying her purse by the ferry called softly:

"Wayland Smith, give me a bow!"

And in the dawn, before people were astir, she found a bow the unlike of any fashioned by mortal craft, and a quiverful of true arrows; and for these the G.o.d had taken his penny fee.

On a lovely day of autumn the chase began. And the red deer and the red fox started from their covers; and the small rabbits stopped their kitten-play on the steep warrens of the Downs, and fled into their burrows; and birds whirred up in screaming coveys, and the kestrel hovered high and motionless on the watch. There was game in plenty, and many men were tempted and forgot the prize they sought. The hunt separated, some going this way and some that. And in the evening all met again in Amberley. And some had game to show and some had none. And one had seen the hart.

When he said so a cry went up from the company, and they pressed round to hear his tale, and it was a strange one.

"For," said he, "where Great Down clothes itself with the North Wood I saw a flash against the dark of the trees, and out of them bounded the very hart, taller than any hart I ever dreamed of, and, as the tale has told, as pure as snow; and the crockets spring from its crowns like rays from a summer cloud. I could not count them, but its points are more than twelve. When it saw me it stood motionless, and trembling with joy I fitted my arrow to the string; but even as I did so out of the trees ran another creature, as strange as the white hart. It was none other than the Rusty Knight; I knew him by his battered vizard, which was closed. But for the rest he wore now, not rust, but rags--a tattered jerkin in place of battered mail. Yet in his hands was a bow which among weapons could only be matched by his sword. He took his stand beside the snow-white hart, and cried in that angry voice we have all heard, These crowns grow only to the glory of the Proud Rosalind, the most peerless daughter of Suss.e.x, and no woman but she shall ever boast of them!' And before I could move or answer for surprise, he had set his arrow to his bow, and drawn the string back to his shoulder, and let fly. It was well I did not start aside, or it might have hit me; for I never saw an arrow fly so wild of its mark. But the whole circ.u.mstance amazed me too much for quick action, and before I could come up and chastise this unskillful archer, or even aim at the prize which stood beside him, he and the hart had plunged through the wood again, the man running swiftfoot as the beast; and when I followed I could not find them, and unhappily my dogs were astray."

The strange tale stung the tempers of all listeners, both men and women.

"Well, now," laughed Maudlin, "it has at least been seen that the hart is the whitest of harts."

"But it has not yet been seen," fumed Clarimond, "that this Rosalind is the most beautiful of women."

"Nor have we seen," said the knight who told the tale, "who it is that insults our manhood with valiant words and no deeds to prove them. Yet with such a sword and such a bow a man might prove anything."

The next day all rode forth on fire with eagerness. And at the end of it another knight brought back the selfsame tale. He sword that in the tattered archer was no harm at all but his arrogance, since he was clearly incapable of hitting where he aimed. But his very presence and his swift escape, running beside the hart, made failure seem double; for the derision he excited recoiled on the deriders, who could not bring this contemptible foe to book. After that day many saw him, sometimes at a great distance, sometimes near enough to be lashed by his insolent tongue. He always kept beside the coveted quarry, as though to guard it, and ran when it ran, with incredible speed; but once when he flagged after a longer chase than usual, he had been seen to leap on its back, and so they escaped together. From dawn to dusk through that bright month of autumn the man and the hart were hunted in vain; and in all that while their lair was never discovered. It was now taken for granted that where one would be the other would be; and in all likelihood Proud Rosalind also.

At last the final day of the month and the chase arrived, and Maudlin spoke to her mortified company. Among them all she was the only one who laughed now, for her nature was like that of running water, reflecting all things, retaining none; she could never retain her disappointments longer than a day, or her affections either.

"Sirs and dames," said she, "I see by your clouded faces it is time we departed, but we will depart as we came in the sun. If this day bring no more fruit than its fellows, neither victory to a lord nor sovereignty to his lady, we will to-morrow hold the mightiest tourney of the year, and he who wins the crown shall give it to his love, and she shall be called for ever the fairest of Suss.e.x; but for that, if her lord desire it, she shall wed him--yes, though it be myself she shall!"