The Forest Lovers Part 28

GALORS CONQUAESTOR

Prosper's aim on leaving High March after his gests of arms had been Goltres, for there he had believed to find Galors. But Galors was a man of affairs just now who had gone far since Isoult overheard his plans. His troop of some sixty spears had grown like the avalanche it resembled. For what the avalanche does not crush it turns to crushing.

Galors harrying had won harriers. In fact, he headed within a fortnight of his coming into North Morgraunt a force which was the largest known since Earl Roger of Bellesme had made a quietness like death over those parts. By the time of Prosper's exodus, that is by mid-May, his tactical situation was this--it is as well to be precise.

He had Hauterive and Waisford. Goltres was in the hollow of his hand.

If he could get Wanmeeting he would be master of the whole of the north forest, west of Wan. Here would be enormous advantage. By a forced march and a night surprise he might get Market Basing, on the east side of the river; and if he did that he would cut the Countess of Hauterive practically off the whole of Morgraunt. Going further, so far as to cut her off March, whence she drew her supplies, she would be at his mercy. He could pen her in High March like a sheep, and make such terms as a sheep and a butcher were likely to arrange.

For, strategically, North Morgraunt would be his; with that to the good South Morgraunt could await his leisure. The key will show how the Hauterive saltire stood with the Galors pale.

Now the whole of this pretty scheming was based upon one simple supposed fact, that the Countess's daughter was then actually in her mother's castle. Galors knew quite well that he could not hold Morgraunt indefinitely without the lady. Even Morgraunt was part of the kingdom; and though rumour of the King's troubles came down, with wild talk of Aquardente from the north and Bottetort from the south- west combining to slaughter their sovereign, the King's writ would continue to run though the king that writ it were under the earth: it was unlikely that a shire would be let fall to a nameless outlaw when five hundred men out of Kings-hold could keep it where it was. But a name would come by marriage as well as by birth. All his terms with his penned Countess would have been, amnesty and the heiress.

At first he prospered in everything he undertook. Waisford and Hauterive were under-garrisoned, and fell. Goltres, very remote, was unimportant except as a base. The Countess at this time, if not engaged philandering with Prosper, was troubled on the northern borders. As a matter of fact Galors had been able to secure that no messengers to High March should cross Wan, and that none from it, having once crossed, should ever re-cross. This was the state of affairs when Prosper pa.s.sed the edge of the High March demesnes and took the road for Wanmeeting and Goltres.

He had not gone far out of the Countess's borders before he saw what had happened. The country had been wasted by fire and sword: cottages burnt out, trampled gardens, green cornlands black and bruised-- desolation everywhere, but no life. Death he did come upon. In one cottage he saw two children dead and bound together in the doorway; at a four-went way a man and woman hung from an ash-tree; of a farmstead the four walls stood, with a fire yet burning in the rick-yard; in the duck-pond before the house the bodies of the owners were floating amid the sc.u.m of green weed. That night he slept by a roadside shrine, and next morning betimes took the lonely track again. Considering all this as he rode, he reached a sign-post which told him that here the ways of Wanmeeting and Waisford parted company. "Wanmeeting is my plain road," thought he, "but plainer still it is that of Galors--and not of Galors alone. I think the longer going is like to be my shorter. I will go to Waisford." He did so. After a patch of woodland was a sandy stretch of road fringed with heather and a few pines. A man was sitting here, by whose side lay his dead young wife with a handkerchief over her face. Prosper asked him what all this misery meant; for at High March, he added, they had no conception of it.

The man turned his gaunt eyes upon him. "We call it the hand of G.o.d, sir."

"Do you though? I see only the hand of man or the devil," said Prosper.

"May be you are in the right, Messire. Only we think that if G.o.d is Almighty He might stay all this havoc if He would. And since He stays it not we say He winks at it, which is as good as a nod any day."

"You are out, sir," said Prosper. "As I read, G.o.d hath given men wits, and suffers the devil in order that they may prove them. If they fail in the test, and of two ways choose the wrong, is G.o.d to be blamed?"

"Some of us have no such choice. It is hard that the battle of the wits should be over our acres, and that our skulls should be cracked to prove which of them be the tougher."

"G.o.d is mighty enough to make laws and too mighty to break them, as I understand the matter," said Prosper. "But who, under G.o.d or devil, hath done this wrong?"

"Sir," said the man, "it is the Lord of Hauterive (so styled), who hath taken Waisford and destroyed it with the country for ten miles round about it, and killed all the women who could not run fast enough, and such of the men as did not run to him. And this he did upon the admirable conceit that the men, having no women of their own, would take pains that they should not be singular in the country, but full of lessons in butchery, would become butchers themselves. It seems that there was ground for the opinion. As for me, I should certainly have been killed had he found me, for butchering is not to my taste--or was not then. But I was on a journey, and came back to find my house in ashes and my new wife, what you see."

"But who," cried Prosper, "in the name of the true Lord, is your lord of Hauterive? And how dare he take upon himself the style and fee of the Countess of Hauterive, Bellesme, and March? I have no reason to love that lady, but I thought all Morgraunt was hers."

"Morgraunt is hers, and Hauterive, and all the country from March unto Wanmouth," said the countryman. "But this lord is an outlaw who was once a monk down at Malbank in the south; and hath renounced his flock and gathered together a crew as unholy as himself. And the story goes that he did it all for the sake of a girl who scorned him. Now then he holdeth Hauterive as his tower of strength, has harried Waisford, and threatens Wanmeeting town, giving out that he will edge in the lady, besiege High March itself, wed the Countess, and have the girl (when he finds her) as his concubine. So he will be lord of all, and G.o.d of no account so far as I can see. And the name of this almighty scamp, Messire-"

"Is Galors de Born," put in Prosper.

The countryman got up and faced him.

"Are you a fellow of his?" he asked. "For, look you, though I must die for it, I will die killing."

"Friend," Prosper said gently, "the man is my enemy whom I had thought disabled longer by a split throat which he got of me. I see I have yet to deal with him. Tell me now where he is."

"I can tell you no more," said the fellow, "than that his tower is in Hauterive. He hath guards along the river and a post at Waisford. We shall have trouble to cross the water. He is said to be for Wanmeeting; but I know he has High March in his eye, because the girl he wants is believed to be there. He has been here also, as you see, G.o.d d.a.m.n him."

"G.o.d hath d.a.m.ned him," said Prosper, "but the work is in my hands."

"You will need more than your hands for the business, my gentleman. He hath five hundred spears."

"The battle is between his and mine nevertheless."

"Then there is the Golden Knight, as they call him, come from h.e.l.l knows where; not a fighter but a schemer; and swift, my word! And cruel as the cold. Will you tackle him?"

"I shall indeed," said Prosper. "Farewell, I am for my luck at Waisford."

"I would come with you if I might," said the man slowly.

"Come then. Two go better than one against five hundred."

"Let me bury my pretty dead and I am yours, Messire."

"Ah, I will help you there if I may," Prosper replied.

They dug a shallow grave and laid in it the body of the young girl.

Prosper never saw her face, nor did her husband dare to look again on what he had covered up. Prosper said the prayers; but the other lay on his face on the gra.s.s, and got up tearless. Then they set off.

Five miles below Waisford they swam the river without any trouble from Galors' outposts: a wary canter over turf brought them to the flank of the hill; they climbed it, and from the top could see the Wan valley and what should be the town. It was a heap of stones, scorched and shapeless. The church tower still stood for a mockery, its conical cap of shingles had fallen in, its vane stuck out at an angle. Prosper, whose eyes were good, made out a flag-staff pointing the perpendicular. It had a flag, _Party per pale argent and sable_.

A dun smoke hung over the litter.

"We shall do little good there," said he; "we are some days too late.

We will try Wanmeeting."

Agreed. They fetched a wide detour to the north-west, climbed the long ridge of rock which binds Hauterive to the place of their election, and made way along the overside of it, taking to cover as much as they could. By six o'clock in the evening they were as near as they dared to be until nightfall. As they stood they could see the ridge rear its ragged head to watch over the cleft where-through the two Wans race to be free. Upon the slope of this bluff was the town itself, a walled town the colour of the bare rock, with towers and belfries. The westering sun threw the whole into warmth and mellow light.

"The saltire still floats," cried Prosper; "we are not too late for this time."

They were let in at dusk by the Martin Gate, not without some parley.

The only word Prosper would give had been, "Death to Galors de Born."

This did not happen to be the right word. Matters were not to be adjusted either by "Life to the Countess," for Prosper did not happen to wish it her.

The High Bailiff and the Jurats argued at some length whether what he had said did not imply the other of necessity.

"If you talk of necessity, gentlemen," finally said the High Bailiff, "in my advice it is written that our necessity is too fine for dialectic. Our present need is to kill the common enemy. Here is a gentleman who asks for no other pleasure. Let him in." And they did.

Prosper was in love at last; but he did not lose his head on that account. It was not his way. The girl he had first pitied, next desired, then respected, then learned, finally adored, was gone. Well, he would find her no doubt. She had but two enemies, Galors and Maulfry; who hunted in couple just now. She might be anywhere in the world, but it was most likely that where she was they were also. If he found them he should find her. That was why, without having any desire to befriend the Countess, who had in his judgment made a fool of herself first and an enemy of him afterwards, he undertook the defences of Wanmeeting.

For it came to that. He found a thin garrison, a pompous bailiff, wordy and precise, headboroughs without heads, and a panic-stricken horde of shopkeepers with things to lose, who spent the day in crying "Danger," and the night in drinking beer. Outside, somewhere, was an enemy who might be a rascal, but was certainly a man. Professional honour was touched on a raw. Since he was in, in G.o.d's name let him do something. After a day spent in observing the manners and customs of Wanmeeting in a state of semi-siege, he got very precise ideas of what they were likely to be in a whole one. He called on the High Bailiff and spoke his mind.

"Bailiff," he said very quietly, "your defences are not good, but they are too good to defend nothing. I am sorry I cannot put your citizens at a higher figure. There does not seem to me to be a man among them.

They chatter like pies, they drink like fishes, they herd like sheep, they scream like gulls. They love their wives and children, but so do rabbits; they are snug at home, but so are pigs in a stye; they say many prayers, they give alms to the poor. But no prayers will ever stay Galors, and the alms your people want I spell with an 'r.' I know Master Galors, and he me. If he comes here the town will be carried, the men hanged, the women ravished, and I shall be killed like a rat in a drain. Now I set little store by my life, but I and the man I have brought with me intend to die in the open. Do what you choose, but understand that unless things alter to my liking, I take myself, my sword, and my head for affairs into the country."

"And who are you, Messire, and what do I know of your head for affairs?" cried the High Bailiff, on his dignity.

"My name is Prosper le Gai, at your service," the youth replied; "and as for my head, it becomes me not to speak."

"If you will not speak of it, why are you here?" asked the High Bailiff, at the mercy of his logic.

"I am here, sir, for the purpose of killing Dom Galors de Born."

"You speak very confidently, young gentleman."