The Outlaw of Torn Part 23

But the unhappy affair had taught him one thing for certain: to know without question what love was, and that the memory of Bertrade de Montfort's lips would always be more to him than all the allurements possessed by the balance of the women of the world, no matter how charming, or how beautiful.

Another thing, a painful thing he had learned from it, too, that the att.i.tude of Joan de Tany, daughter of an old and n.o.ble house, was but the att.i.tude which the Outlaw of Torn must expect from any good woman of her cla.s.s; what he must expect from Bertrade de Montfort when she learned that Roger de Conde was Norman of Torn.

The outlaw had scarce pa.s.sed out of sight upon the road to Derby ere the girl, who still stood in an embrasure of the south tower, gazing with strangely drawn, sad face up the road which had swallowed him, saw a body of soldiers galloping rapidly toward Tany from the south.

The King's banner waved above their heads, and intuitively, Joan de Tany knew for whom they sought at her father's castle. Quickly she hastened to the outer barbican that it might be she who answered their hail rather than one of the men-at-arms on watch there.

She had scarcely reached the ramparts of the outer gate ere the King's men drew rein before the castle.

In reply to their hail, Joan de Tany asked their mission.

"We seek the outlaw, Norman of Torn, who hides now within this castle,"

replied the officer.

"There be no outlaw here," replied the girl, "but, if you wish, you may enter with half a dozen men and search the castle."

This the officer did and, when he had a.s.sured himself that Norman of Torn was not within, an hour had pa.s.sed, and Joan de Tany felt certain that the Outlaw of Torn was too far ahead to be caught by the King's men; so she said:

"There was one here just before you came who called himself though by another name than Norman of Torn. Possibly it is he ye seek."

"Which way rode he?" cried the officer.

"Straight toward the west by the middle road," lied Joan de Tany. And, as the officer hurried from the castle and, with his men at his back, galloped furiously away toward the west, the girl sank down upon a bench, pressing her little hands to her throbbing temples.

Then she opened the packet which Norman of Torn had handed her, and within found two others. In one of these was a beautiful jeweled locket, and on the outside were the initials JT, and on the inside the initials NT; in the other was a golden hair ornament set with precious stones, and about it was wound a strand of her own silken tresses.

She looked long at the little trinkets and then, pressing them against her lips, she threw herself face down upon an oaken bench, her lithe young form racked with sobs.

She was indeed but a little girl chained by the inexorable bonds of caste to a false ideal. Birth and station spelled honor to her, and honor, to the daughter of an English n.o.ble, was a mightier force even than love.

That Norman of Torn was an outlaw she might have forgiven, but that he was, according to report, a low fellow of no birth placed an impa.s.sable barrier between them.

For hours the girl lay sobbing upon the bench, whilst within her raged the mighty battle of the heart against the head.

Thus her mother found her, and kneeling beside her, and with her arms about the girl's neck, tried to soothe her and to learn the cause of her sorrow. Finally it came, poured from the flood gates of a sorrowing heart; that wave of bitter misery and hopelessness which not even a mother's love could check.

"Joan, my dear daughter," cried Lady de Tany, "I sorrow with thee that thy love has been cast upon so bleak and impossible a sh.o.r.e. But it be better that thou hast learnt the truth ere it were too late; for, take my word upon it, Joan, the bitter humiliation such an alliance must needs have brought upon thee and thy father's house would soon have cooled thy love; nor could his have survived the sneers and affronts even the menials would have put upon him."

"Oh, mother, but I love him so," moaned the girl. "I did not know how much until he had gone, and the King's officer had come to search for him, and then the thought that all the power of a great throne and the mightiest houses of an entire kingdom were turned in hatred against him raised the hot blood of anger within me and the knowledge of my love surged through all my being. Mother, thou canst not know the honor, and the bravery, and the chivalry of the man as I do. Not since Arthur of Silures kept his round table hath ridden forth upon English soil so true a knight as Norman of Torn.

"Couldst thou but have seen him fight, my mother, and witnessed the honor of his treatment of thy daughter, and heard the tone of dignified respect in which he spoke of women thou wouldst have loved him, too, and felt that outlaw though he be, he is still more a gentleman than nine-tenths the n.o.bles of England."

"But his birth, my daughter!" argued the Lady de Tany. "Some even say that the gall marks of his bra.s.s collar still showeth upon his neck, and others that he knoweth not himself the name of his own father, nor had he any mother."

Ah, but this was the mighty argument! Naught could the girl say to justify so heinous a crime as low birth. What a man did in those rough cruel days might be forgotten and forgiven but the sins of his mother or his grandfather in not being of n.o.ble blood, no matter howsoever wickedly attained, he might never overcome or live down.

Torn by conflicting emotions, the poor girl dragged herself to her own apartment and there upon a restless, sleepless couch, beset by wild, impossible hopes, and vain, torturing regrets, she fought out the long, bitter night; until toward morning she solved the problem of her misery in the only way that seemed possible to her poor, tired, bleeding, little heart. When the rising sun shone through the narrow window, it found Joan de Tany at peace with all about her; the carved golden hilt of the toy that had hung at her girdle protruded from her breast, and a thin line of crimson ran across the snowy skin to a little pool upon the sheet beneath her.

And so the cruel hand of a mighty revenge had reached out to crush another innocent victim.

CHAPTER XV

When word of the death of Joan de Tany reached Torn, no man could tell from outward appearance the depth of the suffering which the sad intelligence wrought on the master of Torn.

All that they who followed him knew was that certain unusual orders were issued, and that that same night, the ten companies rode south toward Ess.e.x without other halt than for necessary food and water for man and beast.

When the body of Joan de Tany rode forth from her father's castle to the church at Colchester, and again as it was brought back to its final resting place in the castle's crypt, a thousand strange and silent knights, black draped, upon horses trapped in black, rode slowly behind the bier.

Silently they had come in the night preceding the funeral, and as silently, they slipped away northward into the falling shadows of the following night.

No word had pa.s.sed between those of the castle and the great troop of sable-clad warriors, but all within knew that the mighty Outlaw of Torn had come to pay homage to the memory of the daughter of De Tany, and all but the grieving mother wondered at the strangeness of the act.

As the horde of Torn approached their Derby stronghold, their young leader turned the command over to Red Shandy and dismounted at the door of Father Claude's cottage.

"I am tired, Father," said the outlaw as he threw himself upon his accustomed bench. "Naught but sorrow and death follow in my footsteps. I and all my acts be accurst, and upon those I love, the blight falleth."

"Alter thy ways, my son; follow my advice ere it be too late. Seek out a new and better life in another country and carve thy future into the semblance of glory and honor."

"Would that I might, my friend," answered Norman of Torn. "But hast thou thought on the consequences which surely would follow should I thus remove both heart and head from the thing that I have built?

"What suppose thou would result were Norman of Torn to turn his great band of cut-throats, leaderless, upon England? Hast thought on't, Father?

"Wouldst thou draw a single breath in security if thou knew Edwild the Serf were ranging unchecked through Derby? Edwild, whose father was torn limb from limb upon the rack because he would not confess to killing a buck in the new forest, a buck which fell before the arrow of another man; Edwild, whose mother was burned for witchcraft by Holy Church.

"And Horsan the Dane, Father. How thinkest thou the safety of the roads would be for either rich or poor an I turned Horsan the Dane loose upon ye?

"And Pensilo, the Spanish Don! A great captain, but a man absolutely without bowels of compa.s.sion. When first he joined us and saw our mark upon the foreheads of our dead, wishing to out-Herod Herod, he marked the living which fell into his hands with a red hot iron, branding a great P upon each cheek and burning out the right eye completely.

Wouldst like to feel, Father, that Don Piedro Castro y Pensilo ranged free through forest and hill of England?

"And Red Shandy, and the two Florys, and Peter the Hermit, and One Eye Kanty, and Gropello, and Campanee, and Cobarth, and Mandecote, and the thousand others, each with a special hatred for some particular cla.s.s or individual, and all filled with the l.u.s.t of blood and rapine and loot.

"No, Father, I may not go yet, for the England I have been taught to hate, I have learned to love, and I have it not in my heart to turn loose upon her fair breast the beasts of h.e.l.l who know no law or order or decency other than that which I enforce."

As Norman of Torn ceased speaking, the priest sat silent for many minutes.

"Thou hast indeed a grave responsibility, my son," he said at last.

"Thou canst not well go unless thou takest thy horde with thee out of England, but even that may be possible; who knows other than G.o.d?"

"For my part," laughed the outlaw, "I be willing to leave it in His hands; which seems to be the way with Christians. When one would shirk a responsibility, or explain an error, lo, one shoulders it upon the Lord."

"I fear, my son," said the priest, "that what seed of reverence I have attempted to plant within thy breast hath borne poor fruit."

"That dependeth upon the viewpoint, Father; as I take not the Lord into partnership in my successes it seemeth to me to be but of a mean and poor spirit to saddle my sorrows and perplexities upon Him. I may be wrong, for I am ill-versed in religious matters, but my conception of G.o.d and scapegoat be not that they are synonymous."

"Religion, my son, be a bootless subject for argument between friends,"

replied the priest, "and further, there be that nearer my heart just now which I would ask thee. I may offend, but thou know I do not mean to.