The Fool (Bailey)/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
THE FIRE
IT was the next day and the Queen was walking on the walls when Roger Mortimer came up behind her. How should their tale be told now? Nor he nor she could think that in what they did there was wrong: both were well assured that to them intolerable wrong was done. Yet so the world goes that you will despise them heart and head. And they well believed that they struck for the right and at God's command. How could such people and such deeds now be?
That Queen Eleanor was a woman shrewd and of a great will none denies. I hold it a vulgar error to write Roger Mortimer off as a ballad-monger's villain. He had something more in him than passion. Or if you please less. But the tale must hurry or it is not true.
The Queen stood there looking out over the vale of Severn, and Roger Mortimer came beside her.
"You watch like a princess in prison, my Queen."
She did not turn nor speak, she stood like a woman of stone.
"Where is the King, madam?"
Then she flung round upon him. "Death of God, do you tempt me?" she cried.
"Not I, by the rood. I bid you think of your honour."
She laughed. "A word, man, a word. What honour have I left? Naught I am and less than naught."
"You have said and it is your shame that you say."
"You are a bold man, Roger Mortimer."
"And when will you be bold, madame?"
Her hand clutched at the battlements till the knuckles stood out. She commanded herself. "Speak man, speak," she said in a low voice. "What is in your heart?"
"I said, where is the King, madame?"
"Blood of God, man, I know not nor care. Chaffering with this scullion or that."
"It is like enough. But in a little while he will be with a scullion's wench. He has marked one down as your stoat marks down a coney. Each creature does after his kind, Eleanor, and such is he. He spends himself for a broken man's daughter and day by day seeks her out. A blowsy milkmaid has him. And you—nay what are you?"
"Are you true, Roger?"
"I lie to no man nor for no woman's sake. Are you true, Eleanor?"
"You dare" she turned on him.
"Aye, madame, I dare all for your honour. And what dare you? By the bones of the Conqueror we have borne enough from this scullion's King. There is no lord in all the land that is not wronged by him. And you that made him great most foully wronged. I say it is the hour to strike."
"Show me this girl."
He laughed. "Girl and man too. Coney and stoat. I swear to you I will snatch them up and bear them off to my hold in Bridgenorth if you will give me your banner to bear. Come! All the marches will rise for me and if we strike under the Queen's banner the lords of the north will join hands with us and we will make an end of this King of scullions and Eleanor shall be the lady of England. Do you dare?"
She grasped at his hand. "Fail not you."
"Faith of God not I. I will have him caged this night."
She laughed. "And I—I will speak with him in his cage."
"Ride out before the sun sets. He will be hungry for you."
On that morning, Izan, having set in order her dairy and her little household, left her father in a chair in the sun with arrows to plume and his old hound at his knee and wandered away to the copse that was her shrine. She had no thought of her lord's coming then, for she had schooled herself to count upon nothing from him, twice he would come and seem to live for it, then fail her thrice. But she loved to be in the place and remember, poor child, and dream.
But on this morning the King broke loose from his Chancellor's burden of tasks betimes and left that shrewd man wondering. "God guide you, brother, you walk like a man in his sleep," said Bran, making way for him on the stair.
"Say like one who walks in the dark, good friend," Becket said. "Can you give me light?"
But Bran made a miserable face and shook his head and went on groping.
So on this morning the King came to Izan where she sat in the shadow of the hazels. She started as she saw him and the cowslips fell from her lap. She stood and clasped her hands, her eyes large and dark in a white face. He rushed upon her, the short burly man, red and laughing, and she was lost in his arms. But then he kissed her gently enough and held her away to look at her. "Why child, what is it?"
"I do not know, I do not know," she trembled. "It is strange and terrible."
"There is fear in you. God's body, Izan, you must not fear."
"There is no fear," she said quietly. "But I—I cannot see."
"Make me welcome, my heart."
"Ah welcome, welcome," she put her little hands on his breast, "if it is well for you."
"Child—" he kissed her hands—"you are sweet life in my veins."
"You are all power, you charge upon me and carry me off and I know nothing but you. I am to serve you, my lord."
"I come to you, I need you, I seek you like clean air, like freedom to a man who has broke prison. You are sun and wind and running water and flowers."
"My lord, my lord and my King," she breathed.
And then out of the copse men-at-arms broke upon them. The King was borne down before he could strike and they fell on him and bound him. He shouted and the woods rang to it and they filled his mouth with a cloth. They tied him on his horse and rode away with him, and Izan was flung across their captain's saddle-bow.
You may guess how the blood pumped in that bull neck, how he gnawed at the gag and foamed and set his muscles against the creaking cords till his doublet was wet from bleeding flesh. The men who had mocked him began to look at him with some- thing like fear. "There is a devil in that one. God save us, they are of the devil's own seed, those Angevins. Nay, but no man can live in such a madness as that. What if he die upon our hands?" So they talked and Henry heard nothing, knew nothing but his own passion.
When he rode out from Shrewsbury in the morning there was one who marked him far off beyond the river, one who saw the Queen with Roger Mortimer on the walls. Bran his fool, and of all that he saw Bran liked nothing. So in a while groaning he saddled his mule. "Into the dark, Virgil," quoth he, "into the dark. Naught in the dark but ghosts I see, oh Lady St. Mary they frighten me, from ghosts of the past I might win free, but I quail at the ghosts of what is to be. Nenny, nenny, poor Bran is a fool. There is no past nor time to come. Now is all. What hath been is naught and hath no power over what shall come, if what now is is wisely done and well. That is the faith for man. Now is all, oh Bran my brother. But you are no man. You have no life. You are a dreamer and a dream. You are a word in the air, you are a thought in the mind, you are a hope in the heart. You come and go and naught is done. Na, na, God have mercy, brother, but what should I do, I? If I could make the man to my pleasure, naught should fall him but grief beyond measure. What can I give him with all my care but a burden all too heavy to bear? Tell him his wife hates him for what is best in him, hath a mind to wrong him for what he does right, bid him cherish her who will have no cherishing—oh, Bran my brother, work for a fool."
But he rode on. He had marked well the way the King went, and not that day first. He guessed, I suppose, to what it led. He rode easily, his reins on the mule's neck, having no purpose to come on the King unawares or spy. And so while he was still far off the copse he saw that company of men-at-arms sweep across a hill-side, riding south, and the King among them bound. They wore blue upon yellow, the colours of Mortimer's band of Flemish spears.
He turned and the mule Virgil felt whip and heel.
Thomas Becket the Chancellor, working on the roll of the new sheriffs with clerks busy all about him, was startled by a red and breathless fool. "Why goodman Bran, what hounds have hunted you?" he laughed.
"Hark in your ear, brother," Bran gasped.
"Get you gone, children. I hear confession," and as the clerks fled Becket came to him. "Now man, what is the marrow of it?"
"The King is taken, brother," Bran said and steadied himself on Becket's arm. "I saw him among Roger Mortimer's Flemings. Bound he was and they rode southward. He is an hour away."
Becket put him off and he swayed to the window and leaned upon the sill breathing deep. Becket clapped his hands and the clerks scurried in again. "Walter, go you to Sir Richard de Lucy: I greet him and it is the King's need that he sound to horse. Swift, man. Antony, to Sir Roger and bid him muster every spear and his trustiest squire must ride hard to Ludlow to my Lord of Leicester: the King's good greeting to him and the word is that his power come swift to Bridgenorth. My horse at the gate, Francis. Bid Peter bring me my harness." He clapped his hand on Bran's shoulder. "Courage, brother. This wolf hath long been marked and all is ready for his hunting. We have a pack to lay on Master Mortimer that shall pull him down in the first gallop."
Bran turned: "God have mercy, brother: a man might say you were glad of your lord's peril."
"Say not you so. He is dearer to me than brother. I know our Roger a weak man in grain. He will dare but not do. The King shall live out his days for Roger. God is my trust, I know he shall be safe. But Roger hath troubled the land too long. Now may we strike and strike home."
"Yea, yea. It is a wise Thomas. Swift it thinks and clear. Yet to the heart of things it sees not."
"What is the heart then?"
"See where she goes, madame Queen." He pointed out to the courtyard where Eleanor stood with a squire of her household cloaked for the saddle.
"God's body, she would ride to Bridgenorth," Becket cried.
"You have said, brother. There is the sad heart of all."
Becket leaned from the window and shouted: "Warders, ho warders! Down portcullis! "From the gate tower an arm was raised in answer. Slowly the iron bars slid down into the open archway and clashed upon the stones.
Bccket turned and cast off his gown and went into the inner room where his squires waited with helmet and coat of mail. So clad like a knight he went down to the courtyard. The Queen was in the saddle. "Death of God, sirrah, what folly is this?" she cried. "When was your clerkship dubbed knight? Who made you lord of our castle?"
"Lady Eleanor, none born of woman rides out of Shrewsbury this day but by the King's own order."
"I go riding, rogue."
"It cannot be. You go no whither, lady."
"You—you are to hold me at your will?"
"I dare not risk you, lady. Here are you safe. Without these walls you go upon you know not what. There be evil men abroad."
"Fie, you prate like the coward clerk you are. Where is your King then?"
"Nay, if the Queen knows not who am I to know? This only I know, that I do his will. When the King comes again let him judge if I have done you wrong."
She cried out an oath at him. "Rogue, rogue, you threaten me?"
"With what then?" And she was silent glaring at him. He bowed to her. "I go upon the King's business, lady," and he strode away.