CHAPTER XI
CONCERNING A MAID AND A SURCOAT
“NAY, Messire Long-Face, you may not shun our company this time as heretofore. For I have made ready a pudding of dates against your coming, and Master Will hath fetched some rare wine and, what is more, hath saved some of it.”
So saying, Ellen took Robert's sword-belt and shield and pushed a chair forward to the table where supper was spread.
“Aye,” growled the archer. “Wash, wipe, sit, eat, drink, wipe and depart. 's blood, tall brother, dost never loosen thy belt and stretch thy legs under table like a Christian?”
He noticed that the girl's fingers trembled when she placed food and wine before the knight and saw the ominous breaks made in the steel rings where arrows had struck his haburgeon. Ellen had sent away the slaves who had been placed in the house, for she wished none but herself to tend Father Evagrius. And the priest lay on a mattress in another room. The heat of the day had wearied him, and he had declined to join them.
Robert watched her trip back and forth to clear the table and minister to the priest, and the lines of weariness fell away from his eyes. In truth had he longed for this sight of the maid of Ibelin, and several times had turned aside from his riding in Bokhara to pass through the street and listen for sound of her voice lifted in song.
And now he racked his brain for words, wishful that he had been raised in the court where apt speeches were to be learned. He looked expectantly at Will Bunsley, but the glib tongue of the yeoman was still, for a marvel. Meanwhile Ellen settled down on a cushion under a great candle and began to embroider a pattern on a fair sheet of linen stretched upon a small frame.
Her dark head was bent over her task. In this way had she whiled away the long hours of loneliness. Not once did she raise her eyes to the knight.
“Damoiselle!”
Robert flushed and lowered his voice, for he had spoken as if addressing a squadron of men-at-arms.
“Prithee—my thanks for—the supper.”
The long locks hid Ellen's face as she made answer quickly.
“Messire, my thanks for—saving my life.”
“How? In sooth”
“Indeed Master Will hath told me how you won us from the hands of the wazir.”
“Nay”
“And Father Evagrius did relate how you took his part in the tower dungeon.”
“And sent the wizarder a-packing from the courtyard before vespers,” observed the archer with a nod.
“And so,” went on the girl, “my lord, you have repaid me in most courteous wise for—the despite I put upon you. Once, my lord, I struck you. They tell me you are ever minded to pay a debt and to hold good your word. So do we render you—thanks!”
Suddenly Robert smiled, and when he smiled the tight, downcurving lips grew merry.
“I cry quittance, damoiselle. 'Twas a fair good buffet you dealt me at our meeting, and a just one. Nay, child, hast forgotten our second meeting, beyond the Gates, by the desert sea? Your hand was gentle then—to a churl.”
Ellen bent over her embroidery, and her fingers tangled in the thread. For when Robert had lain ill with fever she had often taken his head upon her knee and stroked his forehead until he slept. She wondered how much he remembered, and, observing with a swift, sidelong glance that he still smiled, she waxed haughty.
“My lord, I am no child. Next Martinmas I will be seventeen.”
“My lady,” Robert laughed, “I am no lord. Nay, you have spoiled the pattern. What is it?”
She untangled the thread and went to work anew, and he saw that she was embroidering a crimson cross upon a white background.
“Father Evagrius did ask it of me.”
“A surcoat? Then the patriarch grows stronger?”
“He doth not mend.”
She glanced anxiously toward the door of the other room.
“It was his wish that I make it for you.”
Robert thought there was slight chance of his donning the garments of a knight again—or of leaving Bokhara alive. And what chance had the girl?
“See—'tis nearly finished.”
She tilted the frame and surveyed it critically.
“The one you wore was sadly stained.”
“'Tis a fair gift,” he said, surprized that the girl should remember details of this meeting six months ago.
And he listened while she talked lightly of the strange slaves of Bokhara, the pretty garden and the music that she heard upon the river near at hand. Will, she said, had seldom been absent from the house; servants of the priests had brought her all she could wish of fruits and sweetmeats.
“And Will must not leave this place to seek the wall again,” responded Robert gravely. “I give you in his charge.”
“Nay, tall brother,” put in the archer, “'twas she that sent me hence, saying—
“'Hie thee to my lord, and stand at his back; for he hath many foes, and if harm came to him'”
“Why, our case would e'en be a hard one,” interrupted Ellen swiftly.
Will shook his head doggedly.
“By all the saints, thy words were otherwise. I mind”
“Be still!”
The girl's eyes flashed, and the work on the embroidery ceased altogether.
“I sent you for tidings of the siege. Will the wall withstand assault, Sir Robert?”
“We will hold it. And the foe must withdraw in three days.”
Will Bunsley scratched his head.
“Now verily, and by thy leave, lord brother, thou didst hold forth contrariwise upon the rampart. Thou didst swear in good broad words that the Sooltan's men were overconfident, and the Mungals—or howsomever they be called—were brewing trickery for our quaffing”
Robert reached out his foot under the table and, finding the yeoman's understanding too dense to heed a kick, frowned warningly.
“You have quaffed too many cups of Bokharian brewing to remember aught aright, Master Will.”
“Nay, by St. Dunstan”
“Curb thy tongue, rogue, and cool thy head in the garden for a while.”
The archer went out, muttering under his breath, and Ellen laughed merrily.
“You would make light of our peril, Sir Robert. But you can not silence your eyes, and they were troubled.”
She looked at him frankly.
“Will hath described the barbarians, and it would seem they fight best upon their horses. If I were leader of the besiegers I would take your wall upon the flank. I have seen a point where horsemen could enter a score abreast without dismounting or unbarring a gate.”
Robert did not smile.
“If so—but where?”
“Where you and I entered Bokhara—” she paused to stitch the last thread in the cross—“the foe could swim their horses upon the river through the water gate.”
“A chain hath been stretched across and a barrier made against boats, yet the thought is a good one. How came you to hit upon it?”'
“When I was a child, messire, my father held command in the stronghold of Carcassonne for the queen, and I remember a siege and seeing the foemen swim their chargers across the moat.”
She glanced at his hand where the great sapphire of the Shah's ring gleamed.
“Is that the talisman bestowed by the paynim king?”
“Lightly given.”
Robert turned it on his finger, and lifted his head with sudden purpose.
“We have shared peril, you and I, and you have a heart for true words. Our chance of winning free from Bokhara with our lives is slight.”
The brown eyes searched his without a trace of fear.
“Ah, let the archer attend you, messire. If—if harm befall you he should seek me out, for I would then have need of one arrow from his bow.”
“You would have need of it.”
Robert forced himself to speak coldly. Beholding her pride and her trust in him, he clenched his hands and strode the length of the chamber, to pause beside her.
“Nay, I am a wildling and worthless—as the peers of Palestine did maintain,” he went on. “Hither came I to loot gold and gear and raise myself to a high place, and this day I plotted how to profit by the treachery of the wazir to his master. When I cast aside my spurs I put aside my vows and I have mocked the prayers of good Evagrius—thinking to drown memory of the past in a sea of blood. And this thing is true.”
She began to loosen the long surcoat from the embroidery frame so that he could not see her face, and she made answer softly.
“Among the peers of Palestine—aye and France—who hath done the deeds of the Longsword? Is life, forsooth, such a little thing that we must spend our years in kitchen and hall, making love to some and quarreling with others?”
Robert frowned down at her, wondering, for this was a maid of many surprizes.
“In my father's castle, messire, were many who painted their shields brightly and made a song of each slight dent won in the pleasant jousts. Faith, they tested their skill at romaunts and gestes in the banquet-hall, and they were bold in the hunt—and the war of words.”
She smiled wistfully.
“My father was otherwise, and many a time did he tell me of the brave days of Richard of England. When he died I took the cross, being heavy with grief, and now am I in a paynim hold, long leagues from Jerusalem.”
She stood up, tossing back her dark hair.
“I would not have it otherwise. For now, messire, perchance, I share the last hours of a brave knight and true.”
“O maid,” Robert replied gruffly, being stirred by her bold words, “this is no fit place for a child of d'Ibelin to end her days.”
“Then forsooth and verily,” she cried, her mood changing lightly, “let us adventure forth and win us honor. Nay, the troubadours shall yet make a tale of us, and we will yet see Jerusalem. Master Will hath planned a plan for me whereby I may go forth when the time comes. 'Tis but a makeshift of a plan, and yet”
Ellen turned and disappeared into her sleeping-chamber and emerged with her arms full of garments.
“—and yet 'twill make a man of a maid.”
Her dark tresses were hidden by a light helmet of silvered steel, and a cotton drop that fell to her boyish shoulders.
“Well for me,” she said gravely, “the Moslems of this quarter are slender men, for Will hath looted shamefully.”
She held out a finely wrought haburgeon of delicate chain mail with a silk girdle, and wide damask pantaloons with embroidered slippers, and—smiling merrily—a long khalat of the richest purple.
“Ha, Master Robert,” quoth the bowman, who had come in when he heard his name called, “she hath the bearing of a likely esquire-at-arms and a temper to boot. I have found for her a small shield and a bow suitable for her hand”
“Yah khawand,” interrupted Ellen blithely, “wilt take me for a companion upon your road—your road of peril?”
“Aye, verily,” smiled the knight. “Yet no khawand am I, for that is 'lord and master.'”
“Lord and master,” she whispered; and there was no mockery in her eager eyes.
“Harken,” said Robert suddenly.
A sound as of a multitude of bees came through the open embrasures. The two men glanced at each other. To their trained ears the distant hum resolved itself into the mutter of kettle-drums and the clashing of cymbals mingled with the uproar of human voices. Robert picked up his sword-belt and helm.
“That would be a bruit upon the wall.”
Swiftly he girdled on the long simitar he had chosen for lack of a better weapon of the size and weight to which he was accustomed. Ellen dropped her belongings and caught up the white surcoat.
“Wear this, my lord, for the sake of—of Evagrius, who hath blessed it.”
Skilfully she slipped off the khalat that covered his mail and thrust the mantle over his shoulders, fastening his belt upon the outside. As he strode toward the garden he gripped her hand, and she skipped beside him to the outer gate.
“Fare you well—the good angels fight at your side!”
“Brave heart!” cried the knight. “Keep hidden until I return.”
The alley door flew open, and a bearded Kankali peered within and saluted Robert as Will ran up with the saddled charger.
“Will the lord grant his servant permission”
“Speak!”
“The barbarians have bridged the gap between the wall and the causeway. Aye, they have launched a storm, and Allah hath caused a battle to be.”
Heedless of Robert's last advice, Ellen watched him ride away from the gate and waved farewell as he reached the turn in the alley.
“A fine mark hath thy mantle made of him,” grumbled the archer, who was disappointed at being left behind. “Ah, for the shafts of the foe— Why, lass—why, as St. Dunstan hears me, thou art weeping!”