The Secret Orchard

by Warwick Deeping

 

THE SECRET ORCHARD

By WARWICK DEEPING

Illustrated by Allan Stewart

RICHARD SKELTON rode armed, for the Black Death was abroad, and the Black Death meant hunger and despair in the forest, and the madness of men who had become as wild beasts.

Yet it was Death in a green season, and a man might marvel at the ways of God. The great oaks were budding out into bronze and gold, and the green shimmer of beech leaves had wiped out the purple winter gloom. At sunset birds sang against a yellow sky. Above the brown wreckage of last year's leaves a thousand flowers were blooming.

All through the day, on the forest road, Skelton had heard the cuckoo calling, a strange voice in the hush of the woods. Birds sang their spring song, and yet Death walked there in the green alleys and sat beside the brown water of the forest streams. Nor was Death here a noble figure, but a lean, snarling, starved lousel, ready to stab and to rob through sheer hunger.

Skelton had a broken arrow hanging in a fold of his green surcoat. It had been loosed at him that morning from behind a tree, and had snapped against his harness, and Skelton had left it there for luck. He rode with basinet on head, his long spear over his shoulder. The bay horse he rode had its harness of red leather studded with bosses of burnished steel.

"Come now," said he to himself, "may Our Lady confound that rogue of a hedge priest! What was it—right or left by the three thorns? Send me to Mount Carmel, but I have forgotten!"

His brown face looked grave and a little grim. The forest was not merciful to strangers, even when a haughty and adventurous spirit looked at life out of shrewd, steel-bright eyes.

"At the stone cross by the three thorns on the heath? Yes, to be sure. And I gave the lousel a groat! 'Pax tecum, lording. A silver groat for a brown pocket.' And then someone loosed that arrow!"

He frowned a young man's frown, remembering the harsh voice of the strolling priest, and the quick, red-eyed glances that the fellow had shot at him from under his brown cowl. Here was the heath, sure enough, rising in rusty purple and green out of the deeper murk of the woods. Great white clouds came out of the south, and northwards before him he saw the stone cross and the three wind-blown thorns outlined against the blue of the sky-line. The road forked by the three thorns.

Mounting the hill, he saw a figure in blue seated at the foot of the stone cross. The man sat huddled up as though asleep, his hood drawn forward over his face. Beside him lay a lute, a leather wallet, and a stout staff. The sunlight, streaming from behind two cloud masses, fell full upon the heath, but the thorn trees threw three patches of ragged shadow, and one of the shadow patches covered the man by the cross.

"Hallo, there!"

The man in blue still slept. Skelton could see the black peak of a pointed beard jutting out under the hood. The man's hands were clenched upon his girdle. There was something bleak and stiff in the way his legs lay thrust out from under the blue cloak.

"Wake up, friend, wake up!"

Skelton swung his spear and prodded the figure in the ribs. The man did not stir. Skelton's mouth tightened and his brows came closer together. Catching the edge of the hood on his spear-point, he lifted it up and back, and then sat staring at the dead man's face. It was a parched, grey mask, all blue about the mouth and eyes. The nostrils sneered, the lips were drawn back over the teeth. Skelton crossed himself and backed his horse.

"Poor rogue! Half starved even in running away, and then the Black Death caught him. He'll sing no more romances. He is dead, with Tristram and Iseult."

Skelton sat staring, puzzled in the midst of his pity.

"Ah, my friend, we cannot help each other, unless I put up a few prayers. To the right or to the left? Which shall it be?"

He chose the right, and left the dead man sneering at the foot of the cross.

The road tricked Skelton as only a forest road can trick a stranger, luring him some six miles from the three thorns, only to branch into three vague and dubious tracks. Wooded hill hung beyond wooded hill, the ashen grey trunks of the beeches rising from a blue and bronze floor of dead leaves and wild hyacinths. A great hush held, yet Skelton could fancy that he heard a murmur like the sound heard in a hollow shell.

Sudden and from a great distance came a strange cry—a thin, small sound in the vastness of the forest. Skelton's horse pricked up his ears and shivered. The cry held a moment, and then broke abruptly, as though a hand had been clapped over the wailing mouth. The horse shivered and fidgeted. Skelton's face looked sharper and more white in the shadows. He chose the middle path and rode on.

The leafage was young as yet, and the forest clear of underwood. Skelton, glancing from right to left, looked along aisle after aisle of trees, all of them utterly alike, each ending where the black trunks converged and met in the distance. Sunlight glimmered through, tracing a network of shadows on the grass, and giving here and there a mysterious sense of movement. Twice Skelton reined in, ready to swear that he had seen figures flitting from tree to tree. But the vast hush held. He felt to find that his sword was loose in its scabbard, and swung his shield forward on the leather loop that slung it round his neck.

Then, like the breaking of clouds in a wet and windy sky, the forest thinned before him and fell away into a haze of golden light. A gleam of water came up out of the deeps of a narrow valley. Skelton found himself on the edge of the woodland, looking down over a stretch of yellow-flowered gorse.

Below him lay a mere, and in the midst of it an island. He could see the reflected shapes of the white clouds moving over the water, and the flakes of blue sky in between, while under the banks the water lay black is jet. The island itself might have been a May Day garland afloat upon the water. It was a mass of fruit blossom, rose and white, piled upon the branches of a hundred trees.

Skelton shaded his eyes with his hand. The gable end of a house, dark and shaggy with thatch, discovered itself in the thick of the island orchard. Moreover, he saw a wooden landing-stage, with a barge moored there, where kingcups studded the banks with gold, and flags thrust their green swords up out of the water.

"H'm!" said he. "No smoke is rising. Has death been there? And that cry I heard?"

Skelton's horse threw up his head and shivered.

"Sancta Maria, Sancta Maria!"

Skelton was well-nigh as startled as his horse. The shrill, wild voice rose from the secret orchard yonder, carrying the two hundred paces between the island and the forest's edge. The words were so distinct that Skelton thought of witchery or magic.

"A new cry, and the voice of a girl! By the king's honour, am I afraid? And of what?"

The horse still shivered, and Skelton scanned this secret hollow hidden away in the thick of the forest. A dogged and adventurous look came into his eyes.

He spoke to the horse. "Gaillard, let us see what we can find yonder."

He rode down to the water's edge, noticing the double ropes that ran from a post on the bank to the barge on the further side. A wooden palisade came into view, and beyond it the roof shingles and louvre of a hall.

Skelton dismounted, looped Gaillard's bridle over his spear, and thrust the truncheon into the ground. The ferry ropes ran through a pulley-block, and, by drawing on one of them, Skelton found that he could bring the barge across. It came sliding towards the bank, ripples running from its blunt black prow, and, climbing in, he kept the wet rope moving, and so ferried over to the island.

Skelton stood listening, glancing right and left into the alleys of the orchard. The island and the house half hidden by fruit blossom was so silent that Skelton felt a certain eeriness stealing towards him like a shadow. Ahead of him rose the palisade, an open gate showing the paving-stones of a courtyard. He passed through, and swerved swiftly to one side from a huge hound that lay crouching within the gate, its muzzle between its paws. Skelton's sword came out against the dog's spring. But nothing happened; the beast did not stir. Like the man under the cross by the three thorns, it was dead.

Skelton's eyes fell into a hard stare. He turned slowly on one heel, scanning the courtyard and the silent house like a man who is fearful of being taken unawares. Straight before him yawned a timber porch, the thatch coming down within three feet of the ground, the hollow within dark as the hollow of a cave. Skelton crossed the court, and had one foot inside the porch before he stiffened and recoiled against one of the massive corner-posts.

In a recessed seat sat the figure of an old man—an old man with a white beard and a clay-coloured face. The filmy eyes stared into nothingness. One lean hand held a crust of bread.

Skelton drew his breath sharply, and his face looked pinched.

"Mother of Heaven, is the whole world dead?"

A blank horror of the place seized him and sent him swinging back across the court with a clatter of steel. The Black Death had been here, and pestilence might be in his nostrils. His eyes fell on the dead hound by the gate. Did dogs die of the Black Death, or was there more than he imagined? He turned with a set face and, frowning, walked back towards the house.

"Richard Skelton, my friend, you are very like a coward. You shall see the end of this before you cry Nunc dimittis."

The door leading from the porch into the hall stood ajar. Skelton could see nothing but the end of a wall hung with green arras, and the carved oak panels of a screen. Recklessness seized him—an impetuous desire to see all that this house contained. Sword on shoulder, he pushed across the threshold, turned, and stood staring up the hall.

In a great chair on the dais sat a girl clad in a gown of green sarcenet broidered with crimson thread. Her hands hung limply over the lion-headed arms of the chair; her eyes were two dark circles, her mouth open as though to utter a cry. Purple-black hair fell over her shoulders and about a face that was white as milk. Behind the chair rich arras made a cloud of red and gold.

For the moment Skelton thought that the girl, too, was dead, so white, stiff, and still was she. Then one hand raised itself and gripped the arm of the chair. She leant forward, with chin lifted, her eyes the eyes of one who dazedly accepts some prophetic doom.

"You have come! I have waited!"

She spoke in the French tongue, and like no Englishwoman, her voice a mere whisper.

Skelton stared.

"Assuredly, madame, I am here."

"The naked sword! Hasten! Waste no pity! Let it be done quickly!"

A dozen thoughts hastened together through Skelton's mind. "By my honour, she is but a child! Is it madness, or some terror greatly to be feared? What manner of man am I held to be? And this sword, too? Those eyes of hers stare one into stammering." He went forward three steps, and, dropping the point of his sword to the floor, looked at her compassionately with his shrewd grey eyes.

"Madame, if it was God's wisdom that brought me here, I come as a friend."

Her white face strained towards him.

"Sir, do not jest with me. You are my lord's messenger."

"I am no man's messenger."

"But you come to make an end!"

She tottered, put a hand to her throat, and then sank sideways over the arm of the chair. Her hair fell down over her face, leaving her white neck showing.

Skelton put his sword back into its scabbard, gave one glance over his shoulder, and made towards the dais.

"Good saints, a man feels a knife at his back in such a place! Some devil's work a-brewing. What's to be done? Maybe she is dead with fear."

He bent over her, touched the black hair and the white neck, and a sudden awe came over him. This helpless thing lying like a wounded bird! Skelton's eyes softened. He lifted her and carried her out into the courtyard, passing the dead man, who still stared into nothingness.

"T'st! That, and the silence of the place, would be enough to kill. Blue sky and the sunlight on apple blossoms are kinder."

He found a gate leading from the courtyard into the orchard, and laid the girl on the grass under a tree. Her head fell back, showing the white throat, and some of her hair clung to the joints of his arm-braces. The pale mouth, partly open, might have uttered a cry of pain.

Skelton ran back to the hall, found a silver-mounted maple cup on the dais table, and, filling it with water from a pitcher, returned to the orchard. He knelt and sprinkled some of the water on her throat and face.

She opened sudden eyes on him—great brown eyes full of a swimming fear.

"Sir, is it ended?"

She felt her bosom and then looked at her hands as though expecting to see blood. Pity, and something more than pity, seized Skelton and possessed him.

"Come, sister, why look at me with eyes of terror? Drink—here is water."

She had started up, and sat leaning against the trunk of the tree. Skelton held out the cup, but she put out a hand with the gesture of one warding a blow.

"No, not that—it is poisoned!"

"I took it but a moment ago from the pitcher in the hall."

"It is poisoned! Rather would I feel the sword in my heart!"

He looked at her with compassion.

"Madame, I tell you that you speak in riddles. Some great fear is upon you. Take courage. Is a Skelton of Skeltons a man likely to bring you death?"

His man's pride sounded a new note. Shading her eyes with her hand, she bent towards him and looked intently into his face.

"You do not look like one who has been sent to kill."

He laughed with a touch of grimness.

"We Skeltons are not cut-throats."

Yet, seeing that her eyes were still troubled and questioning, he drew his sword and, holding the crossed hilt before him, kissed it and made an oath.

"By the blessed blood, I, Richard Skelton, ride as a stranger through the forest, being bound for the sea, where I take ship for France. This I swear."

Her eyes filled with misty light.

"France!" She murmured the word. "St. Gilles and the Norman apple orchards!"

For some moments she dreamed, and then, waking, stretched out her hands with a sharp cry—

"Sir, is it the truth?"

"Have I not sworn it, I, Richard Skelton?"

She looked long into his eyes, and then let them fall under the downward shadow of their black lashes.

"I am called Nicolette," she said.

"Then, Nicolette, trust me. Speak, and let me serve."

She gave him one quick, upward glance of the brown eyes.

"Oh, I am hungry—I have tasted no food for three days!"

He was on his feet. "I have food and wine in my saddle-bag."

"Wait—let me tell everything. For three nights I have sat and watched. Messire Richard, have pity! I am the Lord of Mount Radon's lady. He brought me out of France, out of the great war. But then he tired, for he is quick and passionate, and very fierce. I was but a child. And it befell that a perilous secret that was his came to my ears. He would have killed me then, but I pleaded. And then came that other woman with the head of gold and the red, sneering mouth. I cannot tell you all, save that I knew that my lord desired my death. A month ago he sent me in a closed litter to this place. There were three good servants—that was his cunning—and they were true to me. First Bertrand went to the woods to hunt, and came not back again. Geoffrey crossed to seek him, and he, too, came not back again. Then—then three evenings ago a priest came. Old Stephen ferried him across. That night old Stephen and the dog died, and in the morning the priest had gone. But I—I was very fearful. I had a vision of things. I knew that death was watching—watching like a wolf in the dark. I could see the yellow eyes. I was alone. I touched neither food nor drink, and sometimes I cried aloud with fear. Nor had I courage in me to fly into the forest. Death is there. For three days I have had a voice near me; it speaks, and I listen. 'Death comes,' it says; 'if not with poison, then with the sword.' Do not laugh. It is true. I know that my lord desires my death."

She lay back panting, her hands over her bosom. Skelton was walking to and fro, clean, lithe, hawk-faced fighter that he was, trained from his youth to arms and to the governing of his manhood. This Norman girl, Nicolette, had spoken the truth. It had gushed out on his feet like water from a spring. Her white face and fear-weary eyes stirred a great wrath in him—wrath that was quickened by compassion.

"Nicolette," he said suddenly, coming to a stand before her, "this is a knot for a man's fingers to unravel."

Her eyes waited on his.

"I, Richard Skelton, bind myself to meddle in this matter. Maybe, it is in your heart to see the orchards of Normandy again?"

He saw before him the face of an eager, incredulous child.

"The orchards, and the white roads, and the green fields of St. Gilles! Messire, do not mock me!"

"Should I mock you in this?"

"Messire Richard——"

"Courage! I am here to serve."

He glanced at the western sky. The sun was hanging low above the tree-tops, and long shadows lay upon the orchard grass. In an hour twilight would fall, and the forest at night was no place for a man who knew not the ways.

"Nicolette," he said, "you shall rest here to-night, and I will stand on guard. But first you must eat. I left my horse over the water, and there is food for three days in the saddle-bag. I will go and bring him over."

He left her there, and forced upon himself a task that was done for pity and not for joy. Taking the body of the old man from the porch, he laid it in an outhouse, and, dragging the hound to the same place, he left it beside the body of the man. Skelton's face looked older. It was a grim business, gone through with set teeth and frowning eyes.

"Pah, the dead can witness! What does this child know of such things? The Sheriff must come here and hold his nostrils. France—surely! But first a word for honour and dishonour."

He brought his horse across, turned him into the empty stable, and went back to lash the barge to the landing-stage.

"If any cut-throat would come at us to-night, let him swim for it. As for the Lord of Mount Badon, I will haul him by the heels to the ordeal of the sword. Now for the child's hunger."

Before they supped together under the apple tree, Skelton put off his body armour and knelt for Nicolette to unfasten the laces of his helmet. He set red wine and white bread and venison before her on the grass, smiling at the shyness with which she sought to dissemble her hunger, and watching the colour steal back into her lips and the fear melt out of her eyes. His own close-cropped, sun-browned head stood out like the head on a medallion, with the green and shadowy spaces between the trees for a background.

The shy, gliding uplift of her eyes towards him made him forget that he had been on the road all day. Mostly she looked down into her own lap, the long black lashes making two curves of shadow. There was just a gleam of soft light now and again, like sunlight on coy water. The red mouth displayed provoking curves. The silences between them lured them to watch and wonder.

A blackbird burst into song on one of the trees. A musing tenderness crept into Nicolette's eyes. She began to hum a Norman song, swinging one white hand to and fro, with the forefinger pointed. Skelton watched her, and the hush of the forest was the listening heart of a lover.

Her soul dropped back to earth when the blackbird ceased singing. She met Skelton's eyes, and went red to the lips.

"Ah, messire, I say my prayers when I sing. As for you, I shall always remember you in my prayers."

He held the cup towards her and then drank.

"My troth to you, Nicolette."

Dusk came, and with it a heavy dew. The fruit trees stood black against a saffron sky, and there were strange gleams of gold upon the darkening water of the mere. Skelton fastened on his body armour, while the girl stood holding his basinet. Her white face drooped towards him as he knelt for her to helm him.

"I crown you with my gratitude, Messire Richard."

Skelton felt the dusk like a sweet vapour about him, heavy with the scent of apple blossom.

He went to feed and water his horse, while Nicolette brought torches into the hall, lit them, and set them in the brackets. She saw that the dead man had gone from the porch, and blessed Skelton in her heart.

Night fell. Skelton sought to persuade her to go into the upper room and sleep.

"I can keep guard here," he said.

But she would not be persuaded.

"I could not sleep; and after all the horror of loneliness, it is good to look into the face of a friend."

"Then let us tarry here and talk. If you should fall asleep in your chair, Nicolette, I shall watch over you, and I shall wake you at dawn."

Her eyes questioned his.

"Tell me all that is in your thoughts."

He began to tell her of his journey to France, why he went thither, and whence he came. Very gently he brought the morrow before her, with its needs, perils, and importunities. Her face showed a vague unrest, but her eyes met his without fear.

"Messire Richard, I trust you, for who else is there for me to trust? I will do all that you desire, though, to tell the tale before strangers, to have it tossed abroad——"

"Nicolette, let not that shame you. The shame shall lie elsewhere. Tell me the truth. This false lord of yours—your heart will not weaken out of pity?"

He saw her face stiffen.

"He is horrible to me. Ah, if you knew!"

She did not catch the gleam in Skelton's eyes.

"Then let God judge him," he said.

The night was wonderfully still. No wind stirred to rattle the lattices or blow the bloom from the orchard trees; the torches burnt steadily in the brackets. The vast hush of the forest shut the place in as with a great black cliff.

Suddenly Nicolette started in her chair. She sat rigid, listening, her eyes on Skelton's face.

He saw her lips move.

"Listen!"

A faint sound came out of the night, a splashing sound, as though someone were swimming the mere. Skelton had laid his sword and shield on the table. He drew them towards him.

Nicolette's hand pointed.

"The door!"

It stood half open, with the oak bar leaning against the wall.

"Quick—let us bar the door!"

"Let the door bide as it is. Take courage, Nicolette! Listen!"

The splashing had ceased, and out of the stillness of the night came the sound of rapid and heavy breathing. The pupils of Nicolette's eyes dilated, and her lips moved as though she were praying. Skelton put himself between her and the door.

Soft, paddling footsteps crossed the courtyard. The two in the hall waited, wondering what the torchlight would reveal. Skelton's eyes were set steadily towards the door. He drew his breath through twitching nostrils.

"Ah!"

Then they saw the thing that had padded across the courtyard—a huge, tawny-coloured mastiff with a spiked collar about his throat. Water was dripping from the beast's body, and his eyes shone blood-red in the torchlight.

The dog turned, blinked, and then shot forward like a stone from a mangonel. It uttered no sound, but leapt at Skelton and took the sword's point in its throat.

Skelton slew the dog as it struggled to rise. Nicolette had covered her face with her hands. She remained cowering till she heard the sound of Skelton's voice.

"Heaven be thanked that I missed the right road to-day!" he said. "There are those who sent the dog to be reckoned with across the water."

He glanced at the torches, kindled two fresh ones and thrust them into the brackets before he went to the door and peered through the gap by the hinges. A full moon had just topped the forest, and its light lit the whole courtyard, save where the palisade threw a deep black shadow.

Skelton held his breath and listened. A faint, creaking sound came to his ears, and the swish of a rope striking the water.

"Thunder! Someone has swum across and unfastened the barge!"

A black figure darted into the moonlit courtyard, stood motionless a moment, and then began to steal towards the porch. Skelton saw that it came alone. He drew back behind the half-closed door, standing close to the wall.

Footsteps shuffled at the porch. He could hear the man breathing close to the door-hinges. An eye would be peeping there—Skelton guessed that much—but he knew that whoever spied there could not see the figure in armour set like a pillar against the wall. Skelton's sword-arm stiffened. He never moved his eyes from the edge of the door.

The door moved very slightly, then something red appeared at the edge thereof—the fringe of a man's hair. A face followed it, a long, lean, crooked-nosed face straining forward at the end of a leathery neck. Then eyes looked towards Nicolette, seated in the chair on the dais. They were narrow eyes, set close together under oblique eyebrows.

Then Skelton struck. He had a moment's glimpse of the narrow eyes darting round at him and dilating with fear. The sword fell before the man could dodge. He sprawled face downwards, shooting out his hands at the ends of the green sleeves of a close-fitting jupon.

Skelton wasted no pity, and, dragging the body inside the hall, left it behind the door. Then he put an eye to the hinge-crack and waited. He could hear the plash of ripples against the landing-stage, and the noise of the ferry rope running through the pulley-block. The prow of the barge ground against the stage.

Skelton stood ready to close and bar the door should the odds promise to be too heavy. He watched the gateway in the palisade. A solitary figure came into view, and, by the way the moonlight glinted upon it, Skelton knew that the man came armed. A silver streak betrayed the naked sword that he carried upon his shoulder.

The figure remained poised for an instant between the black barriers of the palisade. Presently it moved forward into the courtyard, turning its head this way and that, and showing a snout-visored basinet that gave it the look of some grotesque beast. No other figure followed it, and Skelton's grim mouth twitched out a smile.

He turned, strode up the hall, and took his shield from the table. Nicolette's dark eyes gazed at him in mute appeal.

"Bide there," he said to her in a low voice, "and leave us room to quarrel."

He dropped the point of his sword to the floor and rested his hands on the pommel.

They heard footsteps enter the porch. The door was thrust open, and a knight in polished harness, with a red surcoat turned up over his sword-belt, stood in the dark entry. Behind the black holes in the snout-like visor were eyes, but they were invisible to Richard Skelton and Nicolette. For fully half a minute the figure remained motionless in the torchlight, as though the man within the steel shell were astonished at what he saw. The red-haired servant in the green jupon lay dead behind the door, the mastiff under the table. Nicolette, with chin tilted, stared wide-eyed down the hall. Skelton, grim and inscrutable, stood beside her, leaning on his sword.

The man in the red surcoat moved at last. He advanced up the hall and, raising his sword, pointed towards the door.

Skelton threw up his head and laughed.

"God's mercy, sir, if I stand in your way, the saints be thanked for it!"

"Out, out!"

"The dog and the servant go before their lord."

A sob of wrath came from the closed helmet. He of the red surcoat rushed suddenly upon Skelton, heaving up his sword. Skelton sprang forward so as to smother the blow. The two steel-clad bodies met with a crash.

Skelton's sinews proved the stiffer, and the man in red went back. He brought up with a jerk against the heavy table, and saved himself, only to find Skelton's sword rattling about his head. The blade glided off the basinet to the left shoulder, cut the linked mail between the shoulder-plates, and drew blood.

The red knight was a big man and no lap-dog. He dropped his shield, and, putting both hands to his sword, he fell upon Skelton like a labourer flailing corn. The blows came with a savage clatter, but they were rash, tempestuous blows that a cool fighter could put aside. Skelton gave back, guarding himself and watching his man.

Then the red knight showed his colour. He swerved aside and made a rush towards the dais, where Nicolette sat very white and still. The great sword flew up. Her brown eyes watched it as though bewitched.

Skelton shouted, as he leapt after the man in red—

"Down, down! Throw yourself down!"

His cry broke the spell. She threw herself forward under the very blade of the sweeping sword. The sword struck the back of the oak chair and jammed in the tough wood.

The red knight wrenched it free, but Skelton was on him with eyes of fire. His wrath whistled with the sweep of his sword. A blow on the gorget wrenched the plates apart. A second blow went home even more grimly. The red knight blundered back and struck the wall close to one of the torch brackets.

He recovered himself, snatched the torch, and rushed blindly at Skelton, trying to thrust the flames into Skelton's face. Skelton struck the arm down and, making a point of his sword, aimed for the broken gorget. The point went home. For a moment the red knight hung like a doll on a wire, and then fell backwards with an upjerking of the arms.

Skelton trod out the torch and stood over him, but the red knight did not move. A red stream poured out over the broken plates of the gorget.

Nicolette had risen, her black hair clouding about her eyes. Skelton glanced at her, and, bending over the fallen man, cut the helmet laces with his dagger. The steel shell fell away, showing the turgid, fleshy face of a man of strong passions and coarse desires.

Skelton heard Nicolette utter a strange cry. She was at his elbow, staring at the dead man.

"It is he!"

She gripped Skelton's sword-arm with her two hands and looked at the face of the man—her husband—who had plotted to bring her death.

*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

The sun was still tangled among the tree-tops when Richard Skelton and Nicolette took leave of the secret orchard. The light of the dawn streamed over the forest, slashing the dark water of the mere with swords of gold. A thin white mist still shimmered about the island, and the fruit trees looked dim and grey.

Utter weariness had given Nicolette sleep, but a horror of the place lived in her eyes as she looked back across the water. Death and dishonour remained there, and she dreaded the hard, cold eyes of the world.

Skelton had crossed before it was light to discover whether the Lord of Mount Badon had left men hidden in the woods. He had found two horses tethered to a tree, and had unfastened the beasts and turned them loose into the forest. Now he was cutting the ferry rope and sending the barge adrift on the water.

He came, and saw Nicolette's frightened eyes.

"Look not back at life," he said. "Come, little sister, courage!"

She held out her hands to him.

"Ah, Messire Richard, if there were no men to ask questions, to gape at me and say: 'Why this? Why that?' My heart is weak in me. I cannot bear it!"

Skelton took her hands.

"Nicolette," he said, "would you be at the mercy of that yellow-headed woman's tongue? No, by my honour, you must suffer this, for my sake, child, as well as for your own. The truth must be told."

She looked at him and burst into tears.

"Do with me as you desire. I have none to trust but you."

Gaillard carried them both that morning, and the good saints were kind to them in the forest. At the three thorns, where the dead man still sat at the foot of the cross, they fell in with a forester who knew all the ways.

"Good friend, is Sir Thomas of Broomhanger still Sheriff?"

"He is, lording, and may Mother Mary give him a long life."

"Show me the road to Broomhanger."

"Follow your left hand, lording, and two leagues will take you there."

Sir Thomas and Richard Skelton had fought together in the French wars, and the Sheriff was a shrewd man and straight as a sword.

"Tarry here three days," he said, "and we we'll have the truth stored in the noddles of our inquest men. They will be brisk for love of me. Geoffrey of Mount Badon? Pah, a bullying, profligate devil! And that black-eyed child, too! Had the man no pity?"

They looked at Nicolette, eating sweetmeats in the window-seat, with Dame Isabelle to comfort her.

"Spare the child where you can, old comrade."

"Trust me, Dick. In a week you shall be in France."

Thomas of Broomhanger was as good as his word.

The fruit blossom had fallen in the orchards of St. Gilles when Nicolette walked once more in her father's garden, and saw the white pigeons crowding the red roof of the great dove-cot. Aspens shivered against a sky of blue, and the broad meadows about the chateau were covered with cloth of gold.

A month had passed, and Nicolette had the look of one who waited. She sat often at a turret window, gazing along the white road that ran between the aspen trees.

"He will come again," she said to herself—"yes, he will come."

A wet sunset in June brought Richard Skelton to St. Gilles. Faces peeped out of the chateau windows at him; good folk had conspired.

"If Messire Skelton would walk in the garden, the Sire de St. Gilles may be found there."

Skelton went, and found Nicolette walking amid the rose bushes and the beds of lavender and thyme. The sky had broken in the west, and the wet world smoked like a sweet sacrifice.

Her startled face caught the sunset glow.

"Messire Richard!"

"Nicolette, I have ridden seven leagues to-day."

"Through the rain?"

"Ah, and I am discontented—angry with this fair place. No man may carry you away from St. Gilles."

She looked at him with shy brown eyes that glimmered.

"Some men are so strong," she said.

"So strong?"

"That it is useless for a woman to say them nay."

He caught her and held her fast.

"My desire, I am stronger than death!"

She put up her mouth to be kissed.