“Father,” I replied, “tender the King my thanks for what was well meant and as princely generous as becomes him. But tell him all the prayers thy convent could count from now till the great ending would not bleach this white maid’s soul an atom whiter. Earn your ransom if you will, but not here; leave me to my sorrow.”
“I will give your answer, soldier; but these holy brothers—the King wished it—must stay and share your vigil until the morning. It is their profession; their prayerful presence can ward off the spirits of darkness; weariness never sits on their eyes as it sits now on thine. Let them stay with thee; it is only fit.”
“Not for another ransom, priest! I will not brook their confederate tears—I will not wing this fair girl’s soul with their hireling prayers—out, good fellows, my mood is wondrous short, and I would not willing do that which to-morrow I might repent of.”
“But, brother——” said one monk, gently.
“Hence—hence! I have no brothers—go! Can you look on me here in this extremity, can you see my hacked and bleeding harness, and the shine of bitter grief in my eyes, and stand pattering there of prayers and sympathy? Out! Out! or by every lying relic in thy cloisters I add some other saints to thy chapter rolls!”
They went, and as the tent-flap dropped behind them and the sound of their sandaled feet died softly away into the gathering night, I turned sorrowful and sad to my watch. I drew a stool to the maiden bier, and sat and took her hand, so white and smooth and cold, and looked at the fair young face that death had made so passionless—that sweet mirror upon which, the last time we had been together in happiness, the rosy light of love was shining and sweet presumption and maiden shame were striving. And as I looked and held her hand the dim tent-walls fell away, and the painted lists rose up before me, and the littered flowers my quick, curveting charger stamped into the earth, and the blare of the heralds’ trumpets, the flutter of the ribbons and the gay tires of brave lords and fair ladies all centered round the daïs where those two fair sisters sat. Gods! was that long sigh the night-wind circling about my tent-flap or in truth the sigh of slighted Isobel, as I rode past her chair with the victor’s circlet on my spear-point and laid it at the footstool of her sister?
I bent over that fair white corpse, so sick in mind and body that all the real was unreal and all the unreal true. I saw the painted pageantry of her father’s hall again and the colored reflections of the blazoned windows on the polished corridors shine upon our dim and sandy floor, and down the long vistas of my aching memory the groups of men and women moved in a motley harmony of color—a fair shifting mosaic of pattern and hue and light that radiated and came back ever to those two fair English girls. I heard the rippling laughter on courtly lips, the whispered jest of gallants, and the thoughtless glee of damsels. I heard the hum and smooth praise that circled round the black elder sister’s chair, and at my elbow the father, saying, “My daughter; my daughter Isobel!” and started up, to find myself alone, and that sweet horrid thing there in the low flickering taper-light unmoved, unmovable.
I sat again, and presently the wavering shadows spread out into the likeness of great cedar branches casting their dusky shelter over the soft, sweet-scented ground; and, as the hushed air swayed to and fro those great velvet screens, Isobel stepped from them, all in white, and ran to me, and stopped, and clapped her hands before her eyes and on her throbbing bosom—then stretched those trembling fingers, beseechingly to me fresh from that sweet companionship—then down upon her knees and clipped me round with her fair white arms and turned back her head and looked upon me with wild, wet, yearning eyes and cheeks that burned for love and shame. I would not have it; I laughed with the bitter mockingness of one possessed by another love, and unwound those ivory bonds and pushed the fair maid back, and there against the dusk of leaf and branch she stood and wrung her fingers and beat her breast and spoke so sweet and passionate, that even my icy mood half thawed under the white light of her reckless love, and I let her take my hand and hold and rain hot kisses on it and warm pattering tears, till all the strength was running from me, and I half turned and my fingers closed on hers—but, gods! how cold they were! And with a stifled cry I woke again in the little tent, to find my hand fast locked in the icy fingers of the dead.
It was a long, weary night, and, sad as was my watch and hectic as the visions which swept through my heavy head, I would not quicken by one willing hour of sleep the sad duties of that gray to-morrow which I knew must come. At times I sat and stared into the yellow tapers, living the brief spell of my last life again—all the episode and change, all the hurry and glitter, and unrest that was forever my portion—and then, in spite of resolution, I would doze to other visions, outlined more brightly on the black background of oblivion; and then I started up, my will all at war with tired Nature’s sweet insistence, and paced in weary round our canvas cell, solitary but for those teeming thoughts and my own black shadow, which stalked, sullen and slow, ever beside me.
But who can deride the great mother for long? ’Twas sleep I needed, and she would have it; and so it came presently upon my heavy eyelids—strong, deep sleep as black and silent as the abyss of the nether world. My head sank upon my arm, my arm upon the foot of the velvet bier, and there, in my mail, under the thin taper-light, worn out with battle and grief, I slept.