Before nightfall I was down by the English coast and made many a long league from the castle. Thoughtful and alone, my partings made, I had paced out from its gloomy archway, the gay feathers on my helmet-top near brushing the iron teeth of the portcullis lowering above, and my charger’s hoofs falling as hollow on the echoing drawbridge as my heart beat empty to the sounds of happy life behind me. Away south went the pathway, trodden day after day by contingents of gallant troops from that knightly stronghold. Jove! one might have followed it at midnight: those jolly bands had made a trail through copse and green wood, through hamlet and through heather, like the track of a storm-wind. They had beaten down grass and herbage, they had robbed orchards and spinneys, and here their wayside fires were still a-smoldering, and there waved rags upon the bushes, and broken shreds and baggage. Now and then, as I paced along, I saw in the hamlets the folk still looking southward, and standing gossiping on the week’s wonders, the boys meanwhile careering in mock onset with broken spear-shafts or discarded trappings. Oh! ’twas easy enough to know which way my friends had gone!
So plain was the track, and so well did my good horse acknowledge it, that there was little for me to do but sit and chew the bitter cud of fancy. All through the hot afternoon, all through the bright sunshine and shining green bracken, did we saunter, back toward the gray sea I knew so well, back toward that void beginning of my wanderings, and as my sad thoughts turned to when I last had sat a charger in such woods as these, to my fair Saxon homestead, Editha, the abbey and its Abbot, my donning English mail and breaking spears for a smile from yon cold Peeress, with much more of like nature, went idly flitting through my head. But hardly a thought among all that motley crowd was there for Isobel or her tears, and my promised meeting with her playmate.
Thus it happened that as evening fell and found me still some two miles from where our troops lay camped along the shore, waiting to-morrow’s ferrying across to France, I rode down the steep bank of a small river to a ford, and slowly waded through. There be episodes of action that live in our minds, and incidents of repose that recur with no less force. So, then—that placid evening stream has come before me again and again—in the hot tumult of onset and mêlée, in court and camp, in the cold of winter and in summer’s warmth, I have ridden that ford once more. I have gone down sad and thoughtful as I did, my loose reins on my charger’s arching neck, watching the purple shine of the water where it fretted and broke in the evening light against his fetlocks; again and again I have listened to the soft lisp of the stream as he drank of that limpid trough, and I have seen in its cool, fresh mirror my own tall image, my waving crimson plumes, and the one white star of the evening above, reflected upon it. And yet, if these things of a remote yesterday are fresh in my mind, even more so is my meeting with the slim gallant whose figure rose before me as I emerged from the ford.
As my good English charger bore me up from the hollow, on the brow of the opposite rise was a mounted figure standing out clear and motionless against the yellow glow of the sunset. At first I thought it would be some wandering spearman bound on a like errand with myself, for more than one or two such had passed that day. But something in the steadfast interest of that silent horseman roused my curiosity even before I was near enough to see the color of his armor or the device upon his shield. Up we scrambled up that sandy, heathery scar, the strong sinews of my war-horse playing like steel cordage under my thighs as he lifted me and my armor up the gravelly path, and then, as we topped the rise and came into the evening breeze, that strange warrior advanced and held out a hand.
Never in all my experience had I known a knight extend the palm of friendship to another so demure and downcast. “Truth!” I thought to myself, “this friend of Isobel’s is, in fact, as she said, the most modest-mannered soldier who ever took a place in the rough game of war!” But I was pledged to like him, and therefore, in the most hearty manner possible, as we came up knee to knee, I slapped my heavy hand into his extended fingers and welcomed him loudly as a long-looked-for comrade. And in truth he was a very pretty fellow, whose gentle presence grew upon me after that first meeting each hour we lived together. He seemed, as far as I could judge, no more than twenty-five years of age, yet even that was but a guess, for his armor was complete from top to toe, his visor was down, and there was, indeed, naught to judge by but a certain slightness of limb and suppleness that spoke of no more mature years. In height this gallant was very passable enough, and his helmet, with its nodding plumes, added some grace and inches to his stature, while his pale-gray mail was beautifully fashioned and molded, and spoke through every close joint and cunning finished link of a young but well-proportioned soldier.
The arms this warrior carried were better suited to his strength than to that of the man who rode beside him. His lance was long and of polished inlay, while mine beside it was like the spear of Goliath to a fisher’s hazel wand. His dagger was better for cutting the love-knot on a budget of sonnets than for disburdening foemen’s spirits of their mortal shackles. His cross-hilted sword was so light it made me sigh to look at it. On his shield was a heart wrapped in flames, most cunningly painted, and expressive enough in those days, when every man took a pride in being as vulnerable to women as he was unapproachable among men.
But who am I that I should judge that gentle knight by myself—by me, whose sinews countless fights have but matured, who have been blessed by the gods with bulk and strength above other mortals? Why should I measure his brand-new lance, gleaming in the pride of virgin polish, against the stern long spear I carried; or that dainty brand of his, that mayhap his tender maid had belted on him for the first time some hours before, with such a broad blade as long use had made lighter to my hand than a lady’s distaff?
Before we had paced a mile, Flamaucœur had proved himself the sprightliest companion who ever enlivened a dull road with wit and laughter. At first ’twas I that spoke, for he had not one word in all the world to say—he was so shy. But when I twitted him for this, and laughed, and asked him of his lady-love, and how she had stood the parting—how many tears there had been, and whether they all were hers; and whose heart was that upon his shield, his own or the damsel’s; and so on, in bantering playfulness, I got down to the metal of that silent boy. He winced beneath my laughter for a little time, and fidgeted upon his saddle, and then the gentle blood in his veins answered, as I hoped it would, and he turned and gave me better than I offered. Such a pretty fellow in wordy fence I never saw: his tongue was like a woman’s, it was so hard to silence. When I thought I had him at disadvantage on a jest, he burked the point of my telling argument, and struck me below my guard; when I would have pinned him to some keen inquiry regarding that which he did not wish to tell, he turned questioner with swift adroitness, and made—quicker than it takes to write—his inquisitor the humble answerer to his playful malice. He was better at that fence than I, there could be no doubt, and very speedily his nimble tongue, which sounded so strange and pleasant in the hollow of his helmet, had completely mastered mine. So, with a laugh, I did acknowledge to the conquest.
Whereon that generous youth was pleased, I saw, and laid aside his coyness, and chattered like a millstream among the gravels on an idle Sunday. He turned out both shrewd and witty, with a head stuffed full of romance and legend, just such as one might have who had spent a young life listening to troubadours and minstrels. And I liked him none the less because he trimmed the gross fables of that time to such a decent shape. He told me one or two that I had heard before, although he knew it not. And as I had heard them from the licentious lips of courtly minstrels they are not fit to write or tell, but my worthy wayfarer clipped and purged them so adroitly, and turned them out so fair and seemly, all with such a nice unconsciousness, I scarce could recognize them. He was a most gentle-natured youth, and there was something in his presence, something in the half-frankness he put forth, and something in that there was strange about him which greatly drew me. Now you would think, to listen to him, he was all a babbling stream as shallow as could be, and then, anon, a turn of sad wisdom or a sigh set you wondering, as when that same stream runs deep into the shadows, and you hear it fret and fume with gathering strength far away in unknown depths of mother Earth. A most enticing, a most perplexing comrade.
Beguiling the way in this fashion, and liking my new ally better and better as we went, we came a little after nightfall on a wet and windy evening to the hamlet near the sea where the rearguard of the English troops were collected for ferrying over to France. Here we halted and sought food and shelter, but neither were to be had for the asking. That little street of English dwellings was crowded with hungry troopers. They were camping by their gleaming watch-fires all along the grassy ways, so full was every lodgment, while every yellow window of the dim gabled alehouse in the midst shone into the wet, dark night, and every room within was replete with stamping, clanking, noisy gallants. Their chargers filled the yard and were picketed a furlong down the muddy road, that sloped to the murmuring, unseen sea, and there was not space, it seemed, for one single other horse or rider in the whole friendly village.