The Castle of Twilight

by Margaret Horton Potter

By order of the Bishop, Laure was left alone all day, and this twenty-four hours was the most wretched that she had to spend after her return to Le Crépuscule. On the following day she went alone to the priory,—not on foot, as the Bishop had at first commanded; for the snow was too deep, and Laure too much exhausted by her privations of the last two months, for her safely to endure the fatigue of such a walk. She rode thither on horseback; and possibly extracted more soul’s good out of the ride than she would have got afoot, for the whole way was laden with bitter memories and grief and shame. The Bishop himself met her at the priory gate, and he remained at her side throughout the time that she was there. The ordeal was not terrible. Mère Piteuse bore out her name, and Laure thought that the spirit of the Saviour had surely descended upon the reverend woman. As an unheard-of concession, the penitent was permitted to recant her vows before only the eight officers of the priory assembled in the chapter-house, instead of before the whole company of nuns in the great church; and thus Laure did not see at all her former companion and abettor, Sœur Eloise, a meeting with whom she had dreaded more than anything else. And when, in the afternoon, Laure finally rode away from the priory gate, it was with a heart throbbing with devotion for St. Nazaire and his goodness to her. Swiftly and eagerly, in the falling twilight, she traversed the road leading back to the Castle, and, when she reached home, night had fallen. Her mother, who had spent the day in the deepest anxiety, was waiting for her in the great hall, and, the moment that Laure entered, weary with the now unusual exercise, she cried out, “It is well? Thou art dismissed?”

And as Laure began to answer the question with a full description of the day, her mother drew her slowly up the stairs, across the hall, and finally into her own narrow room, which was to be the chamber of penance. When they entered there, Laure became suddenly silent; for the little place was dark and chill, and the thought of what was before her struck an added tremor to her heart. Madame read her thoughts and said gently,—

“Be not so sad, dear child. When thou thinkest of the fair, pure, loving life that lies before us, in this Castle of thy youth, surely fourteen little days of peaceful solitude cannot fright thee? Think always that God is on high, and that around thee are those that love thee well; and thus thou canst not be very miserable. Lights and food shall be brought; and then—I bid thee make much of thy solitude, my child; for there is no more healing balm for wounded souls. Now, commending thee to the mercy of the All-merciful, I leave thee.”

In the darkness, Laure clung to her mother as if it were their last embrace, and madame had to put the girl’s hands away before she would bear to be left alone. But at last the door was closed and bolted on the outside; and Laure, within, knew that her imprisonment was begun. Feeling her way to a chair, she seated herself thereon, and laid her head in her hands. Burning and incoherent thoughts hurried through her brain, and she was still lost in these when there was a soft tap at her door, and the outer bolt was drawn. She rose and stumbled hurriedly to open it, but there was no one outside. On the floor was a burning candle, and a tray on which stood a jug of water and a loaf of bread. As she took them in, Laure experienced a wave of desolation. However, she set the food and drink down on her table, lighted the torch on the wall at the candle-flame, and finally sat herself down to eat. No grace to God passed her lips as she took her first bite from the loaf; for her heart was bitter in its weariness. But after she had eaten and drunk she lost the inclination to brood; and, overcome with weariness and the emotions of the day, she hurriedly disrobed, extinguished both her lights, and crept, with her first sense of comfort, into the warmly covered bed. For a long time she lay there, chilly and a little nervous, but thinking of nothing. Then gradually her spirit grew calmer; some of the weariness was done away, and she fell asleep.

When next she woke it was daylight,—a gray, January morning,—and Laure realized, rather disconsolately, that she could sleep no more for the time. Therefore she left her bed, threw a mantle around her, and went to the door, to see if there might be food without. Somewhat to her dismay, she found the door locked fast, and, having no means of knowing what the hour might be, she thought that possibly she had overslept, and that she should have nothing to eat throughout the morning. The heaviness of her head told her that she had slept too long; and, not daring to get back to bed again, she began resignedly to dress. She was in the midst of her toilet when there came a tap at the door, and she flew to open it. Outside stood a kitchen-boy, who handed her a tray containing fresh bread and water, and asked her with formal respect for the stale food of the night before. This she gave him; and immediately the door was shut and rebolted.

Mother and child were happy to sit all
day in the flower-strewn meadow.—Page [402]

With grim precision Laure finished dressing and broke her fast, meantime keeping her thoughts fixed on the most trivial subjects. But when her meal was over, and she knew how long the day must be, and realized that there was no escape from herself, she sat down in the largest chair in the room, let her eyes wander over the familiar objects, and allowed her thoughts to take what form they would. The terrible fatigue of her lonely journey was quite gone now. Nor was there in her own person anything to remind her of her recent suffering. Her body was clean, well-clothed, and warm, and, in her youth, the memory of the past terrible two months grew dim, and instead there rose up before her mental vision a very different picture,—an image,—the image of the idol and the ruin of her life: her joy, her shame, her ecstasy, and her despair; Bertrand Flammecœur, the troubadour, in his matchless, irresponsible untrustworthiness, his incomparable beauty, his fiery enthusiasm. For, strange as it may be, all the bitterness, all the suffering that this man had brought her, had not killed her love for him nor blackened his image in her heart. There being nothing to check her fancy, Laure went mentally back to the hour of her flight with the troubadour, and passed slowly over the whole period of their life together,—from the first days of physical agony and mental shame through the period of increasing delight, to the culmination of her happiness in him and the beginning of its end. Once more she reviewed their journey out of Brittany up the north coast to Calais, whence, in the fair spring weather, they had taken passage to Dover, in England, thence making their way by slow stages to London. Here, in the train of the Duke of Gloucester, uncle of the young Richard, the most powerful man in the kingdom, the two had passed their summer. To Laure it was a summer of fairyland. Flammecœur had become her god, and she saw him ascend height after height of popularity and favor. His nationality and his profession won for him instant recognition, for trouvères from Provence were Persian nightingales to the England of that day. And after his first introduction into high places, his breeding, his dress, and his graceful personality brought him an enviable position, especially among the women of the court. Laure passed always as his wife, and was adroitly exploited among the court gallants. She was still too single-minded to receive the slightest taint from this life. She was found to be as incorruptible as she was pretty, and by this unusual fact her own reputation went up, and her popularity rivalled that of the troubadour. If this manner of life sometimes weighed on her and brought her something of remorse, she found her consolation in the fact that Flammecœur never wavered in his fidelity. For the time being he was thoroughly infatuated with her; and in their stolen hours of golden solitude both of them found their reward for the ofttimes wearisome round of pleasures that, with them, constituted work.

Now, alone, in her solitary prison-room, Laure of Le Crépuscule reviewed her high and holy noon of love, forgetting its subsequence, brooding only over its supreme forgetfulness, till the madness of it was tingling in her every vein, and there rushed over her again, in a tumultuous wave, all that fierce longing, all that hopeless desire, that she thought herself to have endured for the last time. In their early days Flammecœur had been so much her companion, so devoted to her in little, pretty, telling ways, so constant to her and to her alone, that the thought of any life other than the one with him would have been to her like a promise of eternal death. It was not more their hours of delirium than those of silent communion that they had held together, which brought her now the tears of hopeless yearning. All that she desired without him, was death. All that she had loved or cared for was with him.

At this time came to her the thought of Lenore; and she had an instinctive feeling that, had God seen fit to give her that most precious of all gifts, motherhood, this penitential cell had not been the end for her.