As soon as might be, Montjoy would go that pilgrimage to Canterbury. Had it been true, that frightful story, were Mark and Westforest treacherous, Silver Cross down in the mire, evened and more than evened with Hugh across the river, he would have gone not to Canterbury only, but to Rome, to Palestine! Only there, in Gethsemane garden—
He sat, a slight, dark man with a worn, handsome face, beneath a cedar in his castle garden. This was lord’s corner. A castle, God wot, is a public place! But just here was retirement, appropriated long since and possessed for long. Wall and ivy and cedar row, and hardly a narrow window to overlook! Montjoy once had been quick for company, but now for long he sighed toward solitariness. Solitariness that still should be splendour!
Silver Cross—Silver Cross—Silver Cross! The splendour must run through it, bathing the tomb of Isabel, bathing the life-above-death of Isabel! Bathing also Silver Cross, church and abbey, the old form, antique, fair, one’s Lady, old yet young through the centuries!
The soul. How to keep the soul in joy? If not in joy, at least in humble peace.
Montjoy saw himself a grey palmer, state and place laid down. His daughter wedded come Martinmas to Effingham—another year and her son born—then he might go and have word with his own suzerain. Palmer—the road, the shrines, the houses of the religious; quiet, quiet, unobstructed room for dreams of God.
The sky was lead, the light greenish, the air hot and still. He would be glad when the storm burst and the land was drenched. Afterward it would smile once more. He thought, “The Flood is needed again, so wicked is the earth! Oh, my God, am I of the family of Noah? Do I build with gopher wood the Ark that saves? Do I enter Christ? Doth He enter me?”
The cedars clung dark, they darkened the day yet more. Montjoy looked into a cell at Westforest and saw there Richard Englefield. Surely he is mad, though he lies so still, with his face buried in his arms!
Brother Richard.
Montjoy looked into the prison under the castle hill and saw Morgen Fay.