The host defending Roche-de-Frêne grew smaller, the host grew small and worn. Vigilance that must never cease to be vigilant, attack by day and by night, many slain and many hurt, death and wounding and, at last, disease—and yet the host held the bridge-head and the bridge, made no idle threat against Montmaure, but struck quick and deep. It did what was possible to the heroic that yet was human.... There came a day when the entire force of Montmaure thrown, shock upon shock, against the barriers, burst a way in. The strong towers, guardians of the bridge, could no longer stand. The Princess of Roche-de-Frêne must draw a shattered host across the river, up the hill of Roche-de-Frêne, and in at the gates to the shelter of the strong-walled town.
It was done; foot by foot the bridge was surrendered, foot by foot the host brought off. From hillside and wall the archers and the crossbowmen sent their bolts singing through the air, keeping back Montmaure.... Company by company, division by division, the gates were passed; when the host was within, they closed with a heavy sound. Gate and gate-towers and curtains of walls high and thick—the armed town, the huge, surmounting castle, looked four-square defiance to the Counts of Montmaure. Now set in the second stage of this siege.
Montmaure held the roads to and from Roche-de-Frêne. Montmaure lay as close as he might lie and escape crossbow bolts and stones flung by those engines caused to be constructed by men of skill in the princess’s pay. From the walls, look which way you might, you saw the coils of Montmaure. He lay glittering, a puissant dragon, impatient to draw his folds nearer, impatient to tighten them around town and castle, strangle, and crush! To hasten that final hour he made daily assay with tooth and claw. Sound of fierce assault and fierce repulse filled great part of time. The periods between of repose, of exhaustion, of waiting had—though men and women went about and spoke and even laughed—the feeling of the silence of the desert, a blank stillness.
The spirit of the town was good—it were faint praise, calling it that! Gaucelm the Fortunate, Audiart the Wise, and their motto and practice, I BUILD, had lifted this princedom and this town, or had given room for proper strength to lift from within. Now Thibaut Canteleu supported the princess in all ways, and the town followed Thibaut. Audiart the Wise and Roche-de-Frêne fought with a single will. And Bishop Ugo made attestation that he wished wholly the welfare of all. He preached in the cathedral; he passed through the town with a train of churchmen and blessed the citizens as they hurried to the walls; he mounted to the castle and gave his counsel there. The princess listened, then went her way.
Lords, knights, and squires, the chivalry of Roche-de-Frêne, was hers. They liked a woman to be lion-hearted, and they forgot the old name that had been given her. Perhaps it was no longer applicable, perhaps it had never, in any high degree, been applicable. Perhaps there had been some question of fashion, and a beauty not answered to by the eyes of many beholders, a thing of spirit, mind, and rarity. Her vassals, great and less great, gave her devout service; they trusted her, warp and woof. She had a genius and a fire that she breathed into them and that aided to heroic deeds.
Garin of the Golden Island did high things in the siege of Roche-de-Frêne. Where almost all were brave, where each day deeds resounded, he grew to have a name here for exquisiteness of daring as he had had it in the land beyond the sea.... He found himself, in one of those periods of stillness between assaults, alone by the watch-tower above the castle garden. He had left Aimar at the barbican, Rainier he had sent upon some errand. It was nearing sunset, and the trees in the garden had an autumn tint. The year wheeled downward.
Garin, mounting the watch-tower, found upon the summit a mantled figure, leaning against the battlement overlooking the wide prospect. A moment, and he saw that it was the princess and would have withdrawn. But Audiart called him back. In the garden below waited a page and an attendant of whom the princess was fond—the dark-eyed girl who told stories well. But for the rest there held a solitude. She had come from the White Tower to taste this quiet and to look afar, to bathe her senses in this stillness after clamour, and to feel overhead the enemyless expanse.
“You are welcome, Sir Garin of the Golden Island!” she said, and turned toward him. “I watched you lead the sally yesterday. No brave poet ever made men more one with him than you did then—”
Garin came to her side, bent and kissed her mantle edge where her arm brought it against the battlement. “Princess of Roche-de-Frêne!” he said, “watching you, in this war, all men turn brave and poets.”
He had spoken as he felt. But, “No!” said the Princess Audiart. “No man turns what he is not.” She looked again at the wide prospect. “My heart aches,” she said, “because of all the misery! At times I would that I knew—”