[CHAPTER XXI]
THE ROCK-GATE
At the northern point of the Mount of Roche-de-Frêne, castle wall and wall of the town made as it were one height, so close did each approach the other. Huge rock upon rock, Roche-de-Frêne lifted here from the plain. This was the impregnable face, sheer rock and double wall, at the bottom a fosse, and, grim at the top, against cloud or clear sky, Black Tower and Eagle Tower. In the high and thick curtain of stone between was pierced the postern called the rock-gate. Here Garin came, on a night not cold and powdered with stars.
The gate had its turret, and within the shadow of the wall a long bench of stone. Ordinarily, day or night, there might be here a watch of twenty men. To-night he saw that this was not the case. There was a sentinel pacing to and fro before the turret. This man stopped him.
“The princess’s errand,” said Garin.
“The word?”
“Two Falcons.”
“Just.” The speaker paced on.
Garin, going on to the gate, pondered voice and air. They seemed to him not those of any customary sentinel, but of a knight of renown, a foster-brother of the princess. By the turret were other shadowy figures—three or four. These also kept silence, or, if they spoke among themselves, spoke briefly and too low for their words to be distinguished.
Garin, Elias of Montaudon’s mantle close about him, sat down upon the bench in the angle made by wall and turret. He thought that the shadowy figures took note of him, but they did not speak to him nor he to them. They and he were silent. There fell the sentinel’s step, and sounds now vague, now distinct, from Black Tower and Eagle Tower, both of which were garrisoned. For the rest came the usual murmur of the armed and watchful night. Garin lifted his eyes to the starry sky. At first his faculties drank simply the splendour of the night, the blended personalities of scene and hour; then some slight thing brought Palestine into mind. There came before the inner vision the eve of his knighthood, when he had watched his armour in the chapel of a great castle, crusader-built. That was such a night as this. There had been an open window, and through the hours, as he knelt or stood, he had seen the stars climb upward. The emotion of that night rekindled. It came from the past like a slender youth and walked beside the stronger-thewed and older man. Garin watched the stars, then with a long, sighing breath, let his gaze fall to the sky-line, vast, irregular, imposing, and to the mass of buildings that the earth upheld. Here was deep shadow, here a pale, starlight illumination. Here light rayed out from narrow windows, or a carried torch or lanthorn displayed some facet of the whole.