They lay down, the jongleur wrapped in his mantle, the herd-girl in hers. “We must gather sleep wherever it grows,” said the latter. “I will sleep and you will watch until the moon rounds the top of that great pine. Wake me then, and look, Elias, that you do it!”
She pillowed her head upon the scrip or wallet which she carried slung over her shoulder, and lay motionless. The jongleur watched.... The barred moon mounted higher, the night wheeled, eastern lands were knowing light. Garin, resting against a pine trunk, lute and wallet beside him on the earth, kept his gaze from the sleeper, bestowed it instead upon the silver, gliding boat of the moon, or upon the not-distant, murky glare of unfriendly fires. But gaze here or gaze there, space and time sang to one presence! Wonder must exist as to this night and the morrow and what journey was this. Mind could not but lift the lanthorn, weigh likelihoods, pace around and around the subject. That quest drew him, but it was not all, nor most that drew.... Jael the herd! Jael the herd! Here came impossibilities—dreams, phantasies, rain of gold and silver, impossibilities! He remembered clearly now a herd-girl, and that when he had asked her name she had answered “Jael.” Many shepherdesses trod the earth, and a many might be named Jael! Moreover sheer, clear impossibility must conquer, subdue and dispose of all this mad thinking. She who lay asleep was like that herd-girl—he saw it now—shape, colouring, voice—That and the name she had happened to choose—that and the torn, shepherdess garb—to that was owed this dizzy dreaming, this jewelled sleet of fancy, high tide of imagination, flooding every inland.... Things could not be different, yet the same—beings could not be separate, yet one—or in some strange, rich world, could that be so? But here was mere impossibility! Garin strove to still the wider and wider vibrations. The Fair Goal—The Fair Goal!... The moon rounded the top of the pine tree.
He crossed to the sleeper’s side, knelt, and spoke low. “My liege—” She stirred, opened her eyes. “My liege, the moon begins to go down the sky.”
With her hand pressed against the pine-needles she rose to a sitting posture. “I slept—and, by my faith, I wanted sleep! Now it is your turn. Do not again call me liege or lady or princess or Audiart. The wind might carry it to Cap-du-Loup. Say always to me, ‘Jael.’ And now lie down and sleep. I will wake you when the east is grey.”
Garin slept. The Princess Audiart rested against a tree, and now watched the moon, and now the fires kindled by her foe and Roche-de-Frêne’s, and now she watched the sleeping man. The attire which she wore, the name she had chosen for the simple reason that once before she had chanced to take it up and use it, brought brightly into mind a long-ago forest glade and a happening there. But she did not link that autumn day with the man lying wrapped in Elias of Montaudon’s cloak, though she did link it with Jaufre de Montmaure who had kindled those fires in the night. It came, a vivid picture, and then it slept again. There was, of need, a preoccupation with this present enterprise and its chaplet, necklace, girdle, and anklets of danger, no less than with its bud of promise which she meant, if possible, to make bloom. Her own great need and the need of Roche-de-Frêne formed the looming presence, high, wide, and deep as the night, but, playing and interblending with it, high, wide, and deep as the day, was another sense.... She gazed upon Garin of the Golden Island lying wrapped in the jongleur’s cloak, and the loss of him was in the looming night, and the gain in the bud of promise and the feeling of the sun. To-night, her estate seemed forlorn enough, but within she was a powerful princess who did not blink her own desires though she was wise to curb and rein and drive them rightly.
[CHAPTER XXII]
THE SAFFRON CROSS
Moon and stars began to pale. The camp-followers up the stream had poultry with them, for from that direction a cock crew and was answered. The herd-girl waked the jongleur. “I have black bread in my scrip,” she said. “Look if you have not the same.”