“Sweet May, come! the lovers’ sweet season.
In May Love seems the height of reason!
Try your love when the year grows older,
The birds depart and the earth is colder.—”
He stopped. “Saint Michael! the mist is yet in my throat. Your fire, gossips, is the sweet, crackling singer—”
One of the women sat back upon her heels, and, hands on hips, regarded the two. “From what camp are you? You are not of our camp?”
“No. We have been over yonder—near to the young count.”
“If Cap-du-Loup saw you he would have your lute broken and you sent to wait on fighting men! Cap-du-Loup loatheth jongleurs and monks! Your douce there he might take—but no, I think that he would not. She is not fair, and she has the look of one with claws—”
“I have claws, sister,” said Jael. “But I know how to keep them sheathed.” She yawned. “This good fire makes you sleepy. Pretty children, let me rest my head upon that log for a bit! Play to us, Elias, if you cannot sing.”
She put her head down, closed her eyes, lying in the firelight. The jongleur played and he played strange quaint airs that made the washerwomen laugh, nod their heads, and pat with their hands. After this he played quieter strains, a dreamy and monotonous music, humming to it a thought of the East. They listened, then turned to their rubbing and beating of clothes, working as in a dream, to a soothed and unquestioning mood.
Jael sat up, warmed her hands at the fire, looked to the west. On the other side of the brook of Saint Laurent a trampling sound arose and grew. The mist yielded a grey vision of horsemen approaching in number. They loomed, there ran before them noise—harsh voices, ribald laughter. The washerwomen sprang to their feet, gathered hastily into their arms the scattered garments, seized by the hands the children.
“Jacques le Noir and his men! Get out of their way! Jesu! What a world where your own side tramples and abuses—”
They turned up the stream, quarrelling as they went. With them and the children went the jongleur and the herd-girl, all faring along the bank together, in the mist that was now being torn by golden arrows. One of the women, with a load of wet, half-washed clothing, let fall a part of the burden. The herd-girl, stooping, gathered it up. “I’ll help you here, sister!” A child struck its foot against a stone, fell, and began to cry. The jongleur lifted him to his shoulder. Behind them they heard Jacques le Noir splash with his horsemen into the stream. The washerwomen and the two from Roche-de-Frêne went on like one family or like old acquaintances, and so came into the thickly peopled camp of the followers of Cap-du-Loup and his fighting men.