But for all that, the jongleur and the herd-girl met a many people and saw towns that to them from Roche-de-Frêne seemed at ease, relaxed, and light of heart. Baron and knight and squire and man were gone to the wars, but baron and knight and squire and man, for this reason, for that reason, remained. Castle drawbridges rested down, portcullises rusted unlowered. The roads, bad though they were, had peaceful traffic; the fields had been harvested, and the harvest had not gone to feed another world. The folk that remained were not the fiercer sort, and they longed for amusement. It rested not cold, and folk were out of doors. The country-side, mountain and hill and valley, hung softened, stilled, wrapped in a haze of purple-grey.
Jongleur’s art, human voice at its richest, sweetest, most expressive—such was wanted wherever now they went. They had jongleur’s freedom in a singing time. Travelling on, they made pause when they were called upon. The jongleur sang the heart out of the breast, the water into the eyes, high thoughts and resolves into the upper rooms of the nature. The dark-eyed, still girl, his companion and mie, sat on doorstep, or amid the sere growth of the wayside, or stood in castle hall or court, or in the market-place of towns, and listened with the rest to the singing voice and the song that it uttered. The few about them, or the many about them, sighed with delight, gave pay as they were able, and always would have had the jongleur stay, sing on the morrow, and the morrow’s morrow. But jongleurs had license to wander, and no restlessness of theirs surprised. Day by day the two were able, after short delays, to take the road again.
They came to Excideuil.
“Is the duke here?”
“No. He was here, but he has gone to Angoulême.”
Elias of Montaudon brought that news to Jael the herd. She listened with a steady face. “Very well! In ways, that suits me better. There are those at Angoulême whom I know.”
The jongleur sang in the market-place of Excideuil. “Ah, ah!” cried many, “you should have been here when our duke was here! He had a day when there sang six troubadours, and the prize was a cup of gold! And yet no troubadour sang so well as you sing, jongleur!”
A week later, crown of a hill before them, they saw Angoulême. The morning light had shown frost over the fields, but now the sun melted that silver film and the day was a sapphire. Wall and battlement, churches, castle, brilliant and spear-like, stood out from the blue dome: beneath spread a clear valley and clear streams. Other heights had lesser castles, and the valley had houses of the poor. Travel upon the road thickened, grew more various, spiced with every class and occupation. The day carried sound easily, and there was more sound to carry. Contacts became frequent, and these were now with people affected, in greater or less degree, by the sojourn in Angoulême of Duke Richard. The air knew his presence; where he came was tension, energy held in a circumference. From the two that entered Angoulême spread another circle. Garin felt power and will in her whom he walked beside, felt attention. The force within him rose to meet hers and they made one.
The town grew larger before them, walls and towers against the sky.
“Ask some one,” said Audiart, “where is the Abbey of the Fountain?”