[CHAPTER VI]
THE GARDEN
The Abbot of Saint Pamphilius and Garin the squire rode westward—that is to say they rode away from the busy town of Roche-de-Frêne; the cathedral, where, atop the mounting tower, trowel clinked against stone; the bishop’s palace, where, that morning Ugo wrote a letter to Pope Alexander; and the vast castle with Gaucelm the Fortunate’s banner above it.
Roche-de-Frêne dyed with scarlet second only to that of Montpellier. It wove fine stuffs, its saddlers were known for their work, it made good weapons. Rome had left it a ruined amphitheatre—not so large as that at Arles, but large enough to house a trade. Here was the quarter of the moulders of candles. A fair wine was made in the country roundabout, brought to Roche-de-Frêne and sold, and thence sold again. It was a mart likewise for great, creamy-flanked cattle. They came in droves over the bridge that crossed the river and were sold and bought without the walls, in the long, poplar-streaked field where was held the yearly fair.
It was not a free town—not yet. Time was when its people had been serfs wholly, chattels and thralls completely of the lords who built the great castle. Less than a hundred years ago that was still largely true. Then had entered small beginnings, fragmentary privileges, rights of trade, commutations, market grants. These had increased; every decade saw a little freedom filched. Lords must have wealth, and the craftsmen and traders made it; money-rent entered in place of old obediences. Silver paid off body-service. Skill increased, and the number of wares made, and commerce in them. Wealth increased. The town grew bolder and consciously strove for small liberties. Roche-de-Frêne was different now indeed from the old times when it had been wholly servile. It was growing with the strong twelfth century. All manner of ideas entered its head.
Gaucelm the Fortunate’s father had been Gaucelm the Crusader, Gaucelm of the Star. Certain of the ideas of the burghers of Roche-de-Frêne had been approved by this prince. Others found themselves stingingly rebuked. One of Roche-de-Frêne’s concepts of its own good might flourish in court favour, a second just exist like grass under a stone, wan and sere, a third encounter all the forces of extirpation. In the main Gaucelm of the Star bore hardly against the struggle for liberty. But at the last he took the cross, and needing moneys so that he might go to Jerusalem with great array, granted “privileges.” After three years he returned from Palestine and granted no more. He died and Gaucelm the Fortunate reigned. For five years he fought the ideas of Roche-de-Frêne. Then he changed, almost in a night-time, and granted almost more than was asked. His barons and knights stared and wondered; Gaucelm was no weakling. Roche-de-Frêne sat down to digest and assimilate what it had gained. The town was no more radical than it thought reasonable. The meal was sufficient for the time being. There began a string of quiet years.
The bishop’s palace stood a long building, with wings at right angles. Before it spread a flagged place, and in the middle of this a fountain jetted, the water streaming from dolphins’ jaws. In old times the bishops of Roche-de-Frêne had been mightier than its ravening, war-shredded lords. Then had arisen the great line that built the castle and subdued the fiefs and turned from baron to prince and outweighed the bishops. The fountain, shifting its spray as the wind blew, had seen a-many matters, a-many ambitions rise and fall and rise again.
The fountain streamed and the spray shifted this autumn, while the trees turned to gold and bronze and the grapes were gathered, and through the country-side bare feet of peasants trod the wine-press, and over the bridge in droves lowed the cream-hued cattle. It rose and fell time before and time after that feast-day on which the squire Garin had knelt in the cathedral dusk between the Palestine pillars, before Our Lady of Roche-de-Frêne in blue samite and a gemmy crown. It streamed and sparkled on a sunny morning when Bishop Ugo, bound for the castle, behind him a secretary and other goodly following, checked his white mule beside the basin and blessed the lounging folk who sank upon their knees.
The process consumed no great while. Ugo was presently riding up the town’s chief street, a thoroughfare that marked the ridge pole of the hill of Roche-de-Frêne. People were abroad, and as he passed they did him reverence. He was a great churchman, who could hurt or help them, soul and body, here and hereafter! But at a quieter corner, before a pile of old, dark buildings, he came upon, and that so closely that his mantle almost brushed them, a man and two women, poorly dressed, who stood without movement or appeal for blessing. Had they been viewed at a distance, noted merely for three stony units in a bending crowd, the bishop had been too superb to notice, but here they were under his nose, unreverent, stocks before his eyes, their own eyes gazing as though he were not!
Ugo checked his mule, spoke sharply. “Why, shameless ones, do you not bend to Holy Church, her councillors and seneschals?”