“The prince is slain!”
“There has been a great battle, ten leagues from here.... My master!” cried the grizzled knight with sombre passion. “The best prince this land has known—Gaucelm the Good!”
Garin knew that the head of Our Lady in Egypt was a sister of the dead prince. No longer was it a day in which, after years and at last, he might ask his question. As it had waited, so must it wait still. He and Rainier rode back to Castel-Noir. The next day, with his troop behind him, he left Foulque, the black tower, and the fir wood, and the next he joined the host of Stephen the Marshal where it lay confronting Montmaure.
[CHAPTER XV]
SAINT MARTHA’S WELL
The Princess Audiart crossed the river that made a crescent south and east of the town,—her errand, to see how went the defences on that side. Two stout towers reared themselves there, commanding the river-bank, guarding the bridge-head. Beyond the towers workmen in great numbers deepened a fosse, heaped ramparts, strengthened walls, and in the earth over which Montmaure must advance planted sharpened stakes and all gins and snares that the inventive mind might devise. To hold this bridge was of an importance!—South and east stretched the yet unharried lands and the roads by which must come in food for the town, the roads by which it might keep in touch with the world without, the roads by which might travel succour!
The day was a blaze of light, a dry and parching heat. The river ran with a glitter of diamonds. The stone of the many-arched bridge threw back light. The hill of Roche-de-Frêne, the strong walls, the town within them, the towered, huge church, the castle lifted higher yet, swam in radiance. They lost precision of outline, they seemed lot and part of the daystar’s self.
With the princess there rode three or four of her captains. Clearing the river they must turn their horses aside, out of the way of a multitudinous, approaching traffic that presently, embouching upon the bridge, covered it from parapet to parapet. Noise abounded. A herd of cattle came first, destined, these, for the slope of field and meadow between the stream and the town walls. Wagons followed—many wagons—heaped with provision and drawn by oxen. They held grain in quantity, fodder, cured meat, jars of oil, dried fruit, pease and beans, whatever might be gathered near and far through the land. They came, a long line of them, creaking slow, at the head of the oxen sometimes a man walking, oftener a lad or a woman. They kept the princess and those with her in the glare of the sun. A knight spoke impatiently. “They creep!”