But the hound kept on, and Gerbert.
The Abbey of the Blessed Thorn had for Abbess a count’s sister, a woman more able than the count, able, determined, genial, no more religious than Bishop Héribert or Abbot Simon, but a good ruler of her nuns, a highly competent wielder and manager of the wide fief of Blessed Thorn. The Abbess Rothalind rose early, and was a dear lover of hawking. Now, the day being fine, she was out with several of her nuns, with two falconers and a groom, and with Ermengarde, a lady accused of evil, who, pending judgement in her case, had taken sanctuary with Blessed Thorn. The morning’s sport over, the train came, under blue sky and with a jingling of bells at bridle reins, to a crossroads on a bit of heath. Here it overtook a woman in a blue mantle.
The Abbess checked her horse. “Who are you, wandering here?”
“Gersonde the soothsayer. I try to find my people from whom I was parted.... I am tired with walking and wasted with hunger.”
“Do you see the roofs of Blessed Thorn?” said the Abbess. “Go there, and you shall be fed and have your night’s rest in the dormitory of the poor. To-morrow morn we may try your art—so that you in no wise make black magic!”
Blessed Thorn had a fair parlour, giving through an arched door upon grass and flower beds and fruit trees in a double row, and one huge linden, the resort in blossom time of nations of bees. Under this great tree, the next day, sat the Abbess, beside her a table with books and writing materials and before her a frame on which was stretched the cope she was embroidering with coloured silks and gold thread. The Lady Ermengarde likewise embroidered, and five or six nuns, all sisters or daughters of noble houses, held among them a long and narrow web which they embroidered with green and blue and scarlet. A nun seated under a pear tree read aloud the recorded lives of Saints. When she came to an end of a half-hour by the water glass, the Abbess, who would rather talk than read, motioned her to close the book. This was the Abbess’s hour of refreshment from a forenoon of hard work with accounts, with orders of the executive extending to mill and forge and ferry, outlying hamlets, forest and field, with details of Abbey discipline and with correspondence. Rest from the immediate and particular stretched its limbs naturally in the field of the somewhat removed and general.
The Abbess leaned back in her chair, drew an ample breath and looked around upon her spiritual daughters. Her eyes passing the nuns and lighting upon Ermengarde marked a tear coursing down that lady’s cheek. “Saints! Saints!” spoke the Abbess. “I would save my tears till cause was fairly upon me! Here is the sun shining and poppies blooming. The lord who accuses you of first beseeching his love and then striving to poison him may be struck by God’s bolt of repentance. Here is one ‘may’! If he be iron to the bolt your herald may return, and with him the noblest, most valiant, strongest, and skilfullest champion in France, Normandy, Aquitaine, Chartres, or Burgundy—one that this lying lord will eat dust before! There is another ‘may’! Perchance such an one will not present himself and you must take one unfamed, weak, or dull in the fight, while the accuser is strong and famed. Yet are we told that the angels protect the weak, and Michael himself may guide your champion’s arm and pierce Torismond’s shield and shiver his spear and avoid him from his horse and break his neck and declare him a lying, false lord! Here is a third ‘may’! Consider also that you may die, my daughter, before your cause comes to combat. And again, and lastly, that the innocent who is wrongly judged and doomed and given to death is truly a martyr, and rises swiftly through purgatory to Christ and the Blessed Virgin!”
Ermengarde folded her hands from her embroidery. She had a strong, young frame that even this dire trouble had not made weak, and an apple cheek that was, however, fast paling. “Reverend Mother, I ask myself, ‘Is it a bad dream?’ I pinch myself, so mad and unreal does the world seem! I have no great wealth to pay with; I shall not get a strong champion! That is a fair flower, the fancying it, but it has no root. I know that you, yourself, think I shall have good fortune if I find one who can strike a good blow, and is likewise fool or reckless or knows not Lord Torismond! Now, as to the angels and the Angel Michael. I know what we say, Reverend Mother, but do we think Lord Torismond will go down before a champion who will come to my piping, who have small dowry and no mighty kindred?... My case is so hard, my need is so sharp, that my eyes are clear. That miracle may happen, and I ask the prayers of Blessed Thorn that it may! But if it happens not? True it is, I may die before whether I die or live comes to be decided by combat. Truly, I grieve and madden enough to die! But I seem not to be able to do so, and, indeed, Reverend Mother, I like the sunshine and the poppies blooming. And if I get no champion, or, getting one, he cannot stand before Torismond, and if I am put to death with a cruel death, truly, though the world will say I guiltily besought Torismond’s love and guiltily put poison in wine that I gave him, I shall be innocent! And I shall hope that my purgatory may be short and that I shall swiftly rise to Christ and the Blessed Virgin. But I am young, Reverend Mother, and I might be happy yet awhile here on earth, and see and learn a-many things.... I dig again my nails into my flesh, and I say, ‘It is an evil dream!’”
“Blessed Thorn,” said the Abbess, “will pray the Saints and the Blessed Virgin and our Lord her Son that the right may prosper and the truth be shown—”
“Blessed Thorn, giving sanctuary to one oppressed, helps right and truth,” said Ermengarde. “And yet I may be slain, and I am told that no more may be done here, and we know not the mind of the Saints to meward. O Blessed Mother of God, I shall be foully slain!—This, this it is that makes it all dream-like or mad-like, and makes me to wonder how all things are turned and twisted!... I am strong: I am let to ride, to hawk, to dance. Were I daughter of serf or villein, where is the work in field or house, the ditching and digging, the drawing and carrying, the mending and making, the cutting of wood, the swinging a reaper’s sickle I should not be given, yea, made to do?... This is my plaint, Reverend Mother! I can mount and manage a horse. I might have been taught to thrust with the lance, or strike with the sword. I was not so taught—no! But with long watching men at feats of arms I think that I could make some show at doing both. Saints my witness, I think that I might acquit me better than any champion I am likely to get! My quarrel it is—I have no weight of guilt upon my heart—and through me runs a white, a steadying, flame of wrath against Torismond and his lie! O God! I could do better, my own champion! If I had Thy Michael to fight for me! But few have him, and I am not of those who are so near Thy Heaven! I am of the many, like the leaves in the forest, who could do better by their own quarrel.... Perchance I find no champion at all, and since none fight for me I am judged guilty and perish. Should I not do better for myself than none at all? O God, I think that fighting for the truth would pour a wine into me that should give me brute strength to slay the brute lie! Why am I not let to choose, some great angel failing, to fight in my own defence, in my own quarrel? Does the lie slay me then and there in the place of combat? Is that worse than being slain by the lie a day after, two days or three, mayhap, judged worthy of death, because no champion came, or, coming, was too weak? O God! rather should I that Torismond’s lance pierced me through in the place of combat!—” She dropped her head upon her folded arms, her folded arms upon her knees. “I am young and strong! Why do they bind my hands behind me, not letting me keep my own honour?—”