They went through a country filled with misery. Men and women, children, animals that worked for humanity and depended upon it—everywhere was misery and misery. It put out cold fingers and touched Gersonde and Gerbert. “We cannot keep our glory and splendour and bliss!”
Out of the misery rose a hectic enthusiasm, bred of misery and superstition. Every third person now struck hands together and cried, “The End of the World!” Gaunt and tattered bands went about, from hamlet to hamlet, crying, “Throw by the things of every day! It is the End of the World!” There came monks who said, “Not yet—not yet awhile, good folk! There are two years yet before the Thousand Years is spent! Go back to your fields and your houses!” But by now the pale excitement had mounted into a fanatic wish to believe in Terror. A monk was stoned who said, “It is not yet!” The contagion spread.
Gersonde and Gerbert saw in the distance the bishop’s castle on the hill, then the church roof and other roofs and the town wall. They came close to the town, and here were certain huts, clustering under the shadow of the wall, ready to pour their inmates through the gate, at the first breath on the wind of Rainulf’s coming. It was evening. Gerbert and Gersonde thought to enter the town in the morning; in the meantime, by a cast of art, to gain here bread and night’s lodging. She knew the songs of Rosamund; he could play far better than did Bageron.
They played and sang, they gained supper and night’s rest, under the shadow of the wall.... In the middle of the night came Rainulf the Red, an evil whirlwind out of the darkness, strong, with five hundred men behind him. He came to strike like a battering-ram against the bishop’s gates; perchance, with splendid luck, to find them weak, ill-guarded. To do that he overran, like a care-naught tempest, the huddle of houses without.... All was sudden waking, crying, confusion, blows, wounding, and death.
The bishop’s gates were strong; the bishop was baron before he was bishop. He had a strength at hand within the town. Red Rainulf did not break the gates. Instead, they opened against him and the host the bishop had gathered poured in torrent. It whelmed Red Rainulf’s men; there was a clashing as of opposing waters, a scattering and bearing back. Many on both sides were killed or hurt, some borne off prisoners. Rainulf, giving back in the night, cursing the foulness of his luck, drew off at last his diminished host.
Héribert was not ready to pursue. With shouting and flaring of torches those from town and castle went back through gate, behind wall. They took with them their wounded. Likewise there surged into the town with them the folk of those huts that now were burning, burning, fired by Rainulf’s men that had fought from hut to hut, trampling, hurting, slaying, driving apart the inmates, men, women, and children. All of the bishop’s folk hasted now, or were pressed and driven, one part by another, through the gates, into the town.
With them was pushed Gersonde, looking this way, that way, in the alternate glare and darkness, for Gerbert. She saw him not; Gerbert was swept away with Red Rainulf’s men. Hurt, stunned by a blow from a mace, fallen across a doorstep, he had been seen by one from Red Castle. This one knew not why the music-maker was there, but having a liking for him, called to a fellow. The two lifted Gerbert and laid him upon a horse, and bore him away with them.
Gersonde found him not; nowhere could she find him. When morn came and, with others who sought also for missing ones, she returned to the charred heaps where had stood these huts, still she found him not. Here the slain had been left in the road, and the bishop, riding forth at dawn, had seen that the bodies were flung in the river that ran past. Gersonde said, “He is dead! O End of the World, he is dead!”
Hours passed, days passed, though they passed so slowly. Gersonde, to keep her body fed and sheltered, must earn. Black Martin and his band were not here; they were gone on toward Paris. She thought of Jeanne and the children, but she thought dully, not caring greatly for any on earth. Yet she gave her body food as she could get it, and she found a kennel-like place in a black lane where the people in the house above let her sleep. She tried to sing, but the songs of Rosamund would not come, with the music-maker dead.... She fell back upon soothsaying. She sat in a corner of the market-place, her blue cloak drawn about her and her hand outstretched. But the bells were ringing and men and women streaming by to hear the chanting monks. “The End of the World! Presently will the moon fall and the sun go out!”
Then came a black-eyed, anxious-faced youth who said: “You are the soothsayer who was here with those wrestlers and singers.... Tell me if I shall have time before World’s End to get to my mother in Tours?”