In our king’s will at London, therefore, young Valgard grew into man’s estate and, contrary to his expectations, throve mightily, discovering a rare aptitude for gentle accomplishments. And for that his heart was noble as well as brave and he was as débonaire as he was comely, the king and the royal household came to love him exceeding well until—as the years went by and the peace held—they scarcely remembered that he might one day stand as a scapegoat for loathsomest crimes against them.
Only Valgard himself never for the span of one candle’s burning forgot it. Like poison at the bottom of a honeyed cup it lay behind every honor he achieved. Yet even as he had promised his brother, he bore it well and gallantly enough—until, in the sixth year of his captivity, it fortuned to him to fall in love.
She of whom he become enamoured was a young maid in the queen’s service, whose rightful name was Adeleve but whom men called Little Nun both by virtue of the celestial sweetness of her face and because of her being but newly come from a cloister school. And in this cloister they had taught her so much of heaven and so little of earth that whenso her heart was taken by Valgard’s brave and débonaire ways she knew neither fear nor shame therein, but continued to demean herself with the lovely straightforwardness of an angel or a child. Wherefore Valgard, who was used to women that smiled at him from under heavy lids or drew full red lips into rosebuds of enticement, might not dream that she felt more than friendship. And since in her presence he was always silent and humble as he had been before Our Blessed Lady herself, though elsewhere light speeches sparkled on his lips as bubbles on the clear wine, he wist not for a long time the true name of what he felt.
But one day at that season of the year when the king’s household rode often to hunt the wild boar in the woody groves that compassed London round, it happened to Valgard to become separated from the rest and stray alone through still and shadowy glades. There in the solitude, as was ever his unhappy case, his gayety fell away and his forebodings climbed up behind and went with him heavily. Riding thus, it chanced to him to approach the spot where the queen and her maidens tarried and so to come upon the Little Nun herself, that also rode apart, following a brook which sang as it went. Then at last was he made aware of his love, for suddenly it was neither a dislike of death nor any rebellious wish to flee therefrom that possessed him, but solely the dread of being parted from her, which so racked him that he was in very agony.
Now as soon as ever Little Nun perceived that a great trouble was upon him she spoke straight from her heart, though timidly as a child knowing the narrowness of its power, and prayed him to say whether his distress were aught which her love might assuage. When he heard her speak thus sweetly and marked the angelic tenderness of her eyes under her little dove-colored hood, lo! everything fell clean out of his mind before one almighty longing. Descending from his horse, he took her hands and spoke to her passionately, so:
“Tell me whether you love me. My heart cries out for you with every beat. Must it be as the voice of one calling into emptiness? Tell me that you return my love and my life will be whole though it end to-night.”
The Little Nun’s face of cloistral paleness flushed deeply like an alabaster vase into which is being poured the red wine of the sacrament, but her crystalline eyes neither fell nor turned aside.
“I love you as much as you love me—and more,” she answered softly.
Whereupon he would have caught her in passionate arms, but that even as he reached this pinnacle of bliss it came back to him how he was a doomed man; and he was as one that is cast down from a height and stunned by the fall.
Anon his voice returned, and sinking to his knee he begged her in broken words to forgive the wrong he had done her in gaining her love, that well knew himself to be set aside for shame and dole and apart from the favor of woman.