“Peace to you,” he said, “soul and body are hurt here. Go and tell your Prioress that we are in need.”
He rode into the court, though a most sensitive etiquette might have forbidden an armed man to ride into such a place. The portress went her way with a hobbling excitement that was very worldly. Presently Ursula the Prioress came out, and two nuns with her and since Aymery held out Denise to the women they could not let him drop her upon the stones.
CHAPTER XXXII
Ursula the Prioress was a prim woman, a woman with a long, thin face, and a small mouth. She had no knowledge of life, but being very devout and religious, her devotion and her religiosity made her conceive infallibility within herself.
Ursula had seen nothing more in Denise than a young woman with gorgeous hair, a deathly face, and blood upon her bosom, and Ursula’s nostrils had caught a rank flavour of godlessness from the affair. The woman had stabbed herself or been stabbed. She was probably nothing more than a common courtesan, for Ursula had a vague knowledge that the sisterhood of Rahab still existed. And like many religious women, Ursula was very sure of her own cleanliness, and very suspicious of the cleanliness of others.
The woman could not be left to die, there was her “state of sin” to be remembered; yet Ursula was conscious of great graciousness in suffering Denise to be carried within her doors. Then there was the knight to be dealt with, and the Prioress who knew nothing of men, minced before Aymery with prim haughtiness, folding her hands over her lean body, giving him to understand that it was no concern of hers to please him. Aymery, in the deeps and on the heights in one and the same hour, and stricken to the inmost humanism of his soul, had no eyes for Ursula’s prinnickings and prancings. He was in the throes of a tragedy, a strong and impassioned man whose thoughts and desires moved with the headlong naturalness of a stream in flood.
Ursula, half eager to be rid of the man, and yet equally curious, and prying, received him, under a hinted protest, in her Prioress’ parlour. To be sure, she had a couple of nuns outside the door, but some of her prejudicial tartness vanished when she heard the name of Simon the Earl. Even the pinpoint of the Prioress’ womanliness caught the gleam of Aymery’s intensity that burnt at a white heat. She showed herself old-maidishly ready to hear the truth about Denise, since a knight trusted by Earl Simon could not be wholly a dissolute rogue.
Aymery made a mistake that day, a mistake that many a generous and impassioned man has made. Here was a devout woman, a mother of souls, and Aymery took her for what her religion should have made her. Denise, poor child, with the flicker of life still in her, was to be laid to rest in Ursula’s lap. No woman could withhold pity in such a case, and Aymery told Ursula some part of Denise’s tale, not seeing that he was throwing a rose into a pot of sour wine.
The Prioress’ starched figure looked lean and stiff. She was interested, but, dear St. Agnes!—greatly shocked. Aymery’s words fell on an ass’s hide like blows on an empty drum. The drum resounded, made some godly stir, but held nothing more than air.
Aymery had money in his purse. It was not much, but Ursula was a woman whose skin had the colour of gold. She took the money, and his promises of a bequest should the people’s cause prosper, thinking it easily earned by burying a lost woman and putting up prayers for her soul. Ursula would have prayed religiously. She was perfectly sincere in her own corner of the world.