“God’s speed to you, sister.”
“Ah, that would be too slow for me, sir!” and her laughter rang out with forced audacity.
So the night came, and these two solitary ones took up the strands of their several lives, strands that had been tangled by the martyrdom of Denise. Earl Simon’s trumpets called Aymery into the east, whither the King’s host went marching with dust and din. No sword could stay in the scabbard those days, and Aymery had pledged his to Earl Simon, who needed every sword.
Marpasse had watched Aymery ride away into the gathering darkness. She sat there in the grass, sullen, brooding, yet touched by what he had said.
“Bah!” said she, “what would be the use? Brave heart, go your way, and God bless you, for being brave, and honest. Wake up, fool! What, thick in the throat, and ready to blubber like a sot in his cups! Marpasse, my dear, you are a slut and a fool! This is what comes of letting your heart run away with your heels. You will be back to-morrow on the old devil-may-care road.”
But for all her self-scorn—Marpasse could not conjure her own emotion. Her heart hurt her and was troubled, nor could she sleep that night, though she huddled close under the forlorn remnant of a haystack that she found in a meadow. Marpasse felt alone, utterly alone in the world, and conscious of the raw night and the darkness. Who would have cared, she thought, if she had used her knife as Denise had used it? Strangers would have kicked her into a hole, and covered her with sods; that would have been the end.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Rochester city had been stormed on the vigil of Good Friday, but De Warenne still held the castle, and two great Sussex lords, William de Braose of Bramber, and John Fitzallan of Arundel were with him. They knew that the King was on the march; nor was Earl Simon to remain much longer before the walls, for Henry forced him to raise the siege by threatening London with his host. It was Waleran de Monceaux who brought the news of the King’s march, and Aymery, who rode into Rochester but a day behind his brother-in-arms, found De Montfort preparing for a retreat. Their spears were rolling on London when the next dawn came up behind the great tower of the castle, for London was the heart of England that year, and a sudden stab from the King’s sword might have let the life-blood out of the cause.
Earl Simon and the Barons’ men marched through Kent, and pushed in between the King’s host and the city. The Londoners rang their bells, and came shouting over the bridge to bring the Great Earl in. The burghers had been busy since the rejection of King Louis’ award. They had imprisoned some of the King’s creatures on whom they had been able to lay their hands, and sacked and devastated the royalist lands in Surrey and Kent. The week before Palm Sunday the Jewry had been stormed, its inmates massacred, and great treasure taken. London had pledged itself in blood, and De Montfort tarried there, waiting for men to gather to him from the four quarters of the land.
While the roads smoked with these marchings and counter-marchings, and while spears shone on the hill-tops, and steel trickled through the green, Denise cheated death in that quiet valley amid the Surrey hills. Marpasse’s knife had turned between the ribs, missed the heart by the breadth of a finger nail, and let Denise’s blood flow, but not her life. Marpasse’s rough sense had saved her, Marpasse who had saved the body, while Aymery had been busy with the soul. And yet to the nuns Denise’s return out of the valley of the shadows had seemed nothing short of a miracle. Ursula, true to her belief, had seized the first glimmer of consciousness and sent for the priest who served the convent as confessor. But Denise had put the good man off, pleading that she would not die, and that she was too weak to tell him so long a tale.