Ursula opened her mouth, but no sound came. Aymery put up his sword, and turned towards the door.
“I would rather have left her,” he said, “in the hands of the woman you have called an harlot. Nor need your zeal have put lies into my mouth. Suffer me, madame, to recommend you a saint. St. Magdalene might give you the religion that you lack.”
And he went out from her, leaving Ursula speechless, and amazed at his insolence.
Yet Aymery’s wrath was a greater and nobler wrath than Ursula’s as he mounted his horse and rode out into the world, that world for which Christ had bled upon the cross. Bitterly plain to him was Denise’s spirit of revolt, and her passionate discontent with Ursula’s morality. What was more, this woman had put her taunts and her homilies into his mouth, and made him harangue and edify Denise! Aymery cursed Ursula for a meddlesome, cold, and self-righteous fool. He would rather have left Denise in Marpasse’s hands, for Marpasse had a heart, and no belief in her own great godliness.
And Denise, what would befall her now that they had driven her like an outcast into the world? He was gloomy and troubled because of her, feeling that she had been wounded the more deeply than she had ever been wounded by Marpasse’s knife. He remembered too how Denise had sought death in the woods that day. The impulse now might be more powerful, seeing that she had suffered more, and had no friend.
Ride after her into the blind chance of the unknown he could not yet, for Aymery was pledged to Earl Simon and his brethren-in-arms. The Barons’ host had gathered at London; they were on the eve of marching southwards into Sussex, for the King was threatening the Cinque Port towns which were loyal to Earl Simon. Aymery had seized these two days to ride and discover the truth about Denise. His knighthood was pledged to the man who had knighted him, nor could he break the pledge to chase a wandering shadow.
CHAPTER XXXV
Marpasse of the blue gown had fallen in with old friends on the way to Tonbridge, where the King had taken the castle of Gilbert de Clare, and these same friends, ragamuffins all of them, were following the glittering chaos of the King’s host on the road to the sea. There would be plunder to be had if St. Nicholas would only persuade King Henry to take and sack the Cinque Port towns; and all the beggars, cut-throats and strollers in the kingdom rolled in the wash of the King’s host, terribly joyful over the happenings that might give them bones to pick.
The passing of fifty thousand armed men, to say nothing of the baggage rabble, was no blessing to the country folk whom it concerned. Lords, knights, men-at-arms, bowmen, scullions, horse-boys, and harlots went pouring southwards in the May sunshine, ready to thieve whatever came to hand. King Paunch ruled the multitude, for the host ate up the land, and called like a hungry rookery “more, more!” And since a hungry mob is an ill-tempered one when once its patience has leaked out of its tired toes, the King’s followers began to grow very rough and cruel before they had marched five leagues. Hunger does not stand on ceremony, and such brutal things were done that the country folk took to the woods and swore death to any straggler. Bludgeon, and axe, and bow took toll of the King’s host, and many a rowdy was caught and left grinning at the heavens, with his stiff toes in the air.
Now Marpasse and her friends were as hungry as the rest, and coming as they did, like fowls late for feeding time, their genius for theft was developed by necessity. Yet it is not so easy to steal when everything eatable has been stolen, and when a crossbow bolt may come burring from behind a wood-stack. None the less, Marpasse and her company were in luck not ten miles from Tonbridge Town. They saw a sow feeding on the edge of a beech wood close to the road. There was much pannage in the neighbourhood, and Marpasse and her comrades tucked up their skirts, and went a-hunting, and were blessed with the sight of the black backs of a whole drove of swine.