For once in his life Gaillard felt a fool, and his arrant sheepishness did not please him. He comforted himself with that infallible sneer that is the refuge of a vain man who has done something mean and cowardly.
“Red-headed Pharisee, go your way,” he said. “A woman’s sanctity is as thick as her skin. Fool! I am not the first sheep that has bleated in these parts.”
CHAPTER V
Grimbald the priest stood on guard under the ash tree where the road left Goldspur for the open fields. He had a buckler on his arm, and an axe over his shoulder. His short, frayed cassock showed the beginnings of a brown and mighty pair of calves, and the feet in the leather sandals looked like the feet of an Atlas whose shoulders wedged up the heavens.
There had been a panic at Goldspur that morning, when a lad had run in with the news that he had seen armed men riding through the mist, and that they were marching towards Goldspur. And Grimbald, stalking down into the village, had met some of the younger men skulking off as though there were no women and children to be remembered. Grimbald had twisted a stake out of the hedge, dusted some decent shame into these cowards, and driven them back into Goldspur much as a drover drives his cattle.
Grimbald had found the village in an uproar, for Aymery was away with Waleran, and the folk had tumbled over each other for the lack of a leader. Men and boys had herded in sheep and cattle, and the beasts were bolting all ways, and taking every road but the right one. Women, weeping, scolding, chattering, were carrying out their chattels from the cottages. One had a baby at the breast; another clutched a young pig; a third sat at her door, and screamed like a silly girl. Men were arguing, shouting, quarrelling, eager to do the same thing, but obstinate in trying to do it each in his several way.
Then Grimbald had come and shepherded the people, knocked together the heads of the men who quarrelled, and turned disorder into order. The sheep, cattle, and pigs were driven off towards the woods. Men, women, and children followed, carrying all that they could put upon their backs. In a quarter of an hour from Grimbald’s coming Goldspur village was a row of empty hovels, with nothing alive there but a few chickens, and the sparrows, who trusted in God, and continued to build in the thatch.
Grimbald had set himself at the lower end of the village, and stood there like the giant figure of some protecting saint. He was about to follow his flock when he saw a man on horseback round a spur of woodland in the valley. He came on at a canter for the village, and Grimbald knew him for Aymery by the colours of his surcoat and his horse.
Aymery reined in, hot with galloping, his eyes keen and full of flashes of light. He had been with Waleran, and had ridden to warn his people of what they might expect that day.
Grimbald pointed with his axe to the open doors of the hovels.