The Red Saint

by Warwick Deeping

CHAPTER XIII

The may was budding into bloom, and Dom Silvius came riding Goldspur way again, thinking of the many things that may occupy the mind of a man who keeps both eyes fixed upon the affairs of the “house.” Silvius’s soul felt very comfortable within him that morning. The bloom was setting well upon the orchard trees, such a sea of foam that the autumn should be red with fruit. Word had come from the shepherds in the pasture lands that hardly a lamb had been lost that spring. There was little sickness anywhere, but few poor to need alms, and no shortage of dues from the tenants. Dom Silvius made it his business to know of all these things, even though they might not concern his authority. He was like a child and a miser in his joy and carefulness in working for the wealth and honour of his Abbey.

So Dom Silvius came to the beech wood above Goldspur, and followed the main ride, talking to himself like a happy starling, for he rode alone that morning. And he would lean forward and fondle his nag’s ears, for the beast was provided by one of the tenants, and Dom Silvius loved the horse because he had not to feed him.

“A little more roundly, my good Dobbin,” he prattled. “But beware of worldliness, for the sake of my dignity; we must not bump like a butcher to market. What will Sancta Denise say to us this morning? The child should not set herself alone here like a white dove for any hawk to swoop at. Mea culpa, but the girl has hair like dead beech leaves touched by the sun, saving, Dobbin, that the leaves have no glitter of gold. And what eyes! God bless us, but we may hope for miracles. And if the folk flock to be healed, they shall lodge in the Abbey, and surely their gratitude will make us rich.”

The almoner sobered himself however when he turned aside by the white stone that marked the path leading to the hermitage. The woodlands might have eyes and ears, and it would not be seemly for a man of Silvius’s age and estate to be overheard babbling like a lover who must talk even though it be only to his horse. So he rode very demurely into Denise’s glade, with his chin on his chest, and his lips moving as though he said a prayer for every furlong.

The door of Denise’s cell was shut, nor could Dom Silvius see her stirring in her garden. “Perhaps she is abroad,” thought he, “or maybe she is at her prayers,” so he rode up quietly, dismounted, and looped his bridle over the post of the wicket gate. Then he went in and up the path, and was about to knock softly, when the door opened under his very hand, and Silvius saw a figure in grey standing upon the threshold.

Dom Silvius dropped his eyes suddenly as though he blamed himself for being surprised into staring at a woman’s face.

“The grace of Our Lady to you, Sister,” he said. “I was in doubt whether I should find you at home or no.”

Now Silvius was not a shred embarrassed, though he pretended to a kind of saintly coyness. He had his eyes on the sandalled feet that showed under the hem of the grey gown. They were very comely feet, with the brown straps of the sandals contrasting with the nut brown of the skin, and Dom Silvius was thinking how different these feet were with their arched insteps and straight toes from the gouty and behumped members that shuffled and progressed in the Abbey cloisters. Yet in looking at Denise’s feet the almoner missed the first shadows of a tragedy.

Denise stood very still, her hood drawn forward, one hand holding the edge of the door. The face under the hood expressed nothing, if despair be nothing more than a pale, mute mask. Yet the eyes that looked at the monk were the eyes of one whose blood was full of a spiritual fever.