Uther and Igraine/Book 2/6

VI

IGRAINE found lodging that night in the great abbey of St. Helena that Pelleas had spoken of on their ride from the island manor. Posing to the portress as one who had wandered long after her escape from Avangel, she was taken to the refectory, where supper was being spread by the juniors. The women of the place gathered round her, and Igraine inquired with some qualms for any chance news of Malt, Claudia, and the rest, but getting nothing she felt more confident. She told them her name was Melibœa, and she recounted at length the burning of Avangel and her subsequent wanderings, carefully purging the tale of all that might seem strange to their virgin ears, or set their tongues a-clacking. The women were very kind to her, partly for her own sake, and partly for the interesting gossip she had brought them.

At supper she sat next a young and merry nun who shared her misericords with her. The good women of the place were suffered to talk between vespers and complines, and Igraine, sly at heart, edged the talk to a tone for which she thirsted, and began to speak to her neighbours of Gratia, Abbess of Avangel.

"Did any of you know her?" she asked.

"Only by fame," said a fat nun opposite Igraine.

"I have heard she was near of kin to the King," said another, who drooped her lids in very modest fashion.

Igraine started in thought.

"Aurelius?" she said.

The nun nodded.

"How were they related?"

"I have heard Gratia was his aunt."

"And aunt to Uther also?"

"Of course, seeing they are brothers."

Igraine looked at her wooden platter, and pressed the little gold cross to her bosom with her hand. And now a strange thing happened. The old nun opposite Igraine, who was the Mistress of the Novices, brought out news that she had heard in the Abbess's parlour that very morning

"Uther has been seen again," she said.

"Uther?"

The word snapped out like a bolt from a bow, and brought the nuns' eyes on Igraine across the table.

"The man comes and goes like a shadow. He is ever riding alone to do some great deed against the beasts, or against the heathen. A great soul is Uther."

Here were tidings dropped like dew out of heaven at the very hour she stood in need of them. Igraine felt the mist lighten appreciably in her brain. She popped an olive into her mouth and spoke almost carelessly.

"Where is Uther?"

"At Sarum town. He rode, they say, to the great camp there looking like a ghost, or as though he had been playing Simeon on a pillar."

Igraine merely nodded.

"Uther always looks a serious soul. Have you ever seen him, sister?"

"Never. A dark man?"

"With a face like a sun and a thunder-cloud rolled into one."

"A good man!"

"So they say; he has a clean look."

A little bell began to sound to call them away to complines. Igraine went with the rest into the solemn chapel, and let the chant sweep into her soul, and the prayers take her heart to heaven. Incense floated down, colours shone and glimmered on the walls, the dim lamps shivered like stars under the roof. Igraine felt her hollow heart warm as a rose in the full blaze of a golden noon. She said her prayers very fervently that night, for love was awake in her and glad of her new-blossomed hope. She would go to the great camp at Sarum and see this Uther for herself.

She had little comradeship with sleep in the great dormitory that night. When the matins bell rang she was up and ready for her flight like a young lark in the day. After chapel she begged a pittance from the cellaress and stowed it with her bundle in the little wallet Lilith had given her, excusing her early going on the plea that she had far to walk that day. She set out briskly from the grey shadows of the abbey. The place lay quite close by the western gate, so that she was soon beyond the walls and in the fields and orchards where all was goldly quiet at that early hour.

Winchester stood like a prison-house, void and fooled, in the east. Igraine turned and looked down at it awhile huddled in its great girdle of stone, a medley of towers, roofs, and mist-wrapped trees. She shook her fist at it with a noiseless little laugh when she thought of Gorlois. Further yet to the east she could see the blue pine-smirched ridge where Pelleas had built her that little bower on the night he had left her sleeping. Her eyes grew deep with desire as she thought of it all, even as she had thought of it a thousand times since then. Pelleas's dark face was garlanded with green in her memory, and trouble, as it ever does, had made love take deeper root in her bosom.

Cheeriness comes with action. Igraine, fettered no longer, footed it along the road with snatches of song on her lips, and her eyes full of summer. A quiet wind came up from the west, and the clear morning air suited her courage. All the wide world seemed singing; the trees had an epithalamium on their whispering tongues, and the sky seemed strewn with white garlands. The tall corn in its occasional cohorts bowed down to her with murmuring acclaim as though it guessed her secret.

When she had gone a league or so she sat down under a tree and made a meal from the stuff in her wallet. Country folk went by on the road, for it was market-day in Winchester. One apple-cheeked lad seeing a nun sitting there came devoutly with his palms full of fruit taken from his ass's pannier, and made his offering with a shy smile and a bend of the knee. Igraine, touched, blessed him most piously, and gave him a kiss to cap it. The lad blushed and went away thinking he had never seen such a pretty nun before, and wondering if there were many like her in the great abbey. Igraine watched him towards Winchester, and wished some country girl joy of a good husband.

Presently she held on again in great spirits, nor had she gone very far when a tinkling of bells came up behind her with a merry clatter of hoofs. Turning aside to give passage, she looked back and saw an old gentleman riding comfortably on a white mule with two servants jogging along behind him on cobs. The old man's bridle was fringed with little silver bells that made a thin jingle as he rode; he was solidly gowned in plum-coloured cloth turned over with sable, and seemed of comfortable degree, judging by his trappings. Igraine looked up in his face as he passed by, while the old gentleman stared down to see what sort of womanhood lurked under a nun's hood. The man on the mule was Eudol, Radamanth's bosom gossip.

"Hey now, on my soul," said the little merchant, reining in with a will; " what have we here, my dear, gadding about nunwise on a high-road? My faith, I must hold a catechism."

Igraine, knowing the old man's vulnerability, answered with a smile.

"Ah, Master Eudol, you are a very lady's man, a gem of discretion."

"So, and truth," said the merchant, with a chuckle.

Igraine went close to him and patted the white mule's neck, while the serving men held at a wise distance.

"I am running away from Winchester," she said.

"Strange sport, my dear."

"Now you must not tell a soul, on your honour."

"Not a living soul, on my honour."

Igraine let her eyes flit a laughing look up at him.

"Why then, Master Eudol," she said, " if you will order one of your men to walk, I will get up and ride along with you for a league or two. There is trust for you."

Eudol appeared entranced with the suggestion. He ordered one of his fellows to dismount, to spread a cloak over the saddle, to shorten a stirrup leather and give Igraine his knee. The girl was soon mounted, seated side fashion with one sandalled foot in the stirrup and one hand on the pommel to steady her. She flanked Eudol's white mule, and they rode on side by side at a level tramp, with the henchmen some twenty paces in the rear.

Eudol soon waxed fatherly, as was his custom. He twitted Igraine on the temerity of her venture with the senile and pedantic jocosity of an old man. He said things that would have been impertinent on the tongue of a youngster, and exerted to the full that eccentric fad of age, the supposition that youth needs pleasant patronage and nothing more. Old men, holding young folk to be fools, reserve to their rusty brains the privilege of seeming wise. They are content to straddle the crawling, leather-jointed circumspection that they call knowledge. The bird flutters to his mate, sings, soars, and is taken before night by the fowler. The snail creeps his rheumy round covered with the slime and slobber of prudence, to rot in the end under a tree-stump, unless some good throstle cracks him prematurely on a stone. Eudol had something of the snail about him but he assayed none the less to ape the soaring of youth with a very ragged pair of wings. That morning he flew with a senile eagerness for Igraine's favour, and thought himself a match for any young man in the matter of light chivalry.

"Come now, my dear," he said, " let us have a good look at you."

"Well, sir?"

"My word, you make a gorgeous nun. Who ever saw such eyes under a hood before! My dear, you are quite foolhardy to go pilgrimaging alone; men are such rogues, and you have such a pretty face."

There was a cringing tone about the old sinner that made Igraine thoroughly despise him. He seemed to combine elderly bravado with smooth servility, qualities peculiarly obnoxious to the girl's spirit. She had never liked or trusted Eudol overmuch in the past, but she was at pains to be civil to him now, seeing that he might serve her in sundry ways. She took his speeches with outward graciousness, and laughed at him hugely in her heart.

He began to lecture her in rather egotistical fashion.

"You must remember, my dear," he said, " that I am a man of the world, and one whose experience may be relied upon. I may tell you that my judgment is much valued by your good uncle Radamanth, a man of much sagacity, but yet one who lacks just that subtle insight into events that I may say has always been my special characteristic. I am so experienced that I may deserve the infinite honour of advising you if you care to tell me where you are going. I have had so much to do with the world, that I can tell you the best tavern in any town this side of the Thames where clean and honest lodging may be had. I can inform you as to tolls, prices, customs, bye-laws. Are you soon returning to Winchester?"

Igraine shook her head at him.

"Who have you been quarrelling with, my dear?"

"Myself most."

"To think of it, syrup quarrelling with honey! What will your Lord Gorlois do?"

Igraine stifled the question on the instant.

"Master Eudol, leave that name alone if you want more of my company."

"Pardon, my dear, pardon. I did not know it was so unpleasant a topic."

"I hate the very name of him."

"My dear, such a splendid fellow."

"Detestable boaster."

"Tut, tut,--a very popular nobleman; just the very man for you, and vastly rich. Now when I heard that he--that gentleman--"

"For God's sake, Master Eudol, leave your chatter."

The old merchant for the moment looked a little taken aback. Then he smiled, pulled his goat's beard, and grew epigrammatic.

"She who wears a gilded shoe," he said, " will find it pinch in the wearing. Stick to your sandals, my dear, and let your pretty white feet go brown in the sun. Better breathe in the open than freeze in a marble house. Just play the savage and let ambition go hang."

Igraine thanked him as though she held his counsel to be of the most inestimable value to herself. She was wise enough to know that to please an old man you must take his words in desperate earnest, and appear much caught by his supreme sagacity. Eudol smacked his lips and comfortably warm within himself. He went on to tell the girl that he was riding to a little country manor that he owned some few leagues from Winchester. He informed her sentimentally that he was a very Virgil over his farm and garden. Igraine thought " Virgil " might well be Greek for " fool ", but she hid her ignorance under her hood. Eudol ran on to dilate on the subtleties of husbandry, making a fine parade of expert phraseology in the doing of it.

"I see you do not follow me," he said presently. "Young folk are not fond of turning over the sods; they love grass for a scamper, not clay and dull loam. Shall we talk of petticoats or sarcenet that runs down a pretty figure like water? Eh, my dear? You set the tune, I'll follow." Igraine contented herself with keeping him to his hobby.

"My father loved his violet beds," she said.

"Wise man--wise man. A garden makes thoughts sprout as though they would keep time to the leaves. You shall see my garden. Let me see, what road are you for following?"

"The road to fortune, Master Eudol."

"Truth, then, it must run near my doorway. The good woman who keeps house for me will make you most welcome. You must rest on your journey."

"You are very good."

"Not a bit of it, my dear. I shall call you St. Igraine--hee, hee!--and you will ripen all the apples in my orchard by looking at 'em. Faith, am I not a wag?"

"You ought to be at court, sir."

"Hee, hee!"

"You would make all the young squires red with envy."

"My dear, my dear!"

"Truth."

"To flatter an old man so--"

"But you are really such a courtier."

Eudol squirmed and chuckled in the grotesquest fashion.

"Assuredly we make very good friends," he said.

Eudol's manor nearly halved the mileage between Sarum and the royal town of Winchester, and Igraine found his suggestion quite a happy help to her plans. If needs be, she could bide the night there and make Sarum next day with but trivial trouble. She was glad in a way that she had fallen in with Eudol, for the ride had proved quite a charity to her, and his antique vanities had passed the time better than more modest characteristics could have done. Her only fear was lest he should cheat her, and send word to Radamanth. Accordingly she spoke to him again about her flight, and made him promise on the Cross that he would not betray her whereabouts. Eudol, silly soul, was ready enough by now to promise her almost anything.

About noon they baited and made a meal, with a flat stone lying under the shade of a tree for table. Eudol drank quite enough wine to quicken his failings, and to lull what common sense he had to sleep. He became so maudlin, so supremely sentimental, that Igraine had much ado to throttle her laughter. She quite feared for him when they had to get to horse again. His men had to hoist him into the saddle between them. Once there be seemed quite arrogantly confident of his seat, and being a hardy old gentleman at the pot he soon steadied down into comparative docility, managing his mule as though there had been no such luxury as dinner. He was more garrulous and fatherly than ever; now and again be had to quench a hiccough; otherwise he was only an exaggerated portrait of himself.

An hour's ride brought them to Eudol's own pastures. He pointed out his sheep to Igraine amid the clanking of their diverse bells, and told her the profits of the last shearing. Soon the house edged into view, a homely place set back an arrow's flight from the road, and ringed round with a score or so old trees. It was a green and quiet spot, mellow with the warm comfort of pastureland and wood. A pool twinkled in the meadows, through which ran a small stream.

There was no bridge over the brook; the track crossed it by a shallow ford where the water gurgled over pebbles. The banks were loose and crumbling, and the trackway littered with stones. Eudol's mule went over sure-footed as a goat, but Igraine's horse, slipping on the slope, set a forehoof on a shifting,stone, and rolled down with a crash. The girl did not avoid in time, and the brute's body pinned her ankle. She felt the sinews crack, and the stones bruise her flesh. For a moment she was in danger of the animal's plunges to rise, but one of the men came up and seized the bridle, while his fellow drew Igraine clear.

Eudol climbed down, splashed through the water, and came up puffing sympathy. Igraine tried to walk, but gave up with a wry face. The men helped her to the grass bank, where she sat down, with Eudol fussing round her like an old woman. He sent the men on to the manor to bring a bed; and seeing that Igraine had grown white from the wrench, he ran for the wine-flask at his saddle-bow and urged her to drink. The girl had more fear of a spoilt journey than a cracked bone, and feeling faint for the moment, she suffered Eudol, and took the wine. The old man was on his knees by her stroking her hand, his thin beard wagging, and his glazed eyes vinously sympathetic. When the men came bark with the bed they laid Igraine thereon, and bore her through the meadows to the house, Eudol following like a spaniel at their heels.