“My poor unfortunate little fool of a husband,” she said in clear, level tones. “I have certainly made up my mind to leave you for ever, and to live of my own free will with this gallant knight. I was helpless and unprotected, and I married you because I thought you were a warrior who would win a fief. But your ridiculous scruples always hold you back, and you will die landless. The best solution would be for Robert to kill you now; but he is too honourable to murder you unarmed. So good-bye for ever, and I hope you meet an infidel arrow quite soon. Now run along, before my footmen beat you, in revenge for the beating you gave me.”
Thoughts flashed through Roger’s mind of some eloquent appeal that would make Anne return, abashed, to his bed, or some flaming sarcasm that would send his cousin slinking away in shame. But his courage was not great enough to allow him to insult an armed man while he himself was in in his tunic; at length he turned on on his heel, and walked as slowly as he dared back to the bridge of the camp.
As he walked away, the blood pounding in his head and his legs jerking unnaturally from a mixture of fury and fear, he heard continued peals of laughter from the triumphant lovers. Tears were running down his face when he reached his hut and flung himself on his blankets. Tom would be wondering what to do about the donkey and Anne’s baggage, but he could not possibly give him instructions now. His first thought was to get into his armour and hunt down his cousin, but he knew that the garrison on the walls would never let him into the city. He lay on his bed, calling down curses on the whore and her paramour.
As darkness fell he sat up and tried to pull himself together; whatever happened he must march in the morning. He could give out that his wife was sick, and that he had told her to stay in the citadel under the care of his cousin; but of course that was only a temporary expedient; all the pilgrims, and particularly his own acquaintances, would soon know of his shame. If they had all been on the march together he could have appealed to his lord for justice on the seducer, and asked the Legate for a sentence of excommunication on the guilty pair; but he knew that Duke Robert could do nothing against a knight who was sheltered by the city walls, and the Legate was dead and his office still vacant. Prince Bohemund, and all those plundering bandits from Italy, would admire their comrade for his exploit, and would not be bothered in the least by an excommunication that could not be published inside the city. He got up slowly, and lurched aimlessly about the darkened hut; he felt as stiff all over as though he had been beaten, and his hands still shook uncontrollably.
Of course, the conscripted Syrian servants had run off as soon as they realized that something was wrong. He could not join the crowd who would be supping at the Duke’s tables, but he must eat something before the march to-morrow. With fumbling fingers he lit a torch and searched through the hut; in a corner was a small bag of mouldy dates, which the servants had not bothered to steal; he managed to swallow a few without being sick, and drank water from the flask that hung on a peg, already filled for the journey.
He could not bear to spend the night alone in the hut, which had been his married home for more than a year. Everything round him spoke of Anne, his darling golden Anne, who had betrayed him. With the tears still running down his cheeks, but with his breathing under control and a grim set to his mouth, he picked up his blankets and set off to find Tom at the horselines. At sight of the tough but familiar face he broke down again; he could not go through with his carefully thought-out story of Anne’s ill-health, and he found relief in blurting out the truth.
“I shall spend the night here,” he said. “Don’t bother to look out for Domna Anne any longer. She is a whore who has left me for a richer man.”
Tom whistled with surprise; then he began to grin, as everyone does when he hears that a pretty wife has run away from her husband. But he hastily pulled his face into an expression of sorrowful concern.
“I am very sorry to hear that, sir. She was a kind and gracious lady, and it is a dishonour to us all. But you will find fighting comes easier when you have no family to worry about. Put your bedding down here by the fire, and I will fetch some more wood. You want to get some sleep to-night, for we shall have a hard day to-morrow. Have you eaten any supper, sir? There is cold bacon in this pack.”
He did his best to fuss over his master and make him comfortable for the night, but Roger had seen the beginning of that grin; he knew that everyone would feel the whole story made an excellent dirty joke, though some might be too polite to say so. That grin would follow him through the army; and Heaven only knew what sort of nick-names he would be called behind his back.
Very early in the morning, before it was light, the trumpets blew, and grooms started to load the horses. He scrambled out of bed, and let Tom tie him up in his armour, without bothering about a wash. All the hundreds of priests in the camp were beginning their Masses, and in a dazed and half-awake condition he wandered off to the pavilion where Father Yves was accustomed to celebrate. With murder in his heart towards his wife and her adulterous lover, he could not bring himself to confess to a priest who would demand forgiveness before absolving him; so he dared not take Communion, but even so it was unthinkable to begin a new campaign against the infidel without at least being present at the Sacrifice.
Most of the congregation were old acquaintances, and he thought they received him with curious glances and suppressed sniggers. He would have liked to stay afterwards and talk to the priest; but they were due to march in an hour, and already the footmen were waiting to strike the pavilion. He took a piece of biscuit from the Duke’s pantry for his breakfast and walked slowly back to his pony, kicking the ground and muttering his grievances under his breath.
The wintry sun had risen on all the squalid disorder of the half-abandoned camp, and the Duke’s criers were calling the order to mount. Thank God Tom was efficient, and as honest as a crossbow-man could be expected to be; the pack-horse was well loaded, and his own Turkish pony properly saddled and ready for him. He mounted and rode to the eastern end of the camp, where the banner of Normandy was displayed. He caught a glimpse of his abandoned hut, where a squabbling crowd of Syrian peasants were already taking down the soundest timbers, and realized, with a shock to the depths of his heart, that all memorial of his married life would soon have vanished without a trace. The knights who rode beside him in the disorderly throng rejoiced that at last they were leaving the overflowing rubbish-heaps and barely-covered graves of this stinking suburb where they had been held up for more than a year, but he could only remember that Anne was somewhere inside that high and frowning citadel, and that he would never see her again.
At last they reached the open, and after a great deal of confusion and many lost tempers the Duke had them arranged in order of march. Roger was placed in the rearguard, since his pony was not good enough for the main-battle; he rode in the middle of that bad-tempered crowd, who knew that any decent plunder would be snapped up by those who marched in front, and that the winter mud would be poached girth-deep by the baggage-animals when they came to the many sloughs on the road. His head was sunk on his breast, and he pretended not to hear anyone who spoke to him.
As they endured the maddening delays of that first day’s march, with untrained baggage-animals and incompetent drivers, his thoughts dwelt only on his broken marriage. The separation from Anne was very bitter, but the blow to his pride was worse. Endlessly repeating to himself Robert’s and Anne’s last words he found that his self-esteem withered and died; he was in truth an unworthy knight, too pusillanimous to win a fief in this large new country that the pilgrimage had conquered, and he deserved all that had happened to him. If only he had taken Anne’s advice, and gone openly into the service of the Count of Taranto! Surely an oath taken in Normandy, all those thousands of miles away and more than two years ago, could not still be binding under these utterly different conditions; in any case, he should have known better than to become the man of such an undecided leader as Duke Robert. It seemed that no one else was bothered in the slig
htest by the scruples that had cost him his wife. Yet he had learnt from his father, and all England believed it, that Count Harold had lost a throne and his life because he was an oath-breaker. What should a man do? Even if he did not care for honour, there was still the wrath of God to contend with. Then another thought struck him. It was bad enough that his wife should openly leave his hearth for the protection of a better or more prosperous man; yet things might be very much worse than that. He began to wonder if Anne had been unfaithful while still under his roof. Robert, his cousin, had always been welcome at his table, as far back as when he had been freezing and starving in Cemetery Castle, and like the horned idiot that he was he had actually begged him to keep an eye on Anne; perhaps they were deceiving him then, when he was living night and day within range of the enemy’s arrows, earning a little money to buy extra food for her sinful carcass. He cast his mind back over all the weary months that had passed since they first reached Antioch in October ’97, and always he could remember himself busy on some irksome duty while the guilty pair were free to enjoy themselves together. He had been so blind as to think that his honour was safe in the hands of his own cousin, for a cuckold in the family reflected on all his relatives. But he saw now that Robert would not lose reputation, at least among the sort of friends whose good opinion he esteemed. It was one thing to be known as one of a family that were too spiritless to keep their wives, and quite another to be yourself a bold and successful woman-stealer, respected by every bandit and adulterer among the Normans of Italy—and most of them were damned and conscienceless brigands. He remembered the last time Robert had come to his hut, when they had quarrelled about his faithfulness to his lord. He saw it all now; he recalled how smartly his cousin had been dressed, and the ballad that Anne had sung, so loud that it might be heard outside the hut, about the sad fate of a lover when the husband unexpectedly stayed at home. She had sung that song as a warning. Then there was nothing open about the intrigue, they had been quite happy to go on as secret lovers, and Robert had come in to persuade him to stay in Antioch as a vassal of the Prince. It was only when he had announced his decision to march on this new campaign that they had made up their minds to brazen it out. Surely he was the blindest fool in Christendom, and trouvères would make comic songs about his stupidity until the end of time. He cursed aloud, and ground his teeth, as he thought of the funny stories that must have gone round in the quarters of the Normans of Italy. Why had he made a fool of himself by coming on this fantastic pilgrimage? What good had his coming done, anyway? When the real test came, and Hugh had been dismounted and helpless at Dorylaeum, his courage had failed him and he had left a fellow-Christian to perish miserably. The small part he had played in passing messages for the surrender of Antioch had done more harm than good, for the bloodless taking of the city had spread dissension among the pilgrims, and detained the whole expedition for more than six months. There was now less chance than ever of the Duke giving him a fief, since he would be known even to the leaders as a funny, ineffective little man. He was a cowardly warrior, and a husband who could not keep the respect of his wife.
He was roused from these mournful thoughts by an unusual commotion ahead. At last they were going to halt for dinner, and the baggage-guard were trying to get their baulky animals off the road. The rear-battle marched on to where the Duke’s kitchens were set up, and he climbed stiffly down from his undignified little pony as the faithful Tom, always clever at picking his master out of the crowd, came up to take the bridle. It was given out that they would march no further that day, in view of the unfitness of all the animals, and he was thankful to be disarmed before going to look for his meal.
It was still quite early in the afternoon, and after the usual campaigning dinner of nameless stew and hard biscuit he went a little way from the others and sat down on a rock. He was tired out by the early start and the emotions of the previous day, but his thoughts still flowed too swiftly to allow him to go to sleep. He had sat for an hour, and the winter sun was low, when Father Yves came up to him.
“May God comfort you, my son,” he said, sitting down quietly beside him. “I have heard of the grievous wrong that has been done to you. It is a foul and desperate sin, but you must be careful not to take it too hardly.”
“Oh, leave me in peace, Father,” snapped Roger; he could not bear to discuss this disaster which was not yet twenty-four hours’ old.
“Are you in peace, my son?” said the priest, with his best professional smile. “If you are I have nothing to do, but if you are still at enmity with some of your neighbours and mine I must try to get you into a better condition.”
“Of course I am not in a state of grace,” Roger answered angrily. “But I am not in need of absolution at this moment. I hate Anne, and I hate her paramour; may they both rot in Hell for what they have done to me, as indeed they will. Don’t tell me to forgive them, or I shall chase you back to the camp.”
“I am very sorry to find you in this frame of mind,” the priest continued in a quiet voice, disregarding Roger’s interruption. “Forgiveness is the most important, and yet the most difficult, part of the Christian life. You are in danger of death every day, as we all are on this pilgrimage. I beg you not to put yourself also in danger of Hell-fire. Just think of those foolish sinners; for a not very important gratification, that all religious men and women manage perfectly well to do without, they have lost their worldly honour and imperilled their souls. Try to be sorry for them. You may find it easier to have pity if you consider what is their position now. Domna Anne has no livelihood, except what Messer Robert gives her, and she will have to keep the love of that roving and gallant young man. I think she is nearly twenty, isn’t she? She is past her first youth; her old age will be very pitiful. What about Messer Robert himself? He is tied by his sinful honour to live with a woman about whom he can only be certain of one thing, that she has already deceived her rightful lord; he can never be sure of her for one moment. Every time he rides out from the citadel he will wonder what she is doing behind his back. And always, when he couches his lance and prepares to charge the infidel, he will know at the back of his mind that he is in mortal sin, and that a Turkish arrow can at any moment carry him straight, without hope of salvation, to the gates of Hell. Don’t you see that they are worse off than you are, and deserving of your pity?”
Roger had listened quietly, because he was too exhausted to get up and move away, and anyway the priest was only doing his duty. Now he began to picture Anne’s hopeless old age, as she lost her beauty and took lower and more repugnant protectors in a desperate search for security; for Robert would not remain faithful all his life. As to Robert, he was not so certain; he had never noticed that knights were more careful of their lives because they knew they were in mortal sin. Father Yves was waiting for his answer, and he roused himself to speak.
“When you put it like that, Father, I see that Anne is to be pitied. Very well, I pity her, if that satisfies you; perhaps you can twist into forgiveness the contemptuous pity that I feel. But with Robert it is not so easy. He has won a beautiful leman whom he can shake off as soon as he is tired of her; perhaps he is a very lucky man. I hate that dishonourable seducer, and nothing you say will make me forgive him. So don’t you try to absolve me now.”
The priest got to his feet, and prepared to leave.
“You are not a wicked man, my son. It is noble of you to forgive your wife, at least; and you are honourable enough, I am glad to see, not to pretend a forgiveness for the seducer that you do not really feel. But you have repented of at least half your hate, and it may be that when we talk again I shall win you to the proper Christian frame of mind.”
Roger suddenly knew that it was better to talk to Father Yves than to sit alone brooding over his wrongs.
“Don’t go, Father,” he said. “At present I need all the comfort I can get. It isn’t only that my wife has left me for a better man; I may be able to bring myself to take the right Christian view of that. But e
verything seems to be so hopeless. I am poorer than when I left England, though many knights have won rich fiefs. I haven’t even a decent warhorse. What is the good of a man like me trying to fight the infidel, when I can’t keep a woman faithful to me. Why did I ever leave home to come on this wild goose chase?”
“Take care,” answered Father Yves, “you are in danger of falling into the sin of despair, which is mortal. If everybody gave way to these feelings, which come to all of us at times, nothing would ever get done at all. Think of it in this way. You are a part, though a humble part, of a victorious army which has fought its way from Constantinople to Antioch, defeating the infidels by the manifest intervention of God wherever it has met them. Now we are on the last stage of the journey; when we reach Jerusalem, in a very few weeks, the pilgrimage will be accomplished. Your life has been safely preserved, by nothing but God’s providence, and I am sure that you have killed as many Turks as you were able to, and as many as any knight should. Remember that we are now getting into the Holy Land, where the bodily influence of Our Saviour will be present to help us, and perhaps that spear-head we have to lead us is really the Holy Lance. So cheer up as much as you can, fight manfully as you did at Dorylaeum where I first met you, and give thanks that you have no family to cause you anxiety in battle. Now come and sit by the fire. You can’t be a pilgrim and a hermit at the same time, and you will have to get used to being with your fellows in spite of what has happened. Take my arm, and we will see if there is any supper going.”
Roger walked back with the priest, still apprehensive of a jeering reception, but much happier than he had been all that day. If Father Yves was right he had a chance, by hard work and brave fighting, of regaining the respect of his comrades.
Knight with Armour Page 30
