The Fortunes of Garin

by Mary Johnston

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE ROCK-GATE

  AT the northern point of the Mount of Roche-de-Frêne, castle wall andwall of the town made as it were one height, so close did each approachthe other. Huge rock upon rock, Roche-de-Frêne lifted here from theplain. This was the impregnable face, sheer rock and double wall, atthe bottom a fosse, and, grim at the top, against cloud or clear sky,Black Tower and Eagle Tower. In the high and thick curtain of stonebetween was pierced the postern called the rock-gate. Here Garin came,on a night not cold and powdered with stars.

  The gate had its turret, and within the shadow of the wall a long benchof stone. Ordinarily, day or night, there might be here a watch oftwenty men. To-night he saw that this was not the case. There was asentinel pacing to and fro before the turret. This man stopped him.

  “The princess’s errand,” said Garin.

  “The word?”

  “_Two Falcons._”

  “Just.” The speaker paced on.

  Garin, going on to the gate, pondered voice and air. They seemed tohim not those of any customary sentinel, but of a knight of renown,a foster-brother of the princess. By the turret were other shadowyfigures—three or four. These also kept silence, or, if they spokeamong themselves, spoke briefly and too low for their words to bedistinguished.

  Garin, Elias of Montaudon’s mantle close about him, sat down uponthe bench in the angle made by wall and turret. He thought that theshadowy figures took note of him, but they did not speak to him norhe to them. They and he were silent. There fell the sentinel’s step,and sounds now vague, now distinct, from Black Tower and Eagle Tower,both of which were garrisoned. For the rest came the usual murmur ofthe armed and watchful night. Garin lifted his eyes to the starrysky. At first his faculties drank simply the splendour of the night,the blended personalities of scene and hour; then some slight thingbrought Palestine into mind. There came before the inner vision theeve of his knighthood, when he had watched his armour in the chapelof a great castle, crusader-built. That was such a night as this.There had been an open window, and through the hours, as he knelt orstood, he had seen the stars climb upward. The emotion of that nightrekindled. It came from the past like a slender youth and walkedbeside the stronger-thewed and older man. Garin watched the stars,then with a long, sighing breath, let his gaze fall to the sky-line,vast, irregular, imposing, and to the mass of buildings that the earthupheld. Here was deep shadow, here a pale, starlight illumination. Herelight rayed out from narrow windows, or a carried torch or lanthorndisplayed some facet of the whole.

  He turned toward the White Tower. He could see it dimly between twonearer buildings.... He rose from the bench. Figures were approaching,two or three. They also were mantled, face and form. Two stopped a fewsteps away, the third came on. He advanced to meet it. He could onlytell that it was slender, somewhat less tall than himself. The mantleenveloped, the cowl-like hood enveloped. A hand held out a purse whichhe took. It felt heavy; he put it within the breast of his robe.

  “_Saint Martin’s summer_,” said a voice.

  He answered. “_Dreams may come true._” His heart beat violently, hissenses swam. The stars overhead seemed to grow larger, to becomevast, throbbing, living jewels. It appeared that the world slightlytrembled....

  The mantled form turned head, motioned to those who had stopped short.These came up, then after a word all moved to the rock-gate. To rightand left of this now stood the men who had waited by the turret. Thenight had grown still. Montmaure, busy with changes of position, letnight and day go by without attack. Roche-de-Frêne kept watch and ward,but likewise, as far as might be, sank to needed sleep. The investinghost, the great dragon that lay upon the plain, seemed, too, to sleep.The castle up against the stars slept or held its breath. The smallrock-gate opened. Garin and that one who had given him the purse andchanged with him the countersign passed through. After them came thetwo who had accompanied that one. Garin now saw that the taller ofthese was Stephen the Marshal. The gate closed behind them.

  They stood upon a shelf of rock. Below them they saw the stars mirroredin the castle moat. One of the accompanying men now passed in frontand led the way. They were in a downward-sloping, tunnel-like passage.It wound and doubled upon itself; for a time they descended, thentrod a level, then felt that they were upon a climbing path. At lastcame again descent. At intervals they had seen through the crevicesoverhead the stars of heaven; now the passage ended with the stars attheir feet, dim light points in the still water of the moat, stretchingimmediately before them, closing their path. A boat, oared by one man,lay upon it. The four from the castle towering overhead stepped intothis; it was pushed from the sheer rock. In a moment there showedno sign of the road by which they had come. The boat went some way,then turned its prow to the opposing bank. It rose above them darkand sheer. No lasting stairway was here, but as the boat touched themasonry, a hand came over the coping above, and there dropped one endof a ladder of rope. The man who had led the way through the tunnelcaught it and fastened it to a stanchion at the water’s edge.

  “Go first,” said Stephen the Marshal to Garin.

  The latter obeyed, went lightly up the ladder, and upon the moat’srugged bank found himself among two or three men, kneeling, peeringdown upon the boat and its occupants. That one who had said “SaintMartin’s summer” came next, light and lithe as a boy. Last of the fourmounted the one who had fastened the ladder and gone ahead in thetunnel. Garin thought him that engineer whom the princess highly paidand highly trusted.

  They were now between the moat and the wall of the town, rising, uponthis northern face, in the very shadow of the castle rock. About themwere roofs of houses. They went down a staircase of stone and came intoa lane-like space. Before them sprang, huge and high, the burghers’wall, with, on this side, no apparent gate, but a blankness of stone.On the parapet above, a sentinel went by, larger than life against thesky that was paling before the approach of the moon. Some sound perhapshad been made, at the moat or upon the stair between the houses; fornow a guard with halberds, a dozen or more, came athwart their roadwith a peremptory challenge to halt.

  A word was given, the guard fell back. The four from the castle,followed by those who had met them at the moat, went on, walking inthe shadow of the wall that seemed unbroken, a blank, unpierced solid.They had moved away from the most precipitous point of the hill ofRoche-de-Frêne, but now they were bearing back. High above them,almost directly overhead, hung that part of the castle wall where wasset the rock-gate.

  They came to a huge buttress springing inward from the city wall,almost spanning the way between it and the moat. Here, in the anglewas what they sought. From somewhere sprang a dim light and showeda low and narrow opening, a gate more obscure even and masked thanthat by which they had left the castle. Here, too, awaited men; aword was given and the gate opened. A portcullis lifted, they passedunder, passed outward. There was a sense of a gulf of air, and then ofMontmaure’s watch-lights, staring up from the plain. As without thegate in the castle wall, so here, they stood upon a ledge of rock,masked by a portion of the cliff and by a growth of bush and vine.Behind them was Roche-de-Frêne, castle and town; before them therock fell sheer for many feet to a base of earth so steep as to benearly precipitous. This in turn sank by degrees to a broken strip,earth and boulder, and to a wood of small pines which merged with theonce-cultivated plain.

  The dragon that lay about Roche-de-Frêne watched less closely here tothe north. He could not get at Roche-de-Frêne from this side: he knewthat no torrent of armed men could descend upon him here. His eyescould not read the two small, ambushed doors, out of which, truly, notorrent could come! Perhaps he was aware that the besieged might, somenight-time, let down the cliff spy or messenger striving to make a waynorth to that distant and deaf King of France. If so, that daring onemight not at all easily pass the watch that the dragon kept. GaultierCap-du-Loup and his Free Companions encamped in this northern quarter.

  Those who stood without the wall of Roche-de-Frêne looke
d from theirnarrow footing forth and down upon the fields of night and theflickering tokens of the dragon their foe. The men who had handled therope-ladder at the moat now knelt at the edge of this shelf, made fasta like stair but a longer, weighted the free end with a stone, andswung it over the cliff side. It fell: the whole straightened itself,hung a passable road to the foot of the rock. That attained, therewould rest the rough and broken hillside that fell to the wood, thewood that fell to the plain where the dragon had dominion. The nightwas still, the waning moon pushing up from the east.

  That one who alone had used the phrase “Saint Martin’s summer” spoketo Garin: “Go you first,” and then to Stephen the Marshal: “Now we sayfarewell, Lord Stephen!”

  Garin, at the cliff edge, heard behind him the marshal’s low andfervent commendations to the Mother of God and every Saint. He himselfset his feet upon the rope-stair, went down the rock-side, touchedthe stony earth at the base, stood aside. That other, that strangecompanion of this night, came lightly after—not hurriedly, with alight deliberateness—and stood beside him on the moon-silvered hill.The moon showed a woman, slender and lithe, with a peasant’s bodiceand ragged, shortened kirtle and great mantle of frieze. At her wordhe loosened the weighting stone, drew at the rope three times. Thoseat the top of the rock receiving the signal, the ladder was drawnslowly up, vanished. Above the two soared the clean rock, and loftieryet, the bare, the inaccessible wall of Roche-de-Frêne. Black Towerand Eagle Tower seemed among the stars. There was a gulf between themand those small, hidden, defended entrances. The strained gaze couldsee naught but some low, out-cropping bushes and a trailing vine. Upthere the men who had brought them to that side of the gulf might yetbe gazing outward, listening with bated breath for any token that thatdragon was awake and aware; but they could not tell if it were so. Upthere was the friendly world, down here the hostile. Up there might betroubadour-knight and princess, down here stood jongleur and peasant.

  They stood yet a moment at the foot of the crag, then she who wasdressed as a worker among the vines or a herd to drive and watchthe flocks turned in silence and began to descend the moonlitboulder-strewn declivity. She was light of foot, quick and dexterousof movement. Garin, who was now Elias of Montaudon, moved beside her.They came down the steep hill, bare and blanched by the moon. Thedragon had no outpost here; did he plant one, the archers upon thetown wall might sweep it away. But the shafts would not reach to thewood—there perhaps they might hear the dragon’s breathing. They wentwithout speech, and with no noise that could be helped of foot againststone.... Here was a slight fringe of pine and oak. They stood still,listened—all was silent. They looked back and saw Roche-de-Frêne andthe castle of Roche-de-Frêne bathed by the grey night.

  “Cap-du-Loup and his men hold in this quarter,” said the woman in alow voice. “We had a spy forth who got back to us three days since.Cap-du-Loup’s tents and booths are thrown and scattered, stonyground and seams in the earth between the handfuls. He does not keepstern watch, not looking for anything of moment to descend this way.Hereabouts is the ravine of the brook of Saint Laurent, and half a mileup it a medley of camp-followers, men and women.”

  She had not ceased to move as she spoke. They were now in the midst ofa spare growth of trees, under foot a turf burned by the sun and groundto dust by the tread, through half a year, of a host of folk. Somedistance ahead the night was copper-hued; over there were camp-fires.They were now, also, in the zone of a faint confused sound. Theymoved aside from the direction of the strongest light, the deepest,intermittent humming, and came, presently, to the brook of SaintLaurent. It flowed through a shallow ravine with rough, scarped banks.Down it, too, came faint light and sound, proceeding from the camp offollowers.

  “Our aim,” said she in peasant dress, “is to be found at dawn amongthat throng, indistinguishable from it, and so to pass to its outermostedge and away.”

  They were standing above the murmuring stream. Overhead the wind was inthe pine-tops. There were elfin voices, too, of the creatures of thegrass and bush and bark. All life, and life in his own veins, seemed toGarin to be alert, awake as never before, quivering and streaming andmounting like flame.

  “I am Elias of Montaudon,” he said. “I understand that, and how toplay the jongleur, and that if peril comes and stands like a giant andquestions us, I am no jongleur of Roche-de-Frêne nor allied there—”

  “Say that you are of Limousin.”

  “I have not dropped from the sky into the camp of Cap-du-Loup, buthave been singing and playing, telling japes and tales, merry or sad,vaulting and wrestling elsewhere in the host—”

  “With the men of Aquitaine. Say that in Poitou Duke Richard himselfpraised you.”

  “And should they question me of you?”

  “I also am of Limousin. There I watched sheep, but now I am your _mie_and a traveller with you.”

  “By what name am I to call you?”

  “I am Jael the herd. You will call me Jael.”

  They were moving this while up the stream. Did any come upon themnow, it would hardly be held that they had flown from the battlementsof Roche-de-Frêne. The ground was rough, the trees, crowding together,shut out the light from the moon, while the fires at the end of vistasgrew ruddier. The muttering and humming also of the host in the nightincreased.

  Jael the herd stood still. “It will not suit us to stumble in the darkupon some wild band! Here is Saint Laurent’s garden of safety. Let usrest on the pine-needles until cock-crow.”

  They lay down, the jongleur wrapped in his mantle, the herd-girl inhers. “We must gather sleep wherever it grows,” said the latter. “Iwill sleep and you will watch until the moon rounds the top of thatgreat pine. Wake me then, and look, Elias, that you do it!”

  She pillowed her head upon the scrip or wallet which she carriedslung over her shoulder, and lay motionless. The jongleur watched....The barred moon mounted higher, the night wheeled, eastern landswere knowing light. Garin, resting against a pine trunk, lute andwallet beside him on the earth, kept his gaze from the sleeper,bestowed it instead upon the silver, gliding boat of the moon, orupon the not-distant, murky glare of unfriendly fires. But gazehere or gaze there, space and time sang to one presence! Wondermust exist as to this night and the morrow and what journey wasthis. Mind could not but lift the lanthorn, weigh likelihoods, pacearound and around the subject. That quest drew him, but it was notall, nor most that drew.... _Jael the herd! Jael the herd!_ Herecame impossibilities—dreams, phantasies, rain of gold and silver,impossibilities! He remembered clearly now a herd-girl, and that whenhe had asked her name she had answered “Jael.” Many shepherdessestrod the earth, and a many might be named Jael! Moreover sheer,clear impossibility must conquer, subdue and dispose of all thismad thinking. She who lay asleep was like that herd-girl—he saw itnow—shape, colouring, voice—That and the name she had happened tochoose—that and the torn, shepherdess garb—to that was owed thisdizzy dreaming, this jewelled sleet of fancy, high tide of imagination,flooding every inland.... Things could not be different, yet thesame—beings could not be separate, yet one—or in some strange, richworld, could that be so? But here was mere impossibility! Garin stroveto still the wider and wider vibrations. _The Fair Goal—The FairGoal!..._ The moon rounded the top of the pine tree.

  He crossed to the sleeper’s side, knelt, and spoke low. “My liege—”She stirred, opened her eyes. “My liege, the moon begins to go down thesky.”

  With her hand pressed against the pine-needles she rose to a sittingposture. “I slept—and, by my faith, I wanted sleep! Now it is yourturn. Do not again call me liege or lady or princess or Audiart. Thewind might carry it to Cap-du-Loup. Say always to me, ‘Jael.’ And nowlie down and sleep. I will wake you when the east is grey.”

  Garin slept. The Princess Audiart rested against a tree, andnow watched the moon, and now the fires kindled by her foe andRoche-de-Frêne’s, and now she watched the sleeping man. The attirewhich she wore, the name she had chosen for the simple reason that
oncebefore she had chanced to take it up and use it, brought brightly intomind a long-ago forest glade and a happening there. But she did notlink that autumn day with the man lying wrapped in Elias of Montaudon’scloak, though she did link it with Jaufre de Montmaure who had kindledthose fires in the night. It came, a vivid picture, and then it sleptagain. There was, of need, a preoccupation with this present enterpriseand its chaplet, necklace, girdle, and anklets of danger, no lessthan with its bud of promise which she meant, if possible, to makebloom. Her own great need and the need of Roche-de-Frêne formed thelooming presence, high, wide, and deep as the night, but, playing andinterblending with it, high, wide, and deep as the day, was anothersense.... She gazed upon Garin of the Golden Island lying wrapped inthe jongleur’s cloak, and the loss of him was in the looming night, andthe gain in the bud of promise and the feeling of the sun. To-night,her estate seemed forlorn enough, but within she was a powerfulprincess who did not blink her own desires though she was wise to curband rein and drive them rightly.