Chevaliers and merchants, and more than one churchman came to wait their ransom at that Rock's edge. Some waited in vain and were thrust blithely over; gorges and bogs so ringed the place that noblemen suspicious of each other made no concerted move to find and cleanse of its brood that nest of brigandage. Lesser fry of the forest fled from the domain of Joris, or slunk to swell his power; and since he never robbed within leagues of his own lair, travellers passing to and fro between Belsaunt and Dunsberghe could not dream how closely their track approached it. Prisoners entered and left the chasm blindfolded; only the doomed might stare a moment at ominous steeps and rugged skylines while clothing was stripped from their bound or hamstrung limbs.
Joris, then, dealt with the world as the world would have dealt with him; and near the end of his first year of sojourn in the wilds he shaved off his beard and put his life and the lives of three of his men in jeopardy by wandering down into Basse Honoy at the time of midsummer fairs.
Fortune rewarded his daring in her own cruel fashion; at Sangloy, south of Hastain, he came on news of Anne. Taken in witchcraft, they said; so that Joris saw his love a second time amid the grounded pikes of the Prior of Dor. That was the evening remembered by mild Brother Eugenius; Joris was lightly armed, and to aim at a rescue seemed madness, but only for an instant did the shape of her half-bared dripping body sear his vision. Then he yelled and charged, alone for all he knew or cared, at the mailed men who grinned as they pawed and hustled her. But with him were half a hundred; and in the heart of that stubborn fray Red Anne saw and knew him. Alert and unafraid, with sunset light in her face, with the whirl and clash of steel around the draggled splendour of her hair, she smiled at Joris; but even that benediction availed him nothing thereafter. Through the blurred shouting broke thunder of hoofs; a dozen barded destriers shocked into the struggling mass of men. To Joris, as he stabbed and cursed, that onset seemed an earthquake; down he went in the heap, and a stamping horseshoe scattered fire from a stone six inches beyond his face. Then he was up and clawing at the bridle; vaguely he marked a white lion rampant on a sable shield, clearly the dark and savage eyes in the visor slit above it. A chopped stroke over the saddlebow laid open his left forearm; a lance drove past his breast, and a dying man was flung against him like a sack of flour. Over he went once more, saved by the wretch upon him from the pounding hoofs above and as he gasped and cowered he saw Red Anne again. Bleeding and mired, fast-cramped in a shining solleret, her naked foot swung high; amid torn clothing her shoulder and side gleamed white against dark steel and surcoat, for the leader had wheeled his mount and tossed his sword to his shield hand and caught the girl aloft in the crook of his plated arm. Her face was flushed and glad, and her eyes were stars; poised, breathless, strangely small in her rocking turret of tall steeds and armoured riders, she was swept from the sight of Joris of the Rock. There came a gleeful roar and a great tumult of splashing; Red Anne was safe and away with Lorin the Butcher Count, leaving a litter of dead and a gaping crowd of living on the band of the shallows behind them.
With fingers clenched on his bleeding arm, the outlaw loped and stumbled a mile along the river margin; and when he paused for Gandulf to bind up the wound he gritted his teeth for no pain of the flesh. "Black and gold red shall hold – if "red" were Anne and "gold" Joris, "black" was Lorin de Campscapel, and the runes were coming true. Tidings of Red Anne's witchcraft had chilled the heart of Joris; "red shall sin for black to grin" was a promise dark enough, but "black and red in the same bed" rang so foully in his mind that he was almost grateful to the Butcher for supplying an alternative interpretation. If Black must for a space hold Red, let Black be of Earth, not of hell; but jealous misery clawed the outlaw's vitals as he headed again for his Rock.
Then, for a space, he led his raids with a fury that startled even his men. Farms blazed to the midnight sky, foresters died on their thresholds, travellers dropped to the arrows before they could sign the Cross; in snows of winter the peasants sprang up at the bellowing of kine – sprang up, and heard the scratching and sniffing beyond their mud-and-wattle walls, and said to each other: "No, it is only the wolves."
Gandulf and two or three others guessed at the cause of their chief's new blood lust; but the bulk of the growing band knew nothing and cared less for the hidden motives of Joris, until that day when one among them called Anne a rampant whore and envied the Butcher aloud with outlaw frankness.
"Ursin, attend!" drawled Joris, and roared for all to cease their tasks and gather upon the Rock. When they had grouped before him he spoke his mind without heat, letting his hard gaze linger amid their evil faces.
"Ursin here," he announced, "has provided the day's diversion. All of you now take heed. Do I make rules without reason?"
"Nay, never," they shouted, wondering what should befall.
"Hearken then to a new rule. Save to myself with tidings, no man of you shall speak aloud the name of that girl Red Anne who dwells with Butcher Lorin. If any complain of another, the two shall fight it out. But upon that name our Ursin has voided the filth of his mind; therefore he leaps from the Rock or battles me to a finish. Ursin, which shall it be?"
Ursin looked to his friends, and saw they were all for sport. Stoutly enough he armed himself, cursing Joris and Anne in terms that brought sharp silence. Sword in right hand, buckler in left, chief and subaltern fronted each other, sliding and joining across and across a patch of coarse grass thirty feet long and twenty broad above the verge of the abyss.
Animal murmurs arose as the bright blades whirled and rasped; Joris in brown and Ursin in green moved starkly against blue sky, striving each to bring the red ball of the setting sun against the other's eyes. Ursin was bulky and first to sweat, but he wounded his leader's thigh before he stumbled; awhile he fought on one knee, his florid face grown gray. Blood sprang out on his shoulder, blood channelled his cheek; when his sword was jarred from his hand he flung his buckler at Joris and plunged as though to grapple. Joris ducked and laughed, backing and stabbing daintily; then he advanced with buffeting flat-bladed strokes, driving the beaten wretch to the Rock's edge to kick him screaming over.
"Do you abide by my rule?" he thundered, turning on those who watched him.
"Yes, Captain," they chorused. "Yes, you have sealed it fairly with Ursin's blood and your own."
Joris sheathed his sword with a flourish; the crossbar kissed the plates of his belt with a faint sweet ring of steel. Glancing over his should at the uplands of Honoy, he offered his late extravagance as incense to Red Anne.
"I abide by my runes," he thought, "I am one of the men, Red Anne, for whom the world was made."
Thereafter her name was safe enough amid the outlaw throng; but Joris had bitter moods of doubt in which he thought himself bewitched, who knew his love so darkly and maybe doubly bound, and yet found in her image the glory of his day. Sometimes he sought relief in arms of other women; comely Tiphaine de Ath was only one of several doubly outraged by his lust and his indifference. But although Joris was sometimes a slave to his passions, no woman except Red Anne could enslave him with grace of the flesh.
Sternly he restrained himself from haunting the Butcher's marches; tales were blown to his ears of Anne's strange rule above Alanol, and sometimes he pondered lying in wait to see her when she hunted. Now her reputed witchcraft troubled him little; Lorin de Campscapel seemed not the man to share his mistress with the Devil. Yet there were rumours of Anne's night-riding; some said she vanished from the towering hold at times when gates stood shut, next to be seen by the sentries when she shouted for the drawbridge to be lowered in the dawn. And Joris chafed to think of her alone in the wild hills or – worse – at play with comrades not of earth in some ill-famed assembly hidden from men. Nevertheless he held away from danger of the Butcher's watch towers; the Butcher had bouts of madness in the spring, the Butcher's brother Red Jehan was mad all year, their infamous riders were counted by hundreds, their hounds knew human flesh, and this their motto ran like col
d fog over the moors: Face Campscapel, Face Death.
The caution of Joris was justified when the Butcher sided with Barberghe against the Duke of Saulte. When the Jacquerie burst over Normandy the outlaw was hugging his Rock; scurrying north for plunder, he found there was not much left. Peasants who once would have fled at his name now turned and fought him valiantly; the midwinter of rebellion found his diminished band again in their caves, living on cattle and corn and wine that had changed hands twice and thrice before it reached them. Some of the men would have had Joris set up in a castle when castles were easily won, but Joris, like the miller's wife at Ath, foresaw the end of that grim business, and let no lure of runes distort his judgement. When the constable marched into Nordanay and made a final slaughter of the Jacques, Joris shaved off his beard again; instead of adorning wall or stake with his shrivelled carcass, he took young Gandulf with him, and doucely peddled a pack amid relics of oppression, revolt, and revenge in Basse Honoy.
So he came to the Tower of Ath and purchased a mirror; so, on that windy market day, he slouched into Hastain and heard Guelf Reinager's drum, and looked again into the eyes that mocked him through the clang of his cherished runes.
* * * *
The march wind died at Sunset; by the hour of compline a full moon swam above hastain housetops, silvering all the northwest corner of the market square. Joris and Gandulf trod quietly out of shadow, passing the ghostly puppet booth to pause beneath the iron tavern sign. On market days peaceable folk had license of late hours; watchmen observed the pair go by without motion of pike or lantern, and Gandulf shivered to think how pikes would flash and lanterns bob if their names were cried aloud across the cobbles.
Joris, too, shivered, but his fear lay beyond his comrade's understanding, and very near the confines of his own.
"What are they singing?" asked Gandulf, as jovial tumult swelled behind the shuttered windows.
"The jape of the Duke of Saulte," said Joris when he had listened. "But Hastain wits have been at work upon it."
Indeed, the rhyme was sturdily altered and enlarged; Duke Godfrey might have grimaced to hear the townsmens' version.
"Haistain by the river, Tostain on the hill,
Stout hearts deliver when the war-horns thrill!
Pleasant limbs the lords lop,
Scythe-struck the steeds stop,
Shields split and swords drop
And swift shafts quiver,
But Tostain holds the hilltop, hilltop, hilltop,
Tostain holds the hilltop and Hastain guards the river!"
"God save us all!" sneered Gandulf. "The chirping of the communes … Saulte could starve either to surrender in a month!"
But Joris had rapped on the heavy gate of the courtyard, and was already muttering to the man who opened the wicket. Smells of stable and dunghill and damp stone, of torch smoke and peat smoke, of wine and cheese and roasting meat, assailed his nose in turn; thrusting of laden servants, blast of song and laughter, creak of rotting stair treads, and candle glow golden on the dark face of Guelf Reinager, brought him at length to the threshold of an inner room.
"Red Anne is there," said the showman, pointing grimly. "As for your comrade, I have not much to risk, but if he cares to throw awhile at the dice–"
"That will I," Gandulf muttered; and when he sat down at Guelf's rickety table he gave a hitch to his belt.
"No need to bring your hilt beneath your hand," mocked the other. "Her friends are mine, until I prove the contrary."
Even Guelf Reinager, then, was fallen beneath the spell. The inner door stood ajar, and Joris, setting hand against it, stepped into the firelit gloom. Behind him his fingers shook on the clumsy latch.
"I was alone, but bar it if you will," belled she whom he sought. "Men have been brought to death this way, no doubt, though never yet by me."
The outlaw's hand came down as thought the latch had stung it. Across the flame-bright floor Red Anne regarded him. She sat against the wall at the head of the bed, that was a broad plank set on three low trestles and covered by blankets. Beside her lay cloak and purse and dagger; spurs glittered in the rushes near a pair of trim thigh boots. The chamber was hung with rotting arras, and held, beyond the bed, no more than a battered chest and two three-legged stools, with saddlebags and earthenware behind the pile of fire logs in a corner. Moonlight gave form to the crosscrossed wicker lattice of the window, and spattered luminous gray on the motionless rags of Joris; otherwise only the fire showed gold and red to each other – for Joris had uncovered, and the girl's hood was down.
"Greeting," he whispered – and bowed, who had not bowed for years.
"Sit, friend," commanded Anne. "Ay, over there. Who are you?"
The outlaw bent his long limbs to a stool across the glowing hearthstone from the bed, and clasped cold hands around his patched and bony knees.
"Joris of the Rock," he said, and watched her steadily.
Red Anne made no movement, but her rosy face grew intent. Above high cheek bones, under the calm brow and the divided sweep of glowing hair, her shadowed gaze took measure of this ill-conditioned guest. Followed a twitch of the ripe generous mouth above her fighting chin; firelight defined a dimple in either firm round cheek.
"Eh, the poor warden!" mourned Red Anne. "Wolf's head and witch in his net, and he does not know!"
The heavy-lidded eyes of Joris puckered at the corner, but his hushed voice was hard and his sand-brown jaw set forward.
"So Red Anne is a witch. Herself has said it."
"Surely I am a witch. Raise you no Cross against me?"
"Neither Cross nor cold iron, rowan nor relic nor medal."
"Valorous Joris, why?"
"Nothing that witch can do to me you have not done as a woman."
"Fairly spoken if meant; but do not be too sure of that."
"Have not your arts told you something concerning Joris?"
"Why should I seek to know what matters nothing to me? This indeed I heard, that your mother perished for witchcraft, and that the fat sub-prior had thirteen wounds upon him."
"In faith I did not count them."
"Others did. Some who doubted her witchhood were thereby assured of it."
"You mean that there are thirteen witches in a coven?"
"Ay. And then you were outlawed. And this also I know, that you rob Count Lorin of cattle."
"Two or three head here and there; but his go very well guarded. You know it is not cattle I grudge the Butcher of Alanol."
"What do you grudge him, then?"
"You for his comrade and love."
"Joris, I think you are mad."
"Then there is glory in madness. Your uttering of my name goes through me like a javelin. Thought of you has been flame in me since I bought gray silk at your booth. Sometimes I see you as then, when I drowned in wine my anger that any girl should unman me. Sometimes I see you as Santloy, when steel endangered you and it seemed that only steel could save. Then I ponder tales of your sway over the Butcher – how his roaring half-wit of a brother hides in one tower for fear of you – how the Riders of Campscapel are your slaves, and the peasants wax for your fingers. I have thought you an elemental, framed of earth and air and fire; or one of the race of the old gods, like that great white naked image they dug from the mound at Dor, and by the prior's command brake up and cast into the river. I know not how the Butcher endures your commerce with the Fiend; I know not how you can divide your favours between grim lovers such as they; but I know I would draw steel on either – ay, on both – if you so willed it. Maybe you paralyze the devil in the Devil, as in Lorin, as in me. Red Anne, you were born to rule, and not by terror; to me you are more than my own mother – and if I were given to prayer and churchcraft, to me you would rank above the Mother of God."
"Mystical lore in a wolf's head," said the hushed marvellous voice. Still-faced, attentive, glorious, Red Anne crouched on her bed; now she lifted her chin a little, shaking the glistening ropes of hair that had bunched on
her shoulders. Fire glow attained the blue of her eyes and gilded the round of her throat.
"Nay, it is not too mystical," breathed Joris, leaning forward. "I am no fantastical chevalier, content with a scarf or a rose. I would love you as a man loves, or a fiend, for aught I know. When first we spoke I was bond; now I am free as air, commanding many skilful blades, ruling the lonelier hills and roads more surely than any count or baron. When you tire of the Butcher, or the Butcher tires of you, come to me in the forest; you shall not lack for comfort, and I have faith in my sword."
"I doubt not you have gold and gear beside the Rock, wheresoever that may be. How many women have dwelt there under?"
"None. I have dealt heedlessly with women, but never there. You only will have queened it at the Rock."
"Rising from cast-off mistress of a count to be an outlaw's whore? Joris, you do not know me well; nor do you know my Lorin. Your words betray your unknowing."
"Yet I believe you will come to me in the end."
"Strange man! Why?"
"It is written."
"Written? Where?"
"Once upon runes. Now here."
Joris touched his breast. Anne's teeth set sharply, and her brooding face grew stern. Bringing her feet to the floor, she sat upright with hands on the edge of the bed and breasts defined beneath her dove-gray tunic; and her eyes, set wide apart, were again focussed with that directness startling as a squint.
"Tell me your runes," she commanded.
"No. Not until their prophecy is accomplished."
"Strange man again, and stranger wooing!"
"No stranger than your other – than your others. Can mortal still surprise you, who know the witches' ritual and govern the keep of Canpscapel?"
"Ay, so it seems. But if I meant to come to the Rock, how should I find it?"
"What is your witchcraft worth, if it cannot discover Rock and runes?"
Anne's face lightened and grew merry. After a moment's pause she chuckled, and the little disarming sound drove Joris back on his stool, lest losing command of himself he should suddenly spoil all. Plainly enough he understood that she mocked him and his runes, finding in the latter small peril to her lover and her life above distant Alanol.
Joris of the Rock [The Neustrian Cycle, Book II] (Forgotten Fantasy Library) Page 6
