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Forest Lovers

<h2 id="id01790" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER XXX</h2> <h5 id="id01791">THE CHAINED VIRGIN OF SAINT THORN</h5> The Abbot Richard of Malbank Saint Thorn went hunting the deer in Morgraunt with a good company of prickers and dogs. In Spenshaw he unharboured a stag, and he followed him hard. The hart made straight for Thornyhold Brush where the great herd lay; there Mellifont, who was sentry for the time, heard him and gave the alarm. Fern brakes will hide man from man, but here were dogs. The hunted hart drove sheer into the thicket on his way to the water; a dog was at his heels, half-a-dozen more were hard on him. The herd had scattered on all hands long before this. Mellifont saved herself with them, but Belvisée tarrying to help Isoult was caught. A great hound snapped at her as he passed; she limped away with a wounded side. Isoult, too much of a woman and too little of a hind, stood still. She had closed with Fate before. Up came the Abbot's men with horns and shouting voices for the baying of the deer. He, brave beast, was knifed in the brook and broken up, the dogs called off and leashed. Then one of the huntsmen saw Isoult. She had let down her hair for a curtain and stood watching them intently, neither defiant nor fearful, but with a long, steady, unwinking gaze. Her bosom rose quick and short, there was no other stressful sign; she was flushed rather than white. One of the men thought she was a wood-girl—they all knew of such beings; he crossed himself. Another knew better. Her mother Mald was a noted witch; he whistled. A third thought she was uncommonly handsome; he could only look. The dogs whimpered and tugged at the leash; they doubtless knew that there was blood in her. So all waited till the Abbot came up much out of breath. Isoult, cloaked in her panoply of silence, saw him first. In fact the Abbot had eyes only for the dead hart which had led him such a race. One of the prickers ran forward and caught at his stirrup-leather. "Lord Abbot, here is the strangest thing my eyes have ever seen in Morgraunt. As we followed the chase we drove into a great herd which ran this way and that way. And in the thick of the deer were three young women scantily attired, as the one you see yonder, going with the beasts. Of whom two have got clear (one bitten by the mouse-coloured hound), and this one remains speechless. And who the others were, whether flesh and blood or wind and breath, I cannot tell you; but if this laggard is not Isoult, whom we call La Desirous, Matt-o'-the-Moor's daughter, I am no fit servant for your Holiness' diversions." The Abbot had pricked up his ears; now he looked sharply at Isoult. "You are right, Sweyn," he said; "leave her to me. Girl," he turned to her, "this time it shall likely go hard with thee. Trees are plenty and ropes easy to come by. I warned thee before. I shall not warn thee now." Isoult bowed her head. "What dost thou do here, herding in the wood with wild beasts?" he went on. "Lord, none but the beasts will give me food or rest or any kindness at all. There is no pity in man nor woman that I have seen, save in two, and one is dead. Prosper le Gai, my lord, and husband, hath pity, and will come to me at last. And whether he shall come to my body alone or my spirit alone, he will come. And now, lord, hang me to a tree." "Dost thou want to be hanged?" he asked. "Nay, lord, I am too young to be hanged," she said. "Moreover, though I am wedded to my lord, I am not a wife. For only lately he hath loved me, and that since we were put apart." "Wed, and a virgin, girl? Where is thy husband?" "Lord, he is searching for me." "Where hath he been, what hath he done—or thou, what hast thou done, for such a droll fate as this?" Isoult very simply told him everything. Of Galors he already had some news—enough to dread more. But when he heard that the girl had actually been in High March Castle, had been expelled from it, he crossed himself and thanked God for all His mercies. He became a devout Christian at this critical point in Isoult's career, whereby her neck was saved a second time from the rope. He felt a certain pity—she a handsome girl, too, though his type for choice was blonde—for her simplicity, and, as he certainly wished to obtain mercy, reflected upon the possible blessings of the merciful. Besides, Galors was at large, Galors who knew the story, to say nothing of Prosper, also at large, who did not know the story, but did know, on the other hand, the Countess Isabel. Difficult treading! But so the habits of a lifetime for once chimed in with its professions. Even as he stood pitying he roughed out another set of shifts. Prosper and his unconsummated marriage might be set aside—the fool, he thought with a chuckle, deserved it. There remained Galors. He would get the girl married to a mesne of the abbey, or stay! he would marry her elsewhere and get a dowry. She had filled out astonishingly, every line of her spoke of blood: there would be no trouble about a dowry. Then he might supplant Galors by being beforehand with him at the Countess's ear. Gratitude of the mother, gratitude of the daughter, gratitude of the son-in-law! Thus Charity walked hand in hand with Policy. The girl was a beauty. What a picture she made there, short-frocked, flushed and loose-haired, like an Amazon—but, by Mars, not maimed liked an Amazon. The Abbot was a connoisseur of women, as became a confessor and man of the world. "If I do not hang thee, Isoult, wilt thou come with me to Saint Thom?" "Yes, lord, I will come." "Up with you then before me," said the Abbot, and stooped to lift her. Her hair fell back as she was swung into the saddle. "My lady," thought the Abbot, "it is clear you are no Amazon; but I should like to know what you wear round that fine little neck of yours." He bided his time, and sent the men and dogs on ahead. Then at starting he spurred his horse so that the beast plunged both his riders forward. The burden of the chain slipt its harbourage, and the next minute the Abbot had ring and locket in the palm of his hand. "What is this ring, my girl?" he asked. "My lord, it is my wedding-ring, wherewith I was wed in the cottage." "Ah, is that it? Well, I will keep it until there is need." Isoult began to cry at this, which cut her deeper than all the severances she had known. She could confess to the ring. "Don't cry, child," said the Abbot, whom women's tears troubled; "believe me when I say that you shall have it for your next wedding." "Oh, my ring! my ring! What shall I do? It is all I have. Oh, my lord, my lord!" This pained the Abbot extremely. He got what satisfaction there was from the thought that, having dropt it behind him, he could not give it back for all the tears in the world. He was busy now examining the other token—a crystal locket whereon were a pelican in piety circled with a crown of thorns, and on the other side the letters I and F interlaced. He knew it better than most people. "Isoult, stop crying," he said. "Take off this chain and locket and give them to me." So she did. "Ah, my lord," she pleaded as she tendered, "I ask only for the ring." "Plague take the ring," cried the Abbot very much annoyed. "I will throw it away if you say another word about it." The threat chilled her. She dried her eyes, hoping against hope, for even hope needs a sign. When he had his prize safe in Holy Thorn, the Abbot Richard, who had a fantastic twist in him, and loved to do his very rogueries in the mode, set himself to embroider his projects when he should have been executing them. His lure was a good lure, but she would be none the worse for a little gilding; there must be a pretty cage, with a spice of malice in its devising, to excite the tenderer feelings. It should be polite malice, however—a mere hint at a possible tragedy behind a smirk. He dressed her in green silk because she was fresh-coloured and had black hair. If she had been pale, as when he first knew her, and as she was to be again before he knew her no more, the dress would have been red, depend upon it. He put a gold ring on her finger, a jewel on her forehead, a silver mirror and a Book of Hours bound in silver leaves to swing at her girdle. Her chamber was hung with silk arras,—the loving history of Aristotle and a princess of Cyprus;—she had two women to wait upon her, to tire her hair in new ways and set new crowns upon it; she had a close garden of her own, with roses and a fountain, grass lawns, peacocks. She had pages to serve her kneeling, musical instruments, singing boys and girls. He gave her a lap-dog. Finally he kissed her and said— "You are to be queen of this place, Isoult the Much-Desired." All this the Abbot did. This also he did—his crowning piece. He caused her to wear round her waist a girdle made of bright steel in which was a staple. To the staple he fixed a fine steel chain—a toy, a mimicry of prisons, but in fact a chain—and the other end of a chain was fixed to a monk's wrist. The chain was fine and flexible, it was long, it could go through the keyhole—and did—but it was a chain. Wherever the girl went, to the garden, to table, to music, to bed, abroad, or to Mass, she was chained to a monk and a monk to her. The Abbot Richard rested on the seventh day, contemplating his labours with infinite relish. It seemed to him that this was to be politic with an air. So far as he might he did everything in that manner. Isoult bore the burden much as she had borne the thwackings of the charcoal-burners, with ingrained patience. Seriously, one only cross fretted her—the loss of her ring. This indeed cried desertion upon her. Prosper had never seemed so far, nor his love so faint and ill-assured. It would seem that kindness really killed her by drugging her spirit as with anodyne. As she had fallen at Gracedieu, so she fell now into a languid habit where tears swam in flood about the lids of her eyes, where the eyes were too heavy for clear sight and the very blood sluggish with sorrow. She grew pale again, hollow-eyed, diaphanous—a prism for an unearthly ray. Her beauty took on its elfin guise; she walked a ghost. Night and day she felt for the ring; though she knew it was not there, her hand was always in her vest, her bosom always numb and cold. Sometimes her urgent need was more than she could bear. A trembling took her, an access of trembling which she could not check. At such times, if others were about her, she would sit vacant and speechless, smiling faintly for courtesy; her eyes would brim over, the great drops fall unchecked. There would be no sobbing, very little catching of the breath. The well of misery would fill and overflow, gently and smoothly irresistible. Then the shaking would cease and the fount be dry for a season. So she grew more a spirit and less a maid; her eyes waxed larger, and the pupils whelmed the grey in jet. The people of Malbank frankly took her for a saint. Martyrs, virgins, and such rare birds do not hop in every cage; but what more reasonable than that the famous Abbot of Saint Thorn should catch one in his own springes? Those who maintained that the chained white creature, who knelt folded at the Mass, or on a white palfrey rode out on the heath guarded by two monks, was the stormy girl who had kept swine about the middens, Matt's bad daughter Isoult la Desirous, those were leagued with the devil and his imps, who would not see a saint if all heaven walked the earth. The report fell in excellently with the Abbot's calculation. No one believed in the Isoult fable save Mald, whom the girl had seen once or twice, and himself; every one talked rather of the Chained Virgin of Saint Thorn. She became an object of pilgrimage. The Abbot grew to call her chamber the feretory; the faithful gave alms, particularly the seamen from Wanmouth. Then others came to behold, more to his liking, proposing barter. She was observed of the Lord of Hartlepe, the young Lord of Brokenbridge, the Lord of Courthope Saint James; of the Baron of Starning and Parrox, also, from the East Demesne. This Baron Malise, thin and stooping, having Prosper's quick eyes without his easy lordship over all who met them, and Prosper's high voice twisted querulous, came to view his young brother's wife. She pleased, but the price did not please. He and the Abbot haggled over the dowry; Malise, as obstinate as Prosper, would not budge. So they haggled. Finally came Galors de Born, Lord of Hauterive and many other places in the north, not to be denied. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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