The dryad a novel
learned since last he looked upon it that there were better things in
the world than the reading of verses or the writing of verses.
After a little more discourse, Rainouart and Simon, the night being now
upon them, laid them their lengths upon the turf and slept peacefully
through the summer night. Simon dreamed that he was back in that
place of pleasure at Byzantium, and would have nothing to do with the
women-folk there just because he had fallen in love with an old-time
image of stone that stood in the garden and that would have nothing to
say to his wooing. Rainouart dreamed that he was in the demesnes of my
lord Mirth, and that he walked between Love and Venus to the thicket
where the noble rose was throned. So they slept, and woke late when
the sun was high in heaven, for the aches and pains of the dead day
had been of a kind to compel heavy slumber. They broke their fast
with a bite of bread apiece and a few drops from the flagon, which
Simon husbanded scrupulously till supply came his way. Then, leaving
their steed tethered in ease and safety, they proceeded to explore
the forest, and when they had made their way to the very core of the
woodland they came to the place where Argathona lay asleep in the shade.
Rainouart gave a little cry of joy and Simon choked a moan of despair,
for the girl seemed fairer in her sleep than ever to his eyes. He
whispered in his companion's ear that he would leave him with his lass
and would wander awhile in the woods for his diversion, but he made a
tryst with him that he would come back to that same spot in a little
time. So Simon left Rainouart to stand by his sleeping love and drifted
into the depths of the wood. Rainouart looked down upon Argathona and
loved her with all his soul, and by-and-by her eyelids trembled and
then opened, and the girl awoke and gazed into her lover's face.
In an instant Argathona sprang to her feet and caught at her lover's
extended hands and looked into her lover's adoring eyes.
"My dear," she cried, "you are welcome to the greenwood," and then
she fell to laughing and to crying at the same time like a silly girl
that is glad and sad in a companionable moment, and to stay her tears
Rainouart was quick to kiss her on the lips, though the sound of her
laughter was sweeter in his ears than the chime of blessed bells.
For a while of delicious silence they clung together in the sunlight,
murmuring each other's names in little broken spells of speech, and
fondling each other after the manner of happily met lovers since the
dawn of time. But at last, when the sweetness of their first delicate
embraces was sufficiently tasted, and the restraint of two pure hearts
glided ghostlike between desire and desire, Argathona drew a little
way from her lover, and, holding him at arm's-length with her hands
upon his shoulders, asked him what sadness he carried. For her clear
eyes saw that there was sorrow behind the joy he had in finding her and
fondling her, and she would not be denied to know the care that ate
upon his heart.
So Rainouart and she sat side by side upon the grass, each with arms
about the other, while Rainouart in a hushed voice told her what had
come to pass. How the Duchess of Thebes, strengthened by the secession
of the Catalan Grand Company, had defied the pride and power of Athens,
and how the pride and power of Athens had ridden forth to beat Thebes
to reason, and how the pride and power of Athens were swallowed up in
the bloody slough. And he told her how he himself was escaped from that
slaughter, dwelling little upon his own stubbornness to turn from the
shambles planned by the Catalan Grand Company--for it becomes no man to
elaborate his devotion to duty--but lauding to the full the courage of
Simon that by his courage and purpose had plucked him from destruction
and carried him from present death to the depths of the greenwood,
which same Simon he told her was now taking his ease somewhere in the
skirts of the forest, having quitted his companion as soon as the pair
came upon the sleeping girl.
While he told his tale the immortal maiden clung to him close, and
trembled at her lover's peril, and revelled in his strength of spirit
that would rather have died than come to her dishonored, but she had
little grief in her heart for the tragedy of the Athenian gallants.
Beautiful evil creatures they had seemed to her in her short sojourn
among them, fair as a snake may be named fair, and dangerous as a snake
is dangerous.
And "Oh, my love," she whispered, "I was blithe to spy you"; and "Oh,
my love," he whispered, "I was blithe to find you." So they prattled
and babbled together, strong man and strong maid, and the world seemed
very young to Rainouart, for he remembered nothing but the discovery
of his love, and the world seemed very old to Argathona, for she knew,
and joyed with a fierce, sorrowful joy in the knowledge, that there was
little usage of the world left for her.
After a while Rainouart told her of his plans: how a messenger had gone
to Avignon to the pope, there to break him free from his marriage,
and how, in the meanwhile, he was now minded to make his way swiftly
into Peloponnesus, where he hoped to win help at best from the Duke of
Corinth, or at worst to take ship for France and the court of Philip
the Fair, bearing Argathona with him to be his bride and wife in France.
Argathona listened as he whispered his will, and when he had made an
end of his aims she turned to him suddenly and stretched out her arms
and cried out to him, "Take me in your embrace, beloved, and kiss me
once with all your heart and with all your soul, for never again shall
you kiss me as I am now at this hour."
Rainouart, amazed, entreated her meaning, and she answered him sad and
simple: "All my life I have lived in a faith strange to you, the faith
of us who have lived in the woodlands since the days beyond the dawn,
but now I intend to take your faith and to share your worship and to
praise your God. So let us rise and go to the home of the holy man, and
he will bless me and make me as you are, and all shall be well between
us till the time comes when nothing can be well for either of us."
Now Rainouart did not very clearly understand what his sweetheart
meant when she said these words, but rather took her to mean that she
had been bred in that form of the Christian faith which was practised
by the Grecians, and he rejoiced that she was so ready to come from
the tents of error and dwell in the serenity of what he held to be
the truth. So he kissed his mistress long and lovingly upon the lips
with his arms bound about her body, kissing her with all that strength
of his clean heart and his clean soul, and she gave him back both
kiss and clasp, and as she did so she gave also the good-bye to her
deathless life.
Then they rose to leave that place and go towards the hermitage when
their purpose was stayed by the sound of running feet through the
brushwood, and Simon came upon them, hurrying through the trees. Now
Rainouart had forgotten Simon, being all absorbed in his joy at finding
Argathona, but Argathona was glad to see him, just because he had saved
her lover. They saw that Simon's face was grave, yet not with the
gravity of sadness, and when he beheld them he quickened his pace till
he came up with them, and when he was up with them he gasped, being
breathed from his hurry, "Be happy, lass and lad, you can be married
this morning."
XXIX
WHAT SIMON FOUND IN THE FOREST
Simon made his way through the forest idly and at all adventure. He
was trying to think what the world would have been like if a girl of
the kind of Argathona had chosen to take him for mate. But by-and-by
he found this manner of musing too melancholy, and did his best to
banish it by pricking a lively interest in his surroundings, looking
hither and thither at woodland sights that pleased him, reminding him
of Normandy. So by degrees he made some way across the wood, steering,
as he guessed, in the direction of the highway, when suddenly he became
aware of something bright and golden glancing through the tree-trunks.
Curious to see what that could be which glittered and twinkled so
brilliantly through those sombre aisles, Simon pushed his way rapidly
till he came to a little open space where the trees were thinner, and
there he saw a strange sight.
From the boughs of one of the trees a man was hanging that was clad in
coat of gold and had a cloth bound about the lower part of his face,
but the man was not hanging free, for his feet were firmly planted
on the saddle of a dappled horse that seemed to wait very contentedly
beneath him. As Simon came into the clearing he saw the eyes of the
poor wretch that was pinioned and gibbeted thus fixed upon him in the
very eloquence of entreaty, and Simon's purpose was very instant to
answer the appeal. He trod at a brisk trot across the interval of grass
that divided him from the piteous fellow in that perilous pillory, and
when he had come near him he coaxed and wooed the horse cunningly for
a moment or so lest he should start and put his surmounter's neck in
danger. But the horse stood still and allowed him to come close, and
when he was hard by Simon caught at the bridle with a gentle firmness
to stay the animal from stirring. Slipping the bridle over the hook of
his left elbow, he clasped that arm around the legs of the pendulous
fellow, while with his right hand he plucked his sword from its sheath
and sheared at the rope that was about the pinioned man's neck. In
another moment the captive was safe in his arms, and the next Simon had
set him on his legs on the grass. Simon cut the bonds that bound his
wrists, and then, pulling the gagging-cloth from the victim's face,
recognized to his astonishment the page Bohemond, that was wont to wait
so dapper and alert upon the Duchess of Thebes.
At first the poor lad could scarcely speak, but when he had wit and
skill to articulate he cried in an awful voice: "The duchess, the
duchess, where is the duchess?" Then it seemed as if he could say no
more, but after Simon had plied him with a little of the scanty liquor
that yet remained in his flagon the boy grew voluble, and told in
scraps and tags of passion and anguish a most monstrous story.
It seemed that overnight the Duchess of Thebes had asked Ximenes to
lend her men of the Catalan Grand Company for a certain purpose, and
when he had refused her she bade Bohemond find for her the men she
needed. What the duchess's purpose was Bohemond did not know, further
than that he believed she wished to make sure of some enemy of hers
that she held to be lurking in the secrecy of the Eleusinian wood.
Chance had made Bohemond acquainted with a kind of freebooter whom,
from the lad's description, Simon had little difficulty in recognizing
as his one-time waylayer Captain Fox. This footpad promised to pick
up a fellowship, and he kept his word. Early in the present morning
Esclaramonde, with Bohemond for companion, slipped away from Athens,
joined a band of six spadassins outside the walls, and rode for the
forest, the duchess ahead in a rigid spirit of silence. At first all
went well enough, though it showed strange to Bohemond to see his
duchess travelling in the company of half a dozen ruffians. But it
seemed that when the party had got within the confines of the wood the
bearing of the men suddenly changed towards the lady that led them.
The fellow that no doubt was Captain Fox had fallen somewhat behind
as they rode with one of his pillagers. The pair kept whispering
apart, and between them it is probable that they changed their plans
from one crime to another crime. The first that Bohemond knew of their