Читать книгу The Black Rose - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 7

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It was growing late, and still there was no sign of Engaine. Could Ninian have been mistaken? A roke had settled in early that afternoon, and the rain dripped from the roofs of Oxford with a dismal insistence. Walter had placed himself under the entrance at St. Martin’s, but the fear that he might miss her led him to venture out constantly around all the points of the Quadrivium. He was wet to the skin.

Church bells began to toll. Ordinarily they had a profound effect on him, particularly at the close of day in Oxford, for there was something in the atmosphere of the gray old town which lent an additional solemnity to the tolling and fitted the sound to every mood. They could ring loud and resonant like a call to battle; they could be gay and exciting, giving a lift to the heart as well as the heels; they could be slow and sad with a warning of the futility of this earthly life; but mostly they were as sweet and ravishing as the swish of a swift’s wings, bringing a lump of happiness to the throat.

But today Walter felt only impatience as he counted the strokes. Four o’clock! Was Engaine really riding up from London with her father, or had it been another of Ninian’s stupid jokes? He began to suspect the latter, but he dared not give up his vigil. He had not seen Engaine for nearly two years, and Ninian had been hinting that she was soon to wed. It would be two more years before he returned home from the university; if he did not catch a glimpse of her now, he might never see her again.

A beggar with wet bare legs and a face blue from the damp and cold came up the steps of the church. As a matter of habit he began his usual quaver of, “Alms, fair sir!”, holding out his wooden clackdish. Then he slanted a look at the wet student lurking in the stone entrance, and a scornful laugh took the place of the professional whine.

“Gown!” he exclaimed, with a thumb at his splayed nose. “I’m of a mind to rob my own buskin and flip ye a coin, ye starved kestril!”

Another hour passed. Walter shivered with the cold, very nearly convinced now that there would be no party riding through to Tressling. He should have been sensible, he said to himself, and spent the time at his studies. He still had so much to learn! But still he lingered, nursing the dregs of hope. Not a single pedestrian had crossed the Quadrivium in the last half hour. No sound was to be heard but the drip, drip of the rain.

Then his heart gave a bound. A clatter of hoofs sounded from the direction of the east, and a dozen or more riders on horseback came clomping over the cobbles. His doubts were resolved when he saw a mud-splattered whirlicote creaking along in the rear of the procession. Engaine’s mother was an invalid and did all her traveling on wheels.

It was not his purpose to be seen, so he hugged close to one of the pillars. The squire in the lead spied him, nevertheless, and reined in his horse, calling out in a peremptory voice: “You, fellow! Which turn d’we take for the Chelt’am Road?”

Walter was giving hurried instructions, without leaving his secluded post, when another rider drew level with the squire. Under a heavy fur hood he saw the green of a couvre-chef, and under that again the sparkle of the loveliest blue eyes in all the world. It was Engaine!

“Walter of Gurnie!” she cried. As usual there was more than a hint of mockery in her voice. “What do you here, good Walter? Have you lingered overlong at your orisons? Surely you should be back at your books.”

“I heard you were to ride through from London,” he answered.

“And you waited in this rain to see me?” Clearly she was much pleased. She raised a glove to brush back the encroaching scarf and smiled at him. “I am very much flattered. But such devotion would more become one who strives to fit himself for the vows of knighthood, Sir Clerk.”

Her father reined in beside her and scowled at Walter. The lord of Tressling was always in his cups, and there was an unsteadiness now to the hand with which he wiped his brow.

“The whelp of Gurnie!” he said. Then he threw back his head and indulged in a loud roar of laughter. “Well met! You may take a message to your grandfather. Tell the old nip-cheese he has been wasting his time.” Then he turned to his daughter. “How often, child, must I tell you not to demean yourself in this way? This baseborn fellow is beneath your notice.”

Walter’s pride got the better of his discretion. He walked down the steps to the street level. “The Gurnie strain is a nobler one than Tressling, my lord,” he said. “We have held our land for more than five centuries.”

The lord of Tressling laughed again. “You crow loudly, my young cockerel, for one who can’t claim an honest share of that noble blood,” he said. “Come, girl, on with you! We must make Tressling if we ride all night.”

“But Mother is ill,” protested Engaine. “She can’t travel much farther tonight.”

“It’s that lumbering coach which has held us back!” said her father. “I’ll have no more of this endless packing and unpacking, this mewling over sheets and blankets, and running for hot possets and espicier’s pills! We ride straight through, I tell you.” He turned for a final besotted word with Walter. “Count yourself lucky I don’t have my man Gullen here beat a proper respect into you, fellow. Stand back!”

Walter could no longer restrain himself. “I have no fear of Black Gullen nor of you, thief of Tressling!” he said.

The master of the train could not have heard him, for he turned and rode off. But Engaine stiffened in her saddle and tossed her head. Her furred boot tapped the flank of her horse angrily.

“Farewell, Toftman!” she cried.

Toftman! It was the supreme insult in Walter’s ears. The fact that no more than a few beggarly tofts of land were left to Gurnie galled him as much as the cloud on his birth. He was stammering to find an answer when Engaine turned with one of her unpredictable shifts of mood.

“You are wet through, Walter,” she said. “That cloak is too thin for such weather. You must change into dry clothes at once.”

He did not move until the whirlicote, its complaining wheels grinding and sloshing, had passed him. By this time Engaine had vanished from sight on one of the roads which fanned out from the Quadrivium. Then he walked back up the steps, without conscious purpose, and entered the church.

There were lights at the altar, and the verger was pottering about at the far end of the nave. Walter sat down on the nearest bench in a mood of such overwhelming dejection that he lost all consciousness of time.

He had always known that his devotion to Engaine was hopeless. His grandfather had taken up arms with Simon de Montfort in the struggle against Old King Henry to enforce observance of the Great Charter. After the lost battle of Evesham, where great Earl Simon was killed, most of the lands of Gurnie were confiscated and given as a reward to the lord of Tressling who had fought (not too boldly, it was whispered) on the royal side. More than eight years had passed since then, eight years of poverty for his grandfather’s household and of great prosperity for Tressling. The hatred between the two families had grown with the years. Walter’s love for the heiress of the other house had, necessarily, been a matter that he tried to keep to himself. He had taken long walks to places where a glimpse might be had of her, particularly to Tressling church, where he would feast hungrily on her profile. Sometimes she would ride by with hawk on wrist and would draw in for a few moments and a few bantering words; ecstatic moments for him, to be treasured and conned over and worn on his heart as knights flaunted favors on their lances. Once he had smuggled a note to her by a servant in whom he could put trust; a note of adolescent passion, filled with his hopes and his dreams, and vowing his eternal devotion. It had been a blow to hear, on the next occasion when they met, that she had been able to read no more than half of it. That she blamed this on his handwriting and not on her own lack of scholarship had not seemed quite fair, for even then he had wielded a pen with clerkly precision.

He was now more convinced than ever of the hopelessness of it, and yet with the blind optimism of youth, which will grasp at straws after conceding a fact, he took some comfort from her last words. She had always liked him, in a careless and superior way, and she had given fresh proof of this by her concern over his condition. If only things had been different! If only the domain of Gurnie still stretched as nobly as before the Norman Conquest! If——

What was it her father had said? “Tell the old nip-cheese he has been wasting his time.” This could have one meaning only. At the prompting of Old Harry’s son, since crowned Edward the First though absent at the last of the Crusades, many of the confiscated estates had been returned to their former owners. Walter’s grandfather had been besieging the royal ministers with petitions for a reconsideration of his case, and the hope had never been abandoned that the rolling acres of Gurnie would be restored. Engaine’s father must have received assurances that this would not be done. Perhaps his journey to London had been for this very purpose.

Walter wondered if he should write his grandfather, but decided, reluctantly, that he dare not break the rule which prohibited him from addressing the old man directly.

The fervor which possessed every mind in these days of intense religious feeling caused him to slip forward to his knees. He began to pray in an undertone. “Gracious Father in Heaven, and good St. Aidan, in whom I have so often confided, grant me the opportunity to prove my devotion. Even if the bars between us may never be raised, permit me to stand better in her eyes.”