Читать книгу Bertrand of Brittany - Warwick Deeping - Страница 13

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In the deeps of the forest of Broceliande stood a castle known in those parts as the Aspen Tower, from the trees that grew about the moat. The Lord of Tinteniac, who had held it long in fee, had surrendered it to the Sieur de Rohan in exchange for a manor near the western sea. The Sieur de Rohan had used the castle as a hunting-tower till some grim thing had happened in the place and a woman’s blood had dyed the flagstones of the chapel. The chattering aspens, the black moat, the rolling leagues of dark Broceliande had worked upon De Rohan’s conscience and smitten him with a dread of the lonely place. He had offered it to Stephen Raguenel, to whom he owed a certain favor. The Vicomte had taken it gladly, and garrisoned and regarnished the Aspen Tower when the Blois and Montfort wars began.

The aspen leaves were turning to gold, and their melancholy whisperings seemed to fill the valley, as though all the ghosts within Broceliande were flitting and shivering about the tower. The broad moat lay black and stagnant, reflecting the tall trees, streaked here and there with sunlight and dappled with showers of falling leaves. Though the sun was at noon, mists were hanging about the forest, a haze of faint gold dimming the red splendor of the beeches and the tawny magnificence of the oaks. A damp and melancholy stillness weighed upon the valley; even the trees seemed cold, as their gorgeous samites fluttered to decay.

There was something that suggested tragedy in the loneliness of the castle with its walls reflected in the black water and the woods rising like flame beyond its battlements. The spirit of autumn seemed to breathe in it, the spirit of sadness and of death, of mystery and of shadow. The gate was closed, the bridge up, the great grid, with its iron teeth, resting on the stones. No life stirred in the place. Nothing told that there were folk within save one thin plume of smoke that climbed feebly into the air.

Sadness and the sighing of the aspen-trees! Black water, mist-drenched grass, towering woodlands desolate under the blue! A melancholy that might have seemed beautiful had not the place been cursed with something more than sorrow! Such silence, such emptiness! The Black Death had supped in the Aspen Tower. That was why the place seemed terrible.

Many years had passed since the tournament at Rennes, and as for Tiphaïne of the May-bough—well, Bertrand would hardly have remembered her as she bent over the fire in the lord’s solar and stirred some concoction of herbs and wine that was steaming in a brazen pot. Tall, slim, yet broad across the bosom, her body seemed to take the wine-red tunic that she wore and mould it into curves that were rich in their simplicity. As for her face, it was not beautiful in the easy meaning, save for the blush of rose through the olive skin and the earnestness of the liquid eyes. The mouth was too large, the chin too prominent, the bones too massive. In repose, there was a sternness about it, a maturity of strength strange in one so young. It was as though the spirit had triumphed over matter, and that mere sensuousness could not flood forth the glow of the soul within.

A restless spirit possessed her as she bent over the wood fire, with no living thing save a wolf-hound to keep her company. With a deep intake of her breath she thrust her hands above her head and leaned against the stone hood that projected over the hearth. It was not the hysterical weakness of a girl that spoke in that one gesture, but the restrained anguish of a woman, a woman who felt the terror of the unseen strong about her in that lonely tower.

The dog whimpered and thrust his nose against Tiphaïne’s knee. She bent suddenly, with a melting of her whole figure into tenderness, the hard, staring misery gone from her face.

“Ah, ah, Brunet, how will it end? how will it end?”

The beast licked her hands and put up a huge paw.

“How you would bark, Brunet, if your master came! Yes. I would give my all to see his banner at the gate. They do not know how the Black Death serves us.”

She leaned again against the hood, staring into the fire, her hand still fondling the dog’s ears. It seemed to comfort her to touch something that was warm and real, something in which the blood flowed. She had seen man after man sicken and surrender to the pestilence. She still heard their delirious cries, the chattering terror of the women who had crowded round her clamoring to be let loose to starve in the woods. Was it all a dream? Were the graves in the garden real, the smell of death in the place nothing but a grim illusion? She remembered the swollen and disfigured faces, the cries for water, the sordid horror of each hour of the day. Yet it was all true, so true that she wondered why the pest had spared her.

Rousing herself at last, as though casting cowardice fiercely out of her heart, she set her teeth and took up a cup that stood on a stool before the fire.

“There are Jehanot and Guy,” she said, talking to the dog as though he understood her; “they are at work; we must remember them, Brunet; and poor Enid, who used to give you sops.”

She was ladling the posset from the brass pot into the cup, the dog watching her with his ears cocked, his tail beating the floor. When she had filled the cup she threw a gray cloak over her shoulders and passed out from the solar to the stairs that led into the hall. The great room was deserted, and had a cold, damp look. There were ashes and charred sticks upon the hearth, a pile of straw against one wall, and from one corner of the heap protruded a human foot. Tiphaïne saw it and gave a shudder. Loose straw littered the hall, and even in the court, where the sun streamed down as though something had been dragged out through the door.

From the court an open wicket led through a wall into the garden bounded on the far side by the palisades above the moat. Tiphaïne went in under the autumn trees, fruit and leaves rotting together on the grass, a few ghost flowers still blooming in the beds. Two men were at work in the far corner, flinging up earth out of a hole. Ten paces away a row of newly turfed mounds showed where Death had his autumn store.

Near the grave the men were digging lay a figure covered with a sheet. The two diggers had strips of cloth tied over their mouths and nostrils. They stood up and ceased work as Tiphaïne approached, carrying the silver cup, the dog following at her heels.

“Who is that, Jehanot?”

She was pointing to the sheet. Jehanot, an old cripple with a round back, wiped his forehead with his hand.

“That is Le Petit de Fougeres,” he said.

“Ah, ah; and he is dead?”

“This morning,” and the man sniffed. “There are Richard and the lad Berart in the hall. We have covered them up with straw.”

Tiphaïne called sharply to Brunet, who was snuffing at the sheet, and stood looking at the grave and the two diggers. They were all that the Black Death had left to her in the Aspen Tower out of a garrison of twenty men. She had had four women to serve her when the Vicomte had ridden out two months ago. Now but one was left, and she sick to death in the room above the gate.

“How are you, Jehanot, and you, Guy?” she asked.

The two men looked at each other as though to detect the first flush of fever on the other’s face. They smiled grimly. The intense silence of the castle, the mist lying stagnant over the valley, seemed to accord with the invisible horror that lurked in the air.

“I am sound, madame.”

“And I—as yet.”

They crossed themselves and muttered a prayer and the names of several saints. Tiphaïne held out the cup to them, her eyes wandering to the figure under the sheet.

“I have brought you a hot posset,” she said; “it will keep out the damp.”

Jehanot drank first, and then passed the cup to his comrade. The man drained it, and then gave it back to Tiphaïne with a crook of the knee.

“I am going to sit with Enid,” she said.

Jehanot, the cripple, looked at her through half-closed lids, for the misty sunlight was in his eyes.

“Leave her to me, madame?” he asked.

“No, no.”

“I have taken my chance; nothing more can matter.”

Her face lighted up of a sudden, and became beautiful as she gave the old man one of her smiles.

“The Holy Mother remember you, Jehanot,” she said; “you are a good fellow, and I have prayed for you, but Enid is in my hands.”

She turned and walked slowly back towards the court, holding the cup pressed against her bosom, the men looking after her in silence. Her gray cloak vanished under the brown domes of the fruit trees. Jehanot plunged his spade into the ground with an oath.

“The saints defend her!” he said, “How she drives the devil out of one with a look!”

His companion grunted and went on with his work.

“I would run for it, but—”

Jehanot glanced at him quickly over his shoulder.

“But for madame?”

“Yes.”

“That would be a coward’s trick. We should be shamed, even by her dog. God send the Vicomte back, I say, and keep all plundering devils from breaking down the gate.”

Tiphaïne crossed the court, shuddering inwardly as she thought of the dead men lying bloated and stiff under the straw in the hall. It was with an effort that she went in out of the sunlight and climbed the stairway to the lord’s solar. There was still the woman Enid to be looked to; and, refilling the cup from the brass pot on the hook, and ordering Brunet to lie down before the fire, she unlatched a small door in the wall that opened on a short gallery leading to the tower. At the back of the portcullis cell was a room known as the lesser solar, hung with red cloth, its windows opening upon the court. Books were ranged on a shelf beside the chimney and bundles of herbs dangled from the beams of the ceiling. In one corner stood a bed, with a water-pot and a crucifix on a stool beside it.

Tiphaïne set the cup down on the table, and, stealing across the room, drew the hangings back along the bed-rail. On the bed, under a coarse green quilt, lay the woman Enid, her sweet name belying her as she moaned and panted and plucked with her fingers at the clothes. Her face was as hideous as the face of a leper, blotched and swollen, the lips covered with brown scabs. Tiphaïne looked at her and shivered, remembering how she had kissed her as a child. The woman was wandering, thrusting out her dry tongue, blood on the quilt, her black hair in a noisome tangle.

“She will die to-night,” thought Tiphaïne, trying not to shrink from the bed and the tainted air of the room.

She took up the cup from the table, and, holding her breath, she bent over the bed, while the thing on it coughed and whimpered. She tried to pour some of the posset between the cracked lips, but the woman only choked, and the red wine dribbled down her chin. Tiphaïne put the cup back upon the table, and turned to the window-seat as though to wait and watch.

“What is the use,” she said to herself, fingering the rosary that hung about her neck. “I can do nothing, and I have prayed.”

Moved by some such simple thought as this, she left the woman to her moanings, hoping for pity’s sake that she might make a speedy end. It was more terrible to look on life than death, when life boasted so much horror. Lonely, very miserable, and sick at heart, she went to the little chapel beyond the solar and knelt down at the altar steps. Prayer was inarticulate in her, a blind up-rushing of the soul, a passionate desire for deliverance from the end. The sunlight had left the painted window, and everything was dim and indistinct and cold; the breath of the unseen seemed to fill the place and to chill her as she knelt before the cross.

“Ah, I cannot pray.”

She started up, half in petulance, half in despair, and went to her own bower that lay beyond the chapel. A hawk moped on the perch by the window, and even the bright colors on the walls seemed cold. Tiphaïne stood before the window and tried to remember how many days had passed since her father and Robin had ridden out. She strove to count them, taking her rosary and dropping a carved bead for each day. When would they return? And when they came they might find the Aspen Tower filled with the dead. Geoffrey the castellan and fifteen of the garrison lay buried with the three women under the apple-trees in the garden. Who would go next? Only crippled Jehanot, the man Guy, and the dog were left.

Mad with the silence of the place, she picked up a lute from the bed and tried to sing. Anything, even mockery, was better than this accursed stillness—