Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (406 page)

Mr. Sorrell exclaimed:

“Good God, the beggar!” and the beggar, rushing between the bear and the dancing girl, threw himself under the high table and began to kiss Mr. Sorrell’s feet. This filled Mr. Sorrell with disgust and repulsion, and from the lower part of the hall they began to cry out that the beggar had been miraculously cured, because he had been the first to welcome the holy cross to that place. The Dean stood up in his place, and so did the chaplain, who in a stentorian voice ejaculated:

“
Te Deum laudamus!
”

And then, whilst everyone stood still in confusion, the pages in their places, the servers in theirs, and all men held their breaths or chatted to their neighbours, a man in a clerk’s dress of black with furred edges, and with an ink-horn slung from his chest, rushed into the disordered hall, almost unnoticed, and fell on his knees before the Dean.

“Hugh of FitzGreville,” the Lady Dionissia exclaimed deeply, “is laying siege to my Castle of Tamworth.”

CHAPTER III.

IN a very misty half light, caused by a small moon shining down through vapours arising from the River Wiley, the black shapes of men to the number of thirty or forty were moving in front of the black walls of the Castle of Tamworth. They were carrying bundles of faggot wood and parcels of thatch, which they had torn from the roof of a hut that was not very far distant, and they were piling these in front of the great gate of the castle. Others were hauling up from beside the pale stream the huge trunk of an elm tree that had been blown down a fortnight before in the high wind, and now, lopped of its branches at the top, lay there awaiting a convenient season for carting.

They worked for the most part in silence, for these outlaws were very barbarous men who had hardly any words to utter at all, and they were armed with clubs, though two or three had bows, and Hugh of Fitz-Greville himself had a double-handed sword, a cap of steel, and two daggers. With the faggots and thatch they intended to make a fire before the great gate so as to weaken it, and with the trunk of a tree they were going to make a battering-ram, supporting it two and two on either side with ropes of ox-hide. They worked industriously and with haste, and when they had dragged the tree trunk so that its butt end was within a few feet of the gate, they set fire to the mass of combustibles that there lay heaped up. It smouldered and sent out a great deal of smoke. And then, so that they might have more light to work by, Hugh FitzGreville commanded them to set light to the hut from which they had already torn half the thatch.

But whilst all these scoundrels tugged and sweated at the ox-hide ropes that went beneath the battering-ram, the alarming flames crept towards the dark heaven, and a sickly flickering light fell upon the malefactors’ forms and faces. They had little discipline and no unity, all these fellows, so that at one time twenty-five upon the one side of the tree trunk would be lifting, whilst the other twenty-five would be letting go of their ropes.

Having hidden himself for the last ten days, Hugh of FitzGreville had used the time at once to make himself acquainted with the habits of the castle people, and to make them think that he was far away and upon other errands. Indeed, he had sent a treacherous packman down to the castle that afternoon to say that he lay well away to the east, even as far as Andover. Thus, as he had hoped, the Lady Dionissia had been beguiled into security, and she had ridden over to Stapleford with all her men, leaving the castle almost uninhabited, but with most of its furniture, which must have been worth nearly £50, and with what was still more desirable, a certain quantity of arms, including even, it was said, one of those new and devilish inventions which spits forth stones and fire and fills the beholders with fear. Thus, lying up during the evening in the heather, Hugh of FitzGreville, a man of forty, with a very black beard, gnarled fingers, and a huge sword, who had been outlawed for many outrages, from the taking of the King’s deer to the murder of several people, male and female, and religious as well as laymen, Hugh of FitzGreville perceived with satisfaction the Lady Dionissia riding towards Stapleford with all her armed men. Near nightfall he heard from one of his men, the son of a peasant of Stapleford, that to that castle there was come the holy pilgrim that for so long all the countryside had awaited, bearing with him a golden cross that worked astounding miracles. And this all the more determined Hugh of FitzGreville to make his attack upon Tamworth Castle that very night. For he expected that the destination of the pilgrim and the cross was Tamworth itself; and he very much desired to have arms for his men. The season for violences was passing over. With the end of the summer, the knights and their retainers would be back in Wiltshire, and he himself would have to go into his winter quarters in the little town of Imber, which was inaccessible to mounted knights once the winter rains began to fall.

He desired arms, for he wished to sack Harnham, the southern suburb of Salisbury, where all the Jews dwelt, and where there was in consequence very much money. There were arms in the Castle of Tamworth — not many, but sufficient, and there were not anywhere else any that he knew of or could lay hands upon. But if on the morrow the cross came to Tamworth Castle, his chance would be gone. For it was very well known that this cross shed a miraculous protection over all such as possessed it. Thus with the dusk Hugh of FitzGreville slipped with his men down the hillside towards the stream.

It had chanced that there was walking there the Clerk Nicholas, whom the Dean of Salisbury had left at Tamworth to watch over such books as he had brought with him, and more particularly an edition of Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
, which were the Dean’s favourite reading. And this Clerk Nicholas, walking in a shady grove, had perceived how Hugh of FitzGreville and his men had come down to the gates of the castle, and what they had set about doing. Thus, after watching them for a time; being himself unseen, and uncertain whether they were friends or foes, he had set off, running at great speed, as if the devil and all his imps were after him, towards the Dean in the castle at Stapleford. But not knowing this, the outlaws set about their work with great determination, though with much clumsiness.

Hugh FitzGreville was cursing lustily all the while, and thwacking them over the shoulders with a great stick. At last he called for silence, and commanded that they should all stand there with the hide-ropes slack in their hands whilst he counted four, and upon the word four they should all lift together. They must batter down this great gate. There was no other way into the castle; the walls were too high and the windows too narrow. He made three attempts at counting four, each of them ending in failure. But at the fourth attempt they got the great tree trunk lifted up and stood trembling at their knees with its great weight. He commanded them to swing it against the gate, but when they had swung it they tottered so that it fell again to the ground a little farther away than before it had been. Cursing, sweating, and screaming, their leader forced them to another attempt, and again they had it poised and trembling in the air.

There was already an element of fear abroad amongst all these men. To begin with, this attack upon a great castle was a larger and more dangerous enterprise than any to which they had been used. And again, descending into the valleys was a thing they always dreaded. They were men who wrought violences upon the open Plain, and here in the darkness and the mists they felt themselves shut in. Nor, indeed, did they very well know the ways of escape, for it was unfamiliar country. Thus the trembling of their hands beneath the great weight of the tree trunk was a symbol of an awful fear that beset them, and the angry agitation of their leader made them all the more dogged and cowed. But they swung the tree trunk back, and with an enormous thud it fell against the great gate; the lock split, the bolts split, the gate itself, dividing into two parts, flew right back. Suddenly they felt — and they screamed aloud — that the devil was amongst them.

The men on the right-hand side only heard the hoofs — the men on the left saw, enveloped in the clouds of smoke from the burning hovel, an immense white horse, that fell in amongst them. Upon its back was a terrible man all in red and white, waving a steel mace above his head and calling out in an unknown tongue. Those who saw horse and rider let go their ox-hide ropes so that the released tree trunk fell across the legs of the other half. Twelve of them were pinned down and lay screaming.

The horse reared on high and seemed itself to scream in continuous bursts of sound like the high laughter of fiends. The firelight reflected in its eyes appeared to pour forth streams of flame. The black wall of the castle came into sight, dun-coloured in the light of the flames, and vanished when the wind beat the flames low. It rose in front of them like a great cliff, and the uncharted night surrounded them on all other sides. The horse reared. It struck out with its right foot and with its left; its enormous jaws closed with a panic-bearing sound.

His heart full of dread, FitzGreville struck with his twohanded sword a desperate blow at the man on the horse. The sword fell upon the iron handle of the mace that the man carried and its blade shivered like brittle glass. When the fragments fell over its back and crupper, the horse squealed as if with a wicked rage. And even whilst the outlaw, with a gesture of despair, dropped his ruined hilt to the ground, the horse was upon him.

The first blow with its right foot smashed his head like a nut, so that he was at once dead, and then upon the prostrate body it executed its rage, stamping with its feet, tearing with its enormous teeth, until there remained only the pulp of the human being. Then the horse stood still and trembled in all its limbs; it raised its nostrils towards the open gate and snuffed in the air. All the robbers had fled, only those who were pinned down by the tree trunk lay still and groaned. The stallion, with its head erect, trotted in through the dark gateway, its rider powerless or unwilling to prevent it.

Thus when a short two minutes later there came riding into the circle of light the Dean, his shouting chaplain who brandished a morgenstern, his page upon a black horse and four more pages who were the eldest of the Ladies Blanche and Dionissia, together with the five Welsh men-at-arms who had clung to their stirrups and ran uttering wild shrieks — it appeared in the light of the dancing flames that a miracle of God had been worked. There lay three men dead by huge blows, and one crushed out of all semblance of a man, and beneath the tree trunk, in an orderly row, the twelve others pinned to the earth and screaming, as if Providence had neatly arranged this device that in a seemly manner there might be several captives of whom to make an example to all evil-doers. The old men-at-arms, who had followed them on foot, came dropping in by twos and threes and many awakened peasants appeared far off, slinking in the outer ring of the firelight, and asking what all this could be but a madness of their lords, or a miracle of God, some thinking the one and some the other. —

And suddenly, staggering from under the archway, faltering here and there, they perceived a knight in a garment of red and white chequers, who bore in his left hand a mace, and from whose right depended an ornament all flashing gold.

So many and such great cries went up, there was such a babble and such a confusion of voices, that no man knew very well what he said or what was said to him. But there could be no doubt that all were agreed that the bearer of the Cross of St. Joseph and the cross itself had wrought this miracle for the protection of the noble House of Egerton of Tamworth. All men ran about seeking what vestige of fray they might find, and at a little distance there was discovered a man with his shoulder broken in, who had been crawling down to the river to drink. The great gates of the castle they observed to be thrown asunder as if miraculously, to permit of the entry of the Messenger of God. Nothing else in the castle was disturbed — nay, not so much as the books of the Dean of Salisbury; and the great white destrier in its stall with its favourite mare was quietly munching beans, with the stable cat seated upon its wethers. Thus upon that memorable night two miracles were wrought by the Cross of St. Joseph. On the one hand the cripple was made to walk, on the other the most formidable band of outlaws was broken for ever, its leader slain and mutilated beyond recognition; so then here indeed the finger of God had been made visible. Four others of them were killed outright, ten were taken ready to be hanged; and the rest, leaderless and broken men, were dispersed all over the Plain, so that most of them never again met together.

CHAPTER IV.

IT was thus with the glory of two miracles to his credit that Mr. Sorrell was borne once more into the lights of the great hall of Stapleford Castle, seated on high, on a litter supported by the shoulders of four Welshmen. All the countryside was abroad, torches here and there gleamed on the black wall of night, as they had come by the river-side, and a great crowd of people, who by their position or their rights were deemed fit to have ingress into the great hall, were already there, whilst huddled round the central doorway was a crowd of peasants and their wives. Mr. Sorrell was confused out of his mind. He could not have given you a coherent account of the proceedings.

At the moment, he was sober enough, though he was ready to admit he had drunk too much wine at supper. He excused himself by the fact that he had not in the least known how strong the liquor was, and had eaten so many sweet things and so many salt things, that an unheard-of thirst had possessed him. No doubt in the ordinary way he would have wanted to ride with the expedition. He would have done it for the fun of seeing what happened. But without the wine he would probably not have insisted upon riding the white stallion, and he probably would not have insisted on taking with him an iron mace.

As it was, he was conscious of having behaved boastfully and of having been enormously elated. There had been a great deal of hurry; he had been hoisted up on to the great horse before the castle door. Other men had ridden beside him. They had gone down to the river and along it. He had laughed and cried out with excitement. The pace of the great horse had seemed to him extraordinarily easy; it had trotted with a level, heavy action. He had ridden most things, from mules in Spain to camels in Egypt and some sort of ox on the Thibet frontier. And the pace of the great horse had seemed to him absurd; he had wanted to go faster. He had kicked it with his heels; he had hauled upon the bridle; he had called out.

At last he had struck its sides with the iron mace. Immediately it had become another creature, bounding with the elasticity of a steel spring, snorting and screaming. It had taken its own head, and he had found himself galloping through the night with immense bounds, far in advance of all the other men, going on farther and farther towards the glare of a large fire that was all he could see in the darkness. It had grown larger; it had become a conflagration; he had seen many men; he had heard their cries; he had noticed that a man with a black beard and a convulsed face had struck at him with a great sword. He had struck in return with his mace, meeting nothing. He had had too much to do to keep on the back of the horse, which swayed like a small boat in a very choppy sea, pitching now on one end, now on the other. For all he was a good rider, at last he had to hang on to the mane and the saddle.

Then the horse had stood still; it had neighed; it had trotted in under the dark arch into the darkness of the castle. It had come to a standstill by what was obviously a closed stable with a rough thatch that came down almost to Mr. Sorrell’s knee. And here, breathing hard and slightly pawing the ground, it had been answered from within by gentle whinnyings. And it was here for the first time that fear of a sort had come to Mr. Sorrell. It went quickly through his mind that if he did not let the horse in it would kick its way into the stable. On the other hand, if he descended, might not the terrible beast, not knowing him for his master, tear him, as Mr. Sorrell had seen it tear the outlaws? But the thing had to be faced. And with fear possessing him all over, Mr. Sorrell had slipped down from the horse, caught its bridle near the jaw, and, tremblingly, had found the latch of the stable. It was part of the odd jumble of fear, elation, and the natural tendency of his nature to do things in a ship-shape way that he unstrapped the unfamiliar saddle-belt, and took off the head stall and bit before he let the horse go into the black darkness of the stable. He could not for the world have told why he did this. It was hardly the desire for tidiness, since he dropped the saddle and the bridle immediately on the ground. But the great horse trotted quietly into its stall; Mr. Sorrell slammed the door to, and, leaning one hand against the lintel, he became violently ill.

This certainly sobered him, but it left him very dizzy and faint, and, like a man in a dream, he stumbled amongst heaps of offal and the handles of ploughs, which are weary and troublesome things, towards the light of the castle gate; and here, among torches, glare, and the shouts of men, he seemed to be seized upon by friendly savages. He was hoisted shoulder-high on to a litter covered with cushions. And what struck him most, and most singularly, was the fact that the little Jehan was immediately busy about his feet. He had, he discovered, been riding in boots of jointed steel, and almost immediately the little Jehan had these off, and was putting on the now familiar red and white shoes; he sat on high supported by the shoulders of four shaggy-haired, black little devils of mountaineers. He could not make himself heard; he could not ask any questions. It just seemed odd, and he just supposed that the gentlemen of those days went about with pages carrying their slippers behind them, because their iron riding shoes might be calculated to blister their feet. And then suddenly the mountaineers trotted off with him, and he was not distinctly conscious of thinking anything at all, except that it was probably all right, and that they ought to feel grateful to him, though he really had not done anything in particular. At any rate, he was thankful enough for the half hour or so of darkness and quiet.

There was certainly an extraordinary amount of chatter and babble in the hall of Stapleford Castle when they reached it. There were all sorts of people there — nuns, priests, old men-at-arms, men in costumes that he could not account for, a man who might be a mayor in a red garment with a chain round his neck, though he was treated as if he were of no account at all. On the dais there still sat the ladies, as if they had only just finished their supper, their nefs of silver and gold standing solitary on the white cloth before them. He was conscious of the Lady Dionissia gazing at him with a fixed and bemused glance, whilst the Lady Blanche, with triumph upon her face, held out her arms towards him, and the four other ladies rose up and called out. Still bearing him on high, the mountaineers kicked and shoved their way through the crowd till he was come right up to the dais. Everyone else stood upon their feet and shouted and called out; only the Lady Dionissia sat still and gazed at him in silence. And he was conscious that he must present a splendid enough figure, all in red and white velvet, if indeed it had not become dirtied by what he had done that night.

They began almost immediately some sort of religious service in the body of the hall. They appeared to be returning thanks, and the ugly but now cured cripple figured prominently in the middle of a body of kneeling religious people. But it was all very confused, for not everybody took part, and pages or servers moved about clearing the boards and removing the trestles of the lower tables to set them along the wall. Then the little pages came to take away the nefs from the dais. The Lady Blanche had one, the Lady Dionissia a second, and the Dean one more. But as for the chaplain and the ladies-in-waiting, their knives, cups, and napkins were simply wrapped up in cloths. The nef of the Lady Blanche was formed of a huge shell, in shape like a snail, that had come undoubtedly from the East. It had feet of silver, and there were attached to it sails and rigging, and a crew of tiny men of silver also. It contained as table furniture the Lady Blanche’s knife of gold, her small golden drinking-cup, her napkin ring of tortoise-shell, her napkin, and the beads which she used at table when she was piously inclined. All these things were carefully wiped before her face by the little page Jehan upon pieces of soft leather. Then the Lady Blanche fetched from her bosom the large key of the hutch in her bower, and, giving this to the page, she bade him very attentively to stow away the nef in her hutch, and to bring her the key again. This was the first time she had showed so much trust in the little page. And similarly, the Lady Dionissia and the Dean had their vessels cleaned by their pages, and stowed away in their nefs. The Lady Dionissia’s nef was of silver-gilt, in the shape of a man-at-arms who bore a large chest of booty upon his back.

This figure stood upon a plate of silver-gilt, from which the lady was accustomed to eat at table. The Dean’s nef was in the shape of a chasse or feretory. It was of gold, with a peaked roof, and it had small carved saints and angels at each of its four corners, whilst on the peak of the roof was an image of St. George trampling upon a dragon, and holding it transfixed between his pointed shoes with a long spear, round whose stave the golden beast twisted its neck, sending upwards flames of gold. And no sooner were the nefs off the table, than all who were on the daïs rose up and filed out of the hall, completely ignoring, as if with haughty indifference, the religious ceremonies that were there taking place. And this a little disconcerted Mr. Sorrell, who would gladly have taken the opportunity of returning some thanks to some deity for his having come safely through rather considerable perils.

He followed the white head-dress of the Lady Dionissia through what appeared to be miles and miles of stone corridors. The little Jehan walked before them carrying a torch, whose flame smoked redly, and filled the air with a fat, resinous, and stifling vapour. They went along narrow passages, up narrow stairs, and round long galleries. Mr. Sorrell tried to say to the Lady Blanche that he could not understand how they estimated their expenditure. It seemed to him to be very badly managed. Thus, on the one hand, the lady had a nef — a mere implement for containing table things — which must have cost £300 or £400. Would it not, he asked, have been more reasonable to keep her things in an ordinary plate-basket, and to have the passages lit by candles, or, at the very least, by night-lights? Everything that they did seemed to be unbalanced, so that at the one point they had a most unreasonable luxury, and, on the other, a great deal of discomfort. There did not seem to be a pane of glass in the whole castle, and yet he had upon his head at that moment on the cap that they had put on him, a chaplet of large pearls, which must have been worth at least £3000 or £4000. The lady said that this chaplet had been brought from the Holy Land by her husband’s grandfather after the Crusade of Richard I, when knights were more practical and less given to romantic notions. It was a chaplet nearly as fine that her husband had put upon the head of Sir Guy de Hardelot after he had taken him prisoner, because, forsooth, he had fought very well. Whereas it must be obvious to any person of sense that if an opponent has given you a great deal of trouble you should make him pay heavily for it. But for the other things Mr. Sorrell said, she did not at all understand them.

Mr. Sorrell said:

“Oh, but if you’re going into partnership with me, you’ll have to get to understand this sort of principle. You must have your expenditure level and sufficient all round. It’s no good being ostentatious in one place and niggardly in another. That’s the sound business principle.”

“I do not at all understand you,” the Lady Blanche said. “What can I know of the high principles of magic?”

“Oh, it’s perfectly simple,” Mr. Sorrell said, and he cast about in his mind for some illustration that would make her understand the absolute necessity of mastering this elementary business principle.

In the upper part of the castle the corridors were wider, more high and more gloomy, and the shadows of extravagant and protruding sleeves, veils and headdresses jutted and waved over rough walls of stone upon the one side, and untreated wood upon the other.

They walked very slowly, the little page going ahead with the smoking torch held on high.

“It’s like this,” Mr. Sorrell said. “Supposing you want to publish a book. You have to consider two things: the get-up of the book, and the amount you spend in advertisement. Now it’s no good getting up a book handsomely unless you can spend a good sum on publicity. You might have the very best etching for illustrations, and you could have it printed in what’s called golden type with red lettering on the title page, the half-title, and you might have it printed on the very best hand-made paper at God knows how much a pound. But if you don’t spend a high sum on advertising, you won’t sell twenty-five.”

“I do not understand any of those terms of magic,” the Lady Blanche said, “though I listen with all my ears.”

“I’ll try to talk about your sort of life,” Mr. Sorrell said. “Don’t you understand that time is the most valuable thing in the world? Well then, just consider how much time your servants must lose in doing the work of the castle, just because these passages are not lit. You could do with half the number of servants if you organised properly.”

“Ah, dear friend,” the lady said, “then the other half would starve and become bandits and oh, holy man, if these passages and corridors were lit at night, surely it would be very easy for my servants and serfs to come to me where I lie in the upper part of the castle, and to cut my throat and do other outrages. So I should lose my costly gear, and there would be an end of me. No, very assuredly I will keep all my passages quite dark, and the law of the castle what it is, that any serf who is found in them after sundown shall have his ears cut off and his nostrils slit as a suspected thief,”