Chapter II

Now it was the custom on the morning of the Holy day for the _seigneur_ to ride his finest stallion to the top of the hill, where led a steep road down into the town. There he dismounted, surrounded by his people, guests and soldiers, smaller visiting nobility, the household of the Castle. And, the stage being set as it were, and the village waiting below, it was his pleasure to give his charger a great cut with the whip and send him galloping, unridden, down the hill. The horse was his who caught it.

Below waited the villagers, divided between terror and cupidity. Above waited the Castle folk. It was an amusing game for those who stood safely along the parapet and watched, one that convulsed them with merriment. Also, it improved the quality of those horses that grazed in the plain below.

This year it was a great grey that carried Charles out to the road that clung to the face of the cliff. Behind him on a donkey, reminder of the humble beast that had borne the Christ into Jerusalem, rode the Bishop. Saddled and bridled was the grey, with a fierce head and great shoulders, a strong beast for strong days.

The men-at-arms were drawn up in a double line, weapons at rest. From the place below rose a thin grey smoke where the fire kindled for the steer. But the crowd had deserted and now stood, eyes upraised to the Castle, and to the cliff road where waited boys and men ready for their desperate emprise, clad in such protection of leather as they could afford against the stallion's hoofs.

Two people only remained by the steer, an aged man, almost blind, who tended the fire, and the girl Joan, whom Guillem slept to forget.

"The _seigneur_ has ridden out of the gates, father," she said. The colour mounted to her dark cheeks. She was tall and slender, unlike the peasant girls of the town, almost noble in her bearing; a rare flower that Charles, in his rage and disappointment, would pick for himself.

"And were you not undutiful," he mumbled, "you would be with him now, and looking down on this rabble."

She did not reply at once. Her eyes were fixed on the frowning castle, on the grim double line of men-at-arms, at the massive horse and its massive rider.

"I, too, should be up there," whined the old man. "Today, instead of delivering Christmas dues, I should be receiving them. But you--!" He swung on her malevolently, "You must turn great ox-eyes toward Guillem, whose most courageous work is to levy tribute of a dungeon!"

She flushed.

"I am afraid, father. He is a hard man."

"He is gentle with women."

"Gentle!" Her eyes were still upraised. "He knows not the word. When he looks at me there is no liking in his eyes. I am--frightened."

The overlord sat his great horse and surveyed the plain below. As far as he could see, and as far again in every direction, was his domain, paying him tithe of fat cattle and heaping granaries. As far as he could see and as far again was the domain that, lacking a man-child, would go to Philip, his cousin.

The Bishop, who rode his donkey without a saddle, slipped off and stood beside the little beast on the road. His finger absently traced the dark cross on its back.

"Idiots!" snarled the overlord out of his distemper, as he looked down into the faces of his faithful ones below. "Fools and sons of fools! Thy beast would suit them better, Bishop, than mine."

Then he flung himself insolently out of the saddle. There was little of Christmas in his heart, God knows; only hate and disappointment and thwarted pride.

"A great day, my lord," said the Bishop. "Peace over the land. The end of a plentiful year--"

"Bah!"

"The end of a plentiful year," repeated the Bishop tranquilly, "this day of His birth, a day for thanksgiving and for--good-will."

"Bah!" said the overlord again, and struck the grey a heavy blow. So massive was the beast, so terrific the pace at which it charged down the hill that the villagers scattered. He watched them with his lip curling.

"See," he said, "brave men and true! Watch, father, how they rally to the charge!" And when the creature was caught, and a swaying figure clung to the bridle:

"By the cross, the Fool has him! A fine heritage for my cousin Philip, a village with its bravest man a simpleton!"

The Fool held on swinging. His arms were very strong, and as is the way with fools and those that drown, many things went through his mind. The horse was his. He would go adventuring along the winter roads, adventuring and singing. The townspeople gathered about him with sheepish praise. From a dolt he had become a hero. Many have taken the same step in the same space of moments, the line being but a line and easy to cross.

The _denouement_ suited the grim mood of the overlord. It pleased him to see the smug villagers stand by while the Fool mounted his steed. Side by side from the parapet he and the Bishop looked down into the town.

"The birthday of our Lord, Bishop," he said, "with fools on blooded horses and the courage of the townspeople in their stomachs."

"The birthday of our Lord," said the Bishop tranquilly, "with a lad mounted who has heretofore trudged afoot, and with the hungry fed in the market place."

Now it had been in the mind of the Bishop that the day would soften Charles' grim humour and that he might speak to him as man to man. But Charles was not softened.

So the Bishop gathered up his courage. His hand was still on the cross on the donkey's back.

"You are young, my son, and have been grievously disappointed. I, who am old, have seen many things, and this I have learned. Two things there are that, next to the love of God, must be greatest in a man's life--not war nor slothful peace, nor pride, nor yet a will that would bend all things to its end."

The overlord scowled. He had found the girl Joan in the Market Square, and his eyes were on her.

"One," said the Bishop, "is the love of a woman. The other is--a child."

The donkey stood meekly, with hanging head.

"A woman," repeated the Bishop. "You grow rough up here on your hillside. Only a few months since the lady your wife went away, and already order has forsaken you. The child, your daughter, runs like a wild thing, without control. Our Holy Church deplores these things."

"Will Holy Church grant me another wife?"

"Holy Church," replied the Bishop gravely, "would have you take back, my lord, the wife whom your hardness drove away."

The _seigneur's_ gaze turned to the east, where lay the Castle of Philip, his cousin. Then he dropped brooding eyes to the Square below, where the girl Joan assisted her father by the fire, and moved like a mother of kings.

"You wish a woman for the castle, father," he said. "Then a woman we shall have. Holy Church may not give me another wife, but I shall take one. And I shall have a son."

* * * * *

The child Clotilde had watched it all from a window. Because she was very high the thing she saw most plainly was the cross on the donkey's back. Far out over the plain was a moving figure which might or might not have been the Jew. She chose to think it was.

"One of Your people," she said toward the crucifix. "I have done the good deed."

She was a little frightened, for all her high head.

Other Christmases she and the lady her mother had sat hand in hand, and listened to the roystering.

"They are drunk," Clotilde would say.

But her mother would stroke her hand and reply:

"They but rejoice that our Lord is born."

So the child Clotilde stood at her window and gazed to where the plain stretched as far as she could see and as far again. And there was her mother. She would go to her and bring her back, or perhaps failing that, she might be allowed to stay.

Here no one would miss her. The odour of cooking food filled the great house, loud laughter, the clatter of mug on board. Her old nurse was below, decorating a boar's head with berries and a crown.

Because it was the Truce of God and a festival, the gates stood open. She reached the foot of the hill safely. Stragglers going up and down the steep way regarded her without suspicion. So she went through the Square past the roasting steer, and by a twisting street into the open country.

When she stopped to rest it was to look back with wistful eyes toward the frowning castle on the cliff. For a divided allegiance was hers. Passionately as she loved her mother, her indomitable spirit was her father's heritage, his fierceness was her courage, and she loved him as the small may love the great.

The Fool found her at the edge of the river. She had forgotten that there was a river. He was on his great horse, and he rode up by the child and looked down at her.

"It was I who captured him," he boasted. "The others ran, but I caught him, so." He dismounted to illustrate.

"It is not because you were brave that you captured him."

"Then why?" He stood with his feet wide apart, looking down at her.

"It is because you have slept in a manger on a Holy Eve."

"Aye," he responded, "but that was a matter of courage, too. There were many strange noises. Also, in the middle of the night came Our Lady herself and said to me: 'Hereafter thou shalt sing with the voice of an angel.'"

"I should like to see Our Lady," said the child wistfully.

"Also," pursued the Fool, "She gave me power over great beasts. See! He fears me, while he loves me."

And indeed there seemed some curious kinship between the horse and the lad, perhaps because the barrier of keen human mind was not between them.

"Think you," said the little maid, "if I slept where you did She would appear to me? I would not ask much, only to be made a lad like you, and, perhaps, to sing."

"But I am a simpleton. Instead of wit I have but a voice and now--a horse."

"A lad like you," she persisted, "so that my father would love me and my mother might come back again?"

"Better stay as you are," said the Fool. "Also, there will be no Holy Eve again for a long time. It comes but once a year. Also it is hard times for men who must either fight or work in the fields. I--" He struck his chest. "I shall do neither. And I shall cut no more wood. I go adventuring."

Clotilde rose and drew her grey cloak around her.

"I am adventuring, too," she said. "Only I have no voice and no horse. May I go with you?"

The boy was doubtful. He had that innate love and tenderness that is given to his kind instead of other things. But a child!

"I will take you," he said at last, rather heavily. "But where, little lady?"

"To my mother at the castle of Black Philip." And when his face fell--for Philip was not named The Black only for his beard--

"She loves singing. I will ask you to sing before her."

That decided him. He took her before him on the grey horse and they set off, two valiant adventurers, a troubadour and a lady, without food or sufficient clothing, but with high courage and a song.

And because it was the Truce of God the children went unharmed, encountering no greater adventure than hunger and cold and aching muscles. Robbers sulked in their fastnesses, and their horses pawed the ground. Murder, rapine and pillage slept that Christmas day, under the shelter of the cross.

The Fool, who ached for adventure, rather resented the peace.

"Wait until Monday," he said from behind her on the horse. "I shall show you great things."

But the little maid was cold by that time and beginning to be frightened. "Monday you may fight," she said. "Now I wish you would sing."

So he sang until his voice cracked in his throat. Because it was Christmas, and because it was freshest in his heart, he sang mostly what he and the blacksmith and the crockery-seller had sung in the castle yard:

"The Light of Light Divine,
True Brightness undefiled,
He bears for us the shame of sin,
A holy, spotless Child."

They lay that night in a ruined barn with a roof of earth and stones. Clotilde eyed the manger wistfully, but the Holy Eve was past, and the day of miracles would not come for a year.

Toward morning, however, she roused the boy with a touch.

"She may have forgotten me," she said. "She has been gone since the spring. She may not love me now."

"She will love you. It is the way of a mother to keep on loving."

"I am still a girl."

"You are still her child."

But seeing that she trembled, he put his ragged cloak about her and talked to comfort her, although his muscles ached for sleep.

He told her a fable of the countryside, of that Abbot who, having duly served his God, died and appeared at the heavenly gates for admission. "A slave of the Lord," he replied, when asked his name. But he was refused. So he went away and laboured seven years again at good deeds and returned. "A servant of the Lord," he called himself, and again he was refused. Yet another seven years he laboured and came in all humility to the gate. "A child of the Lord," said the Abbot, who had gained both wisdom and humility. And the gates opened.