LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER V

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      RAIMBAUT THE SIX-FINGERED

      A lord might of course visit one who held from him, often did so. But it was not Raimbaut’s use to ride to Castel-Noir. And Garin, parting from him less than a week ago, had heard no word of his coming.

      But here he was, pushing Sicart aside, striding into the hall, a low-browed, thick-skulled giant, savage with his foes, dull and grudging with his friends—Raimbaut the Six-fingered! Foulque hastened to do him reverence, make him welcome; Garin, stepping to his side, took from him his wide, rust-hued mantle and furred cap.

      “Well met, my Lord Raimbaut!” said the abbot in his golden tones.

      Raimbaut gloomed upon him. “Ha, Lord Abbot! Are you here for this springald, my esquire? Well, I have said that you might have him.”

      “Nay,” said the abbot mellowly, “I think that I want him not.”

      “—have him,” pursued Raimbaut. “And likewise his quarrel with Savaric of Montmaure.”

      He spoke with a deep, growling voice, as of an angered mastiff, and as he spoke turned like one upon Garin. “Why, by every fiend in hell, did you fight a Tuesday, with his son?”

      Garin stared. He heard Foulque’s distressed exclamation, saw the abbot purse his lips, but beyond all that he had a vision of a forest glade and heard a clash of steel. He drew breath. “Was he that knight in crimson? Was that Jaufre de Montmaure?”

      Raimbaut doubled his fist and advanced it. Before this Garin had come to earth beneath his lord’s buffet. He awaited it now, standing as squarely as he might. He was aware that Raimbaut had for him a kind of thwart liking—a liking that made, in Raimbaut’s mind, no reason why he should not strike when angry. It was not the expected blow that set Garin’s mind whirling. But Jaufre de Montmaure! To his knowledge he had never, until that Tuesday, seen that same Jaufre. But he knew of him, oh, knew of him! Montmaure was a great count, overlord of towns and many castles. In Garin’s world Savaric of Montmaure was only less than Gaucelm of Roche-de-Frêne—Gaucelm the Fortunate from whom Savaric held certain fiefs. Immediately, Montmaure loomed larger than Roche-de-Frêne, for Raimbaut the Six-fingered owed direct fealty to Montmaure and in war must furnish a hundred men-at-arms.

      Garin knew of the young count, Sir Jaufre. He knew that Jaufre had been long time in Italy, at the court where his mother was born, but that now he was looked for home again. He knew that he had fought boldly in sieges of cities, and in tournaments was acclaimed brave and fortunate. Perhaps Garin had dreamed of his own chance coming to him by way of Montmaure—perhaps he had dreamed of somehow recommending himself to this same Jaufre. That gibe of the abbot’s about the signet ring had struck from the squire an answering thought, “Some day I may—” Now came the reversal, now Garin felt a faintness, an icy fall. He was young and in a thousand ways, unfree. For a day and a night his conscious being had strained high. Now there came a dull subsidence, a slipping toward the abyss. “Jaufre de Montmaure!”

      Raimbaut did not deliver the meditated blow—too angered and concerned was Raimbaut to dispense slight tokens. He let his hand drop, but ground beneath his heavy foot the rushes on the floor. “I would I had had you chained in the pit below the dungeon before I let you go to Roche-de-Frêne!” He turned on Foulque who stood, grey-faced and dry-lipped. “Knew you what this fool did?”

      Foulque struck his hands together. “He told me that eve. He did not know and I did not know—He thought it might be some wandering knight—Ah, my Lord Raimbaut, as we owe you service, so do you owe us protection!”

      Raimbaut strode up and down, heavy and black as his own ancient donjon. “Comes to me yestereve, as formal as you please, a herald from Montmaure! ‘Hark and hear,’ says he, puffing out his cheeks, ‘to what befell our young lord, Sir Jaufre, riding through the forest called La Belle, and for some matter or other sending a good way ahead those that rode with him. Came a squire out of the wood, drunken and, as it were, mad, and with him, plain to be seen, a stark fiend! Then did the two fall upon Sir Jaufre from behind and forced him to fight, and by necromancy overthrew and wounded him, and, ignobly and villainously, bound him to a tree. Which, when they had done, they vanished. And straightway his men found him and brought him home. And now that fiend may perchance not be found, but assuredly the man may be discovered! When he is, for his foul pride, treason, and wizardry, the Count of Montmaure will flay him alive and nail him head downward to a tree.’ ”

      Mistral sent into the hall a withering blast. The smoke from the fire blew out and went here and there in wreaths. It set the abbot coughing. Raimbaut the Six-fingered continued his striding up and down. “Then he puffs his cheeks out and says on, and wits me to know that Savaric of Montmaure calls on every man that owes him fealty to discover—an he is known to them—that churl and misdoer. And thereupon,” ended Raimbaut on a note of thunder, “to my face he describes Garin my esquire!”

      Garin stood silent, but Foulque panted hard. “Ah, thou unhappy! Ah, the end of Castel-Noir! Ah, my Lord Raimbaut, have we not been faithful liegemen?” He caught his brother by the arm. “Kneel, Garin—and I will kneel—”

      But Garin did not kneel. He stood young, straight, pale with indignation. “Brother and Reverend Father and my Lord Raimbaut,” he cried, “never in my life had I to do with a fiend! Nor was I drunken nor without sense! Nor did I come upon him from behind! Does he say that, then am I more glad than I was that I brought him fairly to the earth and, because of his own treachery, tied him to a tree and bound his hands with his stirrup leather—”

      Raimbaut, in his striding up and down being close to his squire, turned upon him at this and delivered the buffet. It brought Garin, hand and knee, upon the rushes, but he rose with lightness. Raimbaut, striding on by, came to the abbot, who, having ended coughing, sat, double chin on hand and foot in furred slipper, tapping the floor. He stopped short, feudal lord beside as massive ecclesiastic. “The Church says it is her part to counsel! Out then with good counsel!”

      The abbot looked at him aslant, then spoke with a golden voice. “Did you tell the count’s herald that it was your esquire?”

      “Not I! I said that it had a sound of Aimeric of the Forest’s men.” Aimeric of the Forest was a lord with whom Raimbaut was wont to wage private war.

      The abbot murmured “Ah!” then, “Did any in your castle betray him?”

      “No,” said Raimbaut. “Only Guilhelm, and Hugonet heard surely and knew for certain. Six-fingered we may be and rude, but we wait a bit before we give our esquires to other men’s deaths!” Again he covered with his stride the space before the wide hearth. He was as huge as a boar and as grim, but a certain black tenseness and danger seemed to go out of the air of the hall. Turning, he again faced the abbot. “So I think, now the best wit that I can find is to say ‘Aye’ twice where I have already said it once, and speed this same Garin the fighter into Church’s fold! Let him as best he may convoy himself to the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius. There he may be turned at once into Brother Such-an-one. So he will be as safe and hid as if he were in Heaven and Our Lady drooped her mantle over him. By degrees Montmaure may forget, or he may flay the wrong man—”

      The abbot covered his mouth with his hand and looked into the blaze that mistral drove this way and that. Foulque came close, with a haggard, wrinkling face; but Garin, having risen from Raimbaut’s buffet, made no other motion.

      The abbot dropped his hand and spoke. “Do you not know that last year the Count of Montmaure became Advocate and Protector of the Abbey of Saint Pamphilius? As little as Lord Raimbaut do I will openly to offend Count Savaric.”

      “ ‘Openly,’ ” cried Foulque. “Ah, Reverend Father, it would not be ‘openly’—”

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