Read Ebook: The Truce of God by Rinehart Mary Roberts Sichel Harold Illustrator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 277 lines and 11250 words, and 6 pages

"But you do not love our Lord!"

The Jew put out his foot quietly so that she could not close the grating again. But he smiled into her eyes.

"Your Lord was a Jew," he said.

This reassured her. It seemed to double the quality of mercy. She threw the door wide and the usurer went out cautiously, as if suspecting a trap. But patches of sunlight, barred with black, showed the way clear. He should have gone at once, but he waited to give her the blessing of his people. Even then, having started, he went back to her. She looked so small in that fearsome place.

"If there is something you wish, little maid, and I can secure it for you--"

"I wish but two things," she said. "I wish to be a boy, only I fear it is too late for that. The Bishop thinks so. And I wish to see my mother."

And these being beyond his gift, and not contained in the pack he had fastened to his shoulders, he only shook his head and took his cautious way toward freedom.

Having tried song and a good deed, Clotilde went back again to her room, stepping over the page, who had curled himself up in a ball, like a puppy, and still slept. She crossed her hands on her breast and raised her eyes as she had been taught.

"Now, O Lord," she said, "I have tried song and I have tried a good deed. I wish to see my mother."

Perhaps it was merely coincidence that the level rays of the morning sun just then fell on the crucifix that hung on the wall, and that although during all the year it seemed to be but of wood and with closed eyes, now it flashed as with life and the eyes were open.

"He was one of Your people," she said to the crucifix, "and by now he is down the hill."

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.

"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:

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 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."

"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:

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet