As she had said to Martin Valliant, every hour was precious, for the Lord of Troy’s riders would be scouring2 the Forest, and Woodmere would not be forgotten. If she and Martin were to hold it as a strong rallying place for their friends of the Red Rose, then it behooved4 them to be up and doing before their ruinous stronghold was attacked.
She opened her door, and going softly down the stairs, found Martin Valliant still sleeping across them on his bed of fern. And for the moment she felt loth to rouse him, for he lay breathing as quietly as a child, one arm under his head.
“Martin Valliant——”
She touched him with her foot, and the result was miraculous6. He sat up, clutching the billhook that lay on the step beside him, a most fierce and unpeaceful figure in the gray light of the dawn.
“Stand! Who’s there?”
Mellis retreated a step or two, laughing, for he was a dangerous gentleman with that bill of his.
“A friend, Martin Valliant.”
He got up, looking not a little angry with himself for having let her catch him asleep.
“What, daylight already!”
“I was loth to wake you, but there is much to be done.”
“It is I who should have been awake, not you.”
He looked in a temper that wanted to catch the day’s work by the throat and throttle7 it. Mellis stepped over the pile of bracken and stood in the doorway8 that opened on the courtyard.
“One does not work well hungry,” she said, “and we must talk over the day’s needs.”
Her hair hung loose, and she shook it down so that it fell like a black cloak about her green-sheathed body. The color and the richness of it thrilled Martin to the heart. Her throat looked as white as May blossom, and her eyes had all the mystery of the dawn. And of a sudden a swift exultation9 leaped in him at the thought that he was her man-at-arms, chosen to shield her with his body, her comrade in this great adventure.
“The day is ours,” he said; “I feel stronger than ten men.”
She turned her head, and her eyes held his.
“I think I am fortunate in you, comrade-in-arms.”
He could have taken the hem5 of her gown and kissed it.
Mellis served the meal, and they broke their fast in the garden, sitting on the oak bench and watching the white mist lift and melt from the valley. The woods grew green, the sky became blue above them, the mere3 flashed gold, the flowers glowed like wet gems10 in the grass. And Martin Valliant’s soul was full of the dawn, the mystery and freshness thereof; the smell of the sweet, wet world intoxicated11 him; the red rose that Mellis had given him lay over his heart. He looked at her with secret, tentative awe12, and life seemed a strange and miraculous dream.
She began to speak of the day’s needs.
“That bridge does not please me, comrade. We want a thing that can be dropped and kept raised at our pleasure. And then there is the gate.”
“The hinges and nails are all that are left of it.”
“I have it. There is some good timber in those outhouses; we could build a new gate. The curtain walls are still strong and good. Then there is the gate leading into the kitchen court; we could wall that up with stones. We must hope to keep the Lord of Troy’s men from crossing the water, if they come before we have raised a garrison13.”
She grew more mysterious.
“I shall have other things to show you, but they can keep till the evening. And now—as to the horse.”
The beast raised quite a debate between them, since he complicated the matter of the bridge. Martin was for leaving him tethered in one of the glades14, and trusting to luck and to Roger Bland’s men not discovering him if they rode to Woodmere within the next few days. And in the end Mellis agreed with him, since he was to be responsible for the contriving15 of a drawbridge.
“Your plan has it,” she confessed. “I will go and tether Dobbin in one of the glades, and then come and serve as housewife. The man’s part shall be yours.”
Martin went to work with fierce enthusiasm. He had a scheme in his head as to how the thing might be done, and he set about it when Mellis had crossed the water. He bored a hole through one end of the big beam, ran the rope through the hole and knotted it. At the other end he contrived16 a rough hinge by driving four stout17 stakes criss-cross into the ground, with a crossbar under them which could be pegged18 to the butt-end of the beam. The pulley wheels for the chains of the old bridge were still in the two chain holes of the gate-house, about ten feet from the ground. Martin piled some stones against the wall, climbed on them, and ran the rope through one of the chain holes. The trick worked very prettily19. He found that he could raise and lower the beam from inside the gate-house, and all that was needed was a stake to which he could fasten the rope when the bridge was up.
Mellis came back from the woods as he was driving the stake into the ground under the gateway20. He had rolled his cassock over his girdle, and turned the sleeves up nearly to his shoulders, so that the muscles showed. And he looked hot and masterful and triumphant21 as he turned to show her how his bridge worked.
“Well done, Martin Valliant. Let the beam down and I will come over and see if I am strong enough to raise it.”
He lowered the beam, and she walked over to him.
“Now I understand why you did not want to build a bridge that would carry a horse. Let me see what I can do. I might have to play bridgeward some day.”
She found that she was strong enough to raise the beam, for she was tall and lithe22, with a beautiful breadth across the bosom23.
Martin’s eyes shone.
“Now I must build you a gate,” he said, “a gate that nothing but a cannon24 shot can shiver.”
It took him the rest of the morning to pull down one of the outhouses, sort out his timber, and get it cut to size and shape. He had dragged the charred25 mass of the old gate from its bed of nettles26, and had stripped it of its great iron hinges when Mellis came to call him to dinner.
“I have done famously: hot meat, and new bread, and a dish of herbs. I found two old iron pots in the cellar, and I am quite kitchen proud.”
Martin was loth to leave the work. He was hunting for the smith’s nails that had fallen out of the burned wood of the old gate; they were more precious than pieces of gold. She pretended to be hurt by his lack of gratitude27.
“I have cooked for my comrade in arms, and he will not eat what I have cooked.”
Martin straightened up, and left his hunting for nails among the trampled28 nettles.
“It was not churlishness on my part.”
“I know. You must do things fiercely, Martin Valliant, with your whole heart, or not at all.”
“My hunger is fierce,” he confessed, smiling gravely. “No food could be sweeter than what your hands have prepared.”
He was shy of her, and voiceless, all through that meal, and there was an answering silence in Mellis’s heart, for though so short a time had passed since their lives had been linked together, she was forgetting Martin the monk29
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