Robert le Débonair was King of France, Robert le Diable Duke of Normandy, John XIX Pope in Rome, Héribert bishop of a diocese taking name from a certain town between Orléans and Paris, Rothalind abbess of a great house of Benedictine nuns, Rainulf the Red, baron holding a wide fief and dwelling, when he was not hunting or ravening in war or gone upon some visit with an errand of his own, in the castle above the river. Rainulf was a tiger, a stream in flood, a devastating flame. Mellissent was his wife. Isabel his sister, was gone to be a nun, and was the happier. Gerbert was a music-maker who ate in Rainulf’s hall.

Black Martin was not king nor baron nor bishop, but he ruled his own that was a troop of Entertainers of the time. The time knew much wretchedness and clamoured for crude forgetfulness. Black Martin sold that by the hour, whether in market-place or castle hall or at crossroads when travellers enough gathered themselves together. He was seventy years old and yet strong as an ox. He was dour as an old wolf in winter, and in fight as bad to meet, and he had the cunning of Sire Reynard. He ruled the score of human beings composing his band with more absoluteness than King Robert ruled France. Four of the number were his sons, and four the women with his sons. Two of these were lawful wives, two were not. There were five children{314} in the band. The remainder, all but one, were kindred only because of Adam and Eve, and because their common occupation was to lighten the heart or impart motion to the mind. The remaining one was Gersonde, Black Martin’s granddaughter, child of a dead eldest daughter and some man somewhere. Black Martin’s band included buffoons, tumblers and wrestlers, a dwarf, a dancer, two singers of ballads and players of harps, a man with an ape and a fortune-teller or soothsayer.

That last was the part of Gersonde. She was a dark woman in a red gown with a blue mantle. Now Black Martin beat her, and now he listened to what she said when it came to points upon which he was perplexed. He never listened to her when she wished to stop soothsaying and play and sing with Bageron and Rosamund, or to dance with Maria. If she was insistent he beat her. He was not perplexed here; coin came into the soothsayer’s lap when the singers and players and even the dancer made no collection.

It had been a year of greedy staring, but small, small collections. The lesser folk, serfs and villeins and craftsmen in mean villages or towns, gave nothing at any time unless it were coarse food, or a turn of their trade, or a night’s rest in a dark and crowded hut. This year they did not give the food for it was a famine year. And the burghers in the larger towns gave little, the landed folk gave little, castle court and hall proved saving.

Black Martin spoke to Gersonde. “Soothsay for me! We have had famine years before—”.

“They told us in that monastery, ‘The End of the World is coming.’ The priest we met on the road said, ‘The End of the World is at hand.’ Three days ago, in that{315} town, the church bells rang and our crowd left us, and gave their money into the bag at the door.”

“The End of the World—! I would I might give it a rope’s end! The world ends if I starve! Hark you! Soothsay that the world does NOT end—at least not in our time! Soothsay along this road so that we get money! Get money or get thy ribs broken!”

The road that they were travelling proved villainously muddy and uneven. Toward noon they found sitting by the wayside a man who led in a chain a brown bear. “This road is most fearful—plain bog and mountain! But never will it be mended, because presently comes the End of the World!”

Black Martin shook his bull shoulders and scraped the mud from a torn shoe. “We have been south. I heard a little talk of that, but nothing in a month to what is heard now in a day! Is it coming to an end in France before it comes in Aquitaine?”

“Only the learned knew much about it,” said the bearward. “Then, all of a sudden, comes a word from the bishops that has to be read in all the churches. And it begins, ‘As the End of the World is at hand—’ So it began to run from mouth to mouth.—The road is muddy and it is raining? Well, the earth sweats with terror!”

It was yet raining when the troop of Entertainers came into the town between Orléans and Paris. They came through a narrow street that turned and wound upon itself to the market-place, and all the way Jouel and Baudwin beat drum and played viol, and Black Martin at the head cried in a bull’s voice. “Choice Entertainment! My masters! My masters! Choice Entertainment!” They brought into the market-place a queue of followers and{316} attracted certain folk already there. But the rain came down hard, and the Entertainers were dead tired and downhearted and all went spiritlessly. Even fear of Black Martin could not keep it up. The crowd felt the chill rain and dissolved. The individuals that stayed, having no better place to go, were not the kind that scattered gain.

There was a black, tangled knot of lanes and alleys like frozen serpents. Mean houses cowered on either side. The Entertainers bargained for night’s lodging in certain of these, and fire to cook food by. Dusk shut in, with a great monastery bell booming overhead. Pastourel the wrestler and his wife Jeanne and their three children and Gersonde the soothsayer had a hut-like place with a hearth in the middle and the smoke going out through a hole overhead. Pastourel was Black Martin’s son, Gersonde’s uncle. If he had not had a black temper he would have been by no means a bad giant. Jeanne was younger than he, not much older than Gersonde. Gersonde loved Jeanne and the children.

Outside poured the rain. The smoke within the hut circled acrid and heavy. Jeanne, bringing Pastourel his supper, let fall the wooden bowl and spilled the stew of little-meat and fragments of vegetables. Pastourel had a stick which he used in vaulting. He took it now and beat Jeanne, beat her much worse than he usually did, since the rain and ill-luck were in his temper. Jeanne began to cry out loudly; his hand was twisted in her long hair, and he flung her to the floor and still beat her. The children cried, huddled in the corner. Gersonde dragged at Pastourel’s arm, caught at the stick. He was strong as a bull, he flung her to the other side of the hut and kept on beat{317}ing Jeanne. The hut stood in a populous alley; now came folk striking at the door to know if there was murder.

Pastourel flung the door open. “I am beating my wife who spoiled my supper! Cannot a man beat his wife in peace and quietness?”

The people left the door. “It is nothing! There is nothing unlawful. He is beating his wife.”

Pastourel gave Jeanne half a dozen more blows, upon the sides, the shoulders and the head, then set his stick in the corner, and flinging himself down upon the straw ate the meat and black bread without the broth. The night set in, dark, wet and chill.

Yet the next morning showed a bright sky with sunbeams that pierced even those lanes. Black Martin’s band took station betimes in the market-place. That was a large, unpaved space, muddy this morning under foot, but roofed by a sky of sapphire. The great buildings that showed above intermediate structures were the church and monastery. Above them in turn, upon the rock above the town, struck against the blue Bishop Héribert’s house that was nothing less than a castle. Coming back to market-place, there were found a storehouse, a guild house, other buildings rude and small, a few better houses belonging to the principal burghers. Down the opening of a street showed the peaked roof of a béguinage, and nearer yet to the market-place the long front of the brothel licensed by the town. The market cross rose in the middle of the market-place, and all around were the hucksters’ booths.

Rude was the time and place, and rude the folk, clergy and laity, country and town, fief-holding noble, man-at-arms and servitor, serf and villein, monk and pilgrim, stroller, beggar, outlaw, leper, Jew, Saracen, and Christian.{318} Such as they were, samples of all skirted or traversed the market-place of this town.

It should have been a good day. But though a crowd gathered, it was nothing like so good a crowd as it should have been. Its units looked hungrily for a turn or two, then drifted away. Others took their places, but these also proved unstable. There was little real applause, hardly any loud jocularities tossed back to the Entertainers. These, like all Entertainers, had the quickest ear for any drop or hollowness in applause. Such communication received, the ray What’s the use? saw to it that their own movements became dispirited. The people of this town had been taxed of all their money or had given it all away. At least, none of the booth people seemed to have it, for their faces, too, were long, and on the other side of the place the man with the brown bear did not seem to have it. The bells clanged noon; the folk were streaming into the church. A palmer crossed the market-place. He held up his staff that had tied to it a bit of dried palm. “It is almost One Thousand years since He suffered! Almost One Thousand years! Be not taken buying and selling, ploughing and building, laughing and clapping of the shoulder as though ye did not believe! Almost One Thousand years!” The bell clanged again. Up in the sky was a cloud. Now it floated so that it came between the sun and the town. Shadow wrapped the place. Half the people took panic fright. “Signs and signs! The End of the World—!”

Rainulf the Red rode into town with a train of twenty. He had a quarrel with Bishop Héribert; he came to make it lighter or make it darker. To the sound of ringing bells he came into the market-place on his way to the bisho{319}p’s house that was in every aspect a castle. He knew the town well, and the castle and the bishop—at least he thought that he knew the bishop. There came in the only doubt—doubt as to whether the quarrel’s shade was solely a matter of Red Rainulf’s will.

He rode his huge grey horse across the market-place, caring not at all that he and his men thrust against booths, made goods to fall in the mire, threatened to trample children and the old and unwary. “Rainulf the Red!” cried the people, men and women, and ducked and cringed.

“Come laugh at Baudwin Buffoon! Come marvel at Pastourel and Rayneval the wrestlers! Come listen to Barnabo’s song, a circumcised Jew that became a Christian! Will you see the dwarf Seguin?—Maria the dancer that danced before the soldan of Paynimry! A soothsayer, a soothsayer! Gersonde the soothsayer, who can taste what the king has for dinner, and hear the bells in Rome!”

Black Martin’s bull voice burst its way from the other side of the market cross. Rainulf the Red rode on, then turned his horse’s head. His men turned with him, Gerbert the music-maker, whom, for some whim, he had brought with him, turned—Black Martin, seeing them coming, felt as though he had swallowed a stoup of wine. He spoke in an undervoice to the Entertainers, that, for this reason and that and another, he dominated as though they were his fingers: “Do your best—each one of you! Get bright coin from him—or answer to me—or answer to me!”

Rainulf the Red said, “Where is your soothsayer?”

Black Martin indicated Gersonde where she sat upon a{320} stone, her mantle about her. “Lord, will you have her come to your bridle-rein?”

Soothsayers, more than ordinarily, had left their youth behind them. But this one was yet young, and she had, if you chose to see it, beauty....

Pastourel and Rayneval were tumbling marvellously upon the carpet they had laid. Baudwin Buffoon strutted from corner to corner. One of Rainulf’s men laughed loudly, then another; Baudwin had caught them. Pastourel, planting the stick with which he had beat Jeanne, vaulted high over it. A man-at-arms clapped his hands, watched for the next trick. Maria the dancer began to bend and whirl.

“Soothsayer,” spoke Rainulf, “if two fiefs quarrel, my fief and another fief, shall my fief win? Will we get it done before Christ comes, and will there be time in which I may get absolution if there has been sacrilege committed?”

The soothsayer stood still with folded hands. All light in her face seemed to go inward, and though her eyes did not close they appeared to rest from use in vision. She stood so for a span of time, while the bells yet rang and the cloud passed from overhead so that the market-place lay in sunshine. She spoke in an inward and murmuring voice. “Why do the folk dread the End of the World? That would be a fair sight, to see Christ come!—but have no fear, lord! Long, long, long will it be ere you see Him coming!”

“I will get clear before the End of the World?”

“Yea. The End of the World is not yet.”

Her face became as usual. She sighed, then smiled as was the rule, and made her reverence and cupped her outstretched hand for the piece of money.{321}

Rainulf the Red stooped from the saddle, put the coin in her hand and closed his own over it. “What is your name?”

“Gersonde, lord.”

She went back and sat upon her stone. Rainulf the Red spoke to Black Martin, standing cap in hand. He spoke in a somewhat lowered, but not greatly lowered voice. He was a strong baron, and these were strollers, and it was nothing extraordinary that which he proposed. He drew his horse aside, but not much aside. He looked at the soothsayer in her blue mantle, then bargained with the head of the band. Black Martin pursed his lips, then named a sum. The Baron halved it; they finally agreed upon three fourths of the first amount. Black Martin sold his granddaughter’s body and agreed that it should be found at such an hour in such a place.

Rainulf the Red and his men rode on to the bishop’s castle, whither presently followed Black Martin’s band of Entertainers. These gained some recompense in the great court, with dinner in the kitchens, and a night’s lodging in a loft. But Black Martin gave Gersonde to the man sent for her.... It was not the first time he had sold her. He gave her, as before, a beating and pushed her out. She followed Gerbert the music-maker, to whom his lord had given the order to bring her to the tower in which Héribert had placed his guest.

Rainulf abode three days with the bishop; then, having made up his mind to declare war, rode away to reach safety before he did so. Among his various determinations was one in regard to the soothsayer Gersonde. At one moment he thought that she was not fair, and at another that she was so. Twice in the three days he had demanded sooth{322}saying and had found a value in the words that came from behind still face and wide eyes.

He sent one to bring to him Black Martin. “The woman your granddaughter. She will be cared for. Here are three pieces of gold.”

“Sire, sire, the gain she brings me—”

“Three pieces of gold. When you have quitted bishop’s land you are in my land. Merchants who do not like my buying meet ill luck.”

“Lord, when you have done with her—”

“I do not buy with conditions.—Are there not granddaughters enough in every land? Find yourself another!”

Black Martin returned to his band. He had not Gersonde, but he had gold in his purse. “That lord will throw her from him when his mood changes! Then will she feel her way back to us who are all she knows—for what better, Christ, can a woman do?”

Jeanne and the children wept, but that made no difference.

Rainulf the Red and his men took the road to his castle. There were several led horses, and on one of these was placed the soothsayer.

The day was cloudy, the road bad. Rainulf rode well ahead, with two or three. The body of his train, loath to leave the town, grumbled, swore, was quarrelsome among its members. Under the grey sky the country wore a desolated look. There was a field in which, earlier that morning, there had been reapers. It lay half cut, and the sickles upon the earth among the corn. Farther on, they came to the reapers themselves, hurrying along the wayside. “Where are you going, you hinds?” A young man an{323}swered: “To St. Martin’s shrine. It is the End of the World!”

Farther on were other folk, men and women. A priest harangued these. “Holy Church tells you, it draws nigh to a thousand years since He suffered! If the sky be not rolled back and the earth does not perish it will be because of Church’s prayers. So pray to Church to pray for you! Believe, give, amend your lives! But do not leave your fields and your smithies, your tending of flocks and diking and ditching—”

The country grew wilder and more unkempt. The sky hung leaden grey. Rainulf was well ahead; depression took his followers. One turned in his saddle. “Gerbert there, with your viol! For Holy Virgin’s sake, make us music!”

Gerbert dropped the reins of his horse. The beast plodded on, no fiery war-steed. Gerbert himself was little thought on, of little importance in Red Rainulf’s demesne. The music-maker drew bow across strings. He played well, loving his art. He made the music that he played, and now it was merry and now it was sad. To-day he made a music that was swift and wild. “Gay, gay!” cried the men. “Fast and sweet!”

Gerbert’s bow danced upon the viol strings. Then a string snapped. “Mute—mute!” he said. “The End of the World for this music!”

The old horse that he rode had fallen back, was going with the hindermost. Gerbert found himself beside Gersonde the soothsayer. She had been listening to the music. Now she spoke. “The world ends, the world begins.”

Gerbert said, “To-morrow, doubtless, I shall mend the viol and play again.{324}”

They were riding side by side, and none giving them heed. “Why is it,” said Gerbert, “that I feel greatly at home with you? There is here something strange, that I cannot understand. It is as though a light and warmth went from me to you and you to me.”

“Some strings are stretched alike and give the same sound.—Your name now is Gerbert?”

“Gerbert. And your name is Gersonde.... In the Red Castle if you need help.... But I am only Gerbert who thinks at night, and in the daytime plays before the Baron! As little as if I were a woman can I give help!”

As he spoke they came in sight of the Red Castle. Rainulf’s hold was a rude, great place, moat and bridge and wall, towers and keep. It crowned a hill and looked down upon a river, and by the river cowered a wretched village of huts. Around stretched field and forest, and more forest than field. The sky hung grey. Ravens were flying above a wood, and the hill, when Rainulf’s horn was blown, threw back a sullen echo.

Mellissent, Rainulf’s wife, watched from the wall the troop come up the road. She had two tire-maidens with her, and she spoke to them. “Is not that a woman?”

“Yea, mistress.”

“Ever he nets new birds! Well, I would I were a man!”

That was one day. Mellissent waited two days, then, Rainulf riding on business to the north, sent and bade to her presence the new-caught bird. “Stand there!... You soothsay?”

“Falsely when I am paid, lady, and sometimes truly when I gain naught.”

“Then soothsay as to yourself.”

“I cannot.{325}”

“Then will I for you,” said Mellissent. “Rainulf will hold you in liking for a month, then will he wish other food. Most women have no other claim than being women; whether that is their fault or sorrow or mournful plight put upon them, I cannot say. You can tell what fortune will befall, so you may not be thrust out at gate. So long as your fortune-telling pleases Rainulf you shall have your hole in the wall and your crust of bread. ’Ware any soothsaying that does not please him!—for then you will be only woman again.”

“I shall not stay the month, dame,” said Gersonde.

Mellissent regarded her, chin in hand. “Have you fondness for Rainulf?”

“No.”

“I will tell you some things,” said Mellissent. “There forms a wish in me to speak to you.... I was a girl in this castle, but it was brighter then than it is now. My father and his sons were slain in battle, and Count Odo was my overlord. He would give this fief to one who fought hard and ruled hard, so one morning there rode here Rainulf to be my husband. Now I loved a man whose castle was not far away, and he was noble, and in all ways fit to carry this fief. So I stole from this castle and rode to find Count Odo, and kneeling before him begged him to give me that one for my husband. But he would not, and he held me there in his town, and sent for Rainulf, and married me to him, there in the church, and the next day we rode back to Red Castle. That was summer, and when winter came Rainulf picked quarrel with that man whom I loved. War was between them, and Red Rainulf slew my man.... Soothsay to me if a woman is ever and always to marry only as says father or brother or suzerain! They say that{326} the End of the World is coming. I care not how soon it comes if things change. If they change not, it is nothing, coming or going!”

“I cannot soothsay to-day,” said Gersonde. “I only know that the world does not end and much is yet to happen.”

What should happen immediately with herself was to leave the castle. She was homesick for Jeanne and the children.

But a month passed before she might win away. Then the quarrel between bishop and baron flamed from earth to zenith. Out at gate, over bridge, down the road clattered Rainulf the Red and his men. They went to the bishop’s lands there to harrow, burn, and slay. The Red Castle stood emptied of fighting men.

The sun set; there followed a chill night of clouds with a few stars in between. The soothsayer crept out upon the wall, the great and small gates being fastened. She had a rope which she had made of many different woven things. This she tied about a jutting stone and flung the loose end clear. Resting upon her hands she looked over the wall and saw that it hung not far from earth. Trusting her weight to the rope she came down the castle wall. At hand was the moat, cold under the stars. She entered the water, finding it rise not higher than her bosom. Over moat she went, climbed the bank, and presently was upon wild hillside. Below were the huts of the serfs of Red Castle; these she avoided, and went her way by a cart track that took her by meadow and forest. She did not know how she should find Jeanne and the children, but she trusted to find them.

After walking for a long while she saw to the right in the{327} woods a red star. Going toward it she came to a woodcutter’s hut, and peering in at the crack that did for window saw that it held none but women and a babe. She saw that the fire had been lighted because there was birth. She knocked at the door, and when at last, after consultation within, it was opened a little way, asked for shelter and warmth. “Naught but a woman alone?” asked she who held the door. “Sit quiet then by the fire.” She entered and sat by the fire and dried her clothing.

In a corner, upon a sheepskin and some straw, lay sleeping the mother of the two-hour-old babe. An old woman sat in the red firelight, the child in her lap. The woman who had opened the door took again her seat upon a billet of wood on the other side of the hearth. She rested her elbow upon her knee, her cheek in her hand. Gersonde sat upon the earthen floor, between the two. The fire of faggots danced and glowed. The thin smoke wandered and circled in the hut before it found and went out at the hole in the roof.

“Who are you, and why are you so wet?” asked the younger woman.

“I forded a stream. I am a soothsayer, Black Martin’s granddaughter.”

They were not curious, or it seemed to be enough. They stayed silent and Gersonde with them. The mother and the babe slept; the old woman and the two younger ones sat somewhat huddled over the fire. Now and then one put out a hand, took a faggot from the heap, and fed the flame. The hours went by. Somewhere a cock crew.

Gersonde lifted her head, then rose to her feet. “It is time to go. I thank you all.”

Said the younger woman: “Guyot and Simon have gone{328} with the Baron. You may stay if you wish and help with the woodcutting.”

The old woman spoke. “What do they say outside about the World coming to an End?... What I do wish to know is this: Is there to be turn and turn about in heaven? Will the baron be the woodcutter, and the woodcutter the baron? Will man be woman, and woman be man?”

“That is not the way they manage,” said Gersonde. “For then still would be unhappiness.”

She drew her cloak around her, said good-bye, and left the hut. It was pink dawn, and the birds were cheeping in the trees. As she went she ate the black bread they had given her.

At noontide a man, travelling the same narrow road from the castle, came by the woodcutter’s hut. He carried a viol strung over his shoulder, and a lean hound padded before him. The younger woman was chopping a felled tree, the old woman gathering faggots. They rested from their work to look at the music-maker.

“Did a woman come by here—a dark woman with a red dress and a blue mantle?”

“No woman, sir.”

But the hound kept on, and Gerbert.

The Abbey of the Blessed Thorn had for Abbess a count’s sister, a woman more able than the count, able, determined, genial, no more religious than Bishop Héribert or Abbot Simon, but a good ruler of her nuns, a highly competent wielder and manager of the wide fief of Blessed Thorn. The Abbess Rothalind rose early, and was a dear lover of hawking. Now, the day being fine, she was out with several of her nuns, with two falconers and a groom, and with Ermengarde, a lady accused of evil, who, pend{329}ing judgement in her case, had taken sanctuary with Blessed Thorn. The morning’s sport over, the train came, under blue sky and with a jingling of bells at bridle reins, to a............