ARIES LE VAYSHER stood at his own door-cheek with oaten cakes and mead. He offered a cake with due ceremony, kneeling to one knee, and Sir Aglovale took and broke it with him and ate. And so came all the others; each in turn came and set his knee against Sir Aglovale's foot, and offered him his cake to break and eat. Orderly the same Aries offered the bowl, and Sir Aglovale took and drank; and after him drank all the rest, each upon his knee, Sir Aglovale standing among them as a King's son and a Queen's son.
"Now sons begone and get to work," said Aries; and to Sir Aglovale he said, "Now put your hand upon me, my lord, and upon your brother, and come in."
So, with a hand upon the shoulder of each, he was brought within, up to the hearth and the old wife's nook.
"Good-wife," said Aries, "stand up and make your reverence, for here I bring you one that is a King's son and a Queen's son, Sir Aglovale de Galis, who is as good and true a make of man as your son Sir Tor."
He put the knight's hand upon her, wheeled about, and went.
Tor's mother drew his hand down to her bosom, and over it folded her two withered hands, all shaking. "May God bless you, sir," she quavered at hush. "God bless Sir Aglovale de Galis. God bless my son's good brother. God bless King Pellinore's son." Her kind old eyes were steady and serene as she looked him hard in the visage, though she was greatly moved.
Tor brought her to her nook, and settled her against her will; for said she, "Son Tor, your brother is a Queen's son, and your mother is a poor churl's wife."
Said Aglovale, kneeling beside her, "Good mother, my father's Queen took your son to her heart." And at that the fair old woman forgot herself, and embraced him like a son, calling him so. And like a mother with a son confiding at her knee, she, whom his father had spoiled in her may-day, heard him tell over all he had done in the night with Laykin Colombe. She marvelled greatly, with no words to give but a simple refrain, "Eh, well to be sure!" Once she said, "Ah, sir, you have your father's eyes. Eh, well to be sure, God rest his soul!" and flushed delicately.
Her son Tor sat at her feet, very still, listening; and when all was told he said, "Where is this poor little maid of mine?"
The old mother rose up. "She flew off as you came in. Eh, poor child, she takes it very hard. I will go fetch her to presently."
"O wise mother, give me some light! What does she take so hard and against comfort?"
"Sonties! my son, she knew herself naked as a needle in a man's hands; and sure, nakedness is the hardest shame a maid finds to bear till she pa**es to be no maid. For what a maid knows by her mind is but half known and dead; but shame of nakedness she knows by her body all over, and it is alive and very keen."
"Brother," said Tor, "does this answer suffice you?"
"No, I guess there is more to uncoil."
"Eh, ye menkind, but have patience, and I will find her out. Give me time and have patience."
When she was gone, Tor stood silent and moody, and Aglovale read him and waited.
Said Tor, low, "Brother Sir Aglovale, I said an unkind word to you in our trouble."
"Alas!" said Aglovale, "but it was just enough; and sooth your forbearing to speak was harder to bear."
"Ah, pardon me, Aglovale, what I shall say; but I would know what I have no right to ask."
"I will answer."
"You kept chastity in deed. You kept my daughter her maidenhood. O fair brother, an I do bear in mind what you were once, it is with worship and wonder for what you are now. Yet though the past is past, it has been, and it was exceeding foul with lechery: that we all knew, though you were secret. Alas! Aglovale, that was a stale field for your folding my dear daughter. I doubt but the taint of it has reached her, and troubles her as for sin."
Said Aglovale, "Fair brother, is that your whole doubt?"
"No, but the edge of it."
"Give the heart of it."
"Fair brother, we are men and knights, and no saints, and between us goes no word to blame sin on what is done in the heart. That is for God, who knows all; but also maybe for a maid awaked, who knows little, and takes her perceptions for sin."
"Ah, Tor, but I think she is not awaked; and as God knows, I did no wrong even in my heart."
"Can this be, and you a man not as Percivale was; no, nor even as Sir Lamorak and I, faulty men; no, nor even as Sir Durnor, a loose liver; but extreme. Can such corruption as yours be shed off until you shed your body to dust?"
"Faith, no! No such joy. No hope! Howbeit, glad I was verily, and the night went sweet with maiden Colombe sleeping in my arms."
"Sweet, you say, and blameless?"
Said Aglovale, smiling, "Simple man, burning had not been sweet."
"As God made us! How came you by so much chastity?"
"I do believe only as I came by so innocent a maid."
He was smiling still, and Tor said, "Is this jest or earnest?"
"No jest. I do but consider how the dread I had of the maid was as needless as the dread she had of me."
"You dreaded."
"Sooth, I did. For the last night I pa**ed with woman was that with Annowre, the who*e Sir Durnor set on me. Now I could thank him for that proof, though there was dread in the remembrance."
"How, dread? You were tried but you did not sin."
"Sooth, in my heart I did, though I kept my will and I kept my sword. Sure, Tor, had I so burned by your daughter, though she should have risen a maid, she would not have been so innocent in her blood of a man's desire as I do know she is."
Said Tor, hot and troubled, "How do you know she is?"
"I looked into her eyes; there was no dread of me. The shame she felt was but skin deep. She knows no more than her mother taught her. I have taught her nothing at all."
"This is too fine a point. You cannot know. God forgive you, Aglovale! Have you brought innocency to scorch before and not devoured?"
Aglovale lost colour, and his face was drawn and haggard as he answered low.
"I have, once. That was Gilleis, my love Gilleis. I never touched her all night through. I put my sword into her hands, and never moved. She was a maid, and good, and I a wicked man. In my heart I did what I meant to do; and she could not help but know, as I willed she should know. By me she knew she was flesh to desire; mine, for she did not k** me. And so I am alive, and she is dead."
Her name was a gaping wound. Fifteen years old was that grief, and still it was unhealed.
Upon morne silence spoke Tor, "Fair dear brother, may you never forgive yourself for evil done with? Have you not put away your sins? Yea, more, have you not now put away and redeemed the father's sin that begot me? My mother blesses you; Aries le Vaysher, and all his sons worship you for your clear forbearance and continence with man and maid, you that were once most lewd and of a most intolerable temper."
Aglovale looked at his brother, marvelling and sad. Then he said, "God is good, and my reward is with me." Then he said, "I say to you, Tor, that rather have I to worship you and your daughter that no devil did claw me to any purpose."
"How? me and my daughter?"
"Forbearance, Tor! I was in the field of your great goodness. You, even in your heart, you did not k** me; you uttered no vengeance; you spoke fair, I think, with sorrow for me.
"And as for continence, I was in the field of simple virginity with your daughter, and by virtue of her innocence I was staid.
"Three nights have I chambered with woman without trespa** in deed: with Gilleis, my love, with the who*e Annowre, and with your daughter Colombe. With Gilleis I sinned in my heart wilfully, with Annowre against my will, but with Colombe neither in will nor work."
"By my soul, I doubt not," said Tor. "I am the gladder for you." He halsed his brother fast with a sigh profound. "Lo! Aglovale, my heart within me grows big to take you in all. Forgive that child of mine should her heart be too small and weak to take you in at all."
Aglovale put him off as lightly as he could. "As for that, let be till she have the heart content of a wedded wife. And I trust waiting may not be overlong, so you hear with good will what suit I have in hand."
He told then all how he had lost and won with Sir Hermind; and he entered his suit, that with very good will Tor received.
Came Aries le Vaysher in upon them, and Sir Tor took him to question.
"Eh, sirs! Has Laykin fair not come to yet?"
He chuckled and shuffled like an old satyr as he told over again how lightly he had come at truth. She rated her Gramfer like a good one, she did, just for changing his mind to come in after the lads. Then she turned to pleading for her heifer to live, heard that was past praying for, and took to such a weeping that a man had to laugh.
Also, said Aries, Laykin was ready enough to tell her silly ramble-gambol. She fooled her uncles, without design, with mere come and go shilly-shally; so these thought she had departed, and those thought she had stayed, whereas she had slipped off and gone scudding to seek a gadding old wight. Then the mist came to mither her, and the night to clam her; she lost her footing, and came by a cut head; she fell into the water-run, and had the wit to follow it up to the springs, and so to the hut. And there she came to herself, naked, with a masterful knight, who did what he pleased with her, and put her to sleep.
Entered Tor's mother, with Laykin Colombe, fair old age and fair youth hand in hand, their eyes of the same periwinkle blue. The old mother was smiling. Colombe was all freshly and orderly arrayed. Very shy and brave and humble, she stood a moment, mounting rose above her paleness, then quitted her hold, came straight to her father and kneeled down.
"Fair dear lord my father, forgive me. I have been most foolish and perverse."
Sir Tor took her and brought her to Sir Aglovale.
"Offer amends, daughter, where most is due."
Colombe kneeled again. "Fair lord and uncle Sir Aglovale, I would make amends."
Sir Aglovale lifted her to her feet. "So, niece Colombe, you forgive that I used you roughly?" He looked at her bruised arm. "Eh, roughly! Sooth I am sorry, child."
Said Sir Tor, watching her, "Sir Aglovale would make amends, child, so you refuse him not again."
She blushed deeper, but lifted her fair face with innocent eyes, and Sir Aglovale kissed her.
Said her father, "Now shall you tell Sir Aglovale, openly or in secret, that word you had to say."
"Ah, it was folly!" she said, and her colour rose to scarlet.
"That I doubt not. I bid you speak out, for penance on folly already spoken."
"I thought no wrong," she faltered. "I did not know you my uncle." She took a breath, and spoke out bravely though abashed. "Fair sir, I wished to ask you if you would be pleased to marry me."
"Fair niece, and wherefore?"
She covered her face. "I was so ashamed. You made me naked and ashamed."
"I tell you, Laykin Colombe, that the covering of a smock is not the closest wear a maid has to her shame. Truly I found you in your skin, clothed well enough in virtue and modesty, and you have no cause to be ashamed. So, as you know, child, you were not laid bare of these, put down your hands into mine and look up."
She put her hands into his, and she looked up.
"Colombe," said Sir Tor, "do you know what slander you uttered?"
"Yea, I do know. But it was foolishness, not falsehood."
"Do you know that not clothing and not virtue had kept you from worst shame had you lain with a man not well endued in chastity and good will?"
"Yea, I do know," she said.
"Fair niece," said Aglovale, "when you slept in my care I loved you well, though not according to marriage; it would please me well to have you in marriage with my ward and heir, who is like to prove as noble and virtuous a man as Sir Hermind who begot him and gave him to me."
Said Colombe, shy and sedate, "Fair uncle, bespeak me to my father."
Said Tor, smiling, "This occasion is over-late, seeing you were fairly proxy-wed last night: Sir Aglovale has bedded you; you were for asking your marriage of him; and, with my good will, marry you he shall as he pleases."
Thereafter so it came to pa**: young Mariet and fair Colombe loved and wedded; but neither Sir Tor nor Sir Aglovale lived to see that day.
Aries le Vaysher and his sons made all the cheer they might to worship Sir Aglovale well; and he sat it out with a good countenance as a noble knight, and said no word to trouble them. When he stood up at last he was unsteady, and put out a hand to his brother. Smiling he said, "I have had strong mead."
Then he looked over the men, and said, "Bid up privily that brother of yours to me here."
That brother was he so unhappily ready and strong of his hands. He came, and Sir Aglovale spoke with him apart, and sent him away not so light as he came, and short to question.
Aries and his wife led Sir Aglovale to a dormer with a fair large bed, where he was to lie with Sir Tor. They offered to do off his clothes, but he would not suffer them, so with homely biddings they departed, and saw him no more.
Aglovale sat down on the bed and rested there. Tor doffed his clothes and lay down, and chid him kindly to make an end of vigil. Therefore he rose wearily and put out the light; and in the dark, softly and leisurely, he put off his clothes and lay down in the bed. Tor reached across and laid hand on his brother he felt the cilice that was upon him.
"Is this always so, brother?" said Tor softly, and Aglovale answered curtly, "Yea so."
Moved with compa**ion and brotherly affection, Tor shifted closer to embrace him. Aglovale winced and gasped.
"What is here!" said Tor, startled, and sat up.
"Peace and lie down, fair brother, but let me alone; for I am not whole enough to bear your love without pain."
"How! is this the trouble of your old wound still with you?"
"Yea so. It will always be with me. I shall never be quite whole."
"Alas! this is how you win no worship with your body."
"I have no hope to win worship now."
"Uncover to me, and let me a**ay to handle your hurt. My virtue may be little, but my love is great."
"Gramercy, Tor," said Aglovale shortly, "you have ransacked me enough for this day. Peace and lie down, and let alone my body."
Tor kissed his cheek, and sighed as he lay down, for he had tasted tears. And still as he lay he sighed heavily, till Aglovale said wearily, "Take peace, Tor. You trouble needless. I tell you, though I lie down to sleep in penance and pain, I wake refreshed and at ease, for I have sound and perfect rest without a dream. When hope forsook me I found that blessing, and thank God it has never failed me. Take my peace upon you and sleep."
Tor felt his hand laid heavy on his heart. "May God bless you Tor, for you have comforted me often, but it is not in you to heal me."
Tor blessed him to God again and lay still; and against the tranquil pressure of his brother's hand he ceased to heave troubled breath, and soon he lay a-sleeping, sound and dreamless.
But Aglovale lay broad awake; and when he felt that slumber was deep enough, he stole away his hand, and, moving carefully, left the bed. Very softly and leisurely he did on his clothes, and made his way quietly through the sleeping house to the door alatch, and issued to the moony night. Up stood the churl Flynn from shadow, and silently led the way through the rickyard to where his horse waited ready. Said Sir Aglovale, groaning, "Man, you have half slain me. Now take me away to end or to mend, and keep me to yourself."