Great Britain -- History -- Henry VII, 1485-1509 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
The Lord of Montjoy returned from his second and greater pilgrimage.
This time he had seen Jerusalem. He was palmer. Bit of palm was wrought
into his sleeve, stitched into his hat. The Lady of Montjoy held his
castle for him, his son-in-law, young Isabel’s baron, giving advice
across five leagues. Montjoy had been gone nigh three years, for once,
taken prisoner by the Turks, he had been held three months in noisome
prison, and once fever had taken him captive, and once shipwreck and a
desert strand had held him long. Now, returning, he had come through
Italy and through France, alone and afoot, for that was his pilgrimage.
Now he moved across Brittany. There were many shrines in Brittany, and
it held him while he went from the one to the other. But he neared the
sea coast and the port where he would take ship for England.
A slight dark man with earnest seeking eyes, wrapped in palmer’s grey
with palmer’s hat and staff and scrip, walked a Brittany road, and
pictures of his travels walked with him. They were many, as though a
lifetime had been spent between castle of Montjoy and Jerusalem wall
and back again. So many that they must come like a breadth of the
earth between him and the pictures of three years gone, or five years
gone, or more. That was true, but now and then breadth of earth became
cloud merely; cloud parted, and there were ancient pictures fresh again.
Now for days they were English pictures. “Because I am nearing home!
They come out to meet and greet me.” But while they were clear they
came also into company of later pictures. His castle knew thousand
other castles, his town multitude of other towns; Silver Cross and
Westforest many and many abbeys and priories. And the palmer, having
grown, could in a measure hold all together and look out upon and
through them. So with the palmer’s whole life.
Montjoy travelled seaward. The day was bright and Brittany had to him
a flavour of home. Moreover at dawn had come Isabel. She seemed now to
float by his side, her feet just above the grey road. Twice it had been
so in Italy, thrice in the Holy Land. It had been a small thought, that
holding her confined to castle there above Middle Forest, or to church
of Silver Cross where lay only her old robe, or to this or that faint
ring in time! She was everywhere and every time. She was living, she
was with him, here, now!
“For I, too, change into that space and time,” thought Montjoy.
Silver Cross, when he came to look at it, still was dear. He regarded
it tranquilly within and without. There sat Mark, yonder moved the
Brothers. The church filled, they chanted, windows became sheets of
jewels, the great picture glowed, light washed the sculptured tomb
beneath which lay, sunken into earth, that which was not Isabel. Here
moved her spirit, near him on Brittany road--enough, enough of her
spirit to make Promise into a glowing rose!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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