Evidently they were expected at High March; for no sooner the white
plumes had cleared the forest purlieus and came nodding over the heath
in view of the solemn towers, than a white flag was run up the keep.
It floated out bravely--a snow patch in a pure sky.
"Peace, hey?" quoth Prosper, asking.
"Well then, there shall be peace if they will take it. It is for them to settle."
Isoult said nothing. She had no reason to welcome High March,
or to attend a welcome.
She might have doubted the wisdom of their adventure
had she been less newly a wife.
As it was, she would have followed her man into the jaws of hell.
When they drew closer still, they could see that the great gates were
set open and the drawbridge let down. Soon the guard turned out and
presented arms. Then issued in good order a white-robed procession,
girls and boys bare-headed, holding branches of palm. A rider in green
marshalled them with a long white wand which he had in his right hand.
It was all very curious.
"I should know that copper-headed knave," said Prosper.
"It is the seneschal, dear lord," said Isoult, who would know him
better, "with his white rod of office."
Prosper gave a mighty shout. "Master Porges, by the Holy Rood! Oh,
Master Porges, Master Porges, have you not yet enough of rods white or
black? Look how the rascal wags the thing. Why, hark, child, he has
set them singing."
The shrill voices, in effect, rose and fell along the devious ways of
a litany to Master Porges' household gods. Mention has already been
made of his curiosity in these commodities. The present times he had
judged to be times of crisis, big with fate. Who so apt as his newest
saint to propitiate the hardy outlaw Galors de Born, and the young
Demoiselle de Bréauté?
For the shocked soul of Porges had fled into religion as your only
cure for esteem and a back cruelly scored. In such stresses as the
present it still took wing to the same courts. "Sancta Isolda,
Sancta Isolda, Genetricis Ancilla," went the choir, "Ora, ora
pro nobis."
And then-"Quoe de coelis volitans,
Sacras manus agitans,
Foves in suppliciis
Me, ne extra gregulo
Tuo unus ferulo
Pereat in vitiis."...
and so on. The youngsters sang with a good will, while Master Porges,
as poet and man of piety, glowed in his skin. The verse limped, the
Latin had suffered, perhaps, more violence than Latin should be asked
to suffer even of a Christian: but what of that? It was the pietist's
own; and as his pupils sang it, they bore before his eyes the holy
image of the saint trampling under her feet the hulking thief Prosper.
And gaily they bore it, and gaily sang their unwitting way towards the
unwitting couple of lovers, who never let go hands until they were
near enough to feel all eyes burn into them to read their secret.