第15章 THE WIFE OF FLANDERS(1)

From the bed set high on a dais came eerie spasms of laughter, a harsh cackle like fowls at feeding time.

"Is that the last of them, Anton?" said a voice.

A little serving-man with an apple-hued face bowed in reply.He bowed with difficulty, for in his arms he held a huge grey cat, which still mewed with the excitement of the chase.Rats had been turned loose on the floor, and it had accounted for them to the accompaniment of a shrill urging from the bed.Now the sport was over, and the domestics who had crowded round the door to see it had slipped away, leaving only Anton and the cat.

"Give Tib a full meal of offal," came the order, "and away with yourself.

Your rats are a weak breed.Get me the stout grey monsters like Tuesday se'ennight."The room was empty now save for two figures both wearing the habit of the religious.Near the bed sat a man in the full black robe and hood of the monks of Cluny.He warmed plump hands at the brazier and seemed at ease and at home.By the door stood a different figure in the shabby clothes of a parish priest, a curate from the kirk of St.Martin's who had been a scandalised spectator of the rat hunt.He shuffled his feet as if uncertain of his next step--a thin, pale man with a pinched mouth and timid earnest eyes.

The glance from the bed fell on him "What will the fellow be at?" said the voice testily."He stands there like a sow about to litter, and stares and grunts.Good e'en to you, friend.When you are wanted you will be sent for Jesu's name, what have I done to have that howlet glowering at me?"The priest at the words crossed himself and turned to go, with a tinge of red in his sallow cheeks.He was faithful to his duties and had come to console a death bed, though he was well aware that his consolations would be spurned.

As he left there came again the eerie laughter from the bed."Ugh, I am weary of that incomparable holiness.He hovers about to give me the St.

John's Cup, and would fain speed my passing.But I do not die yet, good father.There's life still in the old wolf."The monk in a bland voice spoke some Latin to the effect that mortal times and seasons were ordained of God.The other stretched out a skinny hand from the fur coverings and rang a silver bell.When Anton appeared she gave the order "Bring supper for the reverend father," at which the Cluniac's face mellowed into complacence.

It was a Friday evening in a hard February.Out-of-doors the snow lay deep in the streets of Bruges, and every canal was frozen solid so that carts rumbled along them as on a street.A wind had risen which drifted the powdery snow and blew icy draughts through every chink.The small-paned windows of the great upper-room were filled with oiled vellum, but they did not keep out the weather, and currents of cold air passed through them to the doorway, making the smoke of the four charcoal braziers eddy and swirl.

The place was warm, yet shot with bitter gusts, and the smell of burning herbs gave it the heaviness of a chapel at high mass.Hanging silver lamps, which blazed blue and smoky, lit it in patches, sufficient to show the cleanness of the rush-strewn floor, the glory of the hangings of cloth-of-gold and damask, and the burnished sheen of the metal-work.There was no costlier chamber in that rich city.

It was a strange staging for death, for the woman on the high bed was dying.Slowly, fighting every inch of the way with a grim tenacity, but indubitably dying.Her vital ardour had sunk below the mark from which it could rise again, and was now ebbing as water runs from a little crack in a pitcher.The best leeches in all Flanders and Artois had come to doctor her.They had prescribed the horrid potions of the age: tinctures of earth-worms; confections of spiders and wood-lice and viper's flesh; broth of human skulls, oil, wine, ants' eggs, and crabs' claws; the bufo preparatus, which was a live toad roasted in a pot and ground to a powder;and innumerable plaisters and electuaries.She had begun by submitting meekly, for she longed to live, and had ended, for she was a shrewd woman, by throwing the stuff at the apothecaries' heads.Now she ordained her own diet, which was of lamb's flesh lightly boiled, and woman's milk, got from a wench in the purlieus of St.Sauveur.The one medicine which she retained was powdered elk's horn, which had been taken from the beast between two festivals of the Virgin.This she had from the foresters in the Houthulst woods, and swallowed it in white wine an hour after every dawn.

The bed was a noble thing of ebony, brought by the Rhine road from Venice, and carved with fantastic hunting scenes by Hainault craftsmen.Its hangings were stiff brocaded silver, and above the pillows a great unicorn's horn, to protect against poisoning, stood out like the beak of a ship.The horn cast an odd shadow athwart the bed, so that a big claw seemed to lie on the coverlet curving towards the throat of her who lay there.The parish priest had noticed this at his first coming that evening, and had muttered fearful prayers.

The face on the pillows was hard to discern in the gloom, but when Anton laid the table for the Cluniac's meal and set a lamp on it, he lit up the cavernous interior of the bed, so that it became the main thing in the chamber.It was the face of a woman who still retained the lines and the colouring of youth.The voice had harshened with age, and the hair was white as wool, but the cheeks were still rosy and the grey eyes still had fire.Notable beauty had once been there.The finely arched brows, the oval of the face which the years had scarcely sharpened, the proud, delicate nose, all spoke of it.It was as if their possessor recognised those things and would not part with them, for her attire had none of the dishevelment of a sickroom.Her coif of fine silk was neatly adjusted, and the great robe of marten's fur which cloaked her shoulders was fastened with a jewel of rubies which glowed in the lamplight like a star.

Something chattered beside her.It was a little brown monkey which had made a nest in the warm bedclothes.