THE RED SAINT
TO
CAPTAIN AND MRS. MERRILL
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
WITH ALL FAITH AND AFFECTION
THE RED SAINT
By
WARWICK DEEPING
Author of “Sorrell and Son,” etc.
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, Toronto, Melbourne and Sydney
First Published April 1909
THE RED SAINT
CHAPTER I
When Denise of the Hermitage went down to drawwater at the spring at the edge of the beech wood, shesaw the light of a fire flashing out through the bluegloom of the April dusk. It was far away—that fire,almost on the horizon, a knot of tawny colour seenbetween the dark slopes of two high hills. Yet thoughit was so far away Denise could see the long flamesmoving, sometimes shooting upwards, or bending andsweeping towards the ground.
Denise stood and watched these flames that wavedand flickered yonder through the dusk where the smokespread out between the hills into a kind of pearly haze.It was so still under the boughs of the great beechesthat the distant fire seemed strange and ghostly, burningwithout a sound. The little pool where Denise had filledher pitcher was not more silent, the pool fed by an invisiblespring, and believed to be miraculous and holy.
Yet though those far flames were so silent, Denisecould set a sound to them, a crackling roar that wouldbe very real to those who looked on the thing as on asacrifice. There would be many watchers on the hillsthat night, sullen and silent folk to whom that blazewould speak like a war cresset teased by the wind onsome great lord’s tower. Peter of Savoy’s riders, thosehired “spears” from over the sea, Gascons, Flemings,Bretons, were out to keep the King’s peace in the Rapesof Pevensey and of Hastings. Denise knew that privatewar had been let loose, for had she not heard from thepriest of Goldspur, and from Aymery the manor lord,that many of the lesser gentry and the Cinque Port townswere calling for Earl Simon? The pot that had longbeen simmering, had boiled over of a sudden. Andthose who had scalded toes had only their own perversityto thank.
In such a fashion began the Barons’ war in manya quiet corner of the land. Lawyers might orate andscribble, but when men quarrelled over a great issue,and the heart of a people was full of bitterness anddiscontent, the rush was towards the primitive