“But it will not. Love is all. One day thou’lt find that I speak sooth.”
“I wonder!” Simon retorted.
Again Alan sighed.
“Simon, what hast thou in place of a heart? Is it a block of granite that ye carry in your breast? Is no one anything to you? Am I nothing? Is my lord nothing? There is no love in you for either of us?”
Simon laid his bow down, and began to polish an arrow.
“Art like a whining babe, Alan,” he rebuked his friend. “What shouldst thou be but my lords, thou and Montlice?”
Alan stretched out his hands.
“That is not what I would be to thee!” he cried. “I give you Love, and what doest thou give me in return? Hast a single spark of affection for me, Simon?”
Simon selected another arrow, and passed his hand over its broad feather almost lovingly. He looked thoughtfully at Alan, so that the boy sprang up, flushing.
“Thou carest more for that arrow than for me!”
“That is folly,” Simon answered coolly. “How can I tell thee what my feelings are when I do not know myself?”
“Couldst thou leave Montlice today without one pang of regret?” demanded Alan.
“Nay,” Simon said. “But one day I shall. For the present I bide, for I want some years to full manhood. And I am happy here, if that is what thou wouldst know. Between thee and me is friendship, and between my Lord Fulk and me is understanding. A truce to this silly woman’s talk.”
Alan sat down again, twanging his harp discordantly.
“Thou art so strange, Simon, and so cold. I wonder why I do so love thee?”
“Because thou art weak,” Simon replied curtly, “and because thou takest delight in such fondlings.”
“Maybe,” Alan shrugged. “Thou at least art not weak.”
“Nay,” Simon said placidly. “I am not weak, neither am I strange. See if thou canst bend that bow, Alan.”
Alan glanced at it casually.
“I know I cannot.”
“Shouldst practise then. Thou wouldst please my lord.”
“Certes, I do not want to please him. I was not fashioned for these irksome sports. ’Tis thou who shouldst try to please him, for ’tis thou whom he loves.”
Simon balanced a broad feathered arrow on his forefinger.
“Good lack, what has my lord to do with love? There is little enough of that in his heart.”
“So ye think!” retorted Alan. “I know that he watches thee fondly. Perchance he will knight thee soon.”
“I have done naught to deserve it,” replied Simon shortly.
“Natheless, he will do it, I think. He might even give thee one of my sisters in marriage if thou didst wish it, Simon.”
“I am not like to. There is no place for women in my life, and no liking for women in my breast.”
“Why, what will be thy life?” asked Alan.
Then at last a gleam shone in Simon’s eyes, cold yet eager.
“My life will be”—he paused—“what I choose to make it.”
“And what is that?”
“I will tell thee one day,” Simon said, with a rare touch of humour. Then he gathered up his arrows and went away, treading heavily yet noiselessly, like some great animal.
True it was that Fulk cared for him more than for his own son. The lion-spirit was not in Alan, and between him and his father was less and less understanding as the years passed by. Fulk’s jovial roughness, his energetic ways, his frequent lawsuits, wearied and disgusted Alan, and in the same way Alan’s fastidious temper and more cultured tastes became the subject for Fulk’s jeers and sighs. In place of his son Fulk turned to Simon and took him wherever he went, sparing him no exertion nor hardship, but watching his squire’s iron equanimity with an appreciative, almost admiring eye. Thus, bit by bit, grew up between the two an odd understanding and affection, never spoken of, but there at the root of their attitude towards each other. Fulk wanted not servility nor maudlin love, and from Simon he got neither. Strength was the straight road to his heart, and fearlessness: Simon had both. They were not always at one, and sometimes a quarrel would crop up when neither would give way an inch, when Fulk stormed and raged like a wounded buffalo, and when Simon stood rocklike, unshaken by anything Fulk might do to him, icy anger in his strange eyes, inflexible obstinacy about his mouth, and his brows forming a straight line across his hawk-nose.
“What I have I hold!” Fulk roared at him once, pointing to the device on his shield.
“I have not, but still I hold,” Simon retorted.
Fulk’s eyes showed red a moment, and a fleck of foam was on his pointing beard.
“God’s Wounds!” he barked. “Am I to be braved by you, mongrel-whelp? It will be the whip for you, or a dungeon-cell!”
“And still I shall hold,” Simon answered him, folding his arms across his great chest.
“By Death, I will tame you, wildcat!” Fulk cried, and drew back his fist to strike. But even as he would have done so, he checked himself, and the red went out of his eyes. A grin came, and a rumbling laugh.
“ ‘I have not, but still I hold,’ ” he repeated. “Ho-ho! ‘I have not, but—’ Ho-ho!” Chuckling, he smote Simon on the shoulder, a friendly blow which would have crumpled an ordinary stripling to the ground. He became indulgent, even coaxing. “Come lad! Thou’lt do as I bid thee!”
Coaxing left Simon as unmoved as the late storm. He shook his fair head stubbornly.
“Nay, I go mine own road in this.”
The red light showed again.
“Dare ye defy me?” roared Fulk, and closed his huge hand on Simon’s shoulder. “I can snap thy puny body as a reed!”
Simon shot him that upward, rapier-glance.
“I dare all,” he said.
The grip on his shoulder tightened until little rivulets of pain ran down from it across his chest. He did not so much as wince, but held Fulk’s look steadily. Slowly the grip relaxed.
“Ay, ye dare,” Fulk said. “I am of a mind to break thee over
