HOW BELTANE PLIGHTED HIS TROTH IN THE GREEN

Beltane yawned prodigiously, stretched mightily, and opening sleepy eyes looked about him.  He lay ’neath shady willows within a leafy bower; before him a brook ran leaping to the sunshine and filling the warm, stilly air with its merry chatter and soft, laughing noises, while beyond the rippling water the bank sloped steeply upward to the green silence of the woods.

Now as Beltane lay thus ’twixt sleeping and waking, it seemed to him that in the night he had dreamed a wondrous dream, and fain he would have slept again.  But now from an adjacent thicket a horse whinnied and Beltane, starting at the sound, felt his wound throb with sudden pain, and looking down, beheld his arm most aptly swathed in bandages of fair, soft linen.  Now would he have sat up, but marvelled to find it so great a matter, and propping himself instead upon a weak elbow glanced about him expectantly.  And lo, in that moment, one spake near by in voice rich and soft like the call of merle or mavis: 

“Beltane,” said the voice, “Beltane the Smith!”

With heart quick-beating, Beltane turned and beheld the Duchess Helen standing beside him, her glorious hair wrought into two long braids wherein flowers were cunningly entwined.  Straightway he would have risen, but she forbade him with a gesture and, coming closer, sank beside him on her knees, and being there blushed and sighed, yet touched him not.

“Thou’rt hurt,” said she, “so must we bide here awhile, thou to win thy strength again, and I to—­minister unto thee.”

Mutely awhile my Beltane gazed upon her shy, sweet loveliness, what time her bosom rose and fell tempestuous, and she bowed her head full low.

“Helen!” he whispered at last, “O, art thou indeed the Duchess Helen?”

“Not so,” she murmured, “Helen was duchess whiles she was in Mortain, but I that speak with thee am a lonely maid—­indeed a very lonely maid —­who hath sighed for thee, and wept for thee, and for thee hath left her duchy of Mortain, Beltane.”

“For me?” quoth Beltane, leaning near, “was it for me—­ah, was it so in very sooth?”

“Beltane,” said she, looking not toward him, “last night did’st thou bear a nun within thine arms, and, looking on her with love aflame within thine eyes, did yet vow to her you loved this duchess.  Tell me, who am but a lonely maid, is this so?”

“Thou knowest I love her ever and always,” he answered.

“And yet,” quoth she, shaking her head and looking up with eyes of witchery, “thou did’st love this nun also?  Though ’tis true thou did’st name her ‘reverend mother’!  O, wert very blind, Beltane!  And yet thou did’st love her also, methinks?”

“Needs must I—­ever and always!” he answered.

“Ah, Beltane, but I would have thee love this lonely maid dearest of all henceforth an it may be so, for that she is so very lonely and hath sought thee so long—­”