E-text prepared by Robert Cicconetti, Melissa Er-Raqabi,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
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The Truce of God

By Mary Roberts Rinehart

Decorations by Harold Sichel

New York
George H. Doran Company

1920

I
II
III

I

Now the day of the birth of our Lord dawned that year grey and dreary,and a Saturday. But, despite the weather, in the town at the foot of thehill there was rejoicing, as befitted so great a festival. The daybefore a fat steer had been driven to the public square and theredressed and trussed for the roasting. The light of morning falling onhis carcass revealed around it great heaps of fruits and vegetables. Forthe year had been prosperous.

But the young overlord sulked in his castle at the cliff top, and bithis nails. From Thursday evening of each week to the morning of Monday,Mother Church had decreed peace, a Truce of God. Three full days out ofeach week his men-at-arms polished their weapons and grew fat. Threefull days out of each week his grudge against his cousin, Philip of theBlack Beard, must feed on itself.

His dark mood irritated the Bishop of Tours, who had come to speak ofcertain scandalous things which had come to his ears. Charles heard himthrough.

"She took refuge with him," he said violently, when the Bishop hadfinished. "She knew what hate there was between us, yet she took refugewith him."

"The question is," said the Bishop mildly, "why she should have beendriven to refuge. A gentle lady, a faithful wife—"

"Deus!" The young seigneur clapped a fist on the table. "You know wellthe reason. A barren woman!"

"She had borne you a daughter."

But Charles was far gone in rage and out of hand. The Bishop took hisoffended ears to bed, and left him to sit alone by the dying fire, withbitterness for company.

Came into the courtyard at midnight the Christmas singers from the town;the blacksmith rolling a great bass, the crockery-seller who sangfalsetto, and a fool of the village who had slept overnight in a mangeron the holy eve a year before and had brought from it, not wit, but avoice from Heaven. A miracle of miracles.

The men-at-arms in the courtyard stood back to give them space. Theysang with eyes upturned, with full-throated vigour, albeit a bitwarily, with an anxious glance now and then toward those windows beyondwhich the young lord sulked by the fire.