Before he glimpsed the river, its cold breath bathed his face. He advanced to the edge of the bank with care, so difficult was it to tell, in the gray, mist from water. The island rose up halfway between the banks. Maxence contemplated it at length. His indecisive nature often led to such moments, hours even, of being torn between two paths, neither of which particularly drew him. Why ride beside the river? Why try to reach the isle? Why, in the past, had he followed one man in war and not another? Most of the time, the first banner to go by had been the one he went with, and the same for women. Last night's desire had flown with morning. What was he going to do with a wildwoman he wasn't even sure of winning? And yet he could not bring himself simply to go on his way. He thought he saw a figure on the island, and his horse went into the water.
The young woman raised her head and saw Maxence. His whole body was shaking. Though he'd forded many a river on horseback before, the cold had never affected him so. He wasn't sure the cold alone was to blame for his state; as soon as he'd seen the coalwoman, he'd understood his host's troubled words. He too had been afraid, and ready to turn heel and run from the girl. In the purity of features, that high forehead lightly smudged with soot, Maxence saw the face of all his longings. Everything he'd dreamed of as a youth, and even earlier, in those final days of childhood when desire knows nothing of the flesh and vet calls out to it, were suddenly incarnate before him. The tenderness of those vanished days, toward everyone, no one and the heavens above, awoke in him that morning, his life almost wholly consumed, his graying, wasting life broken by wars and embraces, and tears clouded his eyes. He was about to flee when she spoke.
"The river has chilled you to the bone, knight. You mustn't stay here. Come and dry off in my hut. I'll make a fire. Come, you're shivering, you'll take ill!"
"Y-yes… you're right. The river is cold as death."
He shook from head to toe, and his teeth chattered. She took his mount by the reins. He let himself be led. The hut was more wretched than the woodsman's cottage, but he barely noticed. Regiments ran this way and that across his body as though across a battlefield, some mounted on horses of flame and others on horses of ice. He let himself be undressed and put to bed by the young woman like a child by his mother. When she drew away to light the fire and reheat a bit of broth, he remained on his back, staring at the ceiling, a thin coverlet drawn up to his chin. Despite the fever, a feeling of peace flooded through him. He was likely to die, and the thought no longer worried him. His final resting place would be a meager hut of twigs and branches, and the last thing he saw a face like those he'd never dwelled on in the alcoves of churches; so it was, and it was good. When she returned, he drank a bit of broth, then all was dark.
He had no memory of the days and nights that passed. Then the fires the fever had stoked in his body went out one by one, and the black smoke they'd thrown off stopped clouding his mind. The morning came when he could step outside and walk all the way to a nearby pond. He leaned over the water and looked at his reflection between the ribbons of scum on the surface. Though thinner than ever, his hair and beard whiter than expected, it was still him, and he laughed to find himself alive. He heard a gentle voice call out to him, and rose, blushing.
"Sir knight! Sir knight! You're on your feet again!"
Today it was her cheek that was smudged with soot. He remembered their first encounter, and couldn't keep himself from laughing again. Beautiful, yes-but a coalwoman. Still-beautiful! He didn't know what to say to her and cleared his throat.
"You looked after me…"
"Yes, sir knight. A long time."
He misread her. "I'm sorry. My purse is empty."
She stopped smiling, and made as if to leave.
"Don't go! What have I said to offend you?"
"Do you think I'm interested in your money? Had you died, I could have taken it freely."
"Forgive me. I am old and poor, and sooner or later, the subject always comes up.
"You tire me."
She moved away. He returned to the hut, upset with himself. When night began to fall, he waited, but she did not come. He fell asleep late that night. That was how she was, the ruler of her little island, and that day he had displeased her. She did not come till the next day, after noon, bringing fish, four gleaming fish spotted green and blue, one of which still jerked among the blackberries she'd gathered along the way and tossed pell-mell into the wicker basket with her catch. They ate without speaking a word. When they'd finished, they went inside. There they shed their clothes and coupled. Then they fell asleep. Night was falling when they woke. They drank some broth and fought over the remaining blackberries before returning to their lover's sport, inventing new games to play.
They were the only two souls on the island. From time to time, said the coalwoman, boatmen stopped to buy some charcoal from her. The yard behind the hut was almost bare: they would not come again for a long while. The days went by. Slowly, Maxence recovered his forces. He no longer wore his coat of mail, but a simple serge tunic the young woman had sewn him. He helped make charcoal, and at night they lay down beside each other like husband and wife. Sometimes he was astonished that so young and beautiful a girl had given herself to him like this, and the woodsman's words came back to him. He had indeed found a strange companion. She spoke little, and some days behaved as if he didn't exist, coming and going or dreaming in the sun before their hut without giving him so much as a word or a glance. Sometimes she suddenly disappeared, and Maxence spent hours, days even, searching for her on the island. It wasn't very big, but the young woman only reappeared when she chose to.
She pretended not to know her age. Maxence teased her, saying that her childhood days could hardly be so long past, that she should remember them, and made as if to look for dolls beneath the bed. She replied in a serious voice that frightened him.
"Oh, but they are, they are! Long, long past! I no longer even remember ever playing with dolls!"
He asked her about her parents, and got no answer; if he insisted, she fled. He would only see her one or two days later, and then thought only of being forgiven for his tiresome questions. Unlike most young women he'd known, she cared not a whit in love for sweet words or vows. She gave and took without flowery phrases, then fell asleep with a smile on her lips. They never once had those lovers' conversations, which are really confessions, and Maxence, whom these had always bored, missed them for the first time, for his curiosity gnawed at him. One time, as he laughingly threatened to leave her, he caught her giving in to the silly nothings said in bed.
"If you leave this place;" she said, "no path will lead you anywhere. The world around this isle is empty:"
He pretended to play her game. "But then, my beautiful sorceress, what of your buyers, the boatmen? Doesn't the river lead them to the sea after they've stopped at your but?"
"Yes, because I wish it. You can leave; you are free to do so. Cut down branches and make a raft if you wish. But be warned: the river runs only between dead banks to an ocean of silence."
Maxence tried to lighten the mood. "My dearest, love makes a world without the one we love a wasteland!"
"It is not love, but I;" she said gravely, "who will make the world a wasteland for you"
She slipped away, as always when the conversation displeased her. Alone, Maxence went to check on the ovens. He looked up for a moment at the opposite shore and reflected that he'd never seen smoke rising where the woodsman's cottage should have been. No doubt he had misreckoned the length of his ride to the river the morning he'd left, and the next moment, gave it no more thought.