They brought a settle out from the solar, and setting it against the
wall, made ready for a night’s vigil. Since the last torch had gone out
the place was in utter darkness save for one patch of moonlight at the
far end of the hall.
Fulk pulled off his right gauntlet, and felt for Isoult’s hand.
“Try to sleep. Why should two keep watch?”
“Then it is you who should sleep.”
“By my love, do you think that I could sleep to-night? There will be
some devil’s work to be baffled.”
They sat close together like two children, listening for any sound, for
the night had grown strangely silent, and silence told them nothing,
save that there was danger near.
An hour passed before Fulk and Isoult heard a sound of stirring in the
darkness. Voices spoke in undertones, and there was the crackling of
brittle wood. There was movement down yonder in the hall, a kind of
groping movement that came nearer and nearer. Fulk stood ready behind
the barricade made of chests, thinking that Merlin’s men were crawling
up the stairway, but it was a subtler attack that they were preparing.
A faggot was thrown down with a crash at the foot of the stairs. They
heard men running. More faggots were carried in and piled in a heap that
covered the dead men and the wrecked furniture. The darkness hid them at
their work, though there was just one patch of moonlight where the
doorway of the hall opened, and Fulk could see nothing more than the
suggestion of shadows coming and going across this patch of moonlight.
He found Isoult beside him, and her very nearness quickened his
consciousness of their danger.
“Are we to be smoked out?”
“Burnt like rats. The house is all timber and thatch.”
“What’s to be done?”
“Isoult, there is but one thing to be done. Help me to lift this chest
aside.”
She put her hands to it, and between them they carried it back into the
solar.
“Isoult!”
He caught her and held her almost roughly, for the love in him had come
to desperate ends.
“Let us fight rather than burn.”
“That’s the cry. I will give these dogs cold steel in the dark. It is a
chance, and nothing more. If I can but clear the hall of them, we can
throw faggots across the doorway and hold it. And we can open the
shutters and get out of this black pit.”
He held her a moment longer.
“Isoult, bide here, but come to me if I call. It will mean that I have
won the fight. If I do not call, you will know how things have sped.
Unbuckle these greaves and thigh-pieces; they are too heavy for such a
game as hide-and-seek.”
She knelt down and plucked at the buckles, and her fingers trembled a
little.
“Fulk, fight through, fight through.”
He touched her hair with his hand.
“There is life for us yet.”
Fulk climbed over the oak chest and went step by step down the stairs,
stooping with one hand stretched out to feel what lay before him. He had
laid aside his gauntlets, and stuck his dagger into its sheath, meaning
to trust solely to his sword and to quick wits and quick feet. Six steps
from the bottom his hand touched the faggots, and feeling about him
cautiously he found that he could step down on to the daïs table. As he
crouched there, faggot after faggot was carried in and thrown upon the
pile. Moving along the daïs table to the end wall of the hall, he came
upon a gap that had been left, and through it he was able to slip to the
ground.
Fulk groped his way round by the wall till he came to the wooden screen
across the far end of the hall and was able to see the outline of the
great doorway filled with pale moonlight. A man appeared in it, carrying
a faggot, but he vanished directly he gained the inside of the hall.
Fulk saw his chance and took it. He could not tell how many men were in
the hall, but he judged that he would have to deal with no more than two
or three at a time, since they were strung out in their coming and going
between the woodstack and the door of the hall. Holding his sword
pointed ready, he moved along the screen and reached the borderland
where darkness and moonlight met just as another figure appeared in the
porch with a couple of faggots on its back.
Fulk struck so hard and so swiftly that the man went down without a cry,
the faggots falling on top of him. Fulk kept in the shadow as running
footsteps came down the hall. A second figure appeared, bending over the
fallen man, not grasping what had happened. Fulk laid him beside his
comrade, only to be struck in turn by some invisible enemy. A blow on
his helmet made his ears ring.
He thrust in the direction from which the blow had come, struck nothing
in the darkness, but heard a quick shuffle of footsteps go up the hall.
He gave chase, following the footsteps, drawing his dagger as he ran.
The footsteps stopped abruptly, and Fulk halted in response, probing the
darkness about him with his sword. He thought that he heard the sound of
someone breathing close on his left, and he let out a deep thrust
towards the sound, and touched something solid.
The unseen gave a snarl of pain. A body blundered against Fulk,
staggered, and gripped him with desperate arms. Fulk could not use his
sword, and the man who had closed with him crooked one knee round his,
and tried to throw him on his back. They swayed and tottered across the
hall, Fulk stiffening every muscle and sinew. His dagger cut that
tangle. The man made a sobbing sound in his throat; his arms relaxed;
Fulk felt him sink away into the darkness. He used his sword again to
make sure of the business, and, turning towards the doorway, reached it
as two other figures appeared with faggots on their shoulders. The long
sword shot out into the moonlight; the first man fell on his face; the
other dropped his faggots and ran.
Fulk called to Isoult, and he heard the crackling of wood as she climbed
over the faggots, and for a moment he listened anxiously, wondering
whether he had left any live thing lurking in the darkness.
“Here—here, by the doorway.”
He stepped forward into the moonlight, and she joined him there, her bow
in her hand, her arrow ready in her girdle.
“Not hurt?”
“Not a scratch. Stand here with your bow. I will give them something to
climb over.”
He picked up the fallen faggots and threw them across the doorway, on
top of the dead men who lay there. Several more from the stack against
the solar stairway made a breastwork four feet high, sufficient to stop
a rush.
“Keep in the shadow.”
As he spoke he saw her raise her bow and take a snapping shot at
something that had showed outside the porch. A man yelped like a dog
struck with a stone. Voices muttered together—voices that moved slowly
away from the porch.
Fulk and Isoult stood listening.
“I slew four here: three by the door and one in yonder. That leaves but
five.”
Isoult’s eyes never left the panel of light framed by the heap of
faggots and the arch of the doorway.
“All the windows are shuttered.”
“They may try to fire the house from the outside—thrust a torch into
the thatch.”
“Let them try it. There is God’s air outside for us. Your bow and my
sword can tackle five men.”
“Listen!”
She touched his arm, and he heard what she had heard—the splashing of
water down by the mere.
“Are more coming over?”
“No, no; it is on this side.”
There was no doubt as to the sound; it was the noise made by the men’s
rough paddles striking the water. They had taken to the raft of tree
trunks, and were ferrying back across the mere, for the sound went away
towards the farther bank.
Fulk dropped his sword, caught Isoult, and held her.
“Isoult, Isoult, death goes over the water.”
“Ah—and life comes in!”
A great silence descended over the Black Mere—a silence that was
strangely soft and kindly after that half silence that had hidden the
stealthy movements of men. For a while they stood listening, hardly
believing that they were alone. But the stillness was unbroken; the
peril that had threatened them had melted into the night.
Fulk threw the faggots aside and went out into the moonlight. He was
cautious at first, half suspecting some trick, and he looked sharply to
right and left as he walked down through the garden to the mere. All
ripples had died away; the water lay still and untroubled.
Isoult had followed him, and they held hands and looked over the mere.
“What of to-morrow, Isoult, what of to-morrow?”
“I would rather be beyond the sea, where Merlin is not.”
“Is Merlin still to be feared?”
“He is a lustful hound who has hunted for many masters. Who knows whom
he serves?”
They made their way back to the house, but it seemed full of a horror of
darkness and of dead men lying in their blood. Isoult would not enter
it.
“That darkness would choke me. I would rather lie out under the moon.”
Fulk remembered the horses, and went round to the stables to see if the
beasts were safe. The door was still shut as he had left it, and he
blessed the good luck that had left them the horses, for they might need
them on the morrow.
He found a truss of hay, and, carrying it into the garden, broke the
bands, and spread it under an old yew tree about ten paces from the
house.
“Lie down and sleep. I will keep watch.”
“We will take turns at watching.”
“Sleep first, then.”
“Promise that you will wake me.”
“I promise.”
She lay down, being dead weary, and conscious of her weariness now that
the stress of their peril had passed. Fulk sat down beside her under the
yew, and very soon she was asleep; nor had he the heart to wake her that
night, though he could hardly keep his own eyes open. So he watched the
night out and the dawn in, listening to Isoult’s breathing, and loving
her as he listened. The grey half-light grew in the east; the birds
woke; a soft wind came out of the west and stirred the willows.
A sudden restlessness seized on Fulk as he looked at Isoult sleeping,
and thought of the dead men in yonder. He rose, and went towards the
porch, telling himself that he would carry out wine and food, so that
the horror of the place should not hurt her.
Dead men and faggots were lying in a tangle by the door. Fulk stepped
over them, his nostrils narrowing, his eyes looking at them askance. He
threw open several of the shutters, and let daylight into the hall, and
it was then that he saw something that made him turn sharply and stand
staring at a grey figure that lay in the middle of the hall close to the
round hearth.
The grey cowl had slipped back, and a line of grinning teeth and a
gaunt, stark chin showed. One arm was half bent and standing up rigidly
in the air, the fingers and hand turned over like a shepherd’s crook. It
was Merlin, the man who had wrestled with Fulk in the dark and been
stabbed for his pains.
Fulk went and stood over him, staring. Then he bent nearer, his eyes
fixed upon Merlin’s upraised hand. It was as though the dead man were
holding it up for him to see—Richard’s ring, the very ring that Fulk
had worn when he had played the King behind the King.
He turned sharply and ran out of the hall, to find Isoult awake and
sitting up under the yew. She had unlaced his helmet for him before she
had fallen asleep, and Fulk’s face was as grim as a cold winter dawn.
“Merlin is in yonder.”
“Merlin?”
“Dead. He is one of those whom I slew in the dark. I know now whom he
served.”
“Ah!”
“He has the King’s ring upon his finger.”