breath given full in Yeoland's face.
"And the lady, sire, a cup of purple; the roads are dry?"
Fulviac pushed up the stairs.
"We are late, and supped as we came. Your private cellar will suit us
better."
"Of a truth, sire, most certainly."
"Send the men back with the horses; Damian has his orders, and your
money-bag."
"Rely on my dispatch, sire."
"Well, then, roll on."
Fat Jean, sweaty deity of pot and gridiron, took the keys from his
girdle and a lantern from a niche in the wall. Going at a wheezy
shuffle, he led them by a long passage and two circles of stairs to a
cellar packed with hogsheads, tuns, and great vats of copper. From the
first cellar a second opened, from the second, a third. In the last
vault Jean rolled a cask from a corner, turned a flagstone on its side,
showed them a narrow stairway descending into the dark.
Fulviac took the lantern, made a sign to Jean, and passed down the
stairway with Yeoland at his heels. The tavern-keeper remained above in
the cellar, and closed the stone when the last gleam of the light had
died down the stair. He rolled the cask back into its place, and felt
his way back by cellar and stairway to the benignant glow of his own
tavern room.
Fulviac and the girl had descended the black well of the stair. Tunnels
of gloom ran labyrinthine on every hand; a musty scent burdened the air,
and fine sand covered the floor. Fulviac held the lantern
shoulder-high, took Yeoland's wrist, and moved forward into a great
gallery that sloped downwards into the depths of the rock. The place
was silent as the death-chamber of a pyramid. The lantern fashioned
fantastic shadows from the gloom.
Yeoland held close to the man with an instinct towards trust that made
her smile at her own thoughts. Fulviac had been in her life little more
than a week; yet his unequivocating strength had won largely upon her
liking--in no sentimental sense indeed, but rather with the calm command
of power. Possibly she feared him a very little. Yet with the despair
of a wrecked mariner she clung to him, in spirit, as she would have
clung to a rock.
As they passed down the gallery with the lantern swinging in Fulviac's
hand, she began to question him with a quiet persistence.
"What place is this?" she said.
For retort, Fulviac pointed her to the wall, and held the lantern to aid
her scrutiny. The girl saw numberless recesses excavated in the rock;
some had been bricked up and bore tablets; others were packed with
grinning skulls. There were scattered paintings on the walls, symbolic
daubs, or scenes from scriptural history. The place was meaningless to
the girl, save that the dead seemed ever with them.
Fulviac smiled at her solemn face.
"The catacombs of the city of Gilderoy," he said; "yonder are the niches
of the dead. These paintings were made by early folk, centuries ago. A
veritable maze this, a gallery of skulls, a warren for ghosts to squeak
in."
Yeoland had turned to scan a tablet on the wall.
"We go to some secret gathering?" she asked.
Fulviac laughed; the sound echoed through the passages with
reverberating scorn.
"The same dark fable," he said, "telling of vaults and secret stairs,
passwords and poniards, masks and murder. Remember, little sister, you
are to be black and subtle to the heart's chords. This is life, not a
romance or an Italian fable. We are men here. There is to be no
strutting on the stage."
The girl loitered a moment, as though her feet kept pace with her
cogitations.
"I am content," she said, "provided I may eschew poison, nor need run a
bodkin under some wretch's ribs."
"Be at peace on that score. I have not the heart to make a Rosamund of
you."
Sudden out of a dark bye-passage, like a rat out of a hole, a man sprang
at them and held a knife at Fulviac's throat. The mock merchant gave
the password with great unconcern, putting his cap of sables back from
off his face. The sentinel crossed himself, fell on one knee, and gave
them passage. Turning a bluff buttress of stone, they came abruptly
upon a short gallery that widened into a great circular chamber,
pillared after the manner of a church.
A flare of torches harassed the shadowy vault, and played upon a
thousand upturned faces that seemed to surge wave on wave out of the
gloom. In the centre of the crypt stood an altar of black marble, and
before it on the dais, a priest with a cowl down, a rough wooden
crucifix in his hand. A knot of men in armour gleamed about the altar,
ringing a clear space about the steps. Others, with drawn swords, kept
the entries of the galleries leading to the cavern. A great quiet hung
over the place, a silence solid as the rock above.
A group of armed men waited for Fulviac at the main entry to the crypt.
He merged into their ranks, exchanging signs and words in an undertone
with one who seemed in authority. The ring of figures pressed through
the crowd towards the altar, Fulviac and Yeoland in their midst.
Fulviac mounted the steps, and drew the girl up beside him. He
uncovered his face to the mob with the gesture of a king uncovering to
his people.
"Fulviac, Fulviac!"
The press swayed suddenly like the black waters of a lake, stirred by
the rush of flood water through a broken dam. The ring of armed men
gave up the shout with a sweeping of swords and a clangour of harness.
The great cavern took up the cry, reverberating it from its thundering
vault. A thousand hands were thrust up, as of the dead rising from the
sea.
Yeoland watched the man's face with a mute kindling of enthusiasm. As
she gazed, it beaconed forth a new dignity to her that she had never
seen thereon before. A sudden grandeur of strength glowed from its
weather-beaten features. The mouth and jaw seemed of iron; the eyes
were full of a stormy fire. It was the face of a man transfigured,
throned above himself on the burning pinnacle of power. He towered
above the mob like some granite god, colossal in strength, colossal in
courage. His manhood flamed out, a watch-fire to the world.
As the cry dwindled, the priest, who still kept his cowl down over his
face, held his crucifix on high, and broke into the strident cadence of
a rebel ballad. The people followed as by instinct, knowing the song of
old. Many hundred voices gathered strenuously into the flood, the
massed roar rolling through the great crypt, echoing along the galleries
like the sound of some subterranean stream. It was a deep chant and a
stirring, strong with the strength of the storm wind, fanatic as the
sea.
The silence that fell at the end thereof was the more solemn in contrast
to the thundering stanzas of the hymn. Under the flare of the torches,
Fulviac stood forward to turn the task from the crucifix to the sword.
"Men of Gilderoy."
A billow of cheering dashed again to the roof.
"Fulviac, Fulviac!"
The man suffered the cry to die into utter silence, before leaping into
a riot of words, a harangue that had more justification in it than
appeal. His voice filled the cavern with its volume and depth. It was
more the voice of a captain thundering commands to a squadron of horse
than the declamatory craft of the orator. Fulviac knew the mob, that
they were rough and turbulent, and loved a demagogue. Scholastic
subtleties could never fill their stomachs.
"Men of Gilderoy, I come to you with the sword. Bombast, bombast, come
hither all, I'll laden ye with devilry, puff you up with pride. Ha, who
is for being strong, who for being master? Listen to me. Damnation and
death, I have the kingdom in the palm of my hand. Liberty, liberty,
liberty. We strike for the people. Geraint is ours; Gore is ours; all
the southern coast waits for the beacons. Malgo of the Mountain holds
the west like a storm cloud under his cloak. The east raves against the
King. Good. Who is for the stronger side, for Fulviac, liberty, and
the people?"
He halted a moment, took breath, quieted all clamour with a sweep of the
hand, plunged on again like a great carrack buffeting tall billows.
"Are there spies here? By God, let them listen well, and save their
skins. Go and tell what ye have heard. Set torch to tinder. Blood and
fire, the country would be in arms before the King could stir. No, no,
there are no spies in Gilderoy; we are all brothers here. By my sword,
sirs, I swear to you, that before harvest tide, we shall sweep the
nobles into the sea."
A great shout eddied up to answer him. Fulviac's voice pierced it like
a trumpet cry.
"Liberty, liberty, and the people!"
Sound can intoxicate as well as wine. The thunder of war, the bray of
clarions, can fire even the heart of the coward. The mob swirled about
the altar of black marble, vociferous and eager. Torches rocked to and
fro in the cavern; shadows leapt grotesquely gigantic over the rough
groinings of the roof. Yet Fulviac had further and fiercer fuel for the
fire. At a sign from him, the circle of armed men parted; two peasants
stumbled forward bearing a cripple in their arms. They carried him up
the steps and set him upon the altar before all the people, supporting
him as he stared round upon the sea of faces.
He was a shrivelled being, yellow, black of eye, cadaverous. He looked
like a man who had wallowed for years among toads in a pit, and had
become as one of them. His voice was cracked and querulous, as he
brandished a claw of a hand and screamed at the crowd.
"Look at me, mates and brothers. Five years ago I was a tall man and
lusty. I forbade the Lord of Margradel my wife. They racked and
branded me, tossed me into a stinking pit. I am young, young. I shall
never walk again."
A woman rushed from the crowd, grey-haired, fat, and bloated. She
climbed the altar steps, and stretched out her hands in a kind of frenzy
towards the people.
"Look at me, men of Gilderoy. Last spring I had a daughter, a clean
wench as ever danced. Seek her from John of Brissac and his devils.
Ha, good words these for a mother. Men of Gilderoy, remember your
children."
Fulviac's pageant gathered grimly before the mob. A blind man tottered
up and pointed to his sightless eyes. A girl held up an infant, and told
shrilly of its father's murder. One fellow displayed a tongueless
mouth; another, a face distorted by the iron; a third had lost nose and
ears; a fourth showed arms shrivelled and contracted by fire. It was a
sinister appeal, strong yet piteous. The tyranny of the age showed in
the bodies of these wronged and mutilated beings. They had been mere
carrion tossed under the iron heel of power. The granite car of
ruthless opulence and passion had crushed them under its reddened
wheels.
At a gesture from Fulviac, the priest upon the steps threw back his cowl
and stood forward in the torchlight. His face was the face of a zealot,
fanatical, sanguine, lined with an energy that was prophetic of power.
His eyes smouldered under their straight black brows. His hands, white
and bony, quivered as he stretched them out towards the people.
They knew him on the instant; their clamour told as much. Often had the
shadow of that thin figure fallen athwart the parched highways of
stricken cities. Often had those hands tended death, those lips smitten
awe into the souls of the drunkard and the harlot.
"Prosper, Prosper the Preacher!"
There rang a rude, rough joy in the clamour that was spontaneous and
eloquent. It was the heart's cry of the people, wild, trusting, and
passionate. Men and women broke through the circle of armed men, cast
themselves upon the altar steps, kissed the friar's gown, and fawned on
him. He put them back with a certain awkward dignity, and a hot colour
upon his almost boyish face. The man had a fine humility, though the
strenuous ideals of his soul ran in fire to the zenith.
Anon he signed a benediction, and a hush descended on the place.
"God's peace to you, people of Gilderoy!"
The clamour revived.
"Preach to us, preach to us!" came the cry.
The friar stretched forth his hands; his voice rang strong and strident
over the packed upturned faces.
"Children, what need have we of words! To-night have we not seen enough
to scourge the manhood in us, to bear forth the Holy Cross of war? The
evil beast is with us even yet; Mammon the Mighty treads you under foot.
Ye saints, what cause more righteous since the martyrs fell? Look on
these scars, these wrongs, these agonies. Preach! I am dumb beside
such witnesses as these."
The crypt thundered to him when he lowered his hands. It was the cry of
men bankrupt of liberty, thirsty for revenge. Fulviac grappled the
climax, and stood forward with uplifted sword. His lion's roar sounded
above the din.
"Go, people of Gilderoy," he cried, "go--but remember. When castles
burn, and bolts scream, when spears splinter, and armies crash to the
charge, remember your children and your wrongs. Strike home for God,
and for your liberty."
VIII
The crowd had streamed from the cavern, swirling like black water under
the tossing torches, the hollow galleries reverberating to the rush of
many feet. Prosper had gone, borne away by the seditious captains of
the Commune and the armed burghers who had guarded the entries. A great
silence had fallen upon the crypt. Fulviac and the girl were left by
the altar of black marble, their one lamp burning solitary in the gulf
of gloom.
Fulviac had the air of a man whose favourite hawk had flown with fettle,
and brought her quarry tumbling out of the clouds. He was warm with the
zest of it, and his tawny eyes sparkled.
"May the Virgin smile on us!" he said. "Gilderoy will serve our ends."
The girl's eyes searched him gravely.
"You make holy war," she charged him.
"Ha, my sister, it is well to profess a strong conviction in the justice
of one's cause. Tell men they are heroes, patriots, martyrs, and you
will make good fighting stuff. Applaud fanaticism, make great parade of
righteousness, hail the Deity as patron, assemble all the saints under
your banner. Ha, trust me, that is a way to topple a kingdom. Come, we
must stir."
By many labyrinthine passages, strange galleries of death, they passed
together from the dark deeps of the catacombs. At one point the roof
shone silvered as with dew, and the air stood damp as in a marsh on a
winter's eve. The river Tamar flowed above them in its rocky bed, so
Fulviac told the girl. Anon they came out by a narrow stair that opened
by a briar-grown throat into a thicket of old oaks in the Gilderoy
meadows. The stairhead was covered by a species of stone trap that
could be covered and concealed by sods. In the thicket a man awaited
them with the bridles of three horses over his arm. Fulviac held
Yeoland's stirrup, and they rode out, the three of them, from under the
trees.
A full moon swam in a purple black sky amid a shower of shimmering
stars. Gilderoy, with its climbing towers and turrets, stood out white
under the moon. The city walls gleamed like alabaster in the magic
glow. In the meadows the ringlets of the river glimmered. Far and
distant rose the nebulous midnight of the woods.
Fulviac had bared his head to an inconstant and torpid breeze. They
were riding for the west along a bridle track that curled grey and dim
through the sombre meadows. The calm, soundless vault of the world rose
now in contrast to the canopies of stone and the passion-throes of the
catacombs. Human moil and effort seemed infinitely little under the
eternal scrutiny of the stars. So thought the man for the moment, as he
rode with his chin sunk upon his breast, watching keenly the girl at his
side.
Yeoland was young. All the roses of youth were budding about her soul;
idealism, like the essence of crushed violets, hovered heavy over the
world. Her soul as yet was no frayed and listless lute, thrummed into
discords by the bony hand of care. She was built for love, a temple of
white marble, lit by lamps of rubeous glory. Colours flashed through
the red sanctuaries of the flesh. Yet pain and great woe had smitten
her. The grim destinies of earth seemed bent on thrusting an innocent
pilgrim into the turbulent contradictions of life.
The pageant in the catacombs that night had stirred her strangely beyond
belief. The fantastic faces, the zeal, the hot words of gesturing
enthusiasm, these were things new to her, therefore the more vivid and
convincing. New worlds, new passions, seemed to burst into being under
the stars. She was utterly silent as she rode, looking forth into the
night. Her hood had fallen back; her face shone white and clear; her
eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Fulviac, like a chess-player who had
evolved some subtle scheme, rode and watched her with a smile deep in
his eyes. For the moment he was content to leave her to the magic of
her own thoughts.
At certain rare seasons in life, virgin light floods down into the
heart, as from some oriel opened in heaven. The world stands under a
grander scheme of chiaroscuro; men comprehend where they once scoffed.
It was thus that Yeoland rose inspired, like a spiritual Venus from a
sea of dreams. As molten glass is shaped speedily into fair and
exquisite device, so the red wax of her heart had taken the impress of
the hour. Gilderoy had stirred her like a blazoned page of romance.
Fulviac caught the girl's half glance at him; read in measure the
meaning of her mood. Her lips were half parted as though she had words
upon her tongue, but still hesitated from some scruple of pride. He
straightened in the saddle, and waited for her to unbosom to him with a
confident reserve.
"Well?" he said at length, since she still lingered in her silence.
"How much one may learn in a day," she answered, drawing her white
palfrey nearer to his horse.
Fulviac agreed with her.
"The man on the end of the rope," he said, "learns in two minutes that
which has puzzled philosophers since Adam loved Eve."
She turned to him with an eagerness that was almost passionate even in
its suppressed vigour.
"How long was it before you came to pity your fellows?"
"Some minutes, not more."
"And the conversion?"
"Shall satisfy you one day. For the present I will buckle up so
unsavoury a fable in my bosom. Tell me what you have learnt at
Gilderoy."
Yeoland looked at the moon. The man saw great sadness upon her face,
but also an inspired radiance that made its very beauty the more
remarkable. He foresaw in an instant that they were coming to deeper
matters. Superficialities, the mannerisms of life, were falling away.
The girl's heart beat near to his; he felt a luminous sympathy of spirit
rise round them like the gold of a Byzantine background.
"Come," he said, with a burst of beneficence, "you are beginning to
understand me."
She jerked a swift glance at him, like the look of a half-tamed falcon.
"You are a man, for all your sneers and vapourings."
"I had a heart once. Call me an oak, broken, twisted, aged, but an oak
still."
Yeoland drew quite close to him, so that her skirt almost brushed his
horse's flank. Fulviac's shadow fell athwart her. Only her face shone
clear in the moonlight.
"I have ceased," she said, "to look upon life as a stretch of blue, a
laughing dawn."
"Good."
"I have learnt that woe is the crown of years."
"Good again."
"That life is full of violence and wrong."
"A platitude. Yes. Life consists in learning platitudes."
"I am only one woman among thousands."
"A revelation."
"You jeer."
"Not so. Few women learn the truth of your proverb."
"Lastly, my trouble is not the only woe in the world. That it is an
error to close up grief in the casket of self."
Fulviac flapped his bridle, and looked far ahead into the cavern of the
night. He was silent awhile in thought. When he spoke again, he
delivered himself of certain curt cogitations, characteristic
confessions that were wholly logical.
"I am a selfish vagabond," he said; "I appeal to Peter's keys whether
all ambition is not selfish. I am an egotist for the good of others.
The stronger my ambition, the stronger the hope of the land in generous
justice. I live to rule, to rule magnanimously, yet with an iron
sceptre. There, you have my creed."
"And God?" she asked him.
"Is a most useful subordinate."
"You do not mean that?"
"I do not."
She saw again the mutilated beings in the catacombs, aye, even her own
home flaming to the sky, and the white face of her dead father. Faith
and devotion were great in her for the moment. Divine vengeance
beaconed over the world, a torch borne aloft by the hand of Pity.
"It is God's war," she said to him with a finer solemnity sounding in
her voice; "you have stirred the woman in me. Is that enough?"
"Enough," he answered her.
"And the rest?"
"God shall make all plain in due season."
Gilderoy had dwindled into the east; its castle's towers still netted
the moonlight from afar. The meadowlands had ceased, and trees strode
down in multitudes to guard the track. The night was still and calm,
with a whisper of frost in the crisp, sparkling air. The world seemed
roofed with a dome of dusky steel.
Before them a shallow valley lay white in the light of the moon. Around
climbed the glimmering turrets of the trees, rank on rank, solemn and
tumultuous. The bare gable ends of a ruined chapel rose in the valley.
Fulviac drew aside by a bridle path that ran amid rushes. To the left,
from the broken wall of the curtilage, a great beech wood ascended, its
boughs black against the sky, its floor ankle-deep with fallen leaves.
The chapel stood roofless under the moon. Hollies, a sable barrier that
glistened in the moonlight, closed the ruin on the south. Yews cast
their gloom about the walls. A tall cross in the forsaken graveyard
stretched out its mossy arms east and west.
The armed groom took the horses and tethered them under a clump of pines
by the wall. Fulviac and the girl Yeoland passed up through weeds and
brambles to the porch. A great briar rose had tangled the opening with
a thorny web, as though to hold the ruin from the hand of man. The
tiled floor was choked with grass; a rickety door drooped rotten on its
rusty hinges.
Fulviac pushed through and beckoned the girl to follow. Within, all was
ruinous and desolate, the roof fallen, the casements broken.
"We must find harbour here," said the man, "our horses go far
to-morrow."
"A cheerful hostel, this."
"Its wildness makes it safe. You fear the cold. I'll see to that."
"No. I am hungry."
The high altar still stood below the small rose window in the east,
where the rotting fragments of a triptych hid the stonework. There was
a great carved screen of stone on either side, curiously recessed as
though giving access to an ambulatory. The altar stood in dense shadow,
with broken timber and a tangle of briars ringing a barrier about its
steps. On the southern side of the nave, a patch of tiled flooring
still stood riftless, closed in by two fallen pillars. The groom came
in with two horse-cloaks, and Fulviac spread them on the tiles. He also
gave her a small flask of wine, and a silver pyx holding meat and bread.
"We crusaders must not grumble at the rough lodging," he said to her;
"wrap yourself in these cloaks, and play the Jacob with a stone pillow."
She smiled slightly in her eyes. The groom brought in a saddle, ranged
it with a saddle cloth covering it, that it might rest her head.
"And you?" she said to Fulviac.
"Damian and I hold the porch."
"You will be cold."
"I have a thick hide. The Lady of Geraint give you good rest!"
He threaded his way out amid the fallen stones and pillars, and closed
the rickety gate. The groom, a tall fellow in a battered bassinet and a
frayed brigantine, stood by the yew trees, as on guard. Fulviac
gestured to him. The man moved away towards the eastern end of the
chapel, where laurels grew thick and lusty about the walls. When he
returned Fulviac was sitting hunched on a fallen stone in the corner of
the porch, as though for sleep. The man dropped a guttural message into
his master's ear, and propped himself in the other angle of the porch.
An hour passed; the moon swam past the zenith towards the west; a vast
quiet watched over the world, and no wind rippled in the woods. In the
sky the stars shivered, and gathered more closely their silver robes.
In the curtilage the ruined tombs stared white and desolate at the moon.
An owl's cry sounded in the woods. Sudden and strange, as though
dropped from the stars, faint music quivered on the frost-brilliant air.
It gathered, died, grew again, with a mysterious flux of sweetness, as
of some song stealing from the Gardens of the Dead. Flute, cithern, and
viol were sounding under the moon, merging a wizard chant into the magic
of the hour. Angels, crimson-winged, in green attire, seemed to descend
the burning stair of heaven.
A sudden great radiance lit the ruin, a glory of gold streaming from the
altar. Cymbals clashed; waves of shimmering light surged over the
broken walls. Incense, like purple smoke, curled through the casements.
The music rushed in clamorous rapture to the stars. A voice was heard
crying in the chapel, elfin and wild, yet full of a vague rich sanctity.
It ceased sudden as the brief moan of a prophecy. The golden glow
elapsed; the music sank to silence. Nought save the moonlight poured in
silver omnipotence over the ruin.
From the chapel came the sound of stumbling footsteps amid the stones.
A hand clutched at the rotting door, jerked it open, as in terror. The
girl Yeoland came out into the porch, and stood swaying white-faced in
the shadow.
"Fulviac."
Her voice was hoarse and whispering, strained as the overwrought strings
of a lute. The man did not stir. She bent down, dragged at his cloak,
calling to him with a quick and gathering vehemence. He shook himself,
as from the thongs of sleep, stood up and stared at her. The groom
still crouched in the dark corner.
"Fulviac."
She thrust her way through the briars into the moonlight. Her hood had
fallen back, her hair loose upon her shoulders; her eyes were full of a
supernatural stupor, and she seemed under the spell of some great shock
of awe. She trembled so greatly, that Fulviac followed her, and held her
arm.
"Speak. What has chanced to you?"
She still shook like some flower breathed upon by the oracular voice of
God. Her hands were torn and bloody from the thorns.
"The Virgin has appeared to me."
"Are you mad?"
"The Virgin."
"Some ghost or phantom."
"No, no, hear me."
She stretched out her hands like one smitten blind, and took breath
swiftly in sudden gasps.
"Hear me, I was but asleep, woke, and heard music. The Virgin came out
upon the altar, her face like the moon, her robes white as the stars.
There was great light, great glory. And she spoke to me. Mother of
God, what am I that I should be chosen thus!"
"Speak. Can this be true?"
"The truth, the truth!"
Fulviac fell on his knees with a great gesture of awe. The girl, her
face turned to the moon, stood quivering like a reed, her lips moving as
if in prayer.
"Her message, child?"
"Ah, it was this: 'Go forth a virgin, and lead the hosts of the Lord.'"
Fulviac's face was in shadow. He thrust up his hands to the heavens,
but would not so much as glance at the girl above him. His voice rang
out in the silence of the night:--
"Gloria tibi, Sancta Maria! Gloria tibi, Domine!"
IX
Faith, golden crown of the Christian! Self-mesmerism, subtle alchemy of
the mind! How the balance of belief swings between these twain!
A spiritual conception born in a woman's brain is as a savour of rich
spices sweetening all the world. How great a power of obstinacy stirs
in one small body! A pillar of fire, a shining grail. She will bring
forth the finest gems that hang upon her bosom, the ruby of heroism, the
sapphire of pity. She will cast all her store of gold into the lap of
Fate. Give to her some radiant dream of hope, and she may prove the
most splendid idealist, even if she do not prove a wise one. Remember
the women who watched about the Cross of Christ.
There had been trickery in the miracle, a tinge of flesh in the vision.
The Virgin, in the ruck of religion, had suffered herself to be
personated by a clever little "player" from Gilderoy, aided and
idealised by a certain notorious charlatan who dealt in magic, was not
above aiding ecclesiastical mummeries on occasions, and conspiring for
the solemn production of miracles. A priest's juggling box, a secret
door at the back of the altar used in bygone days for the manipulation
of a wonder-working image, musicians, incense, and Greek fire. These
had made the portent possible. As for Fulviac, rugged plotter, he was
as grave as an abbot over the business; his words were wondrous
beatific; he spoke of the interventions of Heaven with bated breath.
It was a superstitious age, touched with phantasy and gemmed with magic.
Relics were casketed in gold and silver; holy blood amazed with yearly
liquefactions the souls of the devout; dreamers gazed into mirrors,
crystals, finger-nails, for visions of heaven. Jewels were poured in
scintillant streams at the white feet of the Madonna. It was all done
with rare mysticism, colour, and rich music. The moon ruled marriage,
corn, and kine. The saints, like a concourse of angels, walked with
melancholy splendour through the wilds.
As for the girl Yeoland, she had the heart of a woman in the noblest
measure, a red heart, pure yet passionate. The world waxed prophetic
that shrill season. She was as full of dreams and phantasies as an
astrologer's missal. Nothing amazed her, and yet all earth was
mysterious. The wind spoke in magic syllables; the trees were oracular;
the stars, white hands tracing symbols in the sky. She was borne above
herself on the pinions of ecstasy, heard seraph wings sweep the air, saw
the glimmer of their robes passing the portals of the night. Mysticism
moved through the world like the sound of lutes over a moonlit sea.
One March morning, Fulviac came to her in the northern chamber of the
cliff. Yeoland had masses of scarlet cloth and threads of gold upon her
knees, for she was broidering a banner, the banner of the Maid of
Gilderoy. Her eyes were full of violet shadow. She wore a cross over
her bosom, emeralds set in silver; a rosary, dangling on her wrist, told
how her prayers kept alternate rhythm with her fingers. Fulviac crooked
the knee to the crucifix upon the wall, sat down near her on a rich
bench of carved cedar wood.
The man was in a beneficent mood, and beamed on her like a lusty summer.
He had tidings on his tongue, tidings that he hoarded with the craft of
an epicure. It was easy to mark when the world trundled well with his
humour. He put forth smiles like a great oak whose boughs glisten in
the sun.
"You will tire yourself, little sister."
She looked at him with one of her solemn glances, a glance that spoke of
vigils, soul-searchings, and prayer.
"My fingers tire before my heart," she said to him.
"Rest, rest."
"Do I seem weary to you?"
"Nay, you are fresh as the dawn."
He brushed back the tawny hair from off his forehead, and the lines
about his mouth softened.
"I have news from the west."
"Ah!"
"We gather and spread like fire in a forest. The mountain men are with
us, ready to roll down from the hills with hauberk and sword. In two
months Malgo will have sent the bloody cross through all the west."
The golden thread ran through the girl's white fingers; the beads of her
rosary rattled; she seemed to be weaving the destiny of a kingdom into
the device upon her banner.
"How is it with us here?" she asked him.
"I have a thousand stout men and true camped upon the cliff. Levies are
coming in fast, like steel to a magnet. In a month we shall outbulk a
Roman legion."
"And Gilderoy?"
"Gilderoy and Geraint will give us a score thousand pikemen."
"The stars fight for us."
Fulviac took her lute from the carved bench and began to thrum the
chords of an old song.
"Spears crash, and swords clang,
Fame maddens the world.
Come battle and love.
Iseult--
Ah, Iseult."
He broke away with a last snap at the strings, and set the lute aside.
"Bear with me," he said.
Her dark eyes questioned him over her banner.
"I offer you the first victim."
"Ah!"
"Flavian of Gambrevault."
An indefinite shadow descended upon the girl's face. The inspired
radiance seemed dimmed for the moment; the crude realism of her thoughts
rang in discord to her dreams. She lost the glimmering thread from her
needle. Her hands trembled a little as she played with the scarlet folds
of the banner.
"Well?"
"A lad of mine bears news--a black-eyed rogue from the hills of
Carlyath, sharp as a sword's point, quaint as an elf. I sent him
gleaning, and he has done bravely. You would hear his tale from his own
lips?"
She nodded and seemed distraught.
"Yes. Bring him in to me," she said.
Fulviac left her, to return with a slim youth sidling in behind him like
a shadow. The lad had a nut-brown skin and ruddy cheeks, a pair of
twinkling eyes, a thatch of black hair over his forehead. Bred amid the
hills of Carlyath, where the women were scarlet Eves, and the land a
paradise, he had served in Gilderoy as apprentice to an armourer.
Carlyath's wilds and the city's roguery had mingled in him fantastic
strains of extravagant sentiment and cunning. Half urchin, half elf, he
stood with bent knees and slouched shoulders, his black eyes alert on
Fulviac, his lord.
The man thrust him forward by the collar, with an eloquent gesture.
"The whole tale. Try your wit."
The Carlyath lad advanced one foot, and with an impudent southern smirk,
remarked--
"This, madame, is an infatuated world."
Thus, sententiously delivered, he plunged into a declamation with a
picturesque and fanciful extravagance that he had imbibed from the
strolling romancers of his own land.
"In the city of Gilderoy," he said, speaking very volubly and with many
gestures, "there lives a lady of surpassing comeliness. Her eyes are as
the sky, her cheeks as June roses, her hair a web of gold. She is a
right fair lady, and daily she sits at her broad casement, singing, and
plaiting her hair into shackles of gold. She has bound the Lord Flavian
of Gambrevault in a net starred with poppies, scarlet poppies of the
field, so that he ever dreams dreams of scarlet, and sees visions of
lips warm as wine. Daily the Lord Flavian scours the country between
Avalon and the fair city of Gilderoy, till the very dust complains of
his fury, and the green grass curses his horse's heels. But the lady
with the hair of gold compasses him like the sunset; she has stolen the
eyes of heaven, and the stars are blind."
Fulviac smiled over the extreme subtlety of the rendering. It was a
delicate matter, delicately handled. The Carlyath lad had wit, and a
most seraphic tongue.
"What more?"
"There is yet another lady at Avalon."
"Well?"
"A lady whose name is Duessa, a lady with black hair and a blacker
temper. Lord Flavian has a huge horror of her tongue. Therefore he
rides like a thief, without trumpets, to Gilderoy."
"Yet more."
The lad spread his hands with an inimitable gesture, shrugged, and
heaved a most Christian sigh.
"The Lady Duessa is the Lord Flavian's wife," he said.
"Surely."
"Therefore, sire, he is a coward."
The lad drew back with a bow and a scrape of the foot, keeping his eyes
on the floor with the discretion of a veteran lackey. At a sign from
Fulviac, he slipped away, and left Yeoland and the man alone.
The girl's hands were idle in her lap; the great scarlet banner trailed
in rich folds about her feet. There was a white mask of thought upon
her face, and her eyes searched the distance with an oblivious stare.
All the strong discords of the past rushed clamorous to her brain; her
consecrated dreams were as so many angels startled by the assaults of
hell.
She rose from her chair, cast the casement wide, and stood gazing over
the forest. Youth seemed in the breeze, and the clear voice of the
Spring. The green woods surged with liberty; the strong zest of life
breathed in their bosoms. In the distance the pines seemed to beckon to
her, to wave their caps in windy exultation.
Fulviac had stood watching her with the calm scrutiny of one wise in the
passionate workings of the soul. He suffered her to possess her
thoughts in silence for a season, to come by a steady comprehension of
the past. Presently he gathered the red banner, and hung it on the
frame, went softly to her and touched her sleeve.
"Shall they kill him on the road?" he asked.
She pondered a moment, and did not answer him.
"It is easy," he said, "and a matter of sheer justice."
The words seemed to steel her decision.
"No," she said, "let them bring him here--to me."
"So be it," he answered her.
Fulviac found her cold and taciturn, desirous of solitude. He humoured
the mood, and she was still staring from the window when he left her.
The woodland had melted before her into an oblivious mist. In its stead
she saw a tower flaming amid naked trees, a white face staring
heavenwards with the marble tranquillity of death.
X
Down through the woods of Avalon rode the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault,
down towards the forest track in the grey face of the dawn. In the
meadows and beyond the orchards, water shone, and towers stood mistily.
The voice of Spring pulsed in the air, songs of green woods, the wild
wine of violets, pavements of primrose gold. Birds piped lustily in
wood and thicket, and the ascending sun lavished his glittering archery
from the chariots of the clouds.
The Lord Flavian was inordinately cheerful that morning, as he rode in
green and red through the prophetic woods. Heart and weather were in
kindred keeping, and his youth sang like a brook after April rains. The
woods danced in dew. Far on its rocky hill the towers of Gilderoy would
soon beckon him above the trees. Beneath the shadow of the cathedral
tower stood a gabled house with gilded vanes and roofs of generous red.
There in Gilderoy, in a room hung with cloth of purple and gold, white
arms waited, and the bosom of a golden Helen held love like a red rose
in a pool of milky spikenard.
Picture a slim but muscular man with the virile figure of a young David,
a keen, smooth face, a halo of brown hair, eyes eloquent as a woman's.
Picture a good grey horse trapped in red and green, full of fettle as a
colt, burly as a bull. Picture the ermined borderings, the jewelled
clasps, brigantine of quilted velvet, fur-lined bassinet bright as a
star. Youth, clean, adventurous, aglow to the last finger-tip,
impetuous to the tune of thirty breaths a minute. Youth with all its
splendid waywardness, its generosities, its immense self-intoxications.
Youth with the voice of a Golden Summer in its heart, and for its plume
the gorgeous fires of eve.
Wealth often breeds apathy and parsimonious instincts. It is the beggar
whose purse bursts with joy, whose soul blazes generous red upon the
clouds. As for Flavian of Gambrevault and Avalon, he was rich but no
miser, proud yet not haughty, sanguine but not vicious. Like many a man
inspired by an instinctive idealism, his heart ran before his reason:
they not having come cheek by jowl as in later years. He was very
devout, yet very worldly; very ardent, yet over hasty. Mark him then, a
lovable fool in the eyes of philosophy; a cup of mingled wine, both
white and red. He was a great lord; yet his serfs loved him.
The Lady Duessa's parents, good folk, had been blessed with aspirations.
Gambrevault and Avalon had bulked very gloriously under the steel-blue
vault of pride. Moreover, their daughter was a sensuous being, who
panted for poetic surroundings, and lived to music. A boy of twenty; a
passionate, dark-eyed, big-bosomed houri of twenty and five; bell, book,
and ring--such had been the bridal bargain consummated on church
principles five years ago or more. A youth of twenty is not supremely
wise concerning the world, or his own heart. The Lord Flavian's
marriage had not proved a magic blessing to him. Parentally sealed
marriage deeds are the edicts of the devil.
Quickly are the mighty fallen, and the chalices of love broken. It was
no mere chance ambuscade that waited open-mouthed for Flavian, Lord of
Gambrevault and Avalon, Warden of the Southern Marches, Knight of the
Order of the Rose, as he rode that morning to Gilderoy, a disciple of
Venus. In a certain perilous place, the road ran betwixt walls of rock,
and under the umbrage of overhanging trees. Twenty men with pike and
gisarme swarming out of the woods; a short scuffle and a stabbed horse;
a gag in the mouth, a bandage over the eyes, a mule's back, half a dozen
thongs of stout leather. That same evening the Lord Flavian was brought
like a bale of merchandise into Fulviac's guard-room, and tumbled on a
heap of straw in a corner.
They were grim men, these forest rangers, not given to pity, or the
light handling of a feud. A poniard point was their pet oath, a whip of
the sword the best word with an enemy. They bit their thumb nails at
creation, and were not gentle in the quest of a creed. Fulviac heard
their news, and commended them. They were like the ogres of the old
fables; the red blood of a lusty aristocrat smelt fresh for the sword's
supper.
The girl Yeoland was at her prayer-desk with a blazoned breviary under
her fingers, when Fulviac came to her with tidings of the day's capture.
She knelt with her hands crossed upon her bosom, as Fulviac stood in the
darkened doorway. To the man she appeared as the Madonna in some
picture of the Annunciation, the yellow light from the lamp streaming
down upon her with a lustre of sanctity.
"They have brought the boar home."
"Dead?"
"Nay; but his corpse candle walks the cavern."
For the girl it was a descent from spiritual themes to the stark realism
of life. She left her prayer-desk with a little sigh. Her hands
trembled as she drew a scarlet cloak about her, and fastened it with a
girdle of green leather. Her eyes dwelt on Fulviac's face with a species
of dusky pain.
"Come," he said to her.
"Whither?"
"To judge him."
"Not before all, not in the guard-room."
"Leave it to me," he said. "Be forewarned. We deal with no mere
swashbuckler."
They went together to Fulviac's parlour, where a great brazen lamp hung
from the roof, and a book bound in black leather lay chained on the
table. Yeoland took the man's carved chair, while he stood behind her
leaning on the rail. She was paler than was her wont. Now and again
she pressed a hand to her breast, as though to stay the too rapid
beating of her heart.
Two guards bearing partisans came in from the guard-room with a man
bound and blindfold between them. A third followed, bearing a
two-handed sword naked over his shoulder. He was known as Nord of the
Hammer, an armourer like to a Norse Volund, burly, strong as a bear. The
door was barred upon them. One of the guards plucked the cloth from the
bound man's face.
In the malicious imagery of thought, Yeoland had often pictured to
herself this Flavian of Gambrevault, a coarse, florid ruffian, burly and
brutal, a fleshly demigod in the world of feudalism. So much for
conjecture. What she beheld was a straight-lipped, clean-limbed man,
slim as a cypress, supple as good steel. The face was young yet strong,
the grey eyes clear and fearless. Moreover there was a certain lonely
look about him that invoked pity, and angered her in an enigmatic way.
She was wrath with him for being what he was, for contradicting the
previous imaginings of her mind.
Flavian of Gambrevault stood bound before her, an aristocrat of
aristocrats, outraged in pride, yet proud beyond complaint. The
self-mastery of his breeding kept him a stately figure despite his
tumbling and his youth, one convinced of lordship and the powerful
splendour of his name. The whole affair to him was illogical,
preposterous, insolent. A gentleman of the best blood in the kingdom
could not be hustled out of his dignity by the horse-play of a bevy of
cut-throats.
Possibly the first vision to snare the man's glance was the elfin
loveliness of the girl, who sat throned in the great chair as on a
judgment seat. He marked the rose-white beauty of her skin, her
sapphire eyes gleaming black in certain lights, her ebon hair bound with
a fillet of sky-blue leather. Moreover, it was plain to the man in turn
that this damoisel in the red gown was deciphering his features in turn
with a curiosity that was no vapid virtue. As for Fulviac, he watched
them both with his amber-brown eyes, eyes that missed no movement in the
mask of life. To him the scene under the great brazen lamp was a study
in moods and emotions.
The aristocrat was the first to defy the silence. He had stared round
the room at his leisure, and at each of its motionless figures in turn.
The great sword, slanted in gleaming nakedness over Nord's shoulder,
appeared to fascinate him for the moment. Despite his ambiguous
sanctity, he showed no badge of panic or distress.
Ignoring the woman, he challenged Fulviac, who leant upon the chair
rail, watching him with an enigmatic smile.
"Goodman in the red doublet," quoth he, "when you have stared your fill
at me, I will ask you to read me the moral of this fable."
Fulviac stroked his chin with the air of a man who holds an adversary at
some subtle disadvantage.
"Messire," he said, "address yourself to madame--here; you are her
affair in the main."
The Warden of the Southern Marches bowed as by habit. His grey eyes
reverted to Yeoland's face, searching it with a certain courteous
curiosity that took her beauty for its justification. The woman was an
enigma to him, a most magical sphinx whose riddle taunted his reason.
"Madame," he began.
The girl stiffened in her chair at the word.
"You hold me at a disadvantage, seeing that I am ignorant of sin or
indiscretion against you. If it is a question of gold----"
"Messire!"
He swept her exclamation suavely aside and ran on mellifluously.
"If it is a question of gold, let me beseech you to be frank with me. I
will covenant with you instanter. My seneschal at Gambrevault will
unbolt my coffers, and ease your greed. Pray be outspoken. I will
renounce the delight of lodging here for a purse of good rose nobles."
There was the faintest tinge of insolence in the man's voice, an
insolence that exaggerated to the full the charge of plunder in his
words. Whether he hinted at blood money or no, there was sufficient
poison in the sneer to fire the brain and scorch the heart to vengeance.
The woman had risen from her chair, and stood gripping the carved
woodwork with a passion that set her arms quivering like bands of
tightened steel. The milk-white calm had melted from her face. Wrath
ran riot in her blood. So large were her pupils that her eyes gleamed
red.
"Ha, messire, I bring you to justice, and you offer me gold."
The man stared; his eyes did not quail from hers.
"Justice, madame! Of what sin then am I accused? On my soul, I know not
who you are."
She calmed herself a little, shook back her hair from her shoulders,
fingered her throat, breathing fast the while.
"My name, messire? Ha, you shall have it. I am Yeoland, daughter of
that Rual of Cambremont whom you slaughtered at the gate of his burning
house. I--am the sister of those fair sons whom you did to death. Blood
money, forsooth! God grant, messire, that you are in honest mind for
heaven, for you die to-night."
The man had bent to catch her words. He straightened suddenly like a
tree whose throat is loosed from the grim grip of the wind. He went
grey as granite, flushed red again as a dishonoured girl. The words had
touched him with the iron of truth.
"Hear me," he said to her.
"Ah, you would lie."
"By Heaven, no; give me an hour's justice."
"Murderer."
"Before God, you wrong me."
He stood with twitching lips, shackled hands twisting one within the
other. For the instant words eluded him, like fruit jerked from the
mouth of a thirst-maddened Tantalus. Anon, his manhood gathered in him,
rushed forth redly like blood from a stricken throat.
"Daughter of Rual, hear me, I tell you the truth. I, Flavian of
Gambrevault, had in my pay a company of hired 'spears,' rough devils
from the north. The braggarts served me against John of Brissac, were
half their service drunk and mutinous. When Lententide had come, their
captain swore to me, 'Lording, pay us and let us go. We have spilt blood
near Gilderoy,' scullion blood he swore, 'give us good bounty, and let
us march.' So at his word I gave them largesse, and packed them from
Gambrevault with pennons flying. Methought they and their brawlings
were at an end. Before God and the saints, I never knew of this."
Yeoland considered him, strenuous as he seemed towards truth. He was
young, passionate, sanguine; for one short moment she pitied him, and
pondered his innocence in her heart. It was then that Fulviac plucked
at her sleeve, spoke in her ear, words that hardened her like a winter
frost.
She stared in the man's eyes, as she gave him his death-thrust with the
sureness of hate.
"Blood for blood," were her words to him.
"Is this justice!"
"I have spoken."
"Monstrously. Hear me----"
"Messire, make your peace with Heaven, I give you till daylight."
The man stumbled against the table, white as the moon. Youth strove in
him, the crimson fountain of life's wine, the wild cry of the dawn. His
eyes were great with a superhuman hunger. Fulviac's strong voice
answered him.
"Hence, hence. At dawn, Nord, do your duty."
XI
Give doubt the password, and the outer battlements are traitorously
stormed. Parley with pity, and the white banner flutters on the keep.
Provided her emotions inspire her, a woman is strong; let her take to
logic, and she is a rushlight wavering in the wind. In her red heart
lies her divinity; her feet are of clay when reason rules her head.
The girl Yeoland took doubt to her chamber that night, a malicious
sprite, sharp of wit and wild of eye. All the demons of discord were
loosed in the silence of the night. Pandora's box stood open, and the
hours were void of sleep; faces crowded the shadows, voices wailed in
the gloom. Her thoughts rioted like frightened bats fluttering and
squeaking round a torch. Sleep, like a pale Cassandra, stood aloof and
watched the mask of these manifold emotions.
Turn and twist as she would amid her fevered pillows, a wild voice
haunted her, importunate and piteous. As the cry of one sinking in a
stormy sea, it rang out with a passionate vehemence. Moreover, there
was a subtle echo in her own heart, a strong appeal that did not spare
her, toss and struggle as she would. Decision fluttered like a wounded
bird. Malevolence rushed back as an ocean billow from the bastion of a
cliff that emblemed mercy.
With a beating of wings and a discordant clamour, a screech-owl buffeted
the casement. A lamp still burnt beneath the crucifix; the glow had
beaconed the bird out of the night. Starting up with a shiver of fear,
she quenched the lamp, and crept back to bed. The darkness seemed to
smother her like a cloak; the silence took to ghostly whisperings; a
death-watch clicked against the wall.
The night crawled on like a funeral cortege. Baffled, outfaced,
sleepless, she rose from her tumbled bed, and paced the room as in a
fever. Still wakefulness and a thousand dishevelled thoughts that hung
about her like her snoodless hair. Again and again, she heard the
distant whirr and rattle of wheels, the clangour of the wire, as the
antique clock in Fulviac's chamber smote away the hours of night. Each
echo of the sound seemed to spur to the quick her wavering resolution.
Time was flying, jostling her thoughts as in a mill race. With the
dawn, the Lord Flavian would die.
Anon she flung the casement wide and stared out into the night. A calm
breeze moved amid the masses of ivy, and played upon her face. She
bared her breast to its breath, and stood motionless with head thrown
back, her white throat glimmering amid her hair. Below, the sombre
multitudes of the trees showed dim and ghostly, deep with mystery. A
vague wind stirred the branches; the dark void swirled with unrest,
breaking like a midnight sea upon a cliff. A few straggling stars
peeped through the lattice of the sky.
She leant against the sill, rested her chin upon her palms, and brooded.
Thoughts, fierce, passionate, and clamorous, came crying like gusts of
wind through a ruined house. Death and dead faces, blood, the yawn of
sepulchres, life and the joy of it, all these passed as visions of fire
before her fancy. Vengeance and pity agonised her soul. She answered
yea and nay with the same breath; condemned and pardoned with
contradicting zeal. Youth lifted up its face to her, piteous and
beautiful. Death reached out a rattling hand into her bosom.
Presently, a far glow began to creep into the sky; a gradual greyness
absorbed the shadows of the night. The day was dawning. From the
forest, the trembling orisons of the birds thrilled like golden light
into the air. Unutterable joy seemed to flood forth from the piping
throats. Even the trees seemed to quiver to the sound. With a rush of
bitter passion, she closed the casement, cast herself upon her bed, and
strove to pray.
Again came the impotent groping into nothingness. A dense mist seemed
to rise betwixt her soul and the white face of the Madonna. Aspiration
lessened like an afterglow, and dissolved away into a dark void of
doubt. Prayer eluded her; the utterances of her heart died in a
miserable endeavour, and she could not think.
The spiritual storm wore itself away as the dawn streamed in with a
glimmer of gold. Yeoland lay and stared at the casement, and the figure
of Sebastian rendered radiant by the dawn, the whiteness of his limbs
tongued with dusky rills of blood, where the barbs had smitten into the
flesh. Sombre were the eyes, and shadowy with suffering. A halo of gold
gilded the youthful face. The painted glass about him blazed like a
shower of gems.
The Sebastian of the casement recalled to her with wizard power the face
of the man whom death claimed at dawn. The thought woke no new passion
in her. The night's vigil had left her reason like a skein of tangled
silk, and with the day she verged towards a wearied apathy. The voice of
pity in her waned to an infrequent whisper that came like the rustling
of leaves on a summer night. She realised that it had dawned an hour or
more; that the man had knelt and fallen to Nord's sword.
Suddenly the silence was snapped by a far outcry sounding in the bowels
of the cliff. Gruff voices seemed to echo and re-echo like breakers in
a cavern. A horn blared. She heard the thudding of a door, the
shrilling of mail, the clangour of iron steps passing up the gallery.
Shivering, she raised herself upon her elbow to listen. Were they
bringing her the man's head, grey and blood-dabbled, with closed lids
and mangled neck? She fell back again upon her pillows, pressed her
hands to her face with a great revulsion of pity, for the image had
burnt in upon her brain.
The clangour of harness drew near, with an iron rhythm as of the march
of destiny. It ceased outside the door. A heavy hand beat upon the
panelling.
"Who knocks?"
Her own voice, strained and shrill, startled her like an owl's hoot.
Fulviac's deep bass answered her from the passage.
"Unbar to me, I must speak with you."
She started up from the bed in passionless haste, ran to a closet, drew
out a cloak and wrapped it about her shoulders. Her bare feet showed
white under her night-gear as she slid the bolt from its socket, and let
the man in. He was fully armed save for his salade, which he carried in
the hollow of his arm. His red cloak swept his heels. A tower of
steel, there was a clangorous bluster about him that bespoke action.
The girl had drawn apart, shivering, and gathering her cloak about her,
for in the gloom of the place she had thought for an instant that
Fulviac carried a mangled head.
"A rider has brought news," he said to her. "John of Brissac's men have
taken Prosper the Preacher, to hang him, as their lord has vowed, over
the gate of Fontenaye. They are on the march home from Gilderoy, ten
lances and a company of arbalestiers. I ride to ambuscado them. Prosper
shall not hang!"
She stood with her back to the casement, and looked at him with a
restless stare. Her thoughts were with the man whose grey eyes had
pleaded with her through the night. Her fears clamoured like captives
at the gate of a dungeon.
"What is more, this vagabond of Avalon has been begging twelve hours'
grace to scrape his soul clean for Peter."
"Ah!" she said, with a sudden stark earnestness.
"I will give him till sunset----"
"If I suffer it----"
"The dog has spirit. I would thrust no man into the dark till he has
struck a bargain with his own particular saints."
She drew back, sank down into a chair with her hair half hiding her
face.
"You are right in being merciful," she said very slowly.
Magic riddle of life; rare roseate rod of love. Was it youth leaping
towards youth, the cry of the lark to the dawn, the crimson flowering of
a woman's pity? The air seemed woven through with gold. A thousand
lutes had sounded in the woods. Voiceless, she sat with flickering
lids, amazed at the alchemy that had wrought ruth out of hate.
Fulviac had drawn back into the gloom of the gallery. He turned suddenly
upon his heel, and his scabbard smote and rang against the rock.
"I take all the men I have," he said to her, "even the dotard Jaspar,
for he knows the ways. Gregory and Adrian I leave on guard; they are
tough gentlemen, and loyal. As for the lordling, he is well shackled."
Yeoland was still cowering in her chair with the mysterious passions of
the moment.
"You will return?" she asked him.
"By nightfall, if we prosper; as we shall."
He moved two paces, stayed again in his stride, and flung a last message
to her from the black throat of the passage.
"Remember, there is no recantation over this business. The man is my
affair as well as yours. He is a power in the south, and would menace
us. Remember, he must die."
He turned and left her without more palaver. She heard him go clanging
down the gallery, heard the thunder of a heavy door, the braying of a
horn. A long while she sat motionless, still as stone, her hands lying
idle in her lap. When an hour had passed, the sun smote in, and found
her kneeling at her prayer-desk, her breviary dewed with tears.
XII
Fulviac passed away that morning into the forest, a shaft of red amid
the mournful glooms. Colour and steel streamed after him fantastically.
The great cliff, silent and desolate, basked like a leviathan in the
sun.
Of the daylight and its crown of gold, the girl Yeoland had no deep joy.
When she had ended her passion over the blazoned pages of her breviary,
and mopped her tears with a corner of her gown, she rose to realism, and
turned her mood to the cheating of the dues of time.
The hours lagged with enough monotony to degenerate a saint; Yeoland was
very much a woman. The night had left her a legacy of evil. She had
shadows under her eyes, and a constant swirl of thoughts within her
brain that made solitude a torture-house, full of prophetic pain. There
was her lute, and she eschewed it, seeing that her fingers seemed as
ice. As for her embroidery, the stitches wandered haphazard, wrought
grotesque things, or lost all method in a stupor of sloth. She threw
the banner aside in a fume at last, and let her broodings have their
way.
The forenoon crawled, like a beggar on a dusty high-road in the welt of
August. Time seemed to stand and mock her. Hour by hour, she was
tortured by the vision of steel falling upon a strong young neck, of a
white face lying in a pool of blood, of a dripping carcase and a
sweating sword. Though the vision maddened her, what could her weak
hands do? The man was shackled, and guarded by men with whom she dared
not tamper. Moreover, she remembered the last look in Fulviac's keen
eyes.
Towards evening she grew rabid with unrest, fled from the cave by the
northern stair, and took sanctuary amid the tall shadows of the forest.
The pine avenues were ever like a church to her, solemn, stately,
sympathetic as night. There was nought to anger, nought to bring
discord, where the croon of the branches soothed like a song.
It was as she played the nun in this forest cloister, that a strange
thought challenged her consciousness under the trees. It was subtle,
yet full of an incomprehensible bitterness, that made her heart hasten.
Even as she considered it, as a girl gazes at a jewel lying in her palm,
the charm flashed magic fire into her eyes. This victim for the sword
lay shackled to the wall in the great guard-room. She would go and
steal a last glance at him before Fulviac and death returned.
Stairway, bower, and gallery were behind her. She stood in Fulviac's
parlour, where the lamp burnt dimly, and harness glimmered on the walls.
The door of the room stood ajar. She stole to it, and peered through
the crack left by the clumsy hingeing, into the lights and shadows of
the room beyond.
At the lower end of a long table the two guards sat dicing, sprawling
greedily over the board, the lust of hazard writ large in their looks.
The dice kept up a continuous patter, punctuated by the intent growls of
the gamesters. By the sloping wall of the cavern, palleted on a pile of
dirty straw, lay the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, with his hands
shackled to a staple in the rock. He lay stretched on his side, with
his back turned towards the light, so that his face was invisible to the
girl behind the door.
She watched the man awhile with a curious and dark-eyed earnestness.
There was pathos in the prostrate figure, as though Hezekiah-like the
man had turned to the bare rock and the callous comfort despair could
give. Once she imagined that she saw a jerking of the shoulders, that
hinted at something very womanish. The thought smote new pity into her,
and sent her away from the cranny, trembling.
Yeoland withdrew into Fulviac's room, and thence into the murk of the
gallery leading to her bower. A sudden sense of impotence had flooded
into her heart; she even yearned for some shock of Fate that might break
the very bonds that bound her to her vengeance, as to a corpse. On the
threshold of her room, a sudden sound brought her to a halt like a hand
thrust out of the dark to clutch her throat. She stood listening, like
a miser for thieves, and heard much.
A curse came from the guard-room, the crash of an overturned bench, the
tingling kiss of steel. She heard the scream as of one stabbed, a
smothered uproar, an indiscriminate scuffling, then----silence. She
stood a moment in the dark, listening. The silence was heavy and
implacable as the rock above. Fear seized her, a lust to know the
worst. She ran down the gallery into Fulviac's room. The door was
still ajar; she thrust it open and entered the great cavern.
Her doubts elapsed in an instant. At the long table, a man sat with his
head pillowed on his arms. A red rivulet curled away over the board,
winding amid the drinking horns, isleting the dice in its course. On
the floor lay the second guard, a smudge of crimson oozing from his grey
doublet, his arms rigid, his hands clawing in the death-agony. At the
end of the table stood the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, free.
Three cubits of steel had tangled the plot vastly in the passing of a
minute. The climax was like a knot of silk thrust through with a sword.
The two stood motionless a moment, staring at each other across the
length of the table, like a couple of mutes over a grave. The man was
the first to break the silence.
"Madame," he said, with a certain grand air, and a flippant gesture,
"suffer me to condone with you over the lamentable tricks of Fortune.
But for gross selfishness on my part, I should still be chastening
myself for the unjust balancing of our feud. God wills it, seemingly,
that I should continue to be your debtor."
Despite her woman's wit, the girl was wholly puzzled how to answer him.
She was wickedly conscious in her heart of a subtle gratitude to Heaven
for the sudden baulking of her malice. The man expected wrath from her,
perhaps an outburst of passion. Taking duplicity to her soul, she stood
forward on the dais and tilted her chin at him with dutiful defiance.
"Thank my irresolution, messire," she said, "for this reprieve of
fortune."
He came two steps nearer, as though not unminded to talk with her in
open field.
"At dawn I might have had you slain," she continued, with some hastening
of her tongue; "I confess to having pitied you a little. You are young,
a mere boy, weak and powerless. I gave you life for a day."
The man reddened slightly, glanced at the dead men, and screwed his
mouth into a dry smile.
"Most harmless, as you see, madame," he said. "For your magnanimity, I
thank you. _Deo gratias_, I will be as grateful as I may."
She stood considering him out of her dark, long-lashed eyes. The man
was good to look upon, ruddy and clean of lip, with eyes that stared
straight to the truth, and a pose of the head that prophesied spirit.
The sunlight of youth played sanguine upon his face; yet there was also
a certain shadow there, as of premature wisdom, born of pain. There
were faint lines about the mouth and eyes. For all its sleek and ruddy
comeliness, it was not the face of a boy.
"Messire," she said to him at last.
"Madame."
"He who lurks over long in the wolf's den may meet the dam at the door."
He smiled at her, a frank flash of sympathy that was not devoid of
gratitude.
"Haste would be graceless," he said to her.
"How so?" she asked him.
"Ha, Madame Yeoland, have I not watched my arms at night before the high
altar at Avalon? Have I not sworn to serve women, to keep troth, and to
love God? You judge me hardly if you think of me as a butcher and a
murderer. For the death of your kinsfolk I hold myself ashamed."
There was a fine light upon his face, a power of truth in his voice that
was not hypocritic. The girl stared him over with a certain critical
earnestness that boasted a gleam of approval.
"Fair words," she said to him; "you did not speak thus to me last eve."
"Ah!" he cried, beaming on her, "I was cold as a corpse; nor could I
whine, for pride."
"And your shackles?"
He laughed and held up both hands; the wrists were chafed and bloody.
"It was ever a jest against me," he said, "that I had the hands of a
woman, white and meagre, yet strong with the sword. Your fellows thrust
a pair of wristlets on me fit for a Goliath, strong, but bulky. My
hands have proved my salvation. I pulled them through while the guards
diced, crept for a sword, gained it, and my freedom."
She nodded, and was not markedly dismal, though the wind had veered
against her cause. The man with the grey eyes was a being one could not
quarrel with with easy sincerity. Probably it did not strike her at the
moment that this friendly argument with the man she had plotted to slay
was a contradiction worthy of a woman.
The Lord of Avalon meanwhile had drawn still nearer to the girl upon the
dais. His grey eyes had taken a warmer lustre into their depths, as
though her beauty had kindled something akin to awe in his heart. He
set the point of the sword on the floor, his hands on the hilt, and
looked up at the white face medallioned in the black splendour of its
hair.
"Madame," he said very gravely, "it is the way of the world to feel
remorse when such an emotion is expedient, and to fling penitence into
the bottomless pit when the peril is past. I shall prove to you that
mine is no such April penitence. Here, on the cross of my sword, I
swear to you a great oath. First, that I will build a chapel in
Cambremont glade, and establish a priest there. Secondly, I will
rebuild the tower, refit it royally, attach to it cottars and borderers
from mine own lands. Lastly, mass shall be said and tapers burnt for
your kinsfolk in every church in the south. I myself will do such
penance as the Lord Bishop shall ordain for my soul."
The man was hotly in earnest over the vow--red as a ruby set in the sun.
Yeoland looked down upon him with the glimmer of a smile upon her lips
as he kissed the cross of the sword.
"You seem honest," she said to him.
"Madame, on this sword I swear it. It is hard to believe any good of an
enemy. Behold me then before you as a friend. There is a feud betwixt
us, not of my willing. By God's light I am eager to bridge the gulf and
to be at peace."
She shook her head and looked at him with a sudden mysterious sadness.
Such a pardon was beyond belief, the man's pure ardour, nothing but seed
cast upon sand. Fulviac, a tower of steel, seemed to loom beyond him--an
iron figure of Fate, grim and terrible.
"This can never be," she said.
His eyes were honestly sorrowful.
"Is madame so implacable?"
"Ah!" she said, "you do not understand me."
He stood a moment in thought, as though casting about in his heart for
the reason of her sternness. Despite her wrongs, he was assured by some
spirit voice that it was not death that stalked betwixt them like an
angel of doom. As he stood and brooded, a gleam of the truth flashed in
upon his brain. He went some steps back from her, as though destiny
decreed it that they should sever unabsolved.
"Your pardon, madame," he said to her; "the riddle is plain to me. I no
longer grope into the dark. This man, here, is your husband."
She went red as a rose blushing on her green throne at the coming of the
dawn.
"Messire."
"Your pardon."
"Ah, I am no wife," she said to him. "God knows but for this man I
should be friendless and without home. He has spread honour and chivalry
before my feet like a snow-white cloak. Even in this, my godless
vengeance, he has served me."
The man strode suddenly towards the dais, with his face turned up to
hers. A strange light played upon it, half of passion, half of pity.
His voice shook, for all its sanguine strength.
"Ah, madame, tell me one thing before I go."
"Messire."
"Have I your pardon?"
"If you love life, messire, leave me."
"Have I your pardon?"
"Go! ere it is too late."
Like a ghostly retort to her appeal came the sound of armed men
thundering over the bridge. Their rough voices rose in the night's
silence, smitten through with the clash and clangour of arms. Fulviac
had caught John of Brissac's company in the woods by Gilderoy. There had
been a bloody tussle and much slaughter. Triumphant, they were at the
gate with Prosper the Preacher in their midst.
The pair in the cavern stared at each other with a mute appeal.
"Fulviac," said the girl in a whisper.
"The door!"
"It is barred."
They were silent and round-eyed, as children caught in the midst of
mischief. Mailed fists and pike staves were beating upon the gate. A
babel of impatience welled up without.
"Adrian, Gregory!"
"Lazy curs!"
"Unbar, unbar!"
Mocking silence leered in retort. Yeoland and the Lord of Avalon were
still as mice. The din slackened and waned, as though Fulviac's men
were listening for sound of life within. Then came more blows upon the
gate; fingers fumbled at the closed grill. The man Gregory lay and
stared at the rocky roof; Adrian sat with his face pooled by his own
blood.
A fiercer voice sounded above the clamour. It was Fulviac's. The girl
shivered as she stood.
"Ho, there, Gregory, Adrian; what's amiss with ye?"
Still silence, mocking and implacable. The lull held for the moment;
then the storm gathered.
"Break down the gate," roared the voice; "by God, we will see the bottom
of this damned silence."
The Lord Flavian of Avalon had stood listening with the look of a man
cooped in a cavern, who hears the sea surging to his feet. He glanced
at the dead guards, and went white. To save his soul from purgatory it
behoved him to act, and to act quickly. A single lamp still burnt in
the oratory of hope. He went near to the girl on the dais, and held up
the crossed hilt of his sword.
"By the Holy Cross, mercy!"
She cast a frightened glance into his eyes, and continued mute a moment.
The thunder grew against the gate, the crash of steel, a rending din
that went echoing into all the pits and passage-ways of the place.
Fulviac's men had dragged the trunk of a fallen pine up the causeway,
and were charging the gate till the timber groaned.
The man, with his sword held like a crucifix, stood and pleaded with his
eyes.
"Mercy!" he said; "you know this warren and can save me."
"Are you a craven?"
"Craven? before God, no, only desperate. What hope have I unharnessed,
one sword against fifty?"
For yet another moment she appeared irresolute, dazed by the vision of
Fulviac's powerful wrath. He was a stark man and a terrible, and she
feared him. The timbers of the gate began to crack and gape. Flavian
of Avalon lifted up his voice to her with a passionate outburst of
despair.
"God, madame, I cannot die. I am young, look at me, life is at its
dawn. By your woman's mercy, hide me. Give me not back to death."
His bitter agitation smote her to the core. She looked into his eyes;
they were hungry as love, and very piteous. There could be no sinning
against those eyes. Great fear flooded over her like a green billow,
bearing her to the inevitable. In a moment she was as hot to save him
as if he had been her lover.
"Come," she said, "quick, before the gate gives."
She led him like the wind through Fulviac's parlour, and down the
gallery to her own bower. It was dark and lampless. She groped to the
postern, fumbled at the latch and conquered it. Night streamed in. She
pushed the man out and pointed to the steps.
"The forest," she said, "for your life; bear by the stars for the
north."
A full moon had reared her silver buckler in the sky. The night was
sinless and superb, drowned in a mist of phosphor glory. The man knelt
at her feet a moment, and pressed his lips to the hem of her gown.
"The Virgin bless you!"
"Go----"
"I shall remember."
He descended and disappeared where the trees swept up with wizard
glimmerings to touch the cliff. When he had fled, Yeoland passed back
into the cavern, and met Fulviac before the splintered gate with a lie
upon her lips.