XXII
Aurelius, physician of Gilderoy, flourished on the fatness of a
fortunate reputation. He was a rubicund soul, clean and pleasant, with
a neatly-trimmed beard, and a brow that seemed to dome a very various
and abundant wisdom. He combined a sprightly humour and an enlivening
presence with the reverent solemnity necessary to his profession.
As for the ladies of Gilderoy, they reverenced Master Aurelius with a
loyalty that became perhaps less remarkable the more one considered the
character of the worthy charlatan. Aurelius was an AEsculap in court
clothing. He was ignorant, but as no one realised the fact, the soul of
Hippocrates would have been wasted in his body. Discretion was his
crowning virtue. He was so sage, so intelligent, so full of a simple
understanding for the ways of women, that the frail creatures could not
love him enough. The confidences granted to a priest were nothing
compared to the truths that were unmasked to his tactful ken. The
physician is the priest of the body, a privileged person, suffered to
enter the bed-chamber before the solemn rites of the toilet have been
performed. He sees many strange truths, beholds fine and wonderful
transfigurations, presides over the confessional of the flesh. And
Aurelius never whispered of these mysteries; never displayed
astonishment; always discovered extraordinary justification for the
quaintest inconsistencies, the most romantic failings. He carried a
sweet and sympathetic air of propriety about with him, like a perfume
that exhaled a most comfortable odour of religion. His salves were
delectable to a degree, his unguents and cosmetics remarkable
productions. Dames took his potions in lieu of Malmsey, his powders in
place of sweetmeats. Never did a more pleasant, a more tactful old
hypocrite pander to the failings of an unregenerate world.
Aurelius stood in his laboratory one June morning, balancing a money-bag
in his chubby pink palm. He seemed tickled by some subtlety of thought,
and wonderfully well pleased with his own good-humour. He smiled,
locked the money-bag in a drawer that stood in a confidential cupboard,
and, taking his cap and walking-staff, repaired to the street. Pacing
the narrow pavement like a veritable potentate, pretentious as any
peacock, yet mightily amiable from the superb self-satisfaction that
roared in him like a furnace, he acknowledged the greetings of
passers-by with the elevation of a hand, a solemn movement of the head.
It was well to seem unutterably serious when under the eyes of the mob.
Only educated folk can properly understand levity in a sage.
In the Erminois, a stately highway that ran northwards from the
cathedral, he halted before a mansion whose windows were rich with
scutcheons and proud blazonry. Aurelius prospered with the rich. The
atmosphere of the mean quarters was like a miasma to him; he loved
sunlight and high places where he might bask like a lizard. He passed
by a great gateway into the inner court, and was admitted into the house
with that ready deference that speaks of familiarity and respect.
Aurelius climbed the broad stairway, and sailed like a stately carrack
into my lady's chamber. A dame in blue and silver greeted him from an
oriel. The compounder of cosmetics bowed, disposed his staff and velvet
cap upon a table, and appropriated the chair the lady had assigned to
him.
"Superb weather, madame."
"Too sultry, though I am a warm-souled person."
"True, madame, true, Gilderoy would be fresher if there were no mean
folk to stifle up the streets like weeds. The alleys send up such an
unpleasant stench upon the breeze, that it makes the cultured sense
revolt from poverty."
The Lady Duessa's lips curled approvingly,
"Poverty, poverty, my dear Aurelius, is like a carcase, fit only for
quicklime. If I had the rule of the place, I would make poverty a
crime, and cram all our human sweepings into lazar quarters."
The man of physic nodded for sympathy.
"Exactly so, madame, but one would have to deal with the inevitable
religious instinct."
"That would be simple enough," she simpered. "I should confine religion
to shadows and twinkling tapers, lights streaming in through enamelled
casements upon solemn colours bowing before dreamy music; pardons and
absolutions bought with a purse of gold. It is sad, Aurelius, but who
doubts but that religion makes scavengers of us all? Away with your
smug widows, your frouzy burgher saints, your yellow-skinned
priest-hunters! I would rather have picturesque sin than vulgar piety."
The man of herbs sighed like an organ pipe.
"Everything can be pardoned before coarseness," he said; "give me a
dirty heart before a dirty face, provided the sinner be pretty. I trust
that madame was satisfied with my endeavours, that the perfumes were
such as she desired, the oil of Arabia pleasant and fragrant?"
"Magical, my AEsculap. The oil makes the skin like velvet, and the
drugs are paradisic and full of languors. Ah, woman, set the tray beside
Master Aurelius' chair."
The man's eyes glistened over the salver and the cup. He bowed to his
hostess, sniffed, and pursed his lips over the wine.
"Madame knows how to warm the heart."
"Truth to you. Who have you been renovating of late? What carcase have
you been painting, you useful rogue?"
"Madame, my profession is discreet."
"I see your work everywhere. There is the little brown-faced thing who
is to marry John of Brissac. Well, she needed art severely. Now the
lady has a complexion like apple-blossom."
The old man's eyes twinkled.
"Madame is pleased to jest," he said, "and to think her
fancies--realities. Were all ladies as fresh as Madame Duessa, what,
think you, would become of my delectable art, my science of beauty? I
should be a poor bankrupt old man, ruined by too much comeliness."
Aurelius always had the wit to say the pleasantest thing possible, and
to press the uttermost drop of honey from the comb of flattery. A surly
tongue will break a man, a glib intelligence ensure him a fortune.
Aurelius earned many a fee by a pretty speech, or a tactful suggestion.
Then of course he was never hindered by sincerity.
"Holy Dominic," laughed the lady, "I have proved a good patron to you in
many ways."
"And I trust I shall always deserve madame's trust."
"A discreet tongue and a comfortable obedience are sweet things to a
woman, Aurelius."
"Madame's voice recalls Delphi."
"Ah, the Greeks were poets; they knew how to fit their religion to their
pleasures. 'Tis only we, poor fools, who measure sin by a priest's
pardon. Give me a torch before an aspergill."
The man of physic sipped his wine, cogitating over it with Jovian
wisdom.
"The chief aim in life, madame," he said, "should be the perfecting of
one's own comfort. 'Tis my contention that a fat bishop is a finer
Christian than a lean friar. The truism is obvious. Is not my soul the
more mellifluous and benign if its shell is gilded and its vest of
velvet?"
Duessa chuckled, and flipped her chin.
"Give me a warm bed," she laughed, "and I will pity creation. The
world's saints are plump and comely; the true goddess has a supple knee.
Am I the worse for being buxom!"
"Madame," said the sage with great unction, "only beggars denounce gold,
and heaven is the dream of diseased souls. The cult of pleasure is the
seal of health. Discontent is the seed of religion."
The door opened a few inches, and there was the sound of voices in
muffled debate in the gallery. The Lady Duessa listened, rose from her
chair, appeared restless. The man of physic comprehended the situation,
and with that tact that characterised him, declared that he had
patronage elsewhere to assuage. The lady did not detain him, but
dismissed him with a smile--a smile that on such a face as hers often
took the place of words. So Master Aurelius took his departure.
Five minutes later Sforza, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy, occupied the vacant
chair in the oriel.
There are many ways to fame. By the broad, embattled gate where the
Cerberus of War crouches; by the glistening stair of glass where all the
beauty of the world gleams as in a thousand mirrors; by the cloaca of
diplomacy and cunning, that tunnels under truth and honour. Sforza of
Gilderoy was a man who never took his finger off a guinea till he had
seen ten dropped into the other palm. He was a narrow-faced,
long-whiskered rat, ever nibbling, ever poking his keen snout into
prospective prosperity. He had no real reverence for anything under the
sun. To speak metaphorically, he would as soon steal the sacrificial
wafer from the altar as the cheese from a burgher's larder. When he
lived in earnest, he lived in moral nebulosity, that is to say, he had
no light save his own lantern. Publicly, he appeared a sleek, dignified
person, quick with his figures, apt at oratory, a man who could quote
scripture by the ell and swear by every saint in the calendar.
Sforza, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy, sat and faced Dame Duessa over a
little table that held wine and a bowl of roses. His large hands rested
on the carved arms of the chair. He had a debonair smirk on his face, a
mask of complacency that suffered him to be vigilant in a polite and
courteous fashion.
"Madame has considered my proposition?"
The woman leant back in her chair and worked her full lower lip against
her teeth.
"I recognise your infallibility, Gonfaloniere."
"Only to the level of human foresight, madame."
"You have a longer nose than most men."
"I take the insinuation as a compliment."
He contemplated her awhile in silence.
"How am I to know that you are sincere?" he said.
"Need you disbelieve me?"
"It is my custom to disbelieve in everybody."
"Till they have satisfied you?"
"Exactly."
Duessa looked out of the window, and played with her chatelaine.
"You know women?"
"I would never lay claim to such an arrogance of cunning."
"Nevertheless you are no fool."
"I am no fool."
"And you imagine my protestations are not sincere, even after what I
have suffered?"
He smiled at her most cunningly.
"You want proof?"
"I do not like unsigned documents."
She started forward in her chair with a strangely strenuous look on her
face.
"Fanatic fools have often made some show of fortitude," she said, "by
thrusting a hand into the fire, or the like. See now if I am a liar or a
coward."
Before he could stay her she drew a small stiletto from her belt, spread
her left hand on the table, and then smote the steel through the thick
of the palm, and held it there without flinching as the blood flowed.
"My signature," she said, with her cheeks a shade paler.
"Madame, you have spirit."
"Do you believe in me?"
"I may say so."
"You will include me in your schemes?"
"I will."
"You remember our mutual bargain?"
"I remember it."
She withdrew the stiletto and wrapped her bleeding hand in her robe.
"You will initiate me--at once."
"To-morrow, madame, you shall go with me to the council."
XXIII
Castle Gambrevault stood out on a great cliff above the sea, like a huge
white crown on the country's brow. It was as fine a mass of masonry as
the south could show, perched on its great outjutting of the land,
precipiced on every side, save on the north. Hoary, sullen,
stupendously strong, it sentinelled the sea that rolled its blue to the
black bastions of the cliffs. Landwards, green downs swept with long
undulations to the valleys and the woods.
That Junetide Gambrevault rang with the clangour of arms. The Lord
Flavian's riders had spurred north, east, and west to manor and hamlet,
grange and lone moorland tower. There had been a great burnishing of
arms, a bending of bows through all the broad demesne. Steel had
trickled over the downs towards the tall towers of Gambrevault.
Knights, with esquires, men-at-arms, and yeomen, had ridden in to keep
feudal faith. The Lord Flavian had swept the country for a hundred
miles for mercenary troops and free-lances. His coffers poured gold.
He had pitched a camp in the Gambrevault meadows; some fifteen hundred
horse and two thousand foot were gathered under his banner.
From the hills cattle were herded in, and heavy wains laden with flour
creaked up to the castle. There was much victualling, much blaring of
trumpets, much blowing of pennons, much martial stir in the meadows. It
seemed as though the Lord Flavian had a strenuous campaign in view, and
there was much conjecture on the wind. The strange part of it was, that
none save Sir Modred had any knowledge for what or against whom they
were to fight. It might be John of Brissac, Gambrevault's mortal enemy;
it might develop into a demonstration against the magistracy of
Gilderoy. Blood was to be spilt, so ran the current conviction. For
the rest, Flavian's feudatories were loyal, and left the managing of the
business to their lord.
The men had been camped a week, and yet there was no striking of tents,
no plucking up of pennons. Sir Modred had ridden out to bring in a body
of five hundred mercenaries from Geraint. The Lord Flavian himself,
with a troop of twenty spears, was lodged for a few days in Gilderoy, in
the great Benedictine monastery, where his uncle held rule as abbot. He
was negotiating for arms, fifty bassinets, two hundred gisarmes, a
hundred ranseurs, fifty glaives, and a number of two-handed swords. He
had found the Armourer's Guild peculiarly insolent, and disinclined to
serve him. He had little suspicion that Gilderoy was seething under the
surface like so much lava.
Thus, while the Lord Flavian was preparing for his march into the great
pine forest, Fulviac had completed his web of revolt. He had heard of
the gathering at Gambrevault, and had hurried on his schemes in
consequence. Five thousand men were ready at his back. He would gain
ten thousand men from Gilderoy; seven thousand from Geraint. These
outlaw levies, free-lances, and train-bands would give him the nucleus
of the vast host that was to spring like corn from every quarter of the
land. Malgo was to head the rising in the west, and to concentrate at
Conan, a little town in the mountains. In the east, Godamar was to
gather a great camp in Thorney Isle amid the morasses of the fens.
Fulviac would himself overthrow the lords of the south. Then they were
to converge and to gather strength for the march upon Lauretia, proud
city of the King.
It would be a great war and a bitter, full of fanatical fierceness and
revenge. Fulviac had given word to take, pillage, and burn all strong
places. Destiny stood with wild hands to the heavens, a bosom of
scarlet, and hair aghast. If the horde conquered, the seats of the
mighty would reek amid flame; there would be death, and a great silence
over proud cities.
XXIV
In an antechamber in the palace of Sforza of Gilderoy stood the Lady
Duessa, watching the day die in the west over a black chaos of spires
and gables. Before her, under the casement, lay the palace garden, a
pool of perfume, banked with tall cypresses, red with the fire of a
myriad roses. As night to the sunset, so seemed this antechamber to the
garden, panelled with black oak, a dark square of gloom red-windowed to
the west. The place had a sullen, iron-mouthed look, as though its
walls had developed through the years a sour and world-wise silence.
The Lady Duessa was not a woman who could trail tamely in anterooms. A
restless temper chafed her pride that evening, and kept her footing the
polished floor like a love-lorn nun treading a cloister. The casements
were open to the garden, and the multitudinous sounds of the city
flooded in--the thunder of the tumbrils in the narrow streets, the
distant blare of trumpets from the castle, the clangour of the cathedral
bells. A solitary figure companioned the Lady Duessa in the anteroom,
cloaked and masked as was the dame herself. It was Balthasar the
Dominican, who followed her now in secular habit, having forsworn his
black mantle and taken refuge in her service. From time to time the two
spoke together in whispering undertones; more than once their lips
touched.
The Lady Duessa turned and stood by a casement with her large white
hands on the sill. She appeared to grow more restive as the minutes
passed, as though the antique clock on the mantle clicked its tongue at
her each gibing second.
"This is insolence," she said anon, "holding us idling here like ragged
clients."
Balthasar joined her, soft-footed and debonair, his black eyes shining
behind his mask.
"Peter kept Paul before the gate of heaven," quoth he, with a curl of
the lip. "Sforza is a meddler in many matters, a god-busied Mercury.
As for me, I am content."
Their hands touched, and intertwined with a quick straining of the
fingers.
"Pah," said the woman with a shiver, "this room is like a funeral
litter; it chills my marrow."
Balthasar sniggered.
"See, the sky burns," he said; "yon garden is packed with colour. We
could play a love chase amid those dark hedges of yew."
She pressed her flank to his; her eyes glittered like amethysts; her
breath hastened.
"My mouth, man."
She pouted out her full red lips to his; suffered his arms to possess
her; they kissed often, and were out of breath. A door creaked. The
two started asunder in the shadows with an impatient stare into each
other's eyes.
Sforza the Gonfaloniere stood on the threshold, clad plainly in a suit
of black velvet, with a sword buckled at his side. He bowed over
Duessa's hand, kissed her finger tips, excusing himself the while for
the delay. He was very suave, very facile, as was his wont. The Lady
Duessa took his excuses with good grace, remembering their compact, and
the common purpose of their ambitions.
"Gonfaloniere, we wait our initiation."
Sforza's eyes were fixed on Balthasar with a keen and ironical glitter.
"Very good, madame."
"Remember; Lord Flavian's head, that is to be my guerdon."
"Madame, we will remember it. And this gentleman?"
"Is the friend of whom I spoke."
"A most loyal friend, methinks?"
"True."
The Gonfaloniere coughed behind his fingers, and spoke in his half-husky
tenor.
"You are ready to risk everything?"
Duessa reassured him.
"Expect no blood and thunder ceremonial," he said to them; "we are grim
folk, but very simple. Your presence will incriminate you both. Be
convinced of that."
He led them by a little closet into the state-room of the palace, a rich
chamber lit by many tapers, its doorway held by a guard of armed men.
Statues in the antique gleamed in the alcoves. The panelling shone with
gem-brilliant colouring. Armoires and carved cabinets stood against the
walls. The ceiling was of purple, with the signs of the Zodiac in gold
thereon.
In the centre of the room, before a slightly raised dais, stood a round
table inlaid with diverse-coloured stones. Scrolls, quills, and inkhorns
covered it. Some twoscore men were gathered round the table, staring
with masked faces at a map spread before them--a map showing all the
provinces of the south, with towns and castles marked in vermilion ink
thereon. A big man in a red cloak stood conning the parchment, pointing
out with a long forefinger certain marches to the masked folk about him.
Sforza pointed Duessa and Balthasar to a carved bench by the wall.
"Have the patience to listen for an hour," he said, turning to join the
men about the table.
A silver bell tinkled, and a priest came forward to patter a few prayers
in Latin. At the end thereof, the masked Samson in the red cloak stood
forward on the dais with uplifted fist. Instant silence held throughout
the room. The man in red began to speak in deep, full-throated tones
that seemed to vibrate from his sonorous chest.
His theme was the revolt, his arguments, the grim bleak facts that
bulked large in the brain of a leader of men. He dealt with realism,
with iron detail, and the strong suggestions of success. Revolt, in the
flesh, bubbled like lava at a crater's brim, seething to overflow and
scorch the land. It was plain that the speaker had great schemes, and a
will of adamant. His ardour ran down like a cataract, smiting into foam
the duller courage of the multitude.
When he had ended his heroic challenge to the world, he took by the hand
a girl who stood unmasked at his side. She was clad all in white with a
cross of gold over her bosom, and her face shone nigh as pallid as her
mantle. The men around the table craned forward to get the better view
of her. Nor was it her temporal beauty alone that set the fanatical
chins straining towards her figure. There was a radiance as of other
worlds upon her forehead, a glamour of sanctity as though some sacred
lamp shed a divine lustre through all her flesh.
At the moment that the man in the red mask had drawn the girl forward
beside him on the dais, Balthasar, with a stifled cry, had plucked the
Lady Duessa by the sleeve. She had started, and stared in the friar's
face as he spoke to her in a whisper, a scintillant malice gathering in
her eyes. Balthasar held her close to him by the wrist. They were
observed of none save by Fulviac, whose care it was to watch all men.
As Balthasar muttered to her, Duessa's frame seemed to straighten, to
dilate, to stiffen. She did not glance at the friar, but sat staring at
the girl in white upon the dais. The Madonna of the chapel of Avalon had
risen before her as by magic; her dispossessor stood before her in the
flesh. Balthasar's tongue bore witness to the truth. In the packed
passion of a moment, Duessa remembered her shame, her dishonour, her
hunger for revenge.
The girl upon the dais had been speaking to the men assembled round her
with the simple calm of one whose soul is assured of faith. For all her
fierce distraction each word had fallen into Duessa's brain like pebbles
into a well. A mocking, riotous scorn chuckled and leapt in her like
the laughter of some lewd faun. She heard not the zealous mutterings
that eddied through the room. Her eyes were fixed on the man in the red
cloak, as he bent to kiss the girl's slim hand.
She saw Fulviac turn and point to a roll of parchment on the table.
"We swim, sirs, or sink together," were his words; "there can be no
traitors to the cause. In three days we hoist our banner. In three
days Gilderoy shall rise. Sign, gentlemen, sign, in the name of God and
of our Lady."
The leaders of Gilderoy crowded about the table where Prosper the
Preacher waited with quill and testament, Sforza standing with drawn
sword beside him. Fulviac had headed those who took the oath, and had
drawn back from the press on to the dais. Meanwhile Duessa, with
Balthasar muttering discretions in her ear, had skirted the black knot
of conspirators and come close upon Fulviac. While Sforza and the rest
were intent upon the scroll, she plucked the man in red by the sleeve,
and spoke to him in an undertone.
"A word with you in an alcove."
Fulviac stared, but drew aside from the group none the less and followed
her. She had moved to an oriel and sat down on the cushioned seat, her
black robe sweeping the crimson cloth. Fulviac stood and faced her,
thus closing her escape from the oriel. Midway between them and the
table, Balthasar stood biting his nails in sullen vexation, ignorant of
where the woman's headstrong passions might be bearing them.
Duessa soon had Fulviac at the tongue's point.
"You are the first man in this assemblage?" she had asked him.
"Madame, that is so."
"I have a truth to make known."
"Unmask to me."
She hesitated, then obeyed him.
"Possibly I am known to you," she said.
Fulviac stood back a step, and looked at her as a man might look at an
old love. A knot of wrinkles showed on his forehead.
"Duessa of the Black Hair."
"Ah, in the old days."
"What would you now, madame?"
"Let me see your face."
"No."
"You hold me at a disadvantage."
"That is well. Tell me this tale of yours."
His voice was cold as a frost, and there was an inclement look about him
that should have warned the woman had she been less blinded by her own
malice. She had lost her cunning in her fuming passion, and denounced
when she should have suggested, blurted the whole when a hint would have
sufficed her.
"I was the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault's wife," she said.
"That man!"
"That devil!"
Fulviac drew a deep breath.
"Well?" he said.
"The fellow has divorced me; I will tell you why. You are the man they
call Fulviac. It was you who took the Lord Flavian in an ambuscade, to
kill him, for the sake of Yeoland of Cambremont, who stands yonder. The
whole tale is mine. It was that girl who let the Lord Flavian escape
out of your hands. A fine fool she is making of you, my friend. A
saint, forsooth! Flavian of Avalon might sing you a strange song."
Duessa took breath. She had prophesied passion, a volcanic outburst.
Fulviac leant against the wainscotting with folded arms, his masked face
impenetrable, and calm as stone. He stirred never a muscle. Duessa had
ventured forth into the deeps.
The man thrust a question at her suddenly.
"You can prove the truth of this?"
Duessa pointed him to Fra Balthasar.
"The priest can bear out my tale. I will beckon him."
"Wait."
"Ah!"
"Does Sforza know of this?"
"None know it, save I and yonder priest."
"Then I uncover to you."
He jerked his mask away, and stood half stooping towards her with a
peculiar lustre in his eyes. Duessa stared at him as at one risen from
the dead. Her face blanched and stiffened into a bleak, gaping terror,
and she could not speak.
"Your tale dies with you."
He smote her suddenly in the bosom with his poniard, smote her so
heavily that the blow dragged her to her knees. She screamed like a
trapped hare, pressed her hands over her bosom, blood oozing over them.
A last malevolence leapt into her eyes; she panted and strove to speak.
"Listen, sirs, hear me----"
Fulviac, standing over her like a Titan, smote her again to silence, and
for ever. With arms thrust upwards, she fell forward along the floor,
her white face hidden by her hood. A red ringlet curled away over the
polished oak. Fulviac had sprung away with jaw clenched, his face as
stone. He drew his sword, plucked Balthasar by the throat, hurled him
back against the wainscotting.
"A spy, poniard him."
The great room rushed into uproar; the guards came running from the
door. Fulviac had passed his sword through Balthasar's body. The friar
rolled upon the floor, yelping, and clutching at the swords that stabbed
him. It was soon over; not a moan, not a whimper. Sforza, white as a
corpse, gripped Fulviac by the shoulder.
"Know you whom you have killed?"
"Well enough, Gonfaloniere."
"What means it?"
"That I am a brave man."
Sforza quailed from him and ran to the oriel, where several men had
lifted the woman in their arms. Her lustrous hair fell down from under
her hood; her hands, stained with her own blood, trailed limply on the
floor. She was a pathetic figure with her pale, fair face and drooping
lids. The men murmured as they held her, like some poor bird, still warm
and plastic, with the life but half flown from her body.
Fulviac stood and looked down into her face. His sword still smoked
with Balthasar's blood.
"Sirs," he said, and his strong voice shook, "hear me, I will tell you
the truth. Once I loved that woman, but she was evil, evil to the core.
To-night she came bringing discord and treachery amongst us. I have
done murder before God for the sake of the cause. Cover her face; it
was ever too fair to look upon. Heaven rest her soul!"
XXV
Two days had passed since the secret assembly in the house of Sforza,
Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy. They had buried Duessa and Balthasar by night
in the rose garden, by the light of a single lantern, with the fallen
petals for a pall. It was the evening before the day when the land
should rise in arms to overthrow feudal injustice and oppression. On
the morrow the great cliff would be desolate, its garrison marching
through the black pine woods on Avalon and Geraint.
Towards eve, when the sky was clear as a single sapphire, Fulviac came
from his parlour seeking Yeoland, to find her little chamber empty. A
strange smile played upon his face as he looked round the room with
crucifix, embroidery frame, and prayer-desk, with rosary hung thereon.
He picked up her lute, thrummed the strings, and broke broodingly into
the sway of some southern song:
"Ah, woman of love,
With the stars in the night,
I see thee above
In a circlet of light.
On the west's scarlet scutcheon
I mark thy device;
And the shade of the forest
Makes gloom of thine eyes,
God's twilight
To me."
He ended the stanza, kissed the riband, and set the lute down with a
certain quaint reverence. The postern stood open and admonished him.
He passed out down the cliff stairway to the forest.
An indescribable peace pervaded the woods, a supreme silence such as the
shepherd on the hills knows when the stars beckon to his soul. Fulviac
walked slowly and thought the more. He felt the altitude of the forest
stillness as of miles of luminous, windless aether; he felt the
anguishing pathos of a woman's face; he felt the strangeness of the new
philosophy that appealed to his heart. Nothing is more fascinating than
watching a spiritual upheaval in one's own soul; watching some great
power breaking up the crust of custom and habit; pondering the while on
the eternal mysteries that baffle reason.
He found Yeoland amid the pines. She had been to the forest grave and
was returning towards the cliff when the man met her. She seemed whiter
than was her wont, her dark eyes looking solemn and shadowy under their
sweeping lashes. She seemed marvellously fair, marvellously pure and
fragile, as she came towards him under the trees.
Something in Fulviac's look startled her. Women are like the sea to the
cloudy moods of men, in that they catch every sun-ray and shadow. An
indefinite something in the man's manner made her restless and
apprehensive. She went near to him with questioning eyes and laid her
hand upon his arm.
"You have had bad news?"
"Nothing."
"Something has troubled you?"
"Perhaps."
She looked at him pensively, a suspicion of reproach, pity, and
understanding in her eyes.
"Is it remorse, your conscience?"
"My conscience? Have I had one!"
"You have a strong conscience."
"_Deo gratias_. Then you have unearthed it, madame."
A vein of infinite bitterness and melancholy seemed to glimmer in his
mood. It was a moment of self-speculation. The girl still looked up
into his face.
"Why did you kill that woman?"
"Why?"
"Her dead face haunts me, I see it everywhere; there is some strange
shadow over my soul. O that I could get her last cry from my ears!"
Fulviac, with a sudden burst of cynicism, broke into grim laughter, a
sound like the rattling of dry bones in a closet. The girl shrank away
with her lips twitching.
"Why cannot you trust me with the truth?"
"Truth is not always beneficent. It was a matter of policy, of
diplomacy."
"Why?"
"Discords are bad at the eleventh hour. That woman could have
half-wrecked our cause. It was policy to silence her and the man. I
made sure of it by killing them."
Yeoland's face had a shadow of repugnance upon it; her eyes darkened.
The man seemed in a callous, scoffing humour; it was mere glittering
steel over the bitterness within.
"You will tell me her name?"
"What is it to you?"
"She haunts me."
"Forget her."
"I cannot."
"Have the truth if you will. She was the wife of the Lord Flavian of
Gambrevault."
The girl stood motionless for a moment; then swayed away several steps
from Fulviac under the trees. One hand was at her throat; her voice
came in a whisper.
"What did she tell you?"
"Many things."
"Quick, do they touch me?"
Fulviac choked an oath, and played with his sword.
"Then there was some truth in her?" he said.
The girl grew imperious.
"I command you to tell me all."
"Madame, the woman declared you were a traitress, and that this
lordling, this Flavian of Gambrevault, loved you."
"And you killed her----"
"For your sake and the cause. She might have cast our Saint out of
heaven."
Yeoland went back from him and leant against a tree, with her hands over
her eyes. Sunlight splashed down upon her dress; she shivered as in a
cold wind, and could not speak. Fulviac's voice, level and passionless,
questioned her as she stood and hid her face.
"You let the Lord Flavian escape?"
"I did."
"Have you seen him since?"
"I have."
"Thanks for the truth."
Her responses had come like chords smitten from the strings of a lute.
She started away from the tree and began to walk up and down, wringing
her hands. Her face was like the face of one in torture, and she seemed
to struggle for breath.
"Fulviac, I could not kill the man."
The words came like a wail.
"He was young, and he besought me when your men were breaking down the
gate. What could I do, what could I do? He was young, and I let him go
by the postern and told you a lie. God help me, I told you a lie."
The man watched her with arms folded. There was a look of deep
melancholy upon his face, as of one wounded by the truth. His voice was
sad but resolute.
"And the rest?"
She rallied suddenly and came to him with truth in her eyes; they were
wonderfully piteous and appealing.
"God knows I have been loyal to you. The man tempted me, but I
withstood him; I kept my loyalty."
"And you told him----?"
"Nothing, nothing; he is as innocent as a child."
Fulviac looked down at her with a great light in his eyes. He spoke
slowly and with a deeper intonation in his voice.
"I have dealt with many bad women," he said, "but I believe you are
speaking the truth."
"It is the truth."
"I take it as such; you have been too much a woman."
"Ah, if you could only forgive."
He stepped forward suddenly, took her hands, and looked down at her with
a vast tenderness.
"Little woman, if I told you I loved you, would you still swear that you
have spoken the truth?"
"God judge me, Fulviac, I have been loyal."
A strange light played upon his face.
"And I, ye heavens, have I learnt my lesson in these later days? Girl,
you are above me as the stars; I may but kiss your hands, no more. You
are not for worldly ways, or for me. Battered, war-worn veteran, I have
come again by the heart of a boy. Fear me not, little woman, there is
no anger in a great love, only deep grieving and unalterable honour."
XXVI
It was dawn; mists covered the forest; not a wind stirred or sobbed amid
the boughs. A vast grey canopy seemed to tent the world, a mysterious
veil that tempered the sun and spread a spiritual gloom over rock and
tree.
The noise of horns played through the misty aisles--horns many-tongued,
faint, clamorous, like the trumpeting of forest elves. There was the
dull, rhythmic onrush of many thousand feet, the hurrying, multitudinous
tramp of men marching. Armour gleamed through the glooms; casque and
bassinet, salade and cap of steel flowed on and on as phosphorescent
ripples on a subterranean stream. Pike, glaive, gisarme shone like
stubble over the forest slopes. The sullen tramp of men, the clashing
clamour of arms, the blaring of a solitary clarion, such were songs of
the great pine forest on that July morning.
Yeoland, rebel lady and saint, on a great white horse, rode at Fulviac's
side in full armour, save for her helmet. Her horse was cased in
steel--chamfron, crinet, gorget, poitrel, croupiere gleaming like
burnished silver. She made a fine and martial figure enough, a
glittering dawn star for a heroic cause. About her rode her guard, the
pick of Fulviac's men, some fifty spears in all, masses of steel, each
bearing a scarlet cross blazoned upon his white jupon. Nord of the
Hammer bore the red banner worked by the girl's own hands. They were
hardy men and big of bone, sworn to keep and guard her to the death.
Fulviac and Yeoland rode side by side like brothers in arms. All about
them were rolling spears and rocking helmets moving among the myriad
trees. The sound of arms surged round them like the ominous onrush of a
sea. War followed like a thunder-cloud on their heels.
Fulviac was in great spirits, somewhat solemn and philosophic, but full
of the exultation of a man who feels his ship surging on the foaming
backs of giant billows. His eyes were proud enough when they scanned the
girl at his side. His heart thundered an echo to the grim tramp of his
men on the march.
"To-day," he said, making grandiose flourishes with his sword, "the
future unrobes to us. We plunge like Ulysses into the unknown. This is
life with a vengeance!"
She had a smile on her lips and a far-away look in her eyes.
"If you love me," she said, "be merciful."
"Ah, you are always a woman."
"There are many women such as I am; there are many hearts that may be
wounded; there are many children."
He looked at her meditatively, as though her words were both bitter and
sweet in his mouth.
"You must play the philosopher, little woman; remember that we work for
great ends. I will have mercy when mercy is expedient. But we must
strike, and strike terror, we must crush, we must kill."
"Yet be merciful."
"War is no pastime; men grip with gauntlets of iron, not with velvet
gloves. Fanaticism, hate, revenge, patriotism, lust of plunder, and the
rest, what powers are these to let loose upon a land! We have the
oppression of centuries red in our bosoms. War is no mere subtle game
of chess; the wolf comes from the wilderness; the vulture swings in the
sky. Fire, death, blood, rapine, and despair, such are the elements of
war."
"I know, I know."
"To purge a field, we burn the crop. To convert, we set swords leaping.
To cleanse, we let in the sea. To move the fabrics of custom and the
past, a man must play the Hercules. God crushes great nations to insure
the inevitable evolution of His will. To move the world, one must play
the god."
It was noon when the vanguard cleared the trees, and spread rank on rank
over the edge of a moor. A zealous sun shone overhead, and the world
was full of light and colour, the heather already a blaze of purple, the
bracken still virgin, the dense dark pines richly green against the
white and azure of the sky.
Fulviac, Yeoland, and her guards rode out to a hillock and took station
under the banner of the Cross. The forest belched steel; rank on rank
swept out with pikes glittering; shields shone, and colours juggled
mosaics haphazard. Horse and foot rolled out into the sun, and gathered
in masses about the scarlet banner and the girl in her silvery harness
on the great white horse. The forest shadows were behind them, they had
cast off its cloak; the world lay bare to their faces; they were hurling
their challenge in the face of Fate. Every man in the mass might well
have felt the future glowing upon his brain, might well conceive himself
a hero and a patriot. It was a deep, sonorous shout that rolled up,
when a thousand points of steel smote upwards to the heavens. Yeoland,
amid her guards, had dim visions of the power vested in her slender
sword. Where her banner flew, there brave men would toss their pikes
with a cheer for the charge home. Where her sword pointed, a thousand
blades would leap to do her bidding. Even as she pondered these things,
the trumpets sounded and the men of the forest marched on.
Fulviac's plans had been matured but a week. His opening of the
campaign was briefly as follows. He was bearing north-west towards
Geraint, and Geraint was to rise that night, massacre the King's
garrison, and come out to him. Avalon lay in Fulviac's path. He was to
smite a blow at it on his march, surprise the place if possible, and
then hold on for Geraint. The same night, Gilderoy would rise; the
castellan, who was with the townsfolk, would open the gates of the
castle and deliver up all arms and the siege train that was kept there.
From Geraint, Fulviac trusted to ride on with a single troop to take
command at Gilderoy, leaving Nord, Prosper, and the girl Yeoland in
command at Geraint. With his numbers raised to some twenty thousand
men, he would have his force divided into two bodies--ten thousand at
Gilderoy, ten thousand at Geraint. These two bodies would sweep up by
forced marches, converge on Gambrevault, crush the Lord Flavian's small
armament, shut him up in his castle. Assault or leaguer would do the
rest. Meanwhile the peasantry would rise and flock in to the standard
of the people.
Free of the forest, Fulviac sent on a troop of horse towards Geraint to
warn the townsfolk of his advance. With the main mass of the foot, he
held northwards over hill and dale, and towards evening touched the hem
of the oak woods that wrapped the manor of Avalon. The place was but
feebly garrisoned, as the Lord Flavian had withdrawn most of his men to
Gambrevault, dreaming little of the thunder-storm that was shadowing the
land.
Fulviac had his plan matured. Fifty men-at-arms in red and green, the
Gambrevault colours, were to advance with a forged pennon upon the
place, as though sent as a reinforcement from Gambrevault. The main
body would follow at a distance and lie ambushed in the woods. If the
ruse answered, and it was an old trick enough, the barbican and gate
could be held till Fulviac came up and made matters sure. Thus Avalon
would fall, proto-martyr on the side of feudalism.
Nor were Fulviac's prognostications at fault. There were not sixty men
in Avalon, and Fulviac's fifty gained footing in the place and held
their ground till the rest came up. The affair was over, save for some
desultory slaughter on the turrets, when Fulviac galloped forward over
the meadows with Yeoland and her guard. The man kept the girl on the
further side of the moat, and did not suffer her to stumble too suddenly
on the realities of war. He feared wisely her woman's nature, and did
not desire to overshock her senses. The butchery was over when they
neared the walls. They heard certain promiscuous yelpings, and saw half
a dozen men-at-arms, who had made a last stand on a tower, tumbled
headlong over the battlements into the moat below. Fulviac did not
suffer the girl to cross the bridge. What passed within was hidden by
the impenetrable massiveness of the sullen walls.
Thus Avalon, fair castle of the woods and waters, sent out her wistful
prophecy to the land. In her towers and galleries men lay dead, bleak
and stiff, contorted into fantastic attitudes, with pike or sword
sucking their vitals. Blood crept down the stairs; dead men cumbered the
beds and jammed the doors. There had been much screaming among the
women; even Fulviac's orders could not cool the passions of the mob; it
was well indeed that he kept Yeoland innocent in the meadows.
Fanaticism, ignorance, lust were loose in Avalon like evil beasts. All
its fairness was defamed in one short hour. Hangings were torn down,
furniture wrecked and shattered, chests and cupboards spoiled of all
their store. In the chapel, where refugees had fled to the altar, there
had been slaughter, merciless and brutal. Bertrand, the old knight and
seneschal, lay dead on the altar steps, with a broken sword and fifty
rents in his carcase. Men were breaking the images, defacing the
frescoes, strewing all the place with blood and riot. Nord of the
Hammer stood over the cellar door with his great mace over his shoulder,
and kept the men from the wine. Elsewhere the mob rooted like a herd of
swine in the rich chambers, and worked to the uttermost its swinish
will.
When the day was past, Fulviac and his men, as hounds that have tasted
blood, marched on exultantly towards Geraint. Night and great silence
settled down over Avalon. The woods watched like a host of plaintive
mourners over the scene. The moon rose and shone on the glimmering mere
and swooning lilies, and streamed in through shattered casements on men
sleeping in their blood, on ruin, and the ghastly shape of death.
XXVII
Gilderoy had risen.
It was midnight. A great bell boomed and clashed over the city, with a
roar of many voices floating on the wind, like the sullen thunder of a
rising sea. Torches flashed and ebbed along the streets, with hundreds
of scampering shadows, and a glinting of steel. Knots of armed men
hurried towards the great piazza, where, by the City Cross, Sforza the
Gonfaloniere and his senators had gathered about the red and white
Gonfalon of the Commune. All the Guild companies were there with their
banners and men-at-arms. "Fulviac," "Saint Yeoland," "Liberty and the
Commune": such were the watchwords that filled the mouths of the mob.
Cressets had burst into flame on the castle's towers, lighting a lurid
firmament; while from the steeps of the city, where stood the palaces of
the nobles, smoke and flame began to rush ominously into the night.
Waves of hoarse ululations seemed to sweep the city from north, south,
east, and west. Trumpets were clanging in the castle, drums beating,
fifes braying. Through the indescribable chaos the great bell smote on,
throbbing through the minutes like the heart of a god.
It will be remembered that the Lord Flavian was in Gilderoy for the
purchasing of arms. At midnight you would have found him in his state
bed-chamber in the abbot's palace, tugging at his hose, fumbling at his
points and doublet, buckling on his sword. He was hardly awake with the
single taper winking in the gloom. The shrill ululations of the mob
sounded through the house, with the clash of swords and the crash of
hammers. The Lord Flavian craned from the window, saw what he could,
heard much, and wondered if hell had broken loose.
"Fulviac and the Commune!"
"Saint Yeoland!"
"Down with the lords, down with the priests!"
The man at the window heard these cries, and puzzled them out in his
peril. Certainly he was a lord; therefore unpopular. And Yeoland!
Wherefore was that name sounding on the tongues of brothel-mongers and
cooks! Was he still dreaming? Certes, these rallying-cries carried a
certain blunt hint, advising him that he would have to care for his own
skin.
Malise, his page, knelt at the door with his ear to the key-hole. The
boy was in his shirt and breeches, and trembling like an aspen. Flavian
stood over him. They heard a rending sound as of a gate giving, a roar
as of water breaking through a dam, a yelp, a scream or two, a confused
medley of many voices.
Flavian told Malise to open the door and look out into the gallery. He
did so. A man, more zealous than the rest, sprang out of the dark and
stabbed at the lad's throat. He fell with a whimper. Flavian plunged
his sword home, dragged Malise within, barred the door again. Very
tenderly he lifted the boy in his arms. Malise's hands clung about his
lord's neck; he moaned a little, and was very white.
"Save yourself, messire!"
Flavian bore him towards a door that stood open in the panelling. He
felt the lad's blood soaking through his doublet; entreaties were poured
into his ears.
"I die, I die; oh, the smart, the burn of it! Leave me, messire; let me
lie still!"
"Nonsense----"
"It is no use; I have it deep, the man's knife went home."
Flavian felt the lad's hands relax, saw his head droop on his shoulder.
He turned and put him down on the bed, and knelt there, while Malise
panted and strove to speak.
"Go--messire."
Flavian was trying to staunch the flow from the boy's neck with a corner
of the sheeting. His own doublet was drenched with blood. In a minute
he saw the futility of such unconscious heroism; the flickering taper by
the bed told that Malise's life would ebb before its own light would be
gutted. Blows were being dealt upon the door. Flavian kissed the lad,
took the taper, and passed out by the panel in the wainscotting.
A stairway led him to a little gate that opened on the abbot's garden.
He more than thought to find the passage disputed, but the place
stretched quiet before him as he came out with sword drawn. The scent
of the flowers and fragrant shrubs was heavy on the night air, and the
shouts of the mob sounded over the black roofs, and rang in his ears
with an inspiriting fury.
There was a gate at the far end of the garden, opening through a stone
wall into a narrow alley, and Flavian, as he scoured the paths, could
see pike points bobbing above the wall, and a flare of torches. Men
were breaking in even here, and he was caught like a rat in a corner.
In an angle of the wall he found a big marrow bed, and crawling under
the leaves like a worm, he smeared dirt over his face and clothes and
awaited developments. In another minute the garden gate fell away, and
a tatterdemalion rout poured in, strenuous and frothy as any tavern
pack. They spread over the garden towards the house, shouting and
blaspheming like a herd of satyrs. Flavian saw his chance, plunged from
his dark corner, and joined the mob of moving figures. Dirty face and
dirtier clothes were in kindred keeping. He shouted as lustily as any,
and by dint of gradual and discreet circumlocutions, edged to the gate
and escaped into the now-deserted alley.
Running on, he skirted the abbey and came out into the square that
flanked the abbey church, and the great gate. A hundred torches seemed
moving behind the abbey windows. The square teemed and smoked with
riot. Flavian went into the crowd with drawn sword, screeching out mob
cries like any huckster, smiting men on the back, laughing and swearing
as in excellent humour. His gusto saved him. As he passed through the
mob he saw heads, gory and mangled, dancing upon pikes; he saw women
drunk with beer and violence, waving a severed foot or hand, kissing
men, hugging each other, mouthing unutterable obscenities in the mad
delirium of the hour. He saw whelps of boys scrambling and struggling
for some ghastly relic; scavengers and sweeps dressed up in the habits
of the Benedictines they had slain. One man carried in his palm an eye
that had been torn from its socket, which he held with a leer in the
faces of his fellows. Further still, he saw half a dozen beggars
dragging the dead body of a lady over the stones by cords fastened to
the ankles, while dogs worried and tore at the flesh. He learnt
afterwards that it was the body of his own cousin, a young girl who had
been lately betrothed. Last of all, he saw a carcase dangling from a
great iron lamp bracket in the centre of the square, and understood from
the crowd that it was the body of the abbot, his uncle. Men and women
were pelting it with offal.
And he, an aristocrat of aristocrats, dirty and dishevelled, rubbed
shoulders with the scourings of the gutter, shouted their shouts, echoed
their exultation. At first the grim humour of the thing smote him in
grosser farcical fashion; but the mood was not for long. He remembered
Malise, whimpering and quivering in his arms; he remembered the body
dragged about the square and worried by dogs; he remembered the carcase
swinging by the rope; he remembered the dripping heads and the fragments
of flesh tossed about by the maddened and intoxicated mob. It was then
that his eyes grew hot with shame and his blood ran like lava through
his veins. It was then that the spirit of a vampire rushed into his
heart, and that he swore great solemn oaths by all the bones and relics
of the saints. God give him a hale body out of Gilderoy, and this city
scum should be scourged with iron and roasted by fire.
He got across the square by dint of his noisy hypocrisy, and turned
morosely into a dark alley that led towards the walls. Hot-hearted
gentleman, the mere panic-stricken thirst for existence had cooled out
of him, and he was in a fine, rendering passion to his finger-tips, a
striding, blasphemous temper, that longed to take the whole city by the
throat and beat a fist in its bloated face. He wondered what had become
of his knights, esquires, and men-at-arms. It was told him in later days
how they died fighting in the abbey refectory, died with the
Benedictines at their side, and a rare barrier of corpses to tell of the
swing of their swords.
Flavian dodged into a dark porch to consider his circumstances and the
baffling influence of the same. He had caught enough from the mob to
comprehend what had occurred, and what was to follow. Certainly for
many months he had heard rumours, but, like other demigods, he had
turned a deaf ear and smiled like a Saturn. The largeness of the
upheaval stupefied him at first; now, as he pondered it, it gave a more
heroic colour to his passions.
To be free of Gilderoy: that was the necessity. He guessed shrewdly
enough that the gates would be well guarded. And the walls! He smote
his thigh and remembered where the river coursed round the rocky
foundations, and washed the walls. A big plunge, a swim, and he would
have liberty enough and to spare.
He set off instanter down alleys and byways, through the most
poverty-stricken quarter of the city. The place had a hundred stenches
on a hot summer night. Naturally enough, such haunts were deserted,
save for a few hags garrulous at the doorways, and a few fragments of
dirt, called by courtesy, children. The rats had gone marauding,
leaving their offal heaps empty.
Keen as a fox, he threaded on, and came before long to the walls, a
black mass, rising above the hovels packed like pigsties to the very
ramparts. Avoiding a tower, he held along a lane that skirted the wall,
looking for one of the many stairways leading to the battlements. It
was here, in the light of a tavern window, that he came plump upon two
sweaty artisans, rendered somewhat more gross and insolent by the fumes
of liquor. The men challenged Flavian with drunken arrogance; they had
their password, to the devil. All the accumulated viciousness of an hour
tingled in his sword arm. He fell upon the men like a Barak, kicked one
carcase into the gutter, and ran on.
He was soon up a stairway, and on the walls, finding them absolutely
deserted. The city stretched behind him, a black chaos, emitting a grim
uproar, its dark slopes chequered here and there with angry flame.
Before him swept the river, and he heard it swirling amid the reeds.
Further still, meadows lay open to the stars, and in the distance stood
solemn woods and heights, touched with the silver of the sky.
He moved on to where a loop of the river curled up to wash the walls.
The water was in full flood at the place, and he heard it gurgling
cheerily against the stones. Flavian took a last look at Gilderoy, its
castle red with burning cressets, its multitudinous roofs, its uproar
like the noise of a nest of hornets. He shook his fist over the city,
climbed the battlements, jumped for it, plunged like a log, came up
spluttering to strike out for the further bank.
In the meadows the townsfolk kept horses at graze. Flavian, aglow to the
finger-tips, with water squelching from his shoes, caught a cob that was
hobbled in a field hard by the river. He unhobbled the beast, hung on
by the mane, mounted, and set off bare-back for the road to Gambrevault.
XXVIII
Dawn climbing red over pinewoods piled on the hills; dawn optimistic yet
ominous, harbinger of war and such perils as set the heart leaping and
the blood afire; dawn that cried unto the world, "Better one burst of
heroism and then the grave, than a miserable monotony of nothingness, a
domestic surfeiting of the senses with a wife and a fat larder."
Out of the east climbed the man on the stolen horse, riding out of the
dawn with the lurid phantasms of the night still running riot in his
brain. No sleep had smoothed the crumpled page, or touched the memory
with unguent to assuage the smart. Maledictions, vengeances, prophecies
of fire and sword rushed with the red dawn over the hills.
With forty miles behind him, he came on his jaded, sweaty beast towards
his own castle of Gambrevault, forded his own stream, saw his mills
gushing foam, heard the thunder of the weir. How eternally peaceful
everything seemed in the dewy amber light of the dawn! Away rolled the
downs, billows of glorious green, into the west. Gambrevault's towers
rose against the blue; he saw the camp in the meadows; his own banner
blowing to the breeze.
The meadows that morning were quiet as a graveyard, as the Lord Flavian
rode through to the great gate of Gambrevault. Soldiers idling about,
stiffened up, saluted, stared in astonishment at the grim, morose-faced
man, who rode by on a foundered horse, looking neither to the right hand
nor the left. He cut something of a figure, as though he had been in a
tavern brawl, and had spent the night snoring in a cow-house. Yet there
was an indescribable power and dignity in the tatterdemalion rider for
all his tumbled look. The compressed lips, knotted brow, smouldering
eyes spoke of phenomenal emotions, phenomenal passions. Not a man
cheered, and the silence was yet more eloquent than clamour. He rode in
by the great gate, and parrying the blank glances and interrogations of
his knights, called for two esquires, and withdrew to his own state
rooms.
His first trouble was to acknowledge such necessities as hunger and
cleanliness. He contrived to compass both at once, eating ravenously
even while he was in the bath. His next command was for his harness, and
his esquires armed him, agog for news, even waxing inquisitive, to be
snubbed for their pains.
"Assemble my knights and gentlemen in the great hall," ran his order,
and after praying awhile in his own private oratory, he passed down to
join the assemblage, solemn and soul-burdened as a young Jove.
There is a certain vain satisfaction in being the possessor of some
phenomenal piece of news, wherewith to astonish a circle of friends.
The dramatic person blurts it out like a stage duke; the real epicure
lets it filter through his teeth in fragments, watching with a twinkling
satisfaction its effect upon his hearers. The Lord Flavian's
revelations that morning were deliberate and gradual, leisurely in the
extreme. Many a man waxes flippant or cynical when his feelings are
deep and sincere, and he is disinclined to bare his heart to the world.
Flavian addressed his assembled knights with a certain stinted and
pedantic courtliness; when they had warmed to his level, then he could
indulge his sympathies to the full. The atmosphere about those who wait
to hear our experiences or opinions is often like cold water, somewhat
repellent till the first plunge has been tried.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I regret to inform you that the Abbot Porphyry,
my uncle, is numbered with the saints."
So much for the first confession; it elicited a sympathetic murmur from
those assembled, a very proper and respectable expression of feeling,
but nothing passionate.
"I also have to inform you, with much Christian resignation, that Sir
Jordan and Sir Kay, Malise, my page, and some twenty men-at-arms are in
all human probability dead."
This time some glimmer of light pervaded the hall. There was still
mystification, silence, and an exchanging of glances.
"Finally, gentlemen, I may confess to you that a great insurrection is
afoot in the land; that Gilderoy has declared against the King and the
nobility; that the scum of a populace has made a great massacre of the
magnates; that I, gentlemen, by the grace of God, have escaped to preach
to you of these things."
A chorus of grim ejaculations came from the knights and the captains
assembled. Astonishment, and emotions more durable, showed on every
face. Flavian gained heat, and let his tongue have liberty; at the end
of ten minutes of fervid oratory, the men were as wise as their lord and
every wit as vicious. Gilderoy had signalised her rising in blood; mob
rule had been proclaimed; the peasantry and townsfolk had thrown down
the glove to the nobles. These were bleak, plain facts, that touched to
the quick the men who stood gathered in the great hall of Gambrevault.
Not a sword was in its scabbard when Modred's deep voice gave the cry--
"God and St. Philip--for the King."
Then like a powder bag flung into a fire came the news of the storming
and wrecking of Avalon. A single man-at-arms had escaped the slaughter,
escaped by crawling down an offal shoot and hiding till the rebels
evacuated the place and marched under cover of night for Geraint. The
man had crept out and fled on foot from the stricken place for
Gambrevault. It was a tramp of ten leagues, but he had stuck to it
through the night like a Trojan, and, knowing the road well, had reached
Gambrevault before the sun was at noon. They brought him before Flavian
and the rest, fagged to the fifth toe, and hardly able to stand. He
told the whole tale, as much as he knew of it, in a blunt yet dazed way.
His senses appeared numbed by the deeds that had been done that night.
Flavian leant back in his escutcheoned chair, and gnawed at his lip.
This last thrust had gone home more keenly than the rest. That castle
of lilies, Avalon the fair, was but a friend of wood and stone, yet a
friend having wondrous hold upon his heart. He had been born there, and
under the shadows of its towers his mother had taken her last sacrament.
Men can love a tree, a cottage, a stream; Flavian loved Avalon as being
the temple of the unutterable memories of the past. Desolation and
ruin! Bertrand, his old master at arms, slain! He sprang up like an
Achilles with the ghost of Patroclus haunting his soul.
"Gentlemen, shall these things pass? Hear me, God and the world, hear
my oath sworn in this my castle of Gambrevault. May I never rest till
these things are reprieved in blood, till there are too few men to bury
the dead. Though my walls fall, and my towers totter, though I win ruin
and a grave, I swear by the Sacrament to do such deeds as shall ring and
resound in history."
So they went all of them together, and swore by the body and blood of
the Lord to take such vengeance as the sword alone can give to the hot
passions of mankind.
That noon there was much stir and life in Gambrevault. The camp hummed
like a wasp's nest when violence threatens; the men were ready to run to
arms on the first sounding of the trumpet. Armourers and farriers were
at work. Flavian had sent out two companies of light horse to
reconnoitre towards Gilderoy and Geraint. They had orders not to draw
rein till they had sure view of such rebel voices as were on the march;
to hang on the horizon; to watch and follow; to send gallopers to
Gambrevault; on no account to give battle. Companies were despatched to
drive in the cattle from the hills, and to bring in fodder. The
Gambrevault mills were emptied of flour, and burnt to the ground, in
view of their being of use to the rebels in case of a siege. Certain
cottages and outhouses under the castle walls were demolished to leave
no cover for an attacking force. The cats, tribocs, catapults, and
bombards upon the battlements were overhauled, and cleared for a siege.
Towards evening, human wreckage began to drift in from the country,
bearing lamentable witness to the thoroughness of Fulviac's
incendiarism. Gambrevault might have stood for heaven by the strange
scattering of folk who came to seek its sanctuary. Fire and sword were
abroad with a vengeance; cottars, borderers, and villains had risen in
the night; treachery had drawn its poniard; even the hound had snapped
at its master's hand.
Many pathetic figures passed under the great arch of Gambrevault gate
that day. First a knight came in on horseback, a baby in his arms, and
a woman clinging behind him, sole relics of a home. Margaret, the
grey-haired countess of St. Anne's, was brought in on a litter by a few
faithful men-at-arms; her husband and her two sons were dead. Young
Prosper of Fountains came in on a pony; the lad wept like a girl when
questioned, and told of a mother and a sire butchered, a home sacked and
burnt. There were stern faces in Gambrevault that day, and looks more
eloquent than words. "Verily," said Flavian to Modred the Strong, "we
shall have need of our swords, and God grant that we use them to good
purpose."
So night drew near, and still no riders had come from the companies that
had ridden out to reconnoitre towards Gilderoy and Geraint. Flavian had
had a hundred duties on his hands: exercising his courtesy to the
refugees, condoling, reassuring; inspecting the defences and the siege
train; superintending the victualling of the place. He had ordered his
troops under arms in the meadows, and had spoken to them of what had
passed at Gilderoy, and what might be looked for in the future. There
seemed no lack of loyalty on their part. Flavian had ever been a
magnanimous and a generous overlord, glad to be merciful, and no
libertine at the expense of his underlings. His feudatories were bound
to him by ties more strong than mere legalities. They cheered him
loudly enough as he rode along the lines in full armour, with fifty
knights following as his guard.
Night came. Outposts had been pushed forward to the woods, and a strong
picket held the ford across the river. On the battlements guards went to
and fro, and clarions parcelled out the night, and rang the changes. In
the east there was a faint yellowish light in the sky, a distant glare
as of a fire many miles away. In the camp men were ready to fly to arms
at the first thunder of war over the hills.
Flavian held a council in the great hall, a council attended by all his
knights and captains. They had a great map spread upon the table, a
chart of the demesnes of Gambrevault and Avalon, and the surrounding
country. Their conjectures turned on the possible intentions of the
rebels, whether they would venture on a campaign in the open, or lie
snug within walls and indulge in raids and forays. And then--as to the
loyalty of their own troops? On this point Flavian was dogmatic, having
a generous and over-boyish heart, not quick to credit others with
treachery.
"I would take oath for my own men," he said; "their fathers have served
my fathers; I have never played the tyrant; there is every reason to
trust their loyalty."
An old knight, Sir Tristram, had taken a goodly share in the debate, a
veteran from the barons' wars, and a man of honest experience, no mere
pantaloon. His grey beard swept down upon his cuirass; his deep-set
eyes were full of intelligence under his bushy brows; the hands that
were laid upon the table were clawed and deformed by gout.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I have not the fitness and youth of many of you,
but I can lay claim to some wisdom in war. To my liege lord, whom,
sirs, I honour as a man of soul, I would address two proverbs. First,
despise not, sire, your enemies."
Modred laughed in his black beard.
"Reverence the scum of Gilderoy?"
"Ha, man, if we are well advised, these folk have been breathed upon by
fanaticism. I tell you, I have seen a meanly-born crowd make a very
stubborn day of it with some of the best troops that ever saw service.
Secondly, sire, I would say to you, turn off your mercenaries if the sky
looks black; never trust your neck to paid men when any great peril
threatens."
Flavian, out of his good sense, agreed with Tristram.
"Your words are weighty," he said. "So long as we are campaigning, I
will pay them well and keep them. If it comes to a siege, I will have
no hired bravos in Gambrevault. And now, gentlemen, it is late; get
what sleep you may, for who knows what may come with the morrow. Modred
and Geoffrey, I leave to you the visiting of the outposts to-night.
Order up my lutists and flute-players; I shall not sleep without a
song."
He passed alone to the outer battlements, and let the night expand about
his soul, the stars touch his meditations. From the minstrels' gallery
in the hall came the wail of viols, the voices of flute, dulcimer and
bassoon keeping a mellow under-chant. He heard the sea upon the rocks,
saw it glimmering dimly to end in a fringe of foam.
So his thoughts soared to the face of one woman in the world, the golden
Eve peering out of Paradise, whose soul seemed to ebb and flow like the
moan of the distant music. He fell into deep forecastings of the
future. He remembered her words to him, her mysterious warnings, her
inexplicable inconsistencies, her appeal to war. Gilderoy had taught him
much, and some measure of truth shone like a dawn spear in the east. A
gulf of war and vengeance stretched from his feet. Yet he let his soul
circle like a golden moth about the woman's beauty, while the wail of
the viols stole out upon his ears.
XXIX
Little store of sleep had the Lord of Gambrevault that night. War with
all its echoing prophecies played through his thought as a storm wind
through the rotting casements of a ruin. He beheld the high hills red
with beacons, the valleys filled with the surging steel of battle.
Gilderoy and its terrors flamed through his brain. Above all, like the
moon from a cloud shone the face of Yeoland, the Madonna of the Forest.
He was up and armed before dawn, and on the topmost battlements, eager
for the day. The sun came with splendour out of the east, hurling a
golden net over the woods piled upon the hills. Mists moved from off
the sea, that shimmered opalescent towards the dawn. Brine laded the
breeze. The waves were scalloped amber and purple, fringed with foam
about the agate cliffs.
The hours were void to the man till riders should come in with tidings
of how the revolt sped at Gilderoy and Geraint. The prophetic hints
that had been tossed to him from the tongues of the mob had served to
discover to him his own invidious fame. Gambrevault, on its rocky
headland, stood, the strongest castle in the south, a black mass looming
athwart the perilous path of war. The rebels would smite at it. Of that
its lord was assured.
At noon he attended mass in the chapel, with all his knights, solacing
his impatience with the purer aspirations of the soul. It was even as
he left the chapel that Sir Modred met him, telling how a galloper had
left the woods and was cantering over the meadows towards the headland.
The man was soon under the arch of the great gate, his sweating horse
smiting fire from the stones, dropping foam from his black muzzle. The
rider was Godamar, Flavian's favourite esquire, a ruddy youth, with the
heart of a Jonathan.
Modred brought him to the banqueting-hall, where Flavian awaited him in
full harness, two trumpeters at his back.
"Sire, Geraint has risen."
"Ha!"
"They are marching on Gambrevault."
"Your news, on with it."