wood over night. At dawn they had reconnoitred the town, and seen, to
their credit, black columns of "foot" pouring out by all the gates. The
Gambrevault company had fallen back upon the woods unseen, and had
watched the Gerainters massing in the city meadows about a red banner
and one in armour upon a white horse. Godamar had lain low in a thicket
and watched the rebels march by in the valley. They had passed between
two hundred paces of him, and he swore by Roland the Paladin that it was
a woman who rode the great white horse.
Flavian had listened to the man with a golden flux of fancy that had
divined something of the esquire's meaning.
"Godamar," he said.
"Sire?"
"You rode with me that day when we tracked a certain lady from
Cambremont glade towards the pine forest."
"Sire, you forestall me in thought."
"So?"
"I could even swear upon my sword that it is Yeoland of Cambremont who
rides with the Gerainters."
Flavian coloured and commended him. Godamar ran on.
"I threaded the thicket, sire, made a detour, galloped hard and rejoined
our company. The Gerainters were blind as bats; they had never a scout
to serve them. We kept under cover and watched their march. They came
due west in three columns, one following the other. Six miles from
Geraint, Longsword gave me a spare horse and sent me spurring to bring
you the news."
Flavian stroked his chin and brooded.
"Their numbers?" he asked anon.
"Ten thousand men, sire, we guessed it such."
Before Godamar had ended his despatch, a second galloper came in
breathless from Gilderoy. He had left Fulviac's rebels massing in the
meadows beyond the river, and had kept cover long enough to see the
foremost column wheel westwards and take the road for Gambrevault. The
scout numbered the Gilderoy force at anything between eight and twelve
thousand pikes. Fulviac had been on the march three hours.
The Lord of Avalon stood forward in the oriel in the full light of the
sun. Sea, hill, and woodland stretched before him under a peerless sky.
There was the scent of brine in the breeze, the banner of youth was
ablaze upon the hills. A red heart beat under his shimmering cuirass,
red blood flushed his brain. It was a season of romance and of lusty
daring, an hour when his manhood shone bright as his burnished sword.
Thoughts were tumbling, moving over his mind like water over a wheel.
Geraint stood ten leagues from Gambrevault, Gilderoy thirteen. The
Geraint forces had been on the march six hours or more, the men of
Gilderoy only three. Hence, by all the craft of Araby, they of Geraint
were three hours and three leagues to the fore. Bad generalship without
doubt, but vastly prophetic to the man figuring in the oriel, his
fingers drumming on the stone sill.
Strategy stirred in him, and waxed like a dragon created from some magic
crystal into the might of deeds. The Lord of Gambrevault caught the
strong smile of chivalry. A great venture burnt upon his sword. It was
no uncertain voice that rang through the hall of Gambrevault.
"Gentlemen, to horse! Trumpets, blow the sally! Let every man who can
ride, mount and follow me to-day. Blow, trumpets, blow!"
The brazen throats brayed from the walls, their shrill scream echoing
and echoing amid the distant hills. Their message was like the plunging
of a boulder into a pool, smiting to foam and clamour the camp in the
meadows. Swords were girded on, spears plucked from the sods, horses
saddled and bridled in grim haste. In one short, stirring hour Flavian
rode out from Gambrevault with twelve hundred steel-clad riders at his
back. Those on the walls watched this mass of fire and colour
thundering over the meadows, splashing through the ford, smoking away to
the east with trumpets clanging, banneroles adance. There was to be
great work done that day. The sentinels on the walls gossiped together,
and swore by their lord as he had been the King.
Gambrevault and its towers sank back against the skyline, its banner
waving heavily above the keep. Flavian's mass of knights and
men-at-arms held over the eastern downs that rolled greenly above the
black cliffs and the blue mosaics of the sea. A brisk breeze laughed in
their faces, setting plumes nodding, banneroles and pensils aslant.
Their spears rose like the slim masts of many sloops in a harbour. The
sun shone, the green woods beckoned to the glittering mass with its
forest of rolling spears.
Flavian's pride whimpered as he rode in the van with Modred, Godamar,
who bore the banner of Gambrevault, and Merlion d'Or, his herald. The
man felt like a Zeus with a thunderbolt poised in his hand. A word, the
flash of a sword, the cry of a trumpet, and all this splendid torrent of
steel would leap and thunder to work his will. The star of chivalry
shone bright in the heavens. As for this woman on the white horse, the
Madonna of the Pine Forest, God and the saints, he would charge the
whole world, hell and its legions, to win so rich a prize.
Turning northwards, with scouts scattered in the far van, they drew to
wilder regions where the dark and saturnine outposts of the great pine
forest stood solemn upon the hills. Dusky were the thickets against the
sapphire sky, the cloud banners trailing in the breeze. The very
valleys breathed of battle and sudden peril of the sword. Rounding a
wood, they saw riders flash over the brow of a hill and come towards
them at a gallop. The men drew rein before the great company of spears.
Their leader saluted his lord, and glanced round grimly upon the sea of
steel dwindling over the green slopes.
"Sire, we are well-fortuned."
"Say on."
"Ten thousand rebels from Geraint are on the march two miles away.
Godamar has given you the news. We are on the crest of the wave."
Flavian tightened his baldric.
"Good ground to the east, Longsword?"
"Excellent for 'horse,' sire."
"To our advantage?"
"Half a mile further towards Geraint there lies a grass valley, a league
long, four furlongs from wood to wood. The rebels will march through it,
or I am a dotard. There stands your chance, sire. We can roll down on
them like a torrent."
Flavian took time by the throat, and called on his man of the tabard.
"Make me this proclamation," quoth he: "'Gentlemen of Gambrevault,
strike for King and chivalry. Let vengeance dye your swords. As for
the lady riding upon the white horse, mark you, sirs, let her be as the
Virgin out of heaven. We ride to take her and her banner. For the
rest, no quarter and no prisoners. We will teach this mob the art of
war.'"
The man of the tabard proclaimed it as he was bidden. The iron ranks
thundered to him like billows foaming about a rock. Modred claimed
silence with uplifted sword.
"Enough, gentlemen, enough. No bellowing. Muzzle your temper. We make
our spring in silence, that we may claw the harder."
A line of hills lay before them, heights crowned with black pine woods,
save for one bare ridge like a great scimitar carving the sky. Flavian
advanced his companies up the slopes, halted them in a broad hollow
under the brow of the hill. A last galloper had ridden in with hot
tidings of the rebels. The Lord of Gambrevault, with Sir Modred and
Longsword, cantered on to reconnoitre. They drew to a thicket of
gnarled hollies on the hilltop, and looked down upon a long grass valley
bounded north and south by woods.
Half a mile away came the rebel vanguard, a black mass of footmen
plodding uphill, their pikes and bills shining in the sun. Pennons and
gonfalons danced here and there, while in the thick of the column flew
the red banner of the Forest, girt about by the spears of Yeoland's
guard. She could be seen on her white horse in the midst of the press.
The Gerainters were split into three columns, the second column half a
mile behind the first, the third somewhat closer upon the second. They
were marching without outriders, as though thoroughly assured of their
own safety.
Modred chuckled grimly through his black beard, and smote his thigh.
"Fools, fools!"
"Devilish generalship," quoth Longsword under his beaver. "We can crush
their van like a wheatfield before the rest can come up. What say you,
sire, fewtre spears, and at them?"
Flavian had already turned his horse.
"No sounding of trumpets, sirs," he said; "we will deal only with their
van. Call up our companies. God and St. Philip for Gambrevault!"
Over the bare ridge, with its barriers of sun-steeped trees, steel
shivered and spears bristled, rank on rank, wave on wave. With a massed
rhythm of hoofs, the flood crested the hill, plunged down at a gallop
with fewtred spears. Knee to knee, flank to flank, a thousand streaks
of steel deluged the hillside. Their trumpets throated now the charge;
the iron ranks clashed and thundered, rocked on with a rush of
glittering shields.
As dust rolling before a March wind, so the horsemen of Gambrevault
poured down on the horde of wavering pikes. The storm had come sudden
as thunder out of a summer sky. Before the hurtling impact of that bolt
of war, the palsied ranks of foot crumbled like rotten timber. The
Gerainters were too massed and too amazed to squander or give ground, to
stem with bill and bow the rolling torrent of death. They were rent and
trampled, trodden like straw under the stupendous avalanche of steel
that crushed and pulverised with ponderous and invincible might.
"God and Gambrevault, kill, kill!"
Such was the death-cry thundered out over the rebel van. The column
broke, burst into infinite chaos. Yeoland's guards alone stood firm, a
tough core of oak amid rotten tinder. Over the trampled wreckage the
fight swirled and eddied, circling about the knot of steel where the red
banner flapped in the vortex of the storm.
Yeoland sat dazed on her white horse, as one in the grip of some
terrific dream. Nord was at her side, snarling, snapping his jaw like a
wolf, his great iron mace poised over his shoulder. The red banner
flapped prophetic above their heads. Around them the fight gathered, a
whirlwind of contorted figures and stabbing steel.
Yeoland's eyes were on one figure in the press, a man straddling a big
bay horse, smiting double-handed with his sword, his red plume jerking
in the hot rush of the fight. She saw horse and man go down before him;
saw him buffet his way onward like a galley ploughing against wind and
wave. His leaping sword and tossing plume came steady and strenuous
through the girdle of death.
Fear, pride, a hundred battling passions played like the battle through
the woman's mobile brain. She watched the man under the red plume with
an intensity of feeling that made her blind to all else for the moment.
Love seemed to struggle towards her in bright harness through the fight.
She saw the last rank of the human rampart pierced. The man on the bay
horse came out before her like some warrior out of an old epic.
None save Nord stood between them, shaggy and grim as a great Norse
Thor. She watched the iron mace swing, saw it fall and smite wide.
Flavian stood in the stirrups, both hands to the hilt, his horse's
muzzle rammed against the opposing brute's chest. The blow fell, a
great cut laid in with all the culminating courage of an hour. The
sword slashed Nord's gorget, buried its blade in the bull-like neck. He
clutched at his throat, toppled, slid out of the saddle and rolled under
his horse's hoofs.
[Illustration: "THE SWORD SLASHED NORD'S GORGET, BURIED ITS BLADE IN THE
BULL-LIKE NECK."]
The man's hand snatched at the girl's bridle; he dragged her and her
horse out of the press. She had a confused vision of carnage, of
stabbing swords and trampling hoofs. She saw her banner-bearer fall
forward on his horse's neck, thrust through with a sword, while Modred
seized the banner staff from his impotent hand. The rebel column had
deliquesced and vanished. In its stead she was girdled by grim and
exultant horsemen whose swords flashed in the sun.
Trumpets blew the retreat. A thousand glittering riders swarmed about
her and the knight with the red plume. She had his words confusedly in
her ears, strong, passionate words, heroic, yet utterly tender. They
rode uphill together amid the clangour of his men. In a minute they had
won the ridge, and were swinging down the further slope with their faces
towards Gambrevault.
XXX
Paris and Helen have been dead centuries, yet in that universal world of
the mind they still live, young and glorious as when the Grecian galleys
ploughed foam through the blue AEgean. The world loves a lover.
Troilus stages our own emotions for us in godlier wise than we poor
realists can hope to do. We owe an eternal gratitude to those who have
stood for love in history. All men might well desire to play the
Tristan to Iseult of the Irish eyes. We forget Gemma Donati, and follow
with Dante's wistful idealism the gleaming figure of Beatrice in
Paradise.
Now the Lord Flavian was one of those happy persons who seem to stumble
into heaven either by prodigious instinct or remarkable good-fortune.
God gives to many men gold; to others intellect; to some truth; to few,
a human echo, a harmony in the spirit, the right woman in the world.
Many of us are such unstable folk that we vibrate vastly to a beautiful
face and hail heaven in a pair of violet eyes. The chance is that such
a business turns out miserably. It is a wise rule to search the world
through to find your Beatrice, or bide celibate to the end. Happy is
the man whose instinctive choice is ratified by all the wisest poetry of
heaven. Happy is he who finds a ruby as he rakes the ephemeral
flower-gardens of life, a gem eternally bright and beautiful, durable,
unchanging, flashing light ever into the soul. It is given to few to
love wisely, to love utterly, to love till death.
That summer day Flavian saw life at its zenith, as he rode through the
woods on the way to Gambrevault. The horse had dropped to a trot, and
the man had taken off his helmet and hung it at his saddle-bow. He was
still red from the melee; his eyes were bright and triumphant. The girl
at his side looked at him half-timidly, a tremor upon her lip, her
glances clouded. The terrific action of the last hour still seemed to
weigh upon her senses, and she seemed fated to be the sport of
contending sentiments. No sooner had she struggled to some level of
saintliness than love rushed in with burning wings, and lo, all the
tinsel of her religion fell away, and she was a mere Eve, a child of
Nature.
Flavian watched her with the tenderness of a strong man, who is ready to
give his life for the woman he serves. Love seemed to rise from her and
play upon him like perfume from a bowl of violets; her eyes transfigured
him, and he longed to touch her hair.
"At last."
"Lord?"
"Treat me as a man, I hate that epithet."
"You are a great signor."
"What are titles, testaments, etiquettes to us! I am only great so long
as you trust and honour me."
"Your power might appear precarious."
"As you will."
"Yet war is loose!"
He looked round upon the sea of men that rolled on every hand.
"And war at its worst. I have seen enough in three days to make me
loathe your partisans and their principles."
"Perhaps."
"It is a wicked and inhuman business."
"What are you going to do with me?" she said.
"Remove you from the hands of butchers and offal-mongers; put you like a
pearl in a casket in my own castle of Gambrevault."
"You incur the greater peril."
"Have I not told you that no woman loves a coward?"
She was silent awhile, with her eyes wistful and melancholy, as though
some spiritual conflict were passing in her mind. Bitterness escaped in
the man's words for all his tenderness and chivalry. He needed an
answer. Anon she capitulated and appeared to surrender herself
absolutely to circumstance. She began to tell Flavian of her adoption
by Fulviac, of her vision in the ruined chapel, of the part assigned to
her as a woman ordained by heaven. He heard her in silence, finding
quaint pleasure in listening to her voice, having never heard her talk
at such length before. Her voice's modulations, its pathos, its many
tones, were more subtle to him than any music, and seemed to steep in
oblivion the grim realities of the last few days. He watched the play of
thought upon her face, sun and shadow, calm and unrest. He began to
comprehend the discords he had flung into her life; she was no longer a
riddle to him; her confessions portrayed her soul in warm and delicate
colouring--colouring pathetic and heroically pure. He had a glorious
sense of joy in an instinctive conviction that this girl was worthy of
all the highest chivalry a man's heart can conceive of.
Though he had a strong suspicion that he could humanise her Madonna for
her, he refrained from argument, refrained from dilating on the
iniquities her so-called crusades had already perpetrated. Moreover,
the girl had opened her heart to him with a delicious and innocent
ingenuousness. He felt that the hour had blessed him sufficiently; that
personalities would be gross and impertinent in the light of that
sympathy that seemed suddenly to have enveloped them like a golden
cloud. The girl appeared to have surrendered herself spiritually into
his keeping, not sorry in measure that a strong destiny had decided her
doubts for her. They were to let political considerations and the
ephemeral turmoils of the times sink under their feet. It was
sufficient for them to be but a man and a woman, to forget the forbidden
fruit, and the serpent and his lore. God walked the world; they were not
ashamed to hear His voice.
So they came with their glittering horde of horsemen to Gambrevault, and
rode over the green downs with towers beckoning from the blue. The
Gilderoy forces were still miles away, and could not have threatened the
retreat on Gambrevault had they been wise as to the event. Yeoland rode
close at Flavian's side. He touched her hand, looked in her eyes, saw
the colour stream to her cheeks, knew that she no longer was his enemy.
"Yonder stands Gambrevault," were his words; "its walls shall bulwark
you against the world. Trust me and my eternal faith to you. I shall
see God more clearly for looking in your eyes."
He lodged her in a chamber in the keep, a room that had been his
mother's and still held the furniture, books, and music she had used.
Its window looked out on the castle garden, and over the double line of
walls to the meadows and woods beyond. Maud, the castellan's wife, was
bidden to wait upon her. Flavian gave her the keys of his mother's
chests, where silks, samites, sarcenets galore, lace and all manner of
golden fripperies, were stored. The ewers of the room were of silver,
its hangings of violet cloth, its bed inlaid with ivory and hung with
purple velvet. It had a shelf full of beautifully illumined books, a
prayer-desk and a small altar, a harp, a lute, an embroidery frame, and
numberless curios. Thus by the might of the sword Yeoland was installed
in the great castle of Gambrevault.
So Duessa and Balthasar were dead. The girl had told Flavian what had
passed in Sforza's palace; the news shocked him more than he would have
dreamed. The dead wound us with their unapproachableness and the mute
pathos of their pale, imagined faces. They are like our own sins that
stare at us from the night sky, irrevocable and beyond us for ever.
Flavian ordered tapers to be burnt and masses said in the castle chapel
for the souls of these two unfortunates. He himself spent more than an
hour in silent prayer before he confessed, received penance and
absolution.
That evening, at Flavian's prayer, Yeoland came down to meet him in the
castle garden, with the castellan's two girls to serve her as maids of
honour. She had put aside her armour, and was clad in a jacket of
violet cloth, fitting close to the figure, and a skirt of light blue
silk. In the old yew walk, stately and solemn, amid the bright parterres
and stone urns gushing colour, the two children slipped away and left
Yeoland and the man alone.
She seemed to have lost much of her restraint, much of her independence,
of her reserve, in a few short hours. Her mood inclined towards silence
and a certain delightful solemnity such as a lover loves. Her eyes met
the man's with a rare trust; her hands went into his with all the ideal
faith he had forecast in his dreams.
They stood together under the yews, full of youth and innocent joy of
soul, timid, happily sad, content to be mere children. Flavian touched
her hands as he would have touched a lily. She seemed too wonderful,
too pure, too transcendent to be fingered. A supreme, a godly timidity
possessed him; he had such love in his heart as only the strong and the
pure can know, such love as makes a man a saint unto himself, a being
wrapped round with the rarest chivalry of heaven.
Their words were very simple and infrequent.
"I have been thinking," said the girl.
"Yes?"
"How war seems ever in the world."
"How else should I have won you?"
She sighed and looked up over his shoulder at the sunlight glimmering
gold through the yews.
"I have been thinking how I bring you infinite peril. They will not lose
me easily. What if I bring you to ruin?"
"I take everything to myself."
"They believe me a saint."
"And I!"
"My conscience will reproach me, but now----"
"Well?"
"I am too happy to remember."
Their eyes met and flashed all the unutterable truths of the soul.
Flavian kissed her hand.
"Forget it all," he said, "save the words I spoke to you over that
forest grave. Whatever doom may come upon me, though death frown, I
care not; all the sky is at sunset, all the world is full of song. I
could meet God to-morrow with a smile, since you have shown me all your
heart."
From a little stone pavilion hidden by laurels the voices of flutes and
viols swirled out upon the air. The west grew faint, and twilight
increased; night kissed and closed the azure eyes of the day. Under the
yew boughs, Flavian and Yeoland walked hand in hand; the music spoke for
them; the night made their faces pale and spiritual under the trees.
They said little; a tremor of the fingers, a glance, a sigh were enough.
When the west had faded, and the last primrose streak was gone, Flavian
kissed the girl's lips and sent her back to the two children, who were
curled on a bench by the laurels, listening sleepily to the music of
flute and viol.
The man's soul was too scintillant and joyous to shun the stars. He
passed up on to the battlements, and listened to the long surge of the
summer sea.
And as he paced the battlements that night, he saw red, impish specks of
flame start out against the black background of the night. They were
the rebel watchfires burning on the hills, sinister eyes, red with the
distant prophecy of war.
XXXI
It would be difficult to describe the thundercloud of thought that came
down upon Fulviac's face when news was brought him of the capture of the
girl Yeoland and the decimation of the vanguard from Geraint. There was
something even Satanic upon his face for the moment. He was not a
pleasant person when roused, and roused he was that day like any ogre.
His tongue ran through the whole gamut of blasphemy before he recovered
a finer dignity and relapsed into a grim reserve. His men spoke to him
with great suavity. He had decreed that Nord of the Hammer should be
hanged for negligence, but the decree was unnecessary, since Flavian's
sword had already settled the matter.
The Gilderoy forces therefore turned northwards, with their great
baggage and siege train, and in due course came upon the Gerainters
bivouacking on the ridge where the battle had taken place. The green
slopes were specked with dark motionless figures, dead horses, and the
wreckage of war. Men were burying the dead upon the battlefield.
Yeoland's guard had been slaughtered almost to a man; and the whole
affair had damped very considerably the ardour of certain of the less
trustworthy levies.
But Fulviac was not the man to sit and snivel over a defeat; he knew
well enough that he had good men behind him, tough fighting stuff, fired
by fanaticism and a long sense of wrong. He harangued his whole force,
black-guarded with his lion's roar those concerned in the march from
Geraint, treating them to such a scourging with words that they snarled
and clamoured to be led on at once to prove their mettle. Their leaders
had been at fault, nor did Fulviac keep their spirits cooling in the
wind. The power of his own personality was great, and he had twenty
thousand men at his back, who knew that to fail meant death and torture.
They had received a check from the Lord of Gambrevault; it was
absolutely essential to the cause that they should wipe out the defeat,
recapture their Saint and sacred banner, crush Gambrevault once and for
ever. To this strenuous tune they marched on towards the sea, and that
night lit their fires on the hills that ringed Gambrevault on the north.
As the sun climbed up and spread a curtain of gold over down and upland,
those on the walls of Gambrevault saw steel glinting on the hills, the
pikes and casques of Fulviac's horde. Yeoland saw them from her
casement, as she stood and combed her hair. Flavian, watching with
certain knights on the keep, confronted the event with a merry smile.
The shimmering line of silver on the hills had broadened to a darker
band, splashed lavishly with steel. The rebel host was coming on in a
half moon, with each horn to the sea. Its centre held towards the ford
and the dismantled Gambrevault mills, positions strongly held on the
southern bank by a redoubt and stockaded trenches.
The criticisms delivered by those watching from the keep were various
and forcible.
"By Jeremy--a rare mob!"
"Let them grip at Gambrevault," said Modred, "and they shall clutch at a
cactus. Look at that long baggage train in the rear. Damn them, I
guess they have the siege train from Gilderoy."
"We shall sweat a trifle."
Quoth Tristram, "They have little time to spare for a leaguer, rotting
in trenches, if they are to make the country rise. They'll not leaguer
us."
Flavian watched the advance under his hand.
"Fortunately or unfortunately, gentlemen," he said, "we have taken their
Saint, their oracle, and their sacred banner. I imagine they will do
their best to dispossess us. It is time we made for the meadows; I
reckon we shall have hot work to-day."
When leaving the keep, Flavian crossed the castle garden, and caught
under the tunnel of yews the flutter of a woman's gown. Sunlight
glimmered through and wove a shimmering network in the air. Green and
violet swept the stones; a white face shone in the shadows.
He went to her and kissed her hands. His eyes were brave and joyous as
she looked into them, and there was no shadow of fear upon his face.
Trumpets were blowing in the meadows, piercing the confused hum of men
running to arms.
"War, ever war!"
"You are sad?"
"Fulviac has the whole kingdom at his back."
"If he led the world, I should not waver."
"With me it is different; I am a woman and you know my heart."
"So well that I seek to know nothing else in the world, I desire no
greater wisdom than my love. You are with me, and my heart sings. No
harm can come to you whatever doom may fall on Gambrevault."
"Think you my thoughts are all of my own safety?"
"Ah, golden one, never fear for me. What is life? a little joy, a
little pain, and then eternity. I would rather have an hour's glory in
the sun than fifty years of grey monotony. It is something to fight,
and even to die, for the love of a woman. There is no shadow over my
soul."
There was a great heroism in his voice, and her eyes caught the light
from his. She touched his cuirass with her slim white fingers.
"God keep you!"
"Ha, I do not smell of earth to-day, nor dream of requiems."
"No, you will come back to me."
"Give me your scarf."
She took the green silk and knotted it about his arm; a rich colour
shone in her cheeks, her eyes were warm and wonderfully luminous.
"God keep you!"
So he kissed her lips and left her.
The rebel horde had rolled down in their thousands from the hills.
Flavian saw their black masses moving from the woods, as he rode down
from the great gate. It was evident to him that Fulviac would try and
force the ford and win his way to the open meadows beyond. The river ran
fast with a deep but narrow channel, and there was only one other ford
some nine miles upstream. His own men were under arms in the meadows.
With his knights round him, Flavian rode down to the redoubt and
trenches by the river-bank, packed as they already were with archers and
men-at-arms. He was loudly cheered as he reined in and scanned the
rebel columns moving over the downs.
Fulviac had ridden forward with a company of spears to reconnoitre. He
saw the captured banner of The Maid hoisted derisively on Gambrevault
keep; he saw the redoubt and the stockades covering the ford; the foot
massed in the meadows; Flavian's mounted men-at-arms drawn up under the
castle walls. Sforza and several captains of note were with Fulviac.
The man was in a grim mood, a slashing Titanic humour. The passage of
the river was to be forced, Flavian's men engaged in the meadows. He
would drive them into Gambrevault before nightfall. Then they would
cast their leaguer, bring up the siege train taken from Gilderoy, and
batter at Gambrevault till they could storm the place.
Early in the day Fulviac detached a body of two thousand men under
Colgran, a noted free-lance, to march upstream, cross by the upper ford,
and threaten Flavian on the flank. The fighting began at ten of the
clock, when Fulviac's bowmen scattered along the river and opened fire
upon the stockades. Flavian's archers and arbalisters responded. A
body of five thousand rebels advanced with great mantlets upon wheels to
the northern bank and entrenched themselves there. A second body, with
waggons laden with timber and several flat-bottomed boats, poured down
to the river a mile higher up, and began to throw a rough, raft-like
bridge across the stream. At half-past ten masses of men-at-arms
splashed through the water at the ford, under cover of a hot fire from
the archers lining the bank, and began an assault upon the redoubt and
the stockades.
By twelve o'clock the bridge higher up the stream had been completed,
and a glittering line of pikes poured across, to be met on the southern
bank by Geoffrey Longsword and a body of men-at-arms. It was hand to
hand, and hot and strenuous as could be. Men grappled, stabbed, hacked,
bellowed like a herd of bulls. Flavian had reinforced the defenders of
the ford, who still held Fulviac at bay, despite a heavy archery fire
and the almost continuous assaults poured against the stockades. Yet by
one o'clock Fulviac's levies had forced the passage of the bridge and
gained footing on the southern bank. Longsword's men, outnumbered and
repulsed, were falling back before the black masses of foot that now
poured into the meadows.
The situation was critical enough, as Flavian had long seen, as he
galloped hotly from point to point. Fulviac's rebels had shown more
valour than he had ever prophesied. Flavian packed all his remaining
foot into the trenches, and putting himself at the head of his knights
and mounted men-at-arms, rode down to charge the troops who had crossed
by the pontoons. Here chivalry availed him to the full. By a
succession of tremendous rushes, he drove the rebels back into the
river, did much merciless slaughter, cut the ropes that held the bridge
to the southern bank, so that the whole structure veered downstream.
The peril seemed past, when he was startled by the cry that the redoubt
had been carried, and that Fulviac held the ford.
Looking south, he saw the truth with his own eyes. His troops were
falling back in disorder upon Gambrevault, followed by an ever-growing
mass, that swarmed exultantly into the meadows. The last and successful
assault had been led by Fulviac in person. Flavian had to grip the
truth. The rebels outnumbered him by more than five to one; and he had
underrated their discipline and fighting spirit. He was wiser before
the sun went down.
"Come, gentlemen, we shall beat them yet."
"Shall we charge them, sire?"
"Blow bugles, follow me, sirs; I am in no mood for defeat."
That afternoon there was grim work in the Gambrevault meadows. Five
times Flavian charged Fulviac's columns, hurling them back towards the
river, only to be repulsed in turn by the fresh masses that poured over
by the ford. He made much slaughter, lost many good men in the mad,
whirling melees. Desperate heroism inspired on either hand. Once he
stood in great peril of his own life, having been unhorsed and
surrounded by a mob of rebel pikes. He was saved by the devotion and
heroism of Modred and his household knights. With the chivalry of a
Galahad, he did all that a man could to keep the field. Colgran's
flanking column appeared over the downs, and Fulviac had his whole host
on the southern bank of the river. The masses advanced like one man,
pennons flying, trumpets clanging. Flavian would have charged again,
but for the vehement dissuasion of certain of his elder knights. He
contented himself with covering the retreat of his foot, while the great
gate of Gambrevault opened its black maw to take them in. Many of his
mercenaries had deserted to the rebels. So stubborn and bloody had been
the day, that he had lost close upon half his force by death and
desertion; no quarter had been given on either side. He heard the
surging shouts of exultation from the meadows, as he rode sullen and
wearied into Gambrevault. The great gates thundered to, the
portcullises rattled down. Fulviac had his man shut up in Gambrevault.
XXXII
The leaguer was drawn that night about the towers of Gambrevault, and
the castle stood clasped betwixt the watch-fires and the sea. Fulviac's
rebels, toiling from evening until dawn, banked and staked a rampart to
close the headland. From the north alone could Gambrevault be
approached, precipices plunging south, east, and west to front the sea.
Athwart the grassy isthmus Fulviac drew his works, running from cliff to
cliff, brown earth-banks bristling with timber. Mortars, bombards,
basilics, and great catapults had been brought from Gilderoy to batter
the walls. Redoubts, covered by strong mantlets, were established in
the meadows. Several small war galleys guarded the castle on the side
of the sea.
Nor was this labour permitted to pass unrebuked before the leaguered
folk upon the headland. There were sallies, assaults, bloody tussles in
the trenches, skirmishes upon the causeway. Yet these fiercenesses
brought no flattering boon to the besieged. The knights and men-at-arms
were masterful enough with an open field to serve them, but behind their
barricades Fulviac's rebels held the advantage. The command went forth
from Modred the seneschal that there were to be no more sorties
delivered against the trenches.
On the second day of the leaguer the cannonade began. Bombard and mortar
belched flame and smoke; the huge catapults strove with their gigantic
arms; arbalisters wound their windlasses behind the ramparts. Shot
screamed and hurtled, crashed and thundered against the walls, bringing
down mortar and masonry in rattling showers. The battlements of
Gambrevault spouted flame; archers plied their bows in bartisan and
turret. A shroud of dust and smoke swirled about the place, the chaotic
clamour of the siege sending the gulls wheeling and wailing from the
cliffs.
On the very second day Flavian was brought low by a shot hurling a
fragment of masonry upon his thigh and bruising it to the bone. Stiff
and faint, he was laid abed in his own state room, unable to stir for
the twinging tendons, loth enough to lie idle. Modred, bluff, lusty
smiter, took the command from him, and walked the walls. Hourly he came
in to his lord's chamber to tell of the cannonade and the state of the
castle. Even Flavian from his cushions could see that the man's black
face looked grim and sinister.
"How do they vex us?" was his question, as the thunder came to them from
the meadows.
Modred clinked his heels against the wainscotting of the window seat,
and strove to sweeten his looks. He was not a man given to blandishing
the truth.
"Their damned bombards are too heavy for us. We are dumb."
"Impossible!"
"Sire, we shall have to hold Gambrevault by the sword."
The man on the bed started up on his elbow, only to fall back again with
a spasmodic twitching of the forehead.
"And our bombards?" he asked.
"Are toppled off their trunnions."
"Ha!"
"For the rest, sire, I have ordered our men to keep cover. The bowmen
shoot passably. The outer battlements are swept."
"And the walls?"
Modred grimaced and stroked his beard.
"There are cracks in the gate-house," quoth he, "that I could lay my
fist in."
What goodlier fortune for a man than to lie bruised when Love bears to
him the bowl of dreams! What softer balm than the touch of a woman's
hand! What more subtle music than her voice! The girl Yeoland had
betrayed a new wilfulness to the world, in that she now claimed as her
guerdon the care of the man's heart. She was in and about his room, a
shadow moving in the sunlight, a shaft of youth, supple and very tender.
Her eyes had a rarer lustre, her face more of the dawn tint of the rose.
Love stirred within her soul like the sound of angels psaltering on the
golden battlements of heaven.
As she sat often beside him, Flavian won the whole romance from her,
gradual as glistening threads of silk drawn from a scarlet purse. She
waxed very solemn over her tale, was timid at times, and exceeding
sorrowful for all her passion. Some shadowy fear seemed to companion
her beside the couch, some wraith prophetic of a tragic end. She loved
the man, yet feared her love, even as it had been a sword shimmering
above his head. Peril compassed them like an angry sea; she heard the
bombards thundering in the meadows.
"Ah, sire," she said to him one morning, as she thrust the flowers she
had gathered in the garden into a brazen bowl, "I am heavy at heart.
Who shall pity me?"
He turned towards her on his cushions with a smile that was not
prophetic of the tomb.
"Do I weary you?"
"Ah no, not that."
"Why then are you sad?"
She held up a white hand in the gloom of the room, her hair falling like
a black cloud upon her bosom.
"Listen," she said to him.
"I am not deaf."
"The thunder of war."
"Well, well, my heart, should I fear it?"
"It is I who fear."
"Ah," he said, taking her hand into his bosom, "put such fears far from
you. We shall not end this year in dust."
A week passed and the man was on the walls again, bold and ruddy as a
youthful Jove. Seven days had gone, swelling with their hours the great
concourse in the meadows. Pikes had sprouted on the hills like
glistening corn, to roll and merge into the girding barrier of steel.
The disloyal south had gathered to Fulviac before Gambrevault like dust
in a dry corner in the month of March. A great host teemed betwixt the
river and the cliffs. Through all, the rack and thunder of the siege
went on, drowning the sea's voice, flinging a storm-cloud over the
stubborn walls. In Gambrevault men looked grim, and muttered of succour
and the armies of the King.
Yet Flavian was content. He had taken a transcendent spirit into his
soul; he lived to music; drank love and chivalry like nectar from the
gods. The woman's nearness made each hour a chalice of gold. He
possessed her red heart, looked deep into her eyes, put her slim hands
into his bosom. Her voice haunted him like music out of heaven. He was
a dreamer, a Lotos-eater, whose brain seemed laden with all the perfumes
of the East. Ready was he to drain the purple wine of life even to the
dregs, and to find death in the cup if the Fates so willed it.
And Fulviac?
War had held a poniard at his throat, turning him to the truth with the
threat of steel. Grim and implacable, he stalked the meadows, bending
his brows upon the towers of Gambrevault. This girl of the woods was no
more a dream to him, but supple love, ardent flesh, blood-red reality.
Lean, leering thoughts taunted the lascivious fears within his brain.
His moods were silent yet tempestuous. Gambrevault mocked him.
Vengeance burnt in his palm like a globe of molten iron.
His dogged temper roused his captains to strenuous debate. Fifty
thousand men were idle before the place, and the siege dragged like a
homily. Their insinuations were strong and strident. The countryside
was emptying its broad larder; Malgo and Godamar of the Fens were
marching from east and west. Ten thousand men could leaguer
Gambrevault. It behoved Fulviac to pluck up his spears and march on
Lauretia, proud city of the King.
For a season Fulviac was stubborn as Gambrevault itself. His yellow
eyes glittered, and he tossed back his lion's mane from off his
forehead.
"Till the place is ours," so ran his dogma, "I stir never a foot. See
to it, sirs, we will put these skulkers to the sword."
His captains were strenuous in retort.
"You mar the cause," said Sforza over the council-board, thin-lipped and
subtle.
"Give me ten thousand men," quoth Colgran the free-lance, "by my bones I
will take the place and bring the Maid out scatheless."
Prosper the Priest put in his plea.
"You are our torch," he said, "our beacon. Malgo is on the march;
Godamar has massed behind the creeks of Thorney Isle. The country waits
for you. Leave Gambrevault to Colgran."
And again the free-lance made his oath.
"Give me ten thousand men," quoth he, "by Peter's blood the place shall
tumble in a month."
That same evening, as a last justification of his stubborn will, Fulviac
sent forward a trumpeter under a white flag to parley with the besieged.
The herald's company drew to the walls as the sun sank over the sea,
setting the black towers in a splendour as of fire. Fulviac's troops
were under arms in the meadows, their pikes glittering with sinister
meaning into the purple of the coming night. The Lord of Gambrevault,
in full harness, met the white flag, his knights round him, a crescent
of steel.
Fulviac's trumpeter proclaimed his terms. They were insolently simple,
surrender absolute with the mere blessings of life and limb, a dungeon
for the lords, a proffer of traitorous service to the men. Yeoland the
Saint was to be sent forth scatheless. The castle was to be garrisoned
and held by the rebels.
Flavian laughed at the bluff insolence of the demand.
"Ha, sirs," he said, "we are the King's men here. Get you gone before my
gate. Say to yonder traitor in the meadows, 'We quail not before
scullions and at the frowns of cooks.'"
Thus, under the red canopy of the warring west, ended the parley at the
gate of Gambrevault. The white flag tripped back behind the trenches;
the castle trumpets blew a fanfare to grace its flight. Yeoland the
Saint heard it, and her lamp of hope burnt dim.
That night Fulviac paced the meadows, his eyes scanning the black mass
upon the cliffs. Dark as was his humour, reason ruled him at the
climax, powerful to extort the truth. Primaeval instincts were strong
in him, yet he put them back that hour out of his heart. Robust and
vigorous, he trampled passion under foot. At dawn his orders went forth
to the captains and the council.
"Colgran shall command. Ten thousand men shall serve him. Let him
storm the place, grant no terms, spare Yeoland the Maid alone. Let him
butcher the garrison, and let the ruin rot. When all have been put to
the sword, let him march and join me before the city of Lauretia."
XXXIII
So Fulviac with his host passed northwards from Gambrevault, leaving
Colgran and his ten thousand to guard the trenches. Flavian saw the
black columns curl away over the green slopes, their pikes glittering
against the blue fringe of the horizon, their banners blowing to the
breeze. The red pavilion stood no longer in the meadows; the man on the
black horse rode no more behind the barricades. Ominous was the marching
of the host over the hills, a prophecy of many battles before the King's
men could succour Gambrevault.
The gate-house stood in ruins, a shattered pile of masonry barriering
the causeway from the meadows. The outer curtain wall on the north had
been pierced between two towers; the stone-work crumbled fast, opening a
gradual breach to the rebel sea dammed behind the trenches. The
battlements were rent and ruinous; many a turret gaped and tottered.
Still the bombards thundered, hurling their salvos of shot against the
place, belching flame even through the night, while the arms of the
great slings toiled like giant hands in the dark.
As for the girl Yeoland, her joy was dim and flickering, mocked with
constant prophecies of woe. The sounds of the siege haunted her
perpetually. Shafts wailed and whistled, bombards roared, the walls
reeked and cracked. A corner in the garden under the yew walk was the
single nook left her open to the blue hope of heaven. The clamour of
the leaguer woke a hundred echoes in her heart. Above all shone the
man's strong face and passionate eyes; above the moon, the stars, the
blue vault of day, death spread his sable wings, a cloud of gloom.
On the sixteenth day of the siege, Colgran made an assault in force upon
the ruins of the gate-house. Despite its chaotic state, Flavian clung
to the ruin, and held the stormers at bay. Thrice Colgran's rebels
advanced to the attack, and came hand-to-hand with the defenders over
the crumbling piles of stone; thrice they were beaten back and driven to
retreat upon their trenches. Colgran renounced the gate-house as
impregnable; the slings and bombards were turned upon the outer wall to
widen the breach already made therein.
It was plain enough even to Yeoland that the siege was bearing slowly
yet surely against Gambrevault. More than half a month had passed, and
still no succouring spears shone upon the hills, no sail upon the sea.
Poor food and summer heat, the crowding of the garrison had opened a
gate to fever and disease. She saw the stern and moody faces of the
soldiery, their loyalty that took fresh and hectic fire from the courage
of their lord. She saw the broken walls and ruined battlements, and
heard the rebels shouting in their trenches.
As the man's peril grew more real and significant, a fear more vehement
entered into her heart. Sleep left her; she began to look white and
weary, with dark shadows under her eyes. The man's warm youth accused
her like a tree that should soon be smitten by the axe. His fine heroism
was a veritable scourge, making the future full of discords, a
charnel-house glimmering with bleached bones. She began to know how
closely their lives were mingled, even as wine in a cup of gold. He was
lord and husband to her in the spirit. Her red heart quaked for him
like the shivering petals of an autumn rose.
On the day of the assault upon the gate-house, he came back to her
wounded in the arm and shoulder. He was faint, but brave and even
merry. She would suffer none to come in to him, as he sat in a carved
chair in her room that opened on the garden. The sight of blood when
harness and gamboison were taken from the caked wounds quickened her
fears into a fever of self-torture. She bathed the wounds and dressed
them with fragrant oil and linen. Twilight filled the room, and it was
not till her tears fell upon his hand that the man found that she was
weeping.
He drew her towards him with sudden great tenderness, as she knelt and
looked into his face. Her eyes swam with tears, her lips quivered.
"My life, why do you weep?"
She started away from him with sudden strength, and stood by the window,
trembling.
"Give me my armour and my banner," she said; "let me ride to the
trenches and barter terms by my surrender. Sire, let me go, let me go."
He looked at her sadly under his brows, with forehead wrinkled.
"You would leave me?"
"Ah yes, to save you from the sword. Is it easy for me to ask you
this?"
"You crave more than I can give."
"No, no."
"I cannot surrender you."
"And for love, you would doom all Gambrevault!"
"Ah!" he cried, "I am wounded, and you would wound me the more."
She gave a whimper of pain, ran to him, and crept into his arms. As her
sobs shook her, he bent many times and kissed her hair.
"Weep not for me," he said; "even when the end comes no harm can touch
you. I cannot parley with these wolves; there are women and children
under my roof; should I open my gates to a savage mob?"
"This is your doom," she said to him.
"I take it, child, from heaven."
She wept no more, for a richer heroism took fire within her heart. She
knelt to the man while he held her face betwixt his hands, bent over
her, and kissed her forehead.
"Courage, courage, what is death!"
"My God, to lose you."
"There, am I not flesh and blood? God knows, I would rather have death
than give you to these vultures."
She knelt before him with her face transfigured.
"And death, death can touch me also."
XXXIV
August came in with storm and rain, and a dreary wind blew from the
south-west, huddling masses of cloud over a spiritless sky. Southwards,
the sea tumbled, a grey expanse edged with foam, its great breakers
booming dismally upon the cliffs. The wind swept over Gambrevault,
moaning and wailing over battlement and tower, driving the rain in
drifting sheets. The bombards still belched and smoked under their
penthouses, and the arms of the catapults rose and fell against the
sullen sky.
The eighteenth night of the siege came out of the east like a thunder
bank, and the grey shivering ghost of the day fled over the western
hills. When darkness had fallen, the walls of Gambrevault were
invisible from the trenches. Here and there a light shone out like a
spark in tinder; the sky above was black as a cavern, unbroken by the
crack or cranny of a star.
Flavian, fully armed, kept watch upon the breach with a strong company
of men-at-arms. He had taken the ugly measure of the night to heart,
and had prepared accordingly. Under the shelter of the wall men slept,
wrapped in their cloaks, with their weapons lying by them. The
sentinels had been doubled on the battlements, though little could be
seen in the blank murk, and even the keep had to be looked for before
its mass disjointed itself from the background of the night.
It was treacherous weather, and just the season for an adventurous enemy
to creep from the trenches and attempt to rush the breach. Flavian
leant upon his long sword, and brooded. The black ends of the broken
wall stood up hugely on either hand; rubble and fallen masonry paved the
breach, and a rough rampart of debris had been piled along the summit.
Around him shone the dull armour of his men, as they stood on guard in
the rain.
The storm deadened soul and body, yet kept Flavian vigilant with its
boisterous laughter, a sound that might stifle the tramp of stormers
pouring to the breach. He was not lonely, for a lover can do without
the confidences of others, when he has a woman to speak with in his
heart. In fancy he can lavish the infinite tenderness of the soul,
caress, quarrel, kiss, comfort, with all the idealisms of the
imagination. The spirit lips we touch are sweeter and more red than
those in the flesh. To the true man love is the grandest asceticism the
world can produce.
Flavian's figure straightened suddenly as it leant bowed in thought upon
the sword. He was alert and vigilant, staring into darkness that
baffled vision and hid the unknown. A dull, characterless sound was in
the air. Whether it was the wind, the sea, or something more sinister,
he could not tell. Calling one of his knights to his side, they stood
together listening on the wreckage of the wall.
A vague clink, clink, came in discord to the wind, a sound that
suggested the cautious moving of armed men. A hoarse voice was growling
warily in the distance, as though giving orders. The shrilling noise of
steel grew more obvious each moment; the black void below appeared to
grow full of movement, to swirl and eddy like a lagoon, whose muddy
waters are disturbed by some huge reptile at night. The sudden hoarse
cries of sentinels rose from the walls. Feet stumbled on the debris at
the base of the breach; stormers were on the threshold of Gambrevault.
A trumpet blared in the entry; the guard closed up on the rampart;
sleeping men started from the shadows of the wall, seized sword and
shield as the trumpets' bray rang in their ears. Colgran's stormers,
discovered in their purpose, cast caution to the winds, and sent up a
shout that should have wakened all Gambrevault.
In the darkness and the driving rain, neither party could see much of
the other. The stormers came climbing blindly up the pile of wreckage
in serried masses. Flavian and his knights, who held the rampart, big
men and large-hearted, smote at the black tide of bodies that rolled to
their swords. It was grim work in the dark. It was no sleepy,
disorderly rabble that held the breach, but a tense line of steel, that
stemmed the assault like a wall. The stormers pushed up and up, to
break and deliquesce before those terrible swords. Modred's deep voice
sounded through the din, as he smote with his great axe, blows that
would have shaken an oak. There was little shouting; it was breathless
work, done in earnest. Colgran's men showed pluck, fought well, left a
rampart of dead to their credit, a squirming, oozing barrier, but came
no nearer forcing the breach.
They had lost the propitious moment, and the whole garrison was under
arms, ready to repulse the attacks made at other points. Scaling
ladders had been jerked forward and reared against the walls; men
swarmed up, but the rebels gained no lasting foothold on the
battlements. They were beaten back, their ladders hurled down, masonry
toppled upon the mass below. Many a man lay with neck or back broken in
the confused tangle of humanity at the foot of the castle.
Colgran ordered up fresh troops. It was his policy to wear out the
garrison by sheer importunity and the stress of numbers. He could
afford to lose some hundred men; every score were precious now to
Flavian. It was a system of counter barter in blood, till the weaker
vessel ran dry. The Lord of Gambrevault understood this rough
philosophy well enough, and husbanded his resources. He could not
gamble with death, and so changed his men when the opportunity offered,
to give breathing space to all. Conscious of the strong stimulus of
personal heroism, he kept to the breach himself, and fought on through
every assault with Modred's great axe swinging at his side. He owed his
life more than once to those gorilla-like arms and that crescent of
steel.
In the outer court, certain of the women folk with Yeoland dealt out
wine and food, and tended the wounded. In the chapel, tapers glimmered,
lighting the frescoes and the saints, the priest chanting at the altar,
the women and children who knelt in the shadowy aisles praying for those
who fought upon the walls. Panic hovered over the pale faces, the fear,
the shivering, weeping, pleading figures. There was little heroism in
Gambrevault chapel, save the heroism of supplication. While swords
tossed and men groped for each other in the wind and rain, old Peter the
cellarer lay drunk in a wine bin, and lame Joan, who tended the linen,
was snivelling in the chapel and fingering the gold angels sewn up in
her tunic.
Five times did Colgran's men assault the breach that night, each repulse
leaving its husks on the bloody wreckage, its red libations to the
swords of Gambrevault. The last and toughest tussle came during the
grey prologue before dawn. The place was so packed with the dead and
stricken, that it was well-nigh impassable. For some minutes the
struggle hung precariously on the summit of the pass, but with the dawn
the peril dwindled and elapsed. The stormers revolted from the shambles;
they had fought their fill; had done enough for honour; were sick and
weary. No taunt, command, or imprecation could keep them longer in that
gate of death. Colgran's rebels retreated on their trenches.
And with the dawn Flavian looked round upon the breach, and saw all the
horror of the place in one brief moment. Cloven faces, hacked bodies,
distortions, tortures, blood everywhere. He looked round over his own
men; saw their meagre ranks, their weariness, their wounds, their
exultation that lapsed silently into a kind of desperate awe. Some
tried to cheer him, and at the sound he felt an unutterable melancholy
descend upon his soul. The men were like so many sickly ghosts, a wan
and battered flock, a ragged remnant. He saw the whole truth in a
moment, as a man sees life, death, and eternity pass before him in the
flashing wisdom of a single thought.
And this was war, this cataclysm of insatiate wrath! His men were too
few, too bustled, to hold the breach against such another storm. His
trumpets blared the retreat, a grim and tragic fanfare. They dragged
out their wounded, abandoned the pile of rubbish for which they had
fought, and withdrew sullenly within the inner walls. Colgran, though
repulsed, had taken the outer ward of Gambrevault.
As one stumbling from a dream, Flavian found himself in the castle
garden. The place was full of the freshness that follows rain; and it
was not till the scent of flowers met him like an odour of peace, that
he marked that the sky was blue and the dawn like saffron. The
storm-clouds had gone, and the wind was a mere breeze, a moist breath
from the west, bearing a curious contrast to the furious temper of the
night.
Flavian, looking like a white-faced debauchee, limped through the court,
and climbed the stairway of the keep to the banqueting hall and his own
state chambers. Several of his knights followed him at a distance and in
silence. He felt sick as a dog, and burdened with unutterable care,
that weighed upon him like a prophecy. He had held the breach against
heavy odds, and he was brooding over the cost. There was honour in the
sheer physical heroism of the deed; but he had lost old friends and
tried servants, had sacrificed his outer walls; there was little cause
for exultation in the main.
He stumbled into the banqueting hall like a man into a tavern.
"Wine, wine, for the love of God."
A slim figure in green came out from the oriel, and a pair of dark eyes
quivered over the man's grey face and blood-stained armour. The girl's
hands went out to him, and she seemed like a child roused in the night
from the influence of some evil dream.
"You are wounded."
She took him by the arm and shoulder, and was able to force him into a
chair, so limp, so impotent, was he for the moment. His face had the
uncanny pallor of one who was about to faint; his eyes stared at her in
a dazed and wistful way.
"My God, you are not going to die!"
He shook his head, smiled weakly, and groped for her hand. She broke
away, brought wine, and began to trickle it between his lips. Several
of his knights came in, and looked on awkwardly from the doorway at the
girl leaning over the man's chair, with her arm under his head. Yeoland
caught sight of them, coloured and called them forward.
The man's faintness had passed. He saw Modred and beckoned him to his
chair.
"Take her away," in a whisper.
Yeoland heard the words, started round, and clung to his hand. There
was a strange look upon her face. Flavian spoke slowly to her.
"Girl, I am not a savoury object, fresh from the carnage of a breach.
Leave me to my surgeon. I would only save you pain. As for dying, I
feel like an Adam. Go to your room, child; I will be with you before
long."
She held both his hands, looked in his eyes a moment, then turned away
with Modred and left him. She was very pale, and there was a tremor
about her lips.
Irrelevant harness soon surrendered to skilled fingers. No great evil
had been done, thanks to the fine temper of Flavian's armour; the few
gashes, washed, oiled, and dressed, left him not seriously the worse for
the night's tussle. Wine and food recovered his manhood. He was
barbered, perfumed, dressed, and turned out by his servants, a very
handsome fellow, with a fine pallor and a pathetic limp.
His first care was to see his own men attended to, the wounded properly
bestowed, a good supply of food and wine dealt out. He had a brave word
and a smile for all. As he passed, he found Father Julian the priest
administering the Host to those whose dim eyes were closing upon earth
and sky.
Modred, that iron man, who never seemed weary, was stalking the
battlements, and getting the place prepared for the next storm that
should break. Flavian renounced responsibilities for the moment, and
crossed the garden to Yeoland's room. He entered quietly, looked about
him, saw a figure prostrate on the cushions of the window seat.
He crossed the room very quickly, knelt down and touched the girl's
hair. Her face was hidden in the cushions. She turned slowly on her
side, and looked at him with a wan, pitiful stare; her eyes were timid,
but empty of tears.
"Ah, girl, what troubles you?"
She did not look at him, though he held her hands.
"Are you angry with me?"
"No, no."
"What is it, then?"
She spoke very slowly, in a suppressed and toneless voice.
"Will you tell me the truth?"
He watched her as though she were a saint.
"I have had a horrible thought in my heart, and it has wounded me to
death."
"Tell it me, tell it me."
"That you had repented all----"
"Repented!"
"Of all the ruin I am bringing upon you; that you were beginning to
think----"
He gave a deep cry.
"You believed that!"
She lay back on the cushions with a great sigh. Flavian had his arms
about her, as he bent over her till their lips nearly touched.
"How could you fear!"
"I am so much a woman."
"Yes----"
"And something is all the world to me, even though----"
"Well?"
"I would die happy."
He understood her whole heart, and kissed her lips.
"Little woman, I had come here to this room to ask you one thing more.
You can guess it."
"Ah----"
"Father Julian."
She drew his head down upon her shoulder, and he knelt a long while in
silence, with her bosom rising and falling under his cheek.
"I am happy," he said at last; "child-wife, child-husband, let us go
hand in hand into heaven."
XXXV
So with Colgran and his rebels beating at the inner gate, Flavian of
Gambrevault took Yeoland to wife, and was married that same eve by
Father Julian in the castle chapel. There was pathetic cynicism in the
service, celebrating as it did the temporal blending of two bodies who
bade fair by their destinies to return speedily to dust. The chant might
have served as a requiem, or a dirge for the fall of the mighty. It was
a tragic scene, a solemn ceremony, attended by grim-faced men in plated
steel, by frightened women and sickly children. Famine, disease, and
death headed the procession, jigged with the torches, danced like
skeletons about a bier. Trumpets and cannon gave an epithalamium; bones
might have been scattered in lieu of flowers, and wounds espoused in
place of favours. For a marriage pageant war pointed to the grinning
corpses in the breach and the clotted ruins. It was such a ceremony
that might have appealed to a Stoic, or to a Marius brooding amid the
ruins of Carthage.
Peril chastens the brave, and death is as wine to the heart of the
saint. Even as the sky seems of purer crystal before a storm, so the
soul pinions to a more luminous heroism when the mortal tragedy of life
nears the "explicit." As the martyrs exulted in their spiritual
triumph, or as Pico of Mirandola beheld transcendent visions on his bed
of death, when the Golden Lilies of France waved into luckless Florence,
so Flavian and Yeoland his wife took to their hearts a true bridal
beauty.
When the door was closed on them that night, a mysterious cavern, a
spiritual shrine of gold, came down as from heaven to cover their souls.
They had no need of the subtleties of earth, of music and of colour, of
flowers, or scent, or song. They were the world, the sky, the sea, the
infinite. Imperishable atoms from the alembic of God, they fused soul
with soul, became as one fair gem that wakes a thousand lustres in its
sapphire unity. To such a festival bring no fauns and dryads, no lewd
and supple goddess, no Orphean flute. Rather, let Christ hold forth His
wounded hands, and let the wings of angels glimmer like snow over the
alchemy of souls.
Flavian knelt beside the bed and prayed. He had the girl's hand in his,
and her dark hair swept in masses over the pillow, framing her spiritual
face as a dark cloud holds the moon. Her bed-gown was of the whitest
lace and linen, like foam bounding the violet coverlet that swept to her
bosom. The light from the single lamp burnt steadily in her great dark
eyes.
Flavian lifted up his face from the coverlet and looked long at her.
"Dear heart, have no fear of me," he said.
She smiled wonderfully, and read all the fine philosophy of his soul.
"God be thanked, you are a good man."
"Ah, child, you are so wonderful that I dare not touch you; I have such
grand awe in my heart that even your breath upon my face makes me bow
down as though an angel touched my forehead."
"All good and great love is of heaven."
"Pure as the lilies in the courts of God. Every fragment of you is like
to me as a pearl from the lips of angels; your flesh is of silver, your
bosom as snow from Lebanon, girded with the gold of truth. Oh, second
Adam, thanks be to thee for thy philosophy."
She put out her hands and touched his hair; their eyes were like sea and
sky in summer, tranquil, tender, and unshadowed.
"I love you for this purity, ah, more and more than I can tell."
"True love is ever pure."
"And for me, such love as yours. Never to see the wolfish stare, the
flushed forehead, and the loosened lip; never to feel the burning
breath. God indeed be thanked for this."
"Have no fear of me."
"Ah, like a white gull into a blue sky, like water into a crystal bowl,
I give myself into your arms."
XXXVI
A week had passed, and the Gambrevault trumpets blew the last rally; her
drums rumbled on the battlements of the keep where the women and
children had been gathered, a dumb, panic-ridden flock, huddled together
like sheep in a pen. The great banner flapped above their heads with a
solemn and sinuous benediction. The sun was spreading on the sea a
golden track towards the west, and the shouts of the besiegers rose from
the courts.
On the stairs and in the banqueting hall the last remnant of the
garrison had gathered, half-starved men, silent and grim as death, game
to the last finger. They handled their swords and waited, moving
restlessly to and fro like caged leopards. They knew what was to come,
and hungered to have it over and done with. It was the waiting that
made them curse in undertones. A few were at prayer on the stone steps.
Father Julian stood with his crucifix at the top of the stairway, and
began to chant the "Miserere"; some few voices followed him.
In the inner court Colgran's men surged in their hundreds like an
impatient sea. They had trampled down the garden, overthrown the urns
and statues, pulped the flowers under their feet. On the outer walls
archers marked every window of the keep. In the inner court cannoneers
were training the gaping muzzle of a bombard against the gate. A sullen
and perpetual clamour sounded round the grey walls, like the roar of
breakers about a headland.
Flavian stood on the dais of the banqueting hall and listened to the
voices of the mob without. Yeoland, in the harness Fulviac had given
her, held at his side. The man's beaver was up, and he looked pale, but
calm and resolute as a Greek god. That morning his own armour, blazoned
with the Gambrevault arms, had disappeared from his bed-side, a suit of
plain black harness left in its stead. No amount of interrogation, no
command, had been able to wring a word from his knights or esquires. So
he wore the black armour now perforce, and prepared to fight his last
fight like a gentleman and a Christian.
Yeoland's hand rested in his, and they stood side by side like two
children, looking into each other's eyes. There was no fear on the
girl's face, nothing but a calm resolve to be worthy of the hour and of
her love, that buoyed her like a martyr. The man's glances were very
sad, and she knew well what was in his heart when he looked at her.
They had taken their vows, vows that bound them not to survive each
other.
"Are you afraid, little wife?"
"No, I am content."
"Strange that we should come to this. My heart grieves for you."
"Never grieve for me; I do not fear the unknown."
"We shall go out hand in hand."
"To the shore of that eternal sea; and I feel no wind, and hear no
moaning of the bar."
"The stars are above us."
"Eternity."
"No mere glittering void."
"But the face of God."
A cannon thundered; a sudden, sullen roar followed, a din of clashing
swords, the noise of men struggling in the toils.
"They have broken in."
Flavian's grasp tightened on her wrist; his face was rigid, his eyes
stern.
"Be strong," he said.
"I am not afraid."
"The Virgin bless you."
The uproar increased below. The rebels were storming the stairway; they
came up and up like a rising tide in the mazes of a cavern. A wave of
struggling figures surged into the hall: men, cursing, stabbing, hewing,
writhing on the floor, a tangle of humanity. Flavian's knights in the
hall ranged themselves to hold the door.
It was then that Flavian saw his own state armour doing duty in the
press, its blazonings marking out the wearer to the swords of Colgran's
men. It was Godamar, Flavian's esquire, who had stolen his lord's
harness, and now fought in it to decoy death, and perhaps save his
master. The mute heroism of the deed drew Flavian from the dais.
"I would speak with Godamar," he said.
"Do not leave me."
"Ah! dear heart; when the last wave gathers I shall be at your side."
Yeoland, with her poniard bare in her hand, stood and watched the tragic
despair of that last fight, the struggling press of figures at the
door--the few holding for a while a mob at bay. Her eyes followed the
man in the black harness; she saw him before the tossing thicket of
pikes and partisans; she saw his sword dealing out death in that Gehenna
of blasphemy and blood.
A crash of shattered glass came unheard in the uproar. Men had planted
ladders against the wall, and broken in by the oriel; one after another
they sprang down into the hall. The first crept round by the
wainscotting, climbed the dais, seized Yeoland from behind, and held her
fast.
As by instinct the poniard had been pointed at her own throat; the thing
was twisted out of her hand, and tossed away along the floor. She
struggled with the man in a kind of frenzy, but his brute strength was
too stiff and stark for her. Even above the moil and din Flavian heard
her cry to him, turned, sprang back, to be met by the men who had
entered by the oriel. They hemmed him round and hewed at him, as he
charged like a boar at bay. One, two were down. Swords rang on his
harness. A fellow dodged in from behind and stabbed at him under the
arm. Yeoland saw the black figure reel, recover itself, reel again, as
a partisan crashed through his vizor. His sword clattered to the floor.
So Colgran's men cut the Lord Flavian down in the sight of his young
wife.
The scene appeared to transfer itself to an infinite distance; a mist
came before the girl's eyes; the uproar seemed far, faint, and unreal.
She tried to cry out, but no voice came; she strove to move, but her
limbs seemed as stone. A sound like the surging of a sea sobbed in her
ears, and she had a confused vision of men being hunted down and stabbed
in the corners of the hall. A mob of wolf-like beings moved before her,
cursing, cheering, brandishing smoking steel. She felt herself lifted
from her feet, and carried breast-high in a man's arms. Then oblivion
swept over her brain.