BOOK I

UTHER AND IGRAINE

[Illustration:

"PELLEAS WATCHED HER AS HER GREY GOWN WENT AMID THE GREEN AND RED"]

UTHER AND IGRAINE

BY

WARWICK DEEPING

_ILLUSTRATED BY W. BENDA_

NEW YORK

THE OUTLOOK COMPANY

1903

COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY

THE OUTLOOK COMPANY.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1903.

To

MAUDE MERRILL

WITH THE AUTHOR'S HOMAGE

CONTENTS

BOOK I

PAGE

THE WAY TO WINCHESTER 1

BOOK II

GORLOIS 93

BOOK III

THE WAR IN WALES 199

BOOK IV

TINTAGEL 325

BOOK I

THE WAY TO WINCHESTER

I

Beneath the dark cornices of a thicket of wind-stunted pines stood a

small company of women looking out into the hastening night. The half

light of evening lay over the scene, rolling wood and valley into

a misty mass, while the horizon stood curbed by a belt of imminent

clouds. In the western vault, a vast rent in the wall of grey gave out

a blaze of transient gold that slanted like a spear-shaft to a sullen

sea.

A wind cried restlessly amid the trees, gusty at intervals, but tuning

its mood to a desolate and constant moan. There was an expression of

despair on the face of the west. The woods were full of a vague woe,

and of troubled breathing. The trees seemed to sway to one another, to

fling strange words with a tossing of hair, and outstretched hands. The

furze in the valley--swept and harrowed--undulated like a green lagoon.

The women upon the hill were garbed after the fashion of grey nuns.

Their gowns stood out blankly against the ascetic trunks of the pines.

They were huddled together in a group, like sheep under a thorn hedge

when storms threaten. The dark ovals of their hoods were turned towards

the south, where the white patch of a sail showed vaguely through the

gathering grey.

Between the hill and the cliffs lay a valley, threaded by a meagre

stream, that quavered through pastures. A mist hung there despite

the wind. Folded by a circle of oaks rose the grey walls of an

ecclesiastical building of no inconsiderable size, while the mournful

clangour of a bell came up upon the wind, with a vague sound as of

voices chanting. Valley, stream, and abbey were rapidly melting into

the indefinite background of the night.

Suddenly a snarling murmur seemed to swell the plaining of the bell.

A dark mass that was moving through the meadows beneath like a herd

of kine broke into a fringe of hurrying specks that dissolved into

the shadows of the circle of oaks. The bell still continued to toll,

while the women beneath the pines shivered and drew closer together as

though for warmth and comfort. There was not one among them who had not

grasped the full significance of the sinister sound that had come to

them from the valley. A novice, taller than her sisters, stood forward

from the group, as though eager to catch the first evidence of the

deed that was to be done on that drear evening. She held up a hand to

those behind her, in mute appeal to them to listen. The bell had ceased

pulsing. In its stead sounded a faint eerie whimper, an occasional

shrill cry that seemed to leap out of silence like a bubble from a pool

where death has been.

The women were shaken from their strained vigilance as by a wind. The

utter grey of the hour seemed to stifle them. Some were on their knees,

praying and weeping; one had fainted, and lay huddled against the trunk

of a pine. It was such a tragedy as was often played in those days of

disruption and despair, for Rome--the decrepit Saturn of history--had

fallen from empire to a tottering dotage. Her colonies--those Titans

of the past--still quivered beneath the doom piled upon them by the

Teuton. In Britain, the cry of a nation had gone out blindly into the

night. Vortigern had perished in the flames of Genorium. Reculbuum,

Rhutupiæ, and Durovernum had fallen. The fair fields of Kent were open

to the pirate; while Aurelius, stout soldier-king, gathered spear and

shield to remedy the need of Britain.

The women upon the hill were but the creatures of destiny. Realism had

touched them with cynical finger. The barbarians had come shorewards

that day in their ships, and at the first breathing of the news the

abbey dependants had fled, leaving nun and novice to the mercies of the

moment. It had become a matter of flight or martyrdom. Certain fervent

women had chosen to remain beside their abbess in the abbey chapel, to

await with vesper chant and bell the coming of sword and saexe. Those

more frail of spirit had fled with the novices from the valley, and

now knelt numb with a tense terror on the brow of that windswept hill,

watching fearfully for the abbey's doom. They could imagine what was

passing in the shadowy chapel where they had so often worshipped. The

face of the Madonna would be gazing placidly on death--and on more than

death. It was all very swift--very terrible. Thenceforward cloister and

garden were theirs no more.

A red gleam started suddenly from the black mass in the valley. The

nuns gripped hands and watched, while the gleam became a glare that

poured steadily above the dark outline of the oaks. A long flame leapt

up like a red finger above the trees. The belfry of the chapel rose

blackly from a circlet of fire, and gilded smoke rolled away nebulously

into the night. The barbarians had set torch to the place. The abbey of

Avangel went up in flame.

The tall novice who had been kneeling in advance of the main company

rose to her feet, and turned to those who still watched and prayed

under the pines. The girl's hood had fallen back; the hair that

should have been primly coifed rolled down in billowy bronze upon her

shoulders. There was infinite pride on the wistful face--a certain

scorn for the frailer folk who wept and found sustenance in prayer. The

girl's eyes shone largely even in the meagre light under the trees, and

there was a straight courage about her lips. She approached and spoke

to the women who knelt and watched the burning abbey in a cataleptic

stupor.

"Will you kneel all night?" she said.

The words were scourges in their purpose. Several of the nuns looked up

from the flames in the valley.

"Shame on you, worldling!" said one of thin and thankless visage;

"down on your knees, brat, and pray for the dead."

The novice gave a curt, low laugh. The reproofs of a year rankled in

her like bitter herbs.

"Let the dead bury their dead," quoth she. "I am for life and the

living."

"Shame, shame!" came the ready response. "May the Mother of Mercy melt

your proud heart, and punish you for your sins. You are bad to the

core."

"Shame or no shame," said the girl, "my heart can grieve for death as

well as thine, Sister Claudia; and now the abbey's burnt, you may couch

here and scold till dawn if you will. You may scold the heathen when

they come to butcher you all. I warrant they will give such a beauty

short shrift."

The lean nun ventured no answer. She had been worsted before by this

rebellious tongue, and had discovered expediency in silence. Several

of the women had risen, and were thronging round the novice Igraine,

querulous and fearful. Implicit faith, though pious and admirable in

the extreme, neither pointed a path nor provided a lantern. Southwards

lay the sea and the barbarians; the purlieus of Andredswold came down

to touch the ocean. There was night in the sky; no refuge within miles,

and wild folk enough in the world to make travelling sufficiently

perilous. Moreover, the day's deed had harried the women's emotions

into a condition of vibrating panic. The unknown seemed to hem them in,

to smother as with a cloak. They were like children who fear to stir in

the dark, and shrink from impalpable nothingness as though a strange

hand waited to grip them to some spiritual torture. As it was, they

were fluttering among the pines like birds who fear the falcon.

"It grows dark," said one.

"Let Claudia pray for us."

"Igraine, you are wiser in the world than we!"

"Truth," said the girl, "you may bide and snivel with Claudia if you

will. I am for Anderida through the woods."

"But the woods," said a child with wide, dark eyes, "the woods are

fearful at night."

"They are kinder than the heathen," said Igraine, taking the girl's

hand. "Come with me; I will mother you."

Even as she spoke the novice saw a point of fire disjoint itself from

the dark circle of the oaks below. Another and another followed it, and

began to jerk hither and thither in the meadows. The dashes of flame

gradually took a northern trend, as though the torch-bearers were for

ascending the long slope that idled up to the ragged thicket of pines.

She turned without further vigil, and made the most of her tidings in

an appeal to the women under the trees.

"Look yonder," she said, pointing into the valley. "Let Sister Claudia

say whether she will wait till those torches come over the hill."

There was instant hubbub among the nuns. Cooped as they had been within

the mothering arms of the Church, peril found them utterly impotent

when self-reliance and natural instinct were needed to shepherd them

from danger. The night seemed to sweep like a wheel with the burning

pyre in the meadows for axle. The torches were moving hither and

thither in fantastic fashion, as though the men who bore them were

doubling right and left in the dark, like hounds casting about for a

scent. The sight was sinister, and stirred the women to renewed panic.

"Igraine, help us," came the cry.

Even tyranny is welcome in times of peril. Witless, resourceless, they

gathered about her in a dumb stupor. Even Claudia lost her greed for

martyrdom and became human. They were all eager enough for the forest

now, and hungry for a leader. Igraine stood up among them like a tall

figure of hope. Her eyes were on the east, where a weird glow above the

tree tops told her that the moon was rising.

"See," she said, "we shall have light upon our way. There is a

bridle-path through the wold here that goes north, and touches the

road from Durovernum. I am going by that path, follow who will."

"We will follow Igraine," came the answer.

North, east, and west lay Andredswold, sinister as a sea at night. The

hill, tangled with gorse and bracken, and sapped by burrows, dipped to

it gradually like an outjutting of the land. To the east they could see

a wide tangle of pines latticing the light of the moon. It was dark,

and the ground more than dubious to the feet. The women, nine in all,

herded close on Igraine, who walked like an Eastern shepherdess with

the sheep following in her track. First came Claudia, who had held sway

over the linen, with Malt, the stout cellaress, next Elaine and Lily,

twin sisters, two nuns, and two novices. There was much stumbling, much

clutching at one another in the dark; but, thanks to holy terror, their

progress was in measure ungracefully speedy.

The girl Igraine led with a keen gleam in her eyes and a queer

cheerfulness upon her face, as she stepped out blithely for the dark

mass where the wold began. Her sojourn in the abbey had been brief

and stormy, a curt attempt at discipline that had failed most nobly.

One might as well have sought to hem in spring with winter as to curb

desire that leapt towards greenness and the dawn like joy. She had ever

thought more of a net for her hair than of her rosary. The little pool

in the pleasaunce had served her as her mirror, casting back a full

face set with amber shadowed eyes, and a bosom more attuned to passion

than to dreams of quiet sanctity. She had been the wayward child of the

abbey flock, flooded with homilies, surrendered to eternal penances,

yet holding her own in a fair worldly fashion that left the good women

of the place wholly to leeward.

Thrust out into the world again she took to the wild like a fox to

the woodland, while her more tractable comrades were like caged doves

baffled by unaccustomed freedom. Matins, complines, vespers were no

more. Cold stone arched no more to tomb her fancies. Above stretched

the free dome of the sky; around, the wilderness free and untainted; in

lieu of psalms she heard the gathering cry of the wind, and the great

voice of the forest at night.

In due course they came to where a dark mass betokened the rampart

thickets of the wold, rising like a wall across the sky. Igraine hoped

for the track, and found it running like a white fillet about the brow

of a wood. They followed till it thrust into the trees, a thin thread

in the shadows. As they went, great oaks overreached them with sinuous

limbs. The vault was fretted innumerably with the faint overdome of

the sky. Now and again a solitary star glimmered through. To the women

that place seemed like an interminable cavern, where grotto on grotto

dwindled away into oblivious gloom. But for the track's narrow comfort,

Igraine and her company would have been impotent indeed.

The prospect was sad for these folk who had lived for peace, and had

tuned their lives to placid chants and the balm of prayer. In Britain

Christ was worshipped and the Cross adored, yet abbeys were burnt,

and children martyred, and strong towns given over to sack and fire.

Truth seemed to taunt them with the apparent impotence of their creed.

The abbess Gratia had often said that Britain, for its sloth and sin,

deserved to meet the scourge of war, and here were her words exampled

by her own stark death. The nuns talked of the state of the land, as

they plodded on through the night. There was no soul among them that

had not been grossly stirred by the fate that had overtaken Avangel,

Gratia, and her more zealous nuns. It was but natural that a cry for

vengeance should have gained voice in the hearts of these outcast

women, and that a certain querulous bitterness should have found tongue

against those in power.

Igraine, walking in the van, listened to their words, and laughed with

some scorn in her heart.

"You are very wise, all of you," she said presently over her shoulder.

"You speak of war and disruption as though the whole kingdom were in

the dust. True, Kent is lost, the heathen have burnt defenceless places

on the coast, and have stormed a few towns. The abbey of Avangel is not

all Britain. Have we not Aurelius and the great Uther? Our folk will

gather head anon, and push these whelps into the sea."

"God grant it," said Claudia, with a smirk heavenward.

"We need a man," quoth Igraine.

"Perhaps you will find him, pert one."

"Peril will," said the girl; "there is no hero when there is no dragon

or giant in need of the sword. Britain will find her knight ere long."

"Lud," said Malt, the cellaress, "I wish I could find my supper."

Thereat they all laughed, Igraine as heartily as any.

"Perhaps Claudia will pray for manna dew," she said.

"Scoffer!"

"It will be cranberries, and bread and water, till better seasons come.

I have heard that there are wild grapes in the wold."

"Bread!" quoth Malt; "did some kind soul say bread?"

"I have a small loaf here under my habit."

"Ah, Igraine, girl, I would chant twenty psalms for a morsel of that

loaf."

"Chant away, sister. Begin on the 'Attendite, popule.' I believe it is

one of the longest."

"Don't trifle with a hungry wretch."

"The psalms, Malt, or not a crust."

"Keep it yourself, greedy hussy; I can go without."

"We will share it, all of us, presently," said the girl, "unless Malt

wants to eat the whole."

They held on under the ban of night, following the track like Theseus

did his thread. At times the path struck out into a patch of open

ground, covered with scrub and bracken, or bristling thick with furze.

Igraine had never seen such timid folk as these nuns from Avangel.

If a stick cracked they would start, huddle together, and vow they

heard footsteps. They mistook an owl's hoot for a heathen cry, and a

night-jar's creaking note made them swear they caught the chafe of

steel. Once they suffered a most shrewd fright. They drove a herd

of red deer from cover, and the rush and tumultuous sound of their

galloping created a most holy panic among the women. It was some time

before Igraine could get them on the march again.

As the night wore on they began to lag from sheer weariness. Two or

three were feeble as sickly children, and the abbey life had done

little for the body, though it had done much to deform the mind.

Igraine had to turn tyrant in very earnest. She knew the women looked

to her for courage and guidance, and that they would be hopeless

without her stronger mind to lead them. She put this knowledge to

effect, and held it like a lash over their weakly spirits.

Igraine found abundant scope for her ingenuity. When they voted a halt

for rest, she vowed she would hold on alone and leave them. The threat

made the whole company trail after her like sheep. When they grumbled,

she told tales of the savagery and lust of the heathen, and made their

fears ache more lustily than did their feet. By such devices she kept

them to it for the greater portion of the night, knowing that the

shrewdest kindness lay in seeming harshness, and that to humour them

was but mistaken pity.

At last--heathen or no heathen--they would go no further. It was

some hours before dawn. The trees had thinned, and through more open

colonnades they looked out on what appeared to be a grass-grown valley

sleeping peacefully under the moon. A great cedar grew near, a pyramid

of gloom. Malt, the cellaress, grumbling and groaning, crept under its

shadows, and commended Igraine to purgatorial fire. The rest, limp

and spiritless, vowed they would rather die than take another step.

Huddling together under the branches, they were soon half of them

asleep in an ecstasy of weariness. Igraine, seeing further effort

useless, surrendered to the inevitable, and lay down herself to sleep

under the tree.

II

Day came with an essential stealth. The great trees stood without a

rustling leaf, in a stupor of silence. A vast hush held as though the

wold knelt at orisons. Soon ripple on ripple of light surged from the

hymning east, and the night was not.

The sleep of the women from Avangel had proved but brief and fitful,

couched as they had been under so strange a roof. They were all awake

under the cedar. Igraine, standing under its green ledges, listened to

their monotonous talk as they rehearsed their plight dismally under

the shade. The nun Claudia's voice was still raised weakly in pious

fashion; she had learnt to ape saintliness all her life, and it was a

mere habit with her. The cellaress's red face was in no measure placid;

hunger had dissipated her patience like an ague, and she found comfort

in grumbling. The younger women were less voluble, as age and custom

behoved them to be. Unnaturally bred, they were like images of wax,

capable only of receiving the impress of the minds about them. Such a

woman as Malt owed her individuality solely to the superlative cravings

of the flesh.

About them rose the slopes of a valley, set tier on tier with trees,

nebulous, silent in the now hurrying light. Grassland, moist and

spangled, lay dew-heavy in the lap of the valley, with the track

curling drearily into a further tunnel of green.

Igraine, scanning the trees and the stretch of grassland, found on a

sudden something to hold her gaze. On the southern side of the valley

the walls of a building showed vaguely through the trees. It was so

well screened that a transient glance would have passed over the line

of foliage without discovering the white glimmer of stone. She pointed

it out to her companions, who were quickly up from under the cedar

at the thought of the meal and the material comforts such a forest

habitation might provide. They were soon deep in the tall grass, their

habits wet to the knee with dew, as they held across the valley for the

manor amid the trees.

The place gathered distinctness as they approached. Two horns of

woodland jutted out--enclosing and holding it jealously from the

track through the valley. There were outhouses packed away under the

trees. A garden held it on the north. The building itself was modelled

somewhat after the fashion of a Roman villa, with a porch--whitely

pillared--leading from a terrace fringed with flowers.

The silence of the place impressed itself upon Igraine and the women as

they drew near from the meadowlands. The manor seemed lifeless as the

woods that circled it. There were no cattle--no servants to be seen,

not even a hound to bay warning on the threshold. Passing over a small

stone bridge, they went up an avenue of cypresses that led primly to

the garden and the terrace. They halted at the steps leading to the

portico. The garden, broken in places, and somewhat unkempt, glistened

with colour in the early sun; terrace and portico were void and silent;

the whole manor seemed utterly asleep.

The women halted by the stairway, and looked dubiously into one

another's faces. There was something sinister about the place--a

prophetic hush that seemed to stand with finger on lip and bid the

curious forbear. After their march over the meadows, and considering

the hungry plight they were in, it seemed more than unreasonable to

turn away without a word. None the less, they all hesitated, beckoning

each to her fellow to set foot first in this house of silence. Igraine,

seeing their indecision, took the initiative as usual, and began to

climb the steps that led to the portico. Claudia and the rest followed

her in a body.

Within the portico the carved doors were wide. The sun streamed down

through a latticed roof into a peristylum, where flowers grew, and a

pool shone silverly. There were statues at the angles; one had been

thrown down, and lay half buried in a mass of flowers. The place looked

wholly deserted, though, by the orderly mood of court and garden, it

could not have been long since human hands had tended it.

The women gathered together about the little font in the centre of the

peristylum, and debated together in low tones. They were still but

half at ease with the place, and quite ready to suspect some sudden

development. The house had a scent of tragedy about it that was far

from comforting.

Said Malt, "I should judge, sisters, that the folk have fled, and that

we are to be sustained by the hand of grace. Come and search."

Claudia demurred a moment.

"Is it lawful," quoth she, "to possess one's self of food and raiment

in a strange and empty house?"

"Nonsense," said the cellaress with a sniff.

"But, Malt, I never stole a crust in my life."

"Better learn the craft, then. King David stole the shewbread."

"It was given him of the priests."

"Tut, sister, then are we wiser than David; we can thieve with our own

hands. I say this house is God-sent for our need. May I stifle if I

err."

"Malt is right," said Igraine, laughing; "let us deprive the barbarians

of a pie or a crucifix."

"Aye," chimed Malt, "want makes thieving honest. _Jubilate Deo._ I'm

for the pantry."

A colonnade enclosed the peristylum on every quarter. Beneath the

shadows cast by the architrave and roof, showed the portals of the

various chambers. Igraine led the way. The first room that they essayed

appeared to have been a sleeping apartment, for there were beds in it,

the bedding lying disordered and fallen upon the floor as though there

had been a struggle, or a sudden wild flight. It was a woman's chamber,

judging by its mirror of steel, and the articles that were scattered

on floor and table. The next room proved to be a species of parlour or

living-room. A meal had been spread upon the table, and left untouched.

Platter and drinking cups were there, a dish of cakes, a joint on a

great charger, bread, olives, fruit, and wine. Armour hung on the

walls, with mirrors of steel, and paintings upon panels of wood.

The women made themselves speedily welcome after the trials of the

night. Each was enticed by some special object, and character leaked

out queerly in the choosing. Malt ran for a beaker of wine; the cakes

were pilfered by the younger folk; Claudia--whispering of Saxon

desecration--possessed herself with an obeisance of a little silver

cross that hung upon the wall. Igraine took down a bow, a quiver

of arrows, and a sheathed hunting knife; she slung the quiver over

her shoulder, and strapped the knife to her girdle. The clear kiss

of morning had sharpened the hunger of a night, and the meal spread

in that woodland manor proved very comforting to the fugitives from

Avangel.

Satisfied, they passed out to explore the rooms as yet unvisited. A

fine curiosity led them, for they were like children who probe the dark

places of a ruin. The eastern chambers gave no greater revealings than

did those upon the west. The kitchen quarters were empty and soundless,

though there was a joint upon the spit that hung over the ashes of a

spent fire. It seemed more than likely that the inmates had fled in

fear of the barbarians, leaving the house in the early hours of some

previous dawn.

As yet they had not visited a room whose door opened upon the southern

quarter of the peristyle. Judging by its portal, it promised to be a

greater chamber than any of the preceding, probably the banqueting or

guest room. The door stood ajar, giving view of a frescoed wall within.

Malt, who had waxed jovial since her communion with the tankard, pushed

the door open, and went frankly into the half light of a great chamber.

She came to an abrupt halt on the threshold, with a fat hand quavering

the symbol of a cross in the air. The women crowded the doorway, and

looked in over the cellaress's stout shoulders.

In a gilded chair in the centre of the room sat the figure of a man.

His hands were clenched upon the lion-headed arms of the siege, and

his chin bowed down upon his breast. He was clad in purple; there were

rings upon his fingers, and his brow was bound with a band of gold. At

his feet crouched a great wolf-hound, motionless, dead.

The women in the doorway stared on the scene in silence. The man in the

chair might have been thought asleep save for a certain stark look--a

bleak immobility that contradicted the possibility of life. Here they

had stumbled on tragedy with a vengeance. The mute face of death lurked

in the shadows, and the vast mystery of life seemed about them like a

cold vapour. It was a sudden change from sunlight into shade.

Igraine pushed past Malt, and ventured close to the crouching hound.

Bending down, she looked into the dead man's face. It was pinched and

grey, but young, none the less, and bearing even in death a certain

sensuous haughtiness and dissolute beauty. The man had been dark, with

hair turbulent and lustrous. In his bosom glinted the silver pommel of

a knife, and there were stains upon cloak and tessellated pavement.

Clasped in one hand was a small cross of gold that looked as though it

had been plucked from a chain or necklet, and held gripped in the death

agony. The wolf-hound had been thrust through the body with a sword.

"Hum," said Malt, with a sniff,--"Christian work here. And a comely

fellow, too--more's the pity. Look at the rings on his fingers;

I wonder whether I might take one for prayer money? It would buy

candles."

Igraine was still looking at the dead man with strange awe in her heart.

"Keep off," she said, thrusting off Malt; "the man has been stabbed."

"Well, haven't I eyes too, hussy?"

Claudia came in, white and quavering, with her crucifix up.

"Poor wretch!" said she; "can't we bury him?"

"Bury him!" cried Malt.

"Yes, sister."

"Thanks, no. It would spoil my dinner."

Claudia gave a sudden scream, and jumped back, holding her skirts up.

"There's blood on the floor! Holy mother! did the dog move?"

"Move!" quoth Malt, giving the brute a kick; "what a mouse you are,

Claudia."

"Are you sure the man's dead?"

"Dead, and cold," said Igraine, touching his cheek, and drawing away

with a shiver. "Come away, the place makes my flesh creep. Shut the

door, Malt. Let us leave him so."

The women from Avangel had seen enough of the manor in the forest.

Certainly, it held nothing more perilous than a corpse, perched

stiffly in a gilded chair; but the dead man seemed to exert a sinister

influence upon the spirits of the company, and to stifle any desire for

a further sojourn in the place. Folk with murder fresh upon their hands

might still be within the purlieus of the valley. The women thought

of the glooms of the forest, and of the strong walls of Anderida, and

discovered a very lively desire to be free of Andredswold, and the

threats of the unknown.

They left the man sitting in his chair, with the hound at his feet,

and went to gather food for the day's journey. Bread they took, and

meat, and bound them in a sheet, while Malt filled a flask with wine,

and bestowed it at her girdle. Igraine still had her bow, shafts,

and hunting knife. Before sallying, they remembered the dead. It was

Igraine's thought. They went and stood before the door of the great

chamber, sang a hymn, and said a prayer. Then they left the place, and

held on into the forest.

Nothing befell them on their way that morning. It was noon before they

struck the road from Durovernum to Anderida, a straight and serious

highway that went whitely amid wastes of scrub, thickets, and dark

knolls of trees. The women were glad of its honest comfort, and blessed

the Romans who had wrought the road of old. Later in the day they

neared the sea again. Between masses of trees, and over the slopes,

they caught glimpses of the blue plain that touched the sky. From a

little hill that gave broader view, they saw the white sails of ships

that were ploughing westward with a temperate wind. They took them for

the galleys of the Saxons, and the thought hurried them on their way

the more.

Presently they came to a mild declivity, with a broken toll-house

standing by the roadside, and two horsemen on the watch there, as the

distant galleys swept over the sea towards the west. The men belonged

to the royal forces in Anderida. They were reticent in measure, and in

no optimistic mood. They told how the heathen had swept the coast, how

their ships had ventured even to Vectis, to burn, slay, and martyr. The

women learnt that Andred's town was some ten miles distant. There was

little likelihood, so the men said, of their getting within the walls

that night, for the place was in dread of siege, and was shut up like a

rock after dusk.

Igraine and the nuns elected, none the less, to hold upon their way.

Despite their weariness, the women preferred to push on and gain

ground, rather than to lag and lose courage. For all they knew, the

Saxons might be soon ashore, ready to raid and slay in their very path.

They left the soldiers at the toll-house, and went downhill into a long

valley.

Possibly they had gone a mile or more when they heard the sound of

galloping coming in their wake. On the slope of the hill they had left,

they could see a distant wave of dust curling down the road like

smoke. The two men from Andred's town were coming on at a gallop. They

were very soon within bowshot, but gave no hint of halting. Thundering

on, they drew level with the women, shouted as they went by, and held

on fast,--dust and spume flying.

"God's curse upon the cravens," said Malt, the cellaress.

Cravens they were in sense; yet the men had reason on their side,

and the women were left staring at the diminishing fringe of dust.

There was much frankness in the phenomenon, a curt hint that carried

emphasis, and advised action. "To the woods," it said; "to the woods,

good souls, and that quickly."

The road ran through the flats at that place, with marsh and meadowland

on either hand. Further westward, the wold thrust forth a finger from

the north to touch the highway. Southward, scrub and grassland swept

away to the sea. It was when looking southwards that the nuns from

Avangel discovered the stark truth of the soldier's warning. Against

the skyline could be seen a number of jerking specks, moving fast over

the open land, and holding north-west as though to touch the road. They

were the figures of men riding.

The outjutting of woodland that rolled down to edge the highway was a

quarter of a mile from where the women stood. A bleak line of roadway

parted them from the mazy refuge of the wold. They started away at

a run; Igraine and another novice dragging the nun Claudia between

them. The display was neither Olympic nor graceful; it would have been

ridiculous but for the stern need that inspired it. Igraine and her

fellows made the best of the highway. In the west, the wold seemed to

stretch an arm to them like a mother.

The heathen raiders were coming fast over the marshes. Igraine,

dragging the panting Claudia by the hand, looked back and took measure

of the chase. There were some score at the gallop three furlongs or

more away, with others on foot, holding on to stirrups, running and

leaping like madmen. The girl caught their wild, burly look even at

that distance. They were hallooing one to another, tossing axe and

spear--making a race of it, like huntsmen at full pelt. Possibly there

was sport in hounding a company of women, with the chance of spoil and

something more brutish to entice.

Igraine and her flock were struggling on for very life. Their feet

seemed weighted with the shackles of an impotent fear, while every

yard of the white road appeared three to them as they ran. How they

anguished and prayed for the shadows of the wood. A frail nun, winded

and lagging, began to scream like a hare when the hounds are hard on

her haunches. Another minute, and the trees seemed to stride down to

them with green-bosomed kindness. A wild scramble through a shallow

dyke brought them to bracken and a tangled barrier about the hem of the

wood. Then they were amid the sleek, solemn trunks of a beech wood,

scurrying up a shadowed aisle with the dull thudding of the nearing

gallop in their ears.

It was borne in upon Igraine's reason as she ran that the trees would

barely save them from the purpose of pursuit. The women--limp, witless,

dazed by danger--could hardly hold on fast enough to gain the deeper

mazes of the place, and the sanctuary the wold could give. Unless the

pursuit could be broken for a season, the whole company would fall to

the net of the heathen, and only the Virgin knew what might befall them

in that solitary place. Sacrifice flashed into the girl's vision--a

sudden ecstasy of courage, like hot flame. These abbey folk had been

none too gentle with her. None the less she would essay to save them.

She cast Claudia's hand aside, and turned away abruptly from the rest.

They wavered, looking at her as though for guidance, too flurried for

sane measures. Igraine waved them on, with a certain pride in her that

seemed to chant the triumph song of death.

"What will you do, girl? Are you mad?"

"Go!" was all she said. "Perhaps you will pray for me as for Gratia the

abbess."

"They will kill you!"

"Better one than all."

They wavered, unwilling to be wholly selfish despite their fear and

the sounding of pursuit. There shone a fine light on the girl's face

as they beheld her--tyrannical even in heroism. Her look awed them and

made them ashamed; yet they obeyed her, and like so many winging birds

they fled away into the green shadows.

Igraine watched them a moment, saw the grey flicker of their gowns

go amid the trees, and then turned to front her fortune. Pursing her

lips into a queer smile, she took post behind a tree bole, and waited

with an arrow fitted to her string. She heard a sluthering babel as

the men reined in, with much shouting, on the forest's margin. They

were very near now. Even as she peered round her tree trunk a figure

on foot flashed into the grass ride, and came on at the trot. The bow

snapped, the arrow streaked the shadows, and hummed cheerily into the

man's thigh. Igraine had not hunted for nothing. A second fellow edged

into view, and took the point in his shoulder. Igraine darted back some

forty paces and waited for more.

In this fashion--slipping from tree to tree, and edging north-west--she

held them for a furlong or more. The end came soon with an empty

quiver. The wood seemed full of armed men; they were too speedy for

her, too near to her for flight. She threw the empty quiver at her

feet, with the bow athwart it, put a hand in the breast of her habit,

and waited. It was not for long. A man ran out from behind a tree and

came to a curt halt fronting her.

He was young, burly, with a great tangle of hair, and a yellow beard

that bristled like a hound's collar. A naked sword was in his hand,

a buckler strapped between his shoulders. He laughed when he saw the

girl--the coarse laugh of a Teuton--and came some paces nearer to her,

staring in her face. She was very rich and comely in a way foreign to

the fellow's fancy. There was that in his eyes that said as much. He

laughed again, with a guttural oath, and stretched out a hand to grip

the girl's shoulder.

An instant shimmer of steel, and Igraine had smitten him above the

golden torque that ringed his throat. Life rushed out in a red

fountain. He went back from her with a stagger, clutching at the place,

and cursing. As the blood ebbed he dropped to his knees, and thence

fell slantwise against a tree. He had found death in that stroke.

A hand closed on the girl's wrist. The knife that had been turned

towards her own heart was smitten away and spurned to a distance. There

were men all about her--ogrish folk, moustachioed, jerkined in skins,

bare armed, bare legged. Igraine stood like a statue--impotent--frozen

into a species of apathy. The bearded faces thronged her, gaped at her

with a gross solemnity. She had no glance for them, but thought only of

the man twitching in the death trance. The wood seemed full of gruff

voices, of grotesque words mouthed through hair.

Then the barbaric circle rippled and parted. A rugged-faced old man

with white hair and beard came forward slowly. There was a tense

silence over the throng as the old man stood and looked at the figure

at his feet. There were shadows on the earl's face, and his hands

shook, for the smitten man was his son.

Out of silence grew clamour. Hands were raised, fingers pointed, a

sword was poised tentatively above the girl's head. The wood seemed

full of bearded and grotesque wrath, and the hollow aisles rang with

the clash of sword on buckler. But age was not for sudden violence,

though the blood of youth ebbed on the grass. The old man pointed to a

tree, spoke briefly, quietly, and the rough warriors obeyed him.

They stripped Igraine, cast her clothes at her feet, and bound her to

the trunk of the tree with their girdles. Then they took up the body of

the dead man, and so departed into the forest.

III

It was well towards evening when the men disappeared into the wood,

leaving the girl bound naked to the tree. The day was calm and

tranquil, with the mood of June on the wind, and a benign sky above.

Igraine's hair had fallen from its band, and now hung in bronze masses

well-nigh to her knees, covering her as with a cloak. Her habit, shift,

and sandals lay close beside her on the grass. The barbarians had

robbed her of nothing, according to their old earl's wishes. She was

simply bound there, and left unscathed.

When the men were gone, and she began to realise what had passed, she

felt a flush spread from face to ankle, a glow of shame that was keen

as fire. Her whole body seemed rosily flaked with blushes. The very

trees had eyes, and the wind seemed to whisper mischief. There were

none to see, none to wonder, and yet she felt like Eve in Eden when

knowledge had smitten the pure flesh with gradual shame. Though the

place was solitary as a dry planet, her aspen fancy peopled it with

life. She could still see the heavy-jowled barbaric faces staring at

her like the malign masks of a dream.

The west was already prophetic of night. There was the golden glow of

the decline through the billowy foliage of the trees, and the shadows

were very still and reverent, for the day was passing. A beam of gold

slanted down upon Igraine's breast, and slowly died there amid her

hair. The west flamed and faded, the east grew blind. Soon the day was

not.

Igraine watched the light faint above the trees, wondering in her heart

what might befall her before another sun could set. She had tried her

bonds, and had found them lacking sympathy in that they were staunch

as strength could make them. She was cramped, too, and began to long

for the hated habit that had trailed the galleries of Avangel, and had

brought such scorn into her discontented heart. There was no hope for

it. She was pilloried there, bound body, wrist, and ankle. Philosophy

alone remained to her, a poor enough cloak to the soul, still worse for

things tangible.

Her plight gave her ample time for meditation. There were many chances

open to her, and even in mere possibilities fate had her at a vantage.

In the first place, she might starve, or other unsavoury folk find her,

and her second state be worse than her first. Then there were wolves in

the wold; or country people might find and release her, or even Claudia

and the women might return and see how she had fared. There was little

comfort in this last thought. She shrewdly guessed that the abbey folk

would not stop till they happened on a stone wall, or the heathen took

them. Lastly, the road was at no very great distance, and she might

hear perchance if any one passed that way.

Presently the moon rose upon Andredswold with a stupendous splendour.

The veil of night seemed dusted with silver as it swept from her

tiar of stars. Innumerable glimmering eyes starred the foliage of

the beeches. Vague lights streamed down and netted the shadows with

mysterious magic. Here and there a tree trunk stood like a ghost,

splashed with a phosphor tunic.

The wilderness was soundless, the billowy bastions of the trees

unruffled by a breath. The hush seemed vast, irrefutable, supreme. Not

a leaf sighed, not a wind wandered in its sleep. The great trees stood

in a silver stupor, and dreamt of the moon. The solemn aisles were

still as Thebes at midnight; the smooth boles of the beeches like ebony

beneath canopies of jet.

The scene held Igraine in wonder. There was a mystery about a moonlit

forest that never lessened for her. The vasty void of the night,

untainted by a sound, seemed like eternity unfolded above her ken. She

forgot her plight for the time, and took to dreaming, such dreams as

the warm fancy of the young heart loves to remember. Perhaps beneath

such a benediction she thought of a pavilion set amid water lilies, and

a boy who had looked at her with boyish eyes. Yet these were childish

things. They lost substance before the chafing of the cords that bound

her to the tree.

Presently she began to sing softly to herself for the cheating of

monotony. She was growing cold and hungry, too, despite all the magic

of the place, and the hours seemed to drag like a homily. Then with

a gradual stealthiness the creeping fear of death and the unknown

began to steal in and cramp even her buoyant courage. It was vain for

her to put the peril from her, and to trust to day and the succour

that she vowed in her heart must come. Dread smote into her more

cynically than did the night air. What might be her end? To hang there

parched, starved, delirious till life left her; to hang there still,

a loathsome, livid thing, rotting like a cloak. To be torn and fed

upon by birds. She knew the region was as solitary as death, and that

the heathen had emptied it of the living. The picture grew upon her

distraught imagination till she feared to look on it lest it should be

the lurid truth.

It was about midnight, and she was beginning to quake with cold, when

a sound stumbled suddenly out of silence, and set her listening. It

dwindled and grew again, came nearer, became rhythmic, and ringing in

the keen air. Igraine soon had no doubts as to its nature. It was the

steady smite of hoofs on the high-road, the rhythm of a horse walking.

Now was her chance if she dared risk the character of the rider. Doubts

flashed before her a moment, hovered, and then merged into decision.

Better to risk the unknown, she thought, than tempt starvation tied to

the tree. She made her choice and acted.

"Help, there! Help!"

The words went like silver through the woods. Igraine, listening

hungrily, strained forward at her bonds to catch the answer that might

come to her. The sound of hoofs ceased, and gave place to silence.

Possibly the rider was in doubt as to the testimony of his own hearing.

Igraine called again, and again waited.

Stillness held. Then there was a stir, and a crackling as of trampled

brushwood, followed by the snort of a horse and the thrill of steel.

The sounds came nearer, with the deadened tramp of hoofs for an

underchant. Igraine, full of hope and fear, of doubt and gratitude,

kept calling for his guidance. Presently a cry came back to her in turn.

"By the holy cross, who are you that calls?"

"A woman," she cried in turn, "bound here by the heathen."

"Where?"

"Here, in a grass ride, tied to a tree."

The words that had come to her were very welcome, heralding, as they

did, a friend, at least in race, and there was a manly depth in the

voice, too, that gave her comfort. She saw a glimmer of steel in the

shadows of the wood as man and horse drew into being from the darkness.

Moonlight played fitfully upon them, weaving silver gleams amid a smoke

of gloom, making a white mist about the man's great horse. A single

ray burnt and blazed like a halo about the rider's casque, and his

spear-point flickered like a star beneath the vaultings of the trees.

He had halted, a solitary figure wrapped round with night, and rendered

grand and wizard by the misty web of the moon.

The sight was pathetic enough, yet infinitely fair. Light streamed

through, and fell full upon the tree where Igraine stood. The girl's

limbs were white and luminous against the dark bosom of the beech,

and her rich hair fell about her like mist. As for the strange rider,

he could at least claim the inspiration accorded to a Christian.

The servant of the Galilean has, like Constantine, a symbol in the

sky, prophetic in all need, generous of all guidance. The Cross is a

perpetual Delphi oracular on trivial matters as on the destinies of

kingdoms. The man dismounted, knelt for a moment with sword held before

him, and then rose and strode to the tree with shield held before his

face.

Igraine was looking at the figure in armour, kindly, redly, from amid

the masses of her hair. The small noblenesses of his bearing towards

her had won her trust with a flush of gratitude. The man saw only

the white feet like marble amid the moss as he cut the thongs where

they circled the tree. The bands fell, he saw the white feet flicker,

a trail of hair waving under his shield. Then he turned on his heel

without a word, and went to tether his horse.

The interlude was as considerate as courtesy had intended. Igraine

darted for her habit with a rapturous sigh. When the man turned

leisurely again, a tall girl met him, cloaked in grey, with her hair

still hanging about her, and sandals on her feet.

"Mother Virgin, a nun!"

The words seemed sudden as an echo. Igraine bent her head to hide

the half-abashed, half-smiling look upon her face. It had been thus

at Avangel. Nun and novice had worn like habits, and there had

been nothing to distinguish them save the final solemn vow. The

man's notions were plainly celibate, and, with a sudden twinkling

inspiration, she fancied they should bide so. It would make matters

smoother for them both, she thought.

"My prayers are yours, daily, for this service," she said.

The man bent his head to her.

"I am thankful, madame," he answered, "that I should have been so good

fortuned as to be able to befriend you. How came you by such evil

hazard?"

"I was of Avangel," she said.

"You speak as of the past," quoth he, with a keen look.

"Avangel was burnt and sacked but yesterday," she said. "Many of the

nuns were martyred; some few escaped. I was made captive here, and

bound to this tree by the heathen."

Igraine could see the man's face darken even in the moonlight, as

though pain and wrath held mute confederacy there. He crossed himself,

and then stood with both hands on the pommel of his sword, stately and

statuesque.

"And the Lady Gratia?" he said.

"Dead, I fear."

A half-heard groan seemed to come from the man's helmet. He bent his

head into the shadows and stood stiff and silent as though smitten into

thought. Presently he seemed to remember himself, Igraine, and the

occasion.

"And yourself, madame?" he said, with a twinge of tenderness in his

voice.

The girl blushed, and nearly stammered.

"I am unscathed," she hastened to say, "thanks to heaven. I am safe and

whole as if I had spent the day in a convent cell. My name is Igraine,

if you would know it. I fear I have told you heavy tidings."

The man turned his face to the sky like one who looks into other worlds.

"It is nothing," he said, gazing into the night; "nothing but what

we must look for in these stark days. Our altars smoke, our blood is

spilt, and yet we still pray. Yet may I be cursed, and cursed again, if

I do not dye my sword for this."

There was a sudden bleak fierceness in his voice that betrayed his

fibre and the strong thoughts that were stirring in his heart that

moment. His face looked almost fanatical in the cold gloom, gaunt,

heavy-jawed, lion-like. Igraine watched this thunder-cloud of thought

and passion in silence, thinking she would meet the man in the wrack of

life rather as friend than as foe. The brief mood seemed to pass, or at

least to lose expression. Again, there was that in the kindness of his

face that made the girl feel beneath the eye of a brother.

"You will ride with me?" he asked.

Igraine hesitated a moment.

"I was for Anderida," she said, "and it is only three leagues distant.

Now that I am free I can go through the wold alone, for I am no child."

"An insult to my manhood," said the stranger.

"But the heathen are everywhere, and I should but cumber you."

"Madame, you talk like a fool."

There was a sheer sincerity about the speech that pleased Igraine. His

spirit seemed to overtop hers, and to silence argument. Proud heart!

yet without thought of debate she gave way in the most placid manner,

and was content to be shepherded.

"I might walk at your stirrup," she said meekly.

The man seemed to ponder. He merely looked at her with dark, solemn

eyes, showing a quiet disregard for her humility.

"Listen to me," he said, "you, a woman, must not attempt Anderida

alone. The town will be beleaguered, or I am no prophet. To Anderida

I cannot go, for I have folk at Winchester who wait my coming. If you

can put trust in me, and will ride with me to Winchester, you will find

harbour there."

She considered a moment.

"Winchester," she said, "yes, and most certainly I trust you."

The man stretched out a hand to her with a smile.

"God willing," he said, "I will bear you safe to the place. As for your

frocks and vows, they must follow necessity, and pocket their pride. It

will not damn you to ride before a man."

"I trow not," she said, with a little laugh that seemed to make the

leaves quiver. So they took horse together, and rode out from the beech

wood into the moonlight.

IV

When they were clear of the solemn beeches, and saw the road white

as white before them, Igraine began to tell the man of the doom of

Avangel, and the great end made by Gratia the abbess. The knight had

folded his red cloak and spread it for her comfort. Her tale seemed

very welcome to him despite its grievous humour, and he questioned

her much concerning Gratia, her goodness and her charity. Now it had

been well known in Avangel that Gratia had come of noble and excellent

descent, and seeing that this stranger had been familiar with her in

the past, Igraine guessed shrewdly that he himself was of some ancient

and goodly stock. To tell the truth, she was very curious concerning

him, and it was not long before she found a speech ready to her tongue

likely to draw some confession from his lips.

"I have promised to pray for you," she said, "and pray for you I will,

seeing that you have done me so great a blessing to-night. When I bow

to the Virgin and the Saints, what name may I remember?"

The man did not look at her, for her face was in the shadow of her hood

and his clear and white in the light of the moon.

"To some I am known as Sir Pelleas," he said.

"And to me?"

"As Sir Pelleas, if it please you, madame."

Igraine understood that she was to be pleased with the name, whether

she liked it or not.

"Then for Sir Pelleas I will pray," she said, "and may my gratitude

avail him."

There was silence for a space, broken by the rhythmic play of hoofs

upon the road, and the dull jar of steel. Igraine was meditating

further catechism, adapting her questions for the knowledge she wished

for.

"You ride errant," she said presently.

"I ride alone, madame."

"The wold is a rude region set thick with perils."

"Very true," quoth the man.

"Perhaps you are a venturesome spirit."

"I believe that I am often as careful as death."

Igraine made her culminating suggestion.

"Some high deed must have been in your heart," she said, "or probably

you would not have risked so much."

The man Pelleas did not even look at her. She felt the bridle-arm that

half held her tighten unconsciously, as though he were steeling himself

against her curiosity.

"Madame," he said very gravely, "every man's business should be for his

own heart, and I do not know that I have any need to share the right or

wrong of mine with others. It is a grand thing to be able to keep one's

own counsel. It is enough for you to know my name."

Igraine none the less was not a bit abashed.

"There is one thing I would hear," she said, "and that is how you came

to know of the abbess Gratia."

For the moment the man looked black, and his lips were stern--

"You may know if you wish," he said.

"Well?"

"Madame, the Lady Gratia was my mother."

Igraine felt a flood of sudden shame burst redly into her heart. Gratia

was the man's mother, and she had been plying him with questions,

cruelly curious. She caught a short, shallow breath, and hung her head,

shrinking like a prodigal.

"Set me down," she said. "I am not worthy to ride with you."

"Pardon me," quoth the man; "you did not think, not knowing I was in

pain."

"Set me down," was all she said; "set me down--set me down."

The man Pelleas changed his tone.

"Madame," he said, with a sudden gentleness that made her desire to

weep, "I have forgiven you. What, then, does it matter?"

Igraine hung her head.

"I am altogether ashamed," she said.

She drew her hood well over her face, and took her reproof to heart

like a veritable penitent. Even religious solemnities make little

change in the notorious weaknesses of woman. Igraine was angry, not

only for having blundered clumsily against the man's sorrow, but also

because of the somewhat graceless part she seemed to have played after

the deliverance he had vouchsafed her. As yet her character seemed to

have lost honour fast by mere brief contrast with the man's.

Pelleas meanwhile rode with eyes watching the wan stretch of road to

the west. On either hand the woods rose up like nebulous hills bowelled

by tunnelled mysteries of gloom. He had turned his horse to the grass

beside the roadway, so that the tramp of hoofs should fall muffled on

the air. Igraine, close against his steeled breast, with his bridle-arm

about her, looked into his face from the shadows of her hood, and found

much to initiate her liking.

If she loved strength, it was there. If she desired the grand reserve

of silent vigour, it was there also. The deeply caverned eyes watching

through the night seemed dark with a quiet destiny. The large, finely

moulded face, gaunt and white in its meditative repose, seemed fit to

front the ruins of a stricken land. It was the face of a man who had

watched and striven, who had followed truth like a shadow, and had

found the light of life in the heavens. There was bitterness there,

pain, and the ghost of a sad desire that had pleaded with death. The

face would have seemed morose, but for a certain something that made

its shadows kind.

Instinctively, as she watched the mask of thought beneath the dark arch

of his open casque, she felt that he had memories in his heart at that

moment. His thoughts were not for her, however much she pitied him or

longed to tell him of her shame and sympathy. Nothing could come into

that sad session of remembrances, save the soul of the man and the

memories of his mother. That he was grieving deeply Igraine knew well.

His was a strong nature that brooded in silence, and felt the more;

it must be a terrible thing, she thought, to have the martyrdom of a

mother haunting the heart like a fell dream at night.

Slipping from such a reverie, the turmoil and weariness of the past

days returned to take their tribute. Despite the strangeness of the

night, Igraine began to feel sleepy as a tired child. The magnetic

calm of the man beside her seemed to lull to slumber, while the motion

of the ride cradled her the more. The noise of hoofs, the dull clink

of scabbard against spur or harness, grew faint and faint. The woods

seemed to swim into a mist of silver. She saw, as in a dream, the

strong face above her staring calmly into the night, the long spear

poised heavenwards. Her head was on the man's shoulder. With scarcely a

thought she was asleep.

It was then that Pelleas discovered the girl heavy in his arms, and

looked down to find her sleeping, with hood fallen and a white face

turned peacefully to his. Strangely enough, the sorrow that had taken

him seemed to make his senses vibrate strongly to the more human things

of life. The supple warmth of the girl's slim body crept up the sinews

of his arm like a subtle flame. From her half-parted lips the sigh of

her breathing came into his bosom. Over his harness clouded her hair,

and her two hands had fastened themselves upon his sword-belt with a

restful trust.

The man bent his head and watched her in some awe. Her lips were like

autumn fruit fed wistfully on moonlight. To Pelleas, woman was still

wonderful, a creature to be touched with reverence and soft delight.

The drab, the scold, and the harlot had failed to debase the ideals

of a staunch spirit, and the fair flesh at his breast was as full of

mystery as a woman could be.

He took his fill of gazing, feeling half ashamed of the deed, and half

dreading lest Igraine should wake suddenly and look deeply into his

eyes. He felt his flesh creep with magic when she stirred or sighed,

or when the hands upon his belt twitched in their slumber. Pelleas

had seen stark things of late, burnt hamlets, priests slaughtered and

churches in flames, children dead in the trampled places of the slain.

He had ridden where smoke ebbed heavenwards, and blood clotted the

green grass. Now this ride beneath the quiet eyes of night, with the

bosomed silence of the woods around, and this lily plucked from death

in his arms, seemed like a passage of calm after a page of tempest.

Little wonder that he looked long into the girl's face, and thrilled

to the soft sway of her bosom. He thanked God in his heart that he

had plucked her blemishless from gradual death. It was even thus, he

thought, that a good soldier should ride into Paradise bearing the soul

of the woman he loved.

Igraine stirred little in her sleep. "Poor child," thought Pelleas,

"she has suffered much, has feared death, and is weary. Let her sleep

the night through if she can." So he drew the cloak gently about her,

said his prayers in his heart, and, holding as much as possible under

the shadows of the trees, kept watch patiently on the track before him.

All that night Pelleas rode, thinking of his mother, with the girl

sleeping in his arms. He saw the moon go down in the west, while the

grey mist of the hour before dawn made the forest gaunt like an abode

of the dead. He heard the birds wake in brake and thicket. He saw the

red deer scamper, frightened into the glooms, and the rabbits scurrying

amid the bracken. When the east mellowed he found himself in fair

meadowlands lying locked in the depths of the wold, where flowers were

thick as on some rich tapestry, and where the scent of dawn was as the

incense of many temples. With a calm sorrow for the dead he rode on,

threading the meadowland, till the girl woke and looked up into his

face with a little sigh. Then he smiled at her half sadly, and wished

her good-morning.

Igraine, wide-eyed, looked round in a daze.

"Day?" she said, "and meadows? It was moonlight when I fell asleep."

"It has dawned an hour or more."

"Then I have slept the night through? You must be tired to death, and

stiff with holding me."

"Not so," said Pelleas.

"I am sorry that I have been selfish," she said. "I was asleep before I

could think. Have you ridden all night?"

"Of course," quoth he, with a smile, "and not a soul have I seen. I

have been watching your face and the moon."

Igraine coloured slightly, and looked sideways at him from under her

long lashes. Her sleep had chastened her, and she felt blithe as a

bird, and ready to sing. Putting the man's scarlet cloak from her, she

shook her hair from her shoulders, and sprang lightly from her seat to

the grass.

"I will run at your side awhile," she said, "and so rest you. Perhaps

you will halt presently, and sleep an hour or two under a tree. I can

watch and keep guard with your sword."

Pelleas smiled down at her like the sun from behind a cloud.

"Not yet," he said; "a soldier needs no sleep for a week, and I feel

lusty as Christopher. We will go awhile before breakfast, if it please

you. There is a stream near where I can water my horse, and we can make

a meal from such stuff as I have. When you are tired, tell me, and I

will mount you here again."

She nodded at him gravely. Grass and flowers were well-nigh to her

waist. Her gown shook showers of dew from the feathery hay. Foxgloves

rose like purple rods amid the snow webs of the wild daisy. Tangled

domes of dogrose and honeysuckle lined the white track, and there were

countless harebells lying like a deep blue haze under the green shadows

of the grass.

Presently they came to where red poppies grew thickly in the golden

meads. Igraine ran in among them, and began to make a great posy, while

Pelleas watched her as her grey gown went amid the green and red. In

due course she came back to him holding her flowers in her bosom.

"Scarlet is your colour," she said, "and these are the flowers of sleep

and of dreams for those that grieve. Hold them in the hollow of your

shield for me."

Pelleas obeyed her mutely. She began to sing a soft slumberous dirge

while she walked beside the great black horse and plaited the flowers

into its mane. The man watched her with a kind of wondering pain. The

song seemed to wake echoes in him, like sea surges wake in the caverns

of a cliff. He understood Igraine's grace to him, and was grateful in

his heart.

"How long were you mewed in Avangel?" he said, presently.

"Long enough," quoth she, betwixt her singing, "to learn to love life."

"So I should judge," said Pelleas, curtly.

His tone disenchanted her. She threw the rest of the flowers aside, and

walked quietly beside him, looking up with a frank seriousness into his

face.

"I was placed there by my parents," she said, by way of explanation,

"and against my will, for I had no hope in me to be a nun. But the

times were wild, and my father--a solemn soul--thought for the best."

"But your novitiate. You had your choice."

"I had my choice," she answered vaguely. "Did ever a woman choose for

the best? Avangel was no place for me."

Pelleas eyed her somewhat sadly from his higher vantage. "The nun's is

a sorry life," he said, "when her thoughts fly over the convent walls."

A level kindness in the words seemed to loose her tongue like magic.

Twelve long months had her sympathies been outraged, and her young

desires crushed by the heel of a so-called godliness. Never had so kind

a chance for the outpouring of her discontent come to her. Women love

an honest grumble. In a moment all her bitterness found ready flight

into the man's ears.

"I hated it!" she said, "I hated it! Avangel had no hold on me. What

were vigils, penitences, and long prayers to a girl? They made us kneel

on stone, and sleep on boards. The chapel bell seemed to ring every

minute of the day; we had vile food, and no liberty. It was Saint This,

Saint That, from morning till night. We saw no men. We might never

dress our hair; and, believe me, there were no mirrors. I had to go to

a little pool in the garden to see my face.

"And they were so dull,--so dismal. No one ever laughed; no one ever

told romances; all our legends were of pious things in petticoats. And

what was the use of it all? Was any one ever a jot the better? I used

to get into my cell and stamp. I felt like a corpse in a charnel-house,

and the whole world seemed dead."

Pelleas scanned her half smilingly, half sadly.

"I am sorry for your heart," he said.

"Sorry! You needs must be when you are a soldier, with life in your

ears like a clarion cry."

"Life is a sorry ballad, Sister Igraine, unless we remember the Cross."

"Ah, yes, I have all the saints in mind--dear souls; but then, Sir

Pelleas, one cannot live on one's knees. I was made to laugh and

twinkle, and if such is sin, then a sorry nun am I."

"You misunderstand me," said the man. "I would that a Christian held

his course over the world, with a great cross set in the west to lead

him. He can laugh and joy as he goes, sleep like the good, and take

the fruits of life in his time. Yet ever above him should be the glory

of the cross, to chasten, purge, and purify. There is no sin in living

merrily if we live well, but to plot for pleasure is to lose it. Look

at the sun; there is no need for us to be ever on our knees to him, yet

we know well it would be a sorry world without his comfort."

"Ah," she said, with a little gesture. "I see you are too devout for

me, despite my habit. Take me up again, Sir Pelleas, and I will ride

with you, though I may not argue."

Pelleas halted his horse, and she was soon in the saddle before him,

somewhat subdued and pensive in contrast to her former vivacity. The

man believed her a nun, and she had a character to play. Well, when she

wearied of it, which would probably be soon, she could tell him and

so end the matter. It was not long before they came to the ford across

the stream Pelleas had spoken of. It was a green spot shut in by thorn

trees, and here they made a halt as the knight had purposed.

Before the meal Pelleas knelt by the stream and prayed. Igraine, seeing

him so devout, did likewise, though her eyes were more on the man than

on heaven. Her thoughts never got above the clouds. When they were at

their meal of meat and bread, with a horn of water from the stream, she

talked yet further of her life at Avangel, and the meagre blessing it

had been to her. It was while she talked thus that she saw something

about the man's person that fired her memory, and set her thinking of

the journey of yesterday.

Pelleas was wearing a gold chain that bore a cross hanging above the

left breast, but with no cross over the right. Looking more keenly,

Igraine saw a broken link still hanging from the right portion of the

chain. Instinctively her thoughts fled back to the silent manor in the

wood, and the dead man seated stiffly in the great carved chair.

Without duly weighing the possible gravity of her words, she began to

tell Pelleas of the incident.

"Yesterday," she said, "I saw a strange thing as we fled through the

wold. We came to a villa, and, seeking food there, found it deserted,

save for a dead man seated in a chair, and stricken in the breast. The

dead man had a small gold cross clutched in his fingers, and there was

a dead hound at his feet."

The man gave her a keen look from the depths of his dark eyes, and then

glanced at the broken chain.

"You see that I have lost a cross," he said.

Igraine nodded.

"Your reason can read the rest."

She nodded again.

"There is nothing like the truth."

Igraine stared at the man in some astonishment. He was cold as a frost,

and there was no shadow of discomfort on his strong face. Knowledge

had come to her so sharply that she had no answer for him at the

moment. Yet there stood a sublime certainty in her heart that this

violent deed was deserving of absolute approval, so soon had her faith

in him become like steel.

"The man deserved death," she said presently, with a curt and ingenuous

confidence.

Pelleas eyed her curiously.

"How should you know?" he asked.

"I have faith in you," was all she said.

Pelleas smiled, despite the subject.

"No man deserved death better."

"And so you slew him."

He nodded without looking at her, and she could see still the embers of

wrath in his eyes.

"I slew him in his own manor, finding him alone, and ready to justify

himself with lies. Honour does not love such deeds; but what would

you?--Britain is free of a viper."

"And you have blood on your hand."

He winced slightly, and glanced at his fingers as though she had not

spoken in metaphor.

"All is blood in these days," he said.

"And what think you of such laws?" she ventured, with a supreme

reaching after the requirements of her Order. "What of the Cross?"

"There was blood upon it."

"But the blood of self-sacrifice."

Her words moved him more than she had purposed. His dark face flushed,

and light kindled in his eyes as though the basal tenets of his life

had been called in question. He glowed like a man whose very creed

is threatened. Igraine watched the fire rising in him with a secret

pleasure,--the love of a woman for the hot courage of a man.

"Listen to me," he said strongly; "which think you is the worthier

life: to dream in a stone cell mewed from the world like a weak weed

in a cellar, or to go forth with a red heart and a mellow honour; to

strive and smite for the weak and the wounded; to right the wrong; to

avenge the fatherless? Choose and declare."

"Choose," she said, with a shrill laugh and a kindling colour, "truth,

and I will. Away with the rosary; give me the sword."

Like a wild echo to her human choice came the distant cry of a horn

borne hollowly over the sleeping meadows. Both heard it and started.

The great war-horse, grazing near by, tossed his head, snorted, and

stood listening with ears twitching and head to the east. Pelleas rose

up and scanned the road from under his hand, with the girl Igraine

beside him.

"A Saxon horn," he said laconically; "the heathen are in the woods."

V

As they watched, looking down betwixt two thorn trees, a faint puff

of dust rose on the road far to the east, and hung like a diminutive

cloud over the meadows. This danger signal counselled the pair. Pelleas

caught his horse and sprang to selle; Igraine clambered by his stirrup,

and was lifted to her seat before him. Pelleas slung his shield

forward, and loosened his sword.

"If it comes to battle," he said, "I will set you down, and you must

hide in the meadows or woods, while I fight. You would but cumber me,

and be in great peril here. Rest assured, though, that I shall not

desert you while I live."

With that he turned his horse to the road, and halted, gazing down amid

the placid fields to where the little cloud of dust had hinted at life.

It was there still, only larger, and sounded on by the distant triple

canter of horses at the gallop. Pelleas and Igraine could see three

mounted figures coming up the road amid a white haze, moving fast, as

though pressed by some as yet unseen enemy. It was soon evident to

Pelleas and the girl that one of the fugitives was a woman.

"We will abide them," said the man, "and learn their peril. We shall be

stronger, too, for company, and may succour one another if it comes to

smiting. Look! yonder comes the heathen pack."

A second and larger cloud of dust had appeared, a mile or less beyond

the first. Pelleas watched it awhile, and then turned and began riding

at a trot towards the west, so that the three fugitives should overtake

him. He bade Igraine keep watch over his shoulder while he scanned the

meadows before them for sign of peril or of friendly harbour.

"Have no fear, child," he said; "I could vow, by these fields, that

there is a manor near. I trust confidently that we shall find refuge."

Igraine smiled at him.

"I am no coward," she said.

"That is well spoken."

"I would, though, that you would give me your dagger, so that, if

things come to an evil pass, I shall know how to quit myself."

"My dagger!" he said, with a sudden stare. "I left it in the man's

heart in Andredswold."

"Ah!" said Igraine; "then I must do without."

The dull thunder of the nearing gallop came up to them--a stirring

sound, full of terse life and eager hazard. Pelleas spurred to a

canter, while Igraine's hair blew about his face and helmet as they

began to meet the kiss of the wind. She clung fast to him with both

hands, and told what was passing on the road in their rear.

"How they ride," she said; "a tangle of dust and whirling hoofs.

There is a lady in blue on a white horse, with an armed man on either

flank. They are very near now. I can see the heathen far away over the

meadows. They are galloping, too, in a smoke of dust. Our folk will be

with us soon."

In a minute the lady and her men were hurtling close in Pelleas's wake.

He spurred to a gallop in turn, and bade Igraine wave them on to his

side. The three were soon with them, stride for stride. The girl on the

white horse drew up on Pelleas's right flank. She was habited in blue

and silver--a flaxen-haired damosel, with the round face of a child.

Seemingly she was possessed of little hardihood, for her mouth was a

red streak in a waste of white, and her blue eyes so full of fear that

Igraine pitied her. She cried shrilly to Pelleas, her voice rising

above the din like the cry of a frightened bird.

"The heathen!" she cried.

"Many?" shouted the man.

"Two score or more. There is a strong manor near. If we gain it we may

live."

"How far?"

"Not a mile over the meadows."

"Lead on," said Pelleas; "we will follow as we may."

The damosel on the white horse turned from the road, and headed

southwards over the meadows, with her men galloping beside her. The

long grass swayed, water-like, before them, its summer seed flying like

a mist of dew. Wood and pasture slid back on either hand. The ground

seemed to rise and fall before them as a sea, while rocks here and

there thrust up bluff noses in the grass like great lizards stirred by

the hurtling thunder of the gallop.

On they went, with white spume on breast and bridle; leaping, swerving

where rough ground showed. To Igraine the ride was life indeed,

bringing back many a whistling gallop from the past. She felt her heart

in her leaping to the horse's stride. Now and again she took a sly look

at Pelleas's face, finding it calm and vigilant--the face of a man

whose thought ran a silent course unruffled by the breeze of peril.

She felt his bridle-arm staunchly about her like a girdle of steel.

Although she could see the dust gathering thickly on the distant road,

she felt blithe as a new bride in the man's company, and there was no

fear at all in her thought.

The grassland began to slope gradually towards the south. A quavering

screech of joy came back to them from the woman riding in the van.

Pelleas spoke his first word during the gallop.

"Courage," he said. "Southwards lies our refuge."

Igraine looked over his shoulder, and saw how their flight tended down

the flank of a gentle hill into the lap of a fair valley. The grass

stretch was broken by great trees--oaks, beeches, and huge, corniced

cedars. Down in the green hollow below them a mere shone with the soul

of the sky steeped in its quiet waters. It was ringed with trailing

willows, and an island held its centre, piled with green shadows and

the grey shape of a fair manor. The place looked as peaceful as sleep

in the eye of the morning.

The woman on the white horse bade one of her men take his bugle-horn

and blow a summons thereon to rouse the folk upon the island. Twice the

summons sounded down over the water, but there was no answering stir to

be marked about the house or garden. The place was smokeless, lifeless,

silent. Like many another home, its hearths were cold for fear of the

barbarian sword.

As they held downhill, Igraine wove the matter through her thought like

swift silk through a shuttle.

"Should there be no boat," she said, giving voice to her misgivings,

"what can you do for us?"

"We must swim for it," said Pelleas, keenly.

"It is a broad, fair water, and the horse cannot bear us both."

"He shall, if needs be."

She felt that the brute would, after Pelleas had spoken so. She patted

the arched black neck, and smiled at the sky as they came down to the

mere's edge at a canter. The water was lapping softly at the sedges

amid a blaze of marsh marigolds and purple flags, the surface gleaming

like glass in the sun. Half a score water-hens went winging from the

reeds, and skimming low and fast towards the island. A heron rose from

the shallows, and laboured heavenwards with legs trailing.

Riding round the margin, they found to their joy a barge grounded in

a little bay, with sweeps ready upon the thwarts, and a horse-board

fitted at the prow. A purple cloak hung over one bulwark, trailing in

the water; a small crucifix and a few trinkets were scattered on the

poop, as though those who had used the ferry last had fled in fear,

forgetful of everything save flight.

Then came the embarkation. The barge would but hold three horses at one

voyage, so Pelleas ordered Igraine and the rest into the boat, and bade

the men row over and return. Igraine demurred a moment.

"Leave your horse," she said; "they may come before the boat can take

you."

Pelleas refused her with a smile, running his fingers through the

brute's black mane.

"I have a truer heart than that," he said.

The men launched away, and pulled at the sweeps with a will, Igraine

helping, and doing her devoir for the man Pelleas's sake. The barge

slid away, with ripples playing from the prow, and a gush of foam

leaping from each smile of the blades. It was a hundred yards or more

to the island, and the craft was ponderous enough to make the crossing

slow.

Pelleas sat still and watched the meadows. Suddenly--bleakly--a figure

on horseback topped the low hill on the north, and held motionless on

the summit, scanning the valley. A second joined the first. Pelleas

caught a shout, muffled by the wind, as the two plunged down at full

gallop for the mere, sleeping in its bed of green. Here were two

gentlemen who had outstripped their fellows, and were as keen as could

be to catch Pelleas before the barge could recross, and set the mere

betwixt them. Pelleas saw his hazard in a moment. Even if the barge

came before the heathen, there would be some peril of its capture in

the shallows.

He would have to fight for it, unless he cared to swim the mere.

Provided he could deal with these two outriders before the main company

came up, well and good, the raiders would find clear water between

the quarry and their swords. He thought of Avangel, and grew iron of

heart. Then there was the nun, Igraine, with the wonderful eyes, and

hair warm as the dun woods in autumn. He was her sworn knight as far

as Winchester. God helping him, he thought, he would yet see her face

again. So he rode out grimly to get fair field for horsecraft, and

waited for the two who swept the meadows.

Igraine, standing on the wooden stage at the water's edge, saw Pelleas

taking ground and preparing for a tussle. The barge had put off again

and had already half spanned the water. She was alone with the woman

of the white horse, who stood beside her still quaking like a reed,

and almost voiceless from the fulsome terror of an unshrived death.

Igraine had no heed for her at the moment. Her whole thought lurked

with the red shield and the black horse in the meadows. Worldly heart!

her desire burnt redly in her own bosom, and found no flutter for the

powers above.

She saw Pelleas gathering for the course, while the heathen slackened

so as not to override their mark. A crescent of steel flashed as the

foremost man launched his axe at the knight's head. The red shield

caught and turned it. In a trice Pelleas's spear had picked the rogue

from the saddle, despite his crouching low and seeking to shun it. The

second fellow came in like a whirlwind. His horse caught the black

destrier cross counter and rolled him down like a rammed wall. Pelleas

avoided, and was up with bleak sword. Smiting low, he caught the man's

thigh, and broke the bone like a lath. The Saxon lost his seat, and

came down with a snarling yell. The rest was easy as beating down a

maimed wolf.

The main company had just topped the hill. Pelleas, with the skirmish

ended to his credit, shook his sword at them, and led his horse into

the shallows. The barge swept in, took its burden from the bank, and

held back for the island, where Igraine stood watching on the stage,

ready with her welcome. She was glad of Pelleas in her heart, as though

the comradeship of half a day had given her the right to share his

honour, and to chime her joy with his. The woman in her swamped the

assumed sanctity of the nun. As the water stretch lessened between

them, Pelleas, silent and dark-browed as was his wont, found himself

beneath the beck of eyes that gazed like the half-born wonder of the

sky at dawn. It was neither joy nor great light in them, but a kind of

quiet musing, as though there were strange new music in her soul.

"Are you hurt?" she asked, as he sprang from the barge and stood beside

her, with head thrown back and his great shoulders squared.

"Not a graze."

"Two to one, and a fair field," quoth she, with a quaver of triumph;

"my heart sang when those men went down. That was a great spear thrust."

"Less and less of the rosary!"

She caught his deep smile, and laughed.

"I am a greater heathen than either," she said. "God rest their souls."

Meanwhile the lady in the blue tunic had somewhat recovered her

squandered wits and courage. She came forward with a simpering dignity,

walking daintily, with her gown gathered in her right hand, and her

left laid over her heart. Her eyes were very big and blue, their

brightness giving her an eager, sanguine look that was upheld the more

by an assumed simpleness of manner. Her childish bearing, winsomely

studied, exercised its subtleties with a lavish embellishment of smiles

and blushes. Looked at more closely, and in repose, her face belied

in measure the perspicuous personality she had adopted. A sensual

boldness lurked in mouth and nostrils, and there was more carnal

wisdom there than a pretended child should possess.