The branches of the forest invoked the sky with the supplications of their thousand hands. Black, tumultuous, terrible, the wilds billowed under the moon, stifled with the night, silent as a windless sea. Winter, like a pale Semiramis of gigantic mould, stood with her coronet touching the steely sky. A mighty company of stars stared frost-bright from the heavens.
A pillar of fire shone red amid the chaos of the woods. Like a great torch, a blazing tower hurled spears of light into the gloom. Shadows, vast and fantastic, struggled like Titans striving with Destiny in the silence of the night. Their substanceless limbs leapt and writhed through the gnarled alleys of the forest. Overhead, the moon looked down with thin and silver lethargy on the havoc kindled by the hand of man.
In a glade, all golden with the breath of the fire, blackened battlements waved a pennon of vermilion flame above the woods. Smoke, in eddying and gilded clouds, rolled heavenwards to be silvered into snow by the light of the moon. The grass of the glade shone a dusky, yet brilliant green; the tower's windows were red as rubies on a pall of sables. About its base, cottages were burning like faggots piled about a martyr's loins.
Tragedy had touched the place with her ruddy hand. There had been savage deeds done in the silence of the woods. Hirelings, a rough pack of mercenaries in the service of the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, had stolen upon the tower of Rual of Cambremont, slain him before his own gate, and put his sons to the sword. A feud had inspired the event, a rotten shred of enmity woven on Stephen's Eve in a tavern scuffle. The burning tower with its cracking walls bore witness to the extravagant malice of a rugged age.
Death, that flinty summoner, salves but the dead, yet wounds the living. It is sport with him to pile woe upon the shoulders of the weak, to crown with thorns the brows of those who mourn. Double-handed are his blessings--a balm for those who sleep, an iron scourge for the living. The quick bow down before his feet; only the dead fear him no more in the marble philosophy of silence.
On a patch of grass within the golden whirl of the fire lay the body of Rual of Cambremont, stiff and still. His face was turned to the heavens; his white beard tinctured with the dye of death. Beside him knelt a girl whose unloosed hair trailed on his body, dark and disastrous as a sable cloud. The girl's eyes were tearless, dry and dim. Her hands were at her throat, clenched in an ecstasy of despair. Her head was bowed down below her stooping shoulders, and she knelt like Thea over Saturn's shame.
Behind her in the shadow, his face grey in the uncertain gloom, an old man watched the scene with a wordless awe. He was a servant, thin and meagre, bowed under Time's burden, a dried wisp of manhood, living symbol of decay. There was something of the dog about his look, a dumb loyalty that grieved and gave no sound. Beneath the burning tower in the heat of the flames, these twain seemed to mimic the stillness of the dead.
There was other life in the glade none the less, a red relic evidencing the handiwork of the sword. A streak of shadow that had lain motionless in the yellow glare of the fire, stirred in the rank grass with a snuffling groan. There was a curt hint in the sound that brought Jaspar the harper round upon his heel. He moved two steps, went down on his knees in the ooze, turned the man's head towards the tower, and peered into his face. It was gashed from chin to brow, a grim mask of war, contorted the more by the uncertain palpitations of the flames.
Jaspar had a flask buckled at his girdle. He thrust his knee under the man's head, trickled wine between his lips, and waited. The limp hands began to twitch; the man jerked, drew a wet, stertorous breath, stared for a moment with flickering lids at the face above him. Jaspar craned down, put his mouth to the man's ear, and spoke to him.
The fellow's lips quivered; he stirred a little, strove to lift his head, mumbled thickly like a man with a palsied tongue. Jaspar put his ear to the bruised mouth and listened. He won words out of the grave, for his rough face hardened, his brows were knotted over the dying man's stumbling syllables. The harper shouted in his ear, and again waited.
Gam--Gambrevault, Flavian's men, dead, all dead, ran the death utterance. "Ave Maria, my lips burn--St. Eulalie--St. Jude, defend me----"
A cough snapped the halting appeal. The man stiffened suddenly in Jaspar's arms, and thrust out his feet with a strong spasm. His hands clawed the grass; his jaw fell, leaving his mouth agape, a black circle of death. There was a last rattling stridor. Then the head fell back over Jaspar's knee with the neck extended, the eyes wide with a visionless stare.
A shadow fell athwart the dead man and the living, a shadow edged with the golden web of the fire. Looking up, Jaspar the harper saw the girl standing above him, staring down upon the dead man's body. The red tower framed her figure with flame, making an ebon cloud of her hair, her body a pillar of sombre stone. Her face was grey, pinched, and expressionless. Youth seemed frozen for the moment into bleak and premature age.
She bowed down suddenly, her hair falling forward like a cataract, her eyes large with a tearless hunger. Pointing to the man on Jaspar's knee, she looked into the harper's face, and spoke to him.
Quick, the truth. I fear it no longer.
Her voice was toneless and hoarse as an untuned string. She beat her hands together, and then stood with her fists pressed over her heart.
Quick, the truth.
The old man turned the body gently to the grass, and still knelt at the woman's feet.
It is Jean, he said, with great quietness, "Jean the swineherd. He is dead. God rest his soul!"
She bent forward again with arm extended, her voice deep and hoarse in her throat.
Tell me, who is it that has slain my father?
They of Gambrevault.
Ah!
Her eyes gleamed behind her hair as it fell dishevelled over her face.
And the rest--Bertrand, my brothers?
Her voice appealed him with a gradual fear. Jaspar the harper bowed his face, and pointed to the tower. The girl straightened, and stood quivering like a loosened bow.
God! In there! And Roland?
Again the harper's hand went up with the slow inevitableness of destiny. The flames, as beneath the incantations of a sibyl, leapt higher, roaring hungrily towards the heavens. The girl swayed away some paces, her lips moving silently, her hair fanned by the draught, blowing about her like a veil. She turned to the tower, thrust up her hands to it with a strong gesture of anguish and despair.
A long while she stood in silence as in a kind of torpor, gazing at this red pyre of the Past, where memories leapt heavenwards in a golden haze of smoke. The roar of the fire was as the voice of Fate. She heard it dim and distant like the far thunder of a sea. Beyond, around, above, the gaunt trees clawed at the stars with their leafless talons. Night and the shadow of it were very apparent to the girl's soul.
Jaspar the harper stood and watched her with a dumb and distant awe. Her rigid anguish cowed him into impotent silence. The woman's soul seemed to soar far above comfort, following the saffron smoke into the silver æther of the infinite. The man stood apart, holding aloof with the instinct of a dog, from a sorrow that he could not chasten. He was one of those dull yet happy souls, who carry eloquence in their eyes, whose tongues are clumsy, but whose hearts are warm. He stood aloof therefore from Yeoland, dead Rual's daughter, pulling his ragged beard, and calling in prayer to the Virgin and the saints.
Presently the girl turned very slowly, as one whose blood runs chill and heavy. Her eyes were still dry and crystal bright, her face like granite, or a mask of ice. The man Jaspar hid his glances from her, and stared at the sod. He was fearful in measure of gaping blankly upon so great a grief.
Jaspar, she said, and her voice was clear now as the keen sweep of a sword.
He crooked the knee to her, stood shading his eyes with his wrinkled hand.
We alone are left, she said.
God's will, madame, God's will; He giveth, and taketh away. I, even I, am your servant.
Her eyes lightened an instant as though red wrath streamed strongly from her heart. Her mouth quivered. She chilled the mood, however, and stood motionless, save for her hands twining and twisting in her hair.
Does Heaven mock me? she asked him, with a level bitterness.
How so, madame? he answered her; "who would mock thee at such an hour?"
Who indeed?
Not even Death. I pray you be comforted. There is a balm in years.
They stood silent again in the streaming heat and radiance of the fire. A sudden wind had risen. They heard it crying far away in the infinite vastness of the woods. It grew, rushed near, waxed with a gradual clamour till the bare wilds seemed to breathe one great gathering roar. The flames flew slanting from the blackened battlements. The trees clutched and swayed, making moan under the calm light of the moon.
The sound thrilled the girl. Her lips trembled, her form dilated.
Listen, she said, thrusting up her hands into the night, "the cry of the forest, the voice of the winter wind. What say they but 'vengeance--vengeance--vengeance'?"
该作者其它作品
《The Red Saint》
Dawn came vaguely in a veil of mist. A heavy dew lay scintillant upon the grass; a great silence covered the woods. The trees stood grim and gigantic with dripping boughs in a vapoury atmosphere, and there seemed no augury of sunlight in the blind grey sky.
A rough hovel under a fir, used for the storing of wood, had given Yeoland and the harper shelter for the night. The sole refuge left to them by fire, the hut had served its purpose well enough, for grief is not given to grumbling over externals in the extremity of its distress.
The girl Yeoland was astir early with the first twitter of the birds in the boughs overhead. Jaspar had made her a couch of straw, and she had lain there tossing to and fro with no thought of sleep. The moon had sunk early over the edge of the world, and heavy darkness had wrapped her anguish close about her soul, mocking her with the staring of a dead face. The burning tower had ceased to torch her vigil towards dawn; yet there had been no fleeing from the pale candour of the night.
A slim, white-faced woman she stood shivering in the doorway of the hovel. Her eyes were black and lustrous--swift, darting eyes full of dusky fire and vivid unrest. Her mouth ran a red streak, firm above her white chin. Her hair gleamed like sable steel. The world was cold about her for the moment, dead and inert as her own heart. As she stood there, fine and fragile as gossamer, the very trees seemed to weep for her with the dawning day.
Some hundred paces from the hut, a cloud of smoke mingled with the mist that hung about the blackened walls of the forest tower. Its windows were blind and frameless to the sky; a zone of charred wood and reeking ashes circled its base. The mist hung above it like a ghostly memory. The place looked desolate and pitiful enough in the meagre light.
The girl Yeoland watched the incense of smoke wreathing grey spirals overhead, melting symbolic--into nothingness. The pungent scent of the ruin floated down to her, and became a recollection for all time. This blackened shell had been a home to her, a bulwark, nay, a cradle. Sanguine life had run ruddy through its heart. How often had she seen its grey brow crowned with gold by the mystic hierarchy of heaven. She had found much joy there and little sorrow. A wrinkled face had taught her these many years to cherish the innocence of childhood. All this was past; the present found her bankrupt of such things. The place had become but a coffin, a charnel-house for the rotting bones of love.
As she brooded in the doorway, the smite of a spade came ringing to her on the misty air. Terse and rhythmic, it was like the sound of Time plucking the hours from the Tree of Life. She looked out over the glade, and saw Jaspar the harper digging a shallow grave under an oak.
She went and watched him, calmly, silently, with the utter quiet of a measureless grief. There was reason in this labour. It emphasised reality; helped her to grip the present. As the brown earth tumbled at her feet, she remembered how much she would bury in that narrow forest grave.
The man Jaspar was a ruddy soul, like a red apple in autumn. His strong point was his loyalty, a virtue that had stiffened with the fibres of his heart. He could boast neither of vast intelligence, nor of phenomenal courage, but he had a conscience that had made gold of his whole rough, stunted body. Your clever servant is often a rogue; in the respect of apt villainy, the harper was a fool.
He ceased now and again from his digging, hung his hooked chin over his spade, and snuffed the savour of the clean brown earth. He thrust curt, furtive glances up into the girl's face as she watched him, as though desirous of reading her humour or her health.
You are weary, she said to him anon, looking blankly into the trench.
The man wagged his head.
Have ye broken fast? There is bread and dried fruit in the hut, and a pitcher of water.
I cannot eat--yet, she answered him.
He sighed and continued his digging. The pile of russet earth increased on the green grass at her feet; the trench deepened. Jaspar moistened his palms, and toiled on, grunting as he hove his libations of soil over his shoulder. Presently he stood up again to rest.
What will you do, madame? he asked her, squinting at the clouds.
Ride out.
And whither?
Towards Gilderoy--as yet.
Ah, ah, a fair town and strong. John of Brissac is madame's friend. Good. Have we money?
Some gold nobles.
They waxed silent again, and in a while the grave lay finished. 'Twas shallow, but what of that! It gave sanctuary enough for the dead.
They went together, and gazed on the sleeping man's face. It was grey, but very peaceful, with no hint of horror thereon. The eyes were closed, and dew had starred the white hair with a glistening web. Yeoland knelt and kissed the forehead. She shivered and her hands trembled, but she did not weep.
So they carried the Lord Rual between them, for he was a spare man and frugal of frame, and laid him in the grave beneath the oak. When they had smoothed his hair, and crossed his hands upon his breast, they knelt and prayed to the Virgin and the saints that in God's heaven he might have peace. The wind in the boughs sang a forest requiem.
When Yeoland had looked long at the white face in the trench, she rose from her knees, and pointed Jaspar to his spade. The harper took the measure of her mind. When she had passed into the shadows of the trees, he mopped his face, and entered on his last duty to the dead. It was soon sped, soon ended. A pile of clean earth covered the place. Jaspar banked the grave with turf, shouldered his spade, and returned to the hovel.
He found the girl Yeoland seated on a fallen tree in the forest, her ebon hair and apple-green gown gleaming under the sweeping boughs. Her cheeks were white as windflowers, her eyes full of a swimming gloom. She raised her chin, and questioned the man mutely with a look that smouldered under her arched brows.
Jaspar?
Madame----
Have you entered the tower?
The man's wrinkled face winced despite his years.
Would you have me go? he asked her in a hoarse undertone.
She looked into the vast mazes of the woods, shuddered in thought, and was silent. Her mouth hardened; the desire melted from her eyes.
No, she said anon, turning her hood forward, and drawing a green cloak edged with sables about her, "what would it avail us? Let us sally at once."
A little distance away, their horses, that had been hobbled over night, stood grazing quietly on a patch of grass under the trees. One was a great grey mare, the other a bay jennet, glossy as silk. Jaspar caught them. He was long over the girths and bridles, for his hands were stiff, and his eyes dim. When he returned, Yeoland was still standing like a statue, staring at the blackened tower reeking amid the trees.
Truly, they have burnt the anguish of it into my heart with fire, she said, as Jaspar held her stirrup.
God comfort you, madame!
Let us go, Jaspar, let us go.
And whither, lady?
Where revenge may lead.
The day brightened as they plunged down into the forest. A light breeze rent the vapours, and a shimmer of sunlight quivered through the haze. The tree-tops began to glisten gold; and there was life in the deepening promise of the sky. The empty woods rolled purple on the hills; the greensward shone with a veil of gossamer; the earth grew glad.
The pair had scant burden of speech upon their lips that morning. They were still benumbed by the violence of the night, and death still beckoned to their souls. Fate had smitten them with such incredible and ponderous brevity. On the dawn of yesterday, they had ridden out hawk on wrist into the wilds, lost the bird in a long flight, and turned homeward when evening was darkening the east. From a hill they had seen the tower lifting its flame like a red and revengeful finger to heaven. They had hastened on, with the glare of the fire spasmodic and lurid over the trees. In one short hour they had had speech with death, and came point to point with the bleak sword of eternity.
What wonder then that they rode like mutes to a burial, still of tongue and dull of heart? Life and the zest thereof were at low ebb, colourless as a wintry sea. Joy's crimson wings were smirched and broken; the lute of youth was unstrung. A granite sky had drawn low above their heads, and to the girl a devil ruled the heavens.
Before noon they had threaded the wild waste of woodland that girded the tower like a black lagoon. They came out from the trees to a heath, a track that struck green and purple into the west, and boasted nought that could infringe the blue monotony of the sky. It was a wild region, swept by a wind that sighed perpetually amid the gorse and heather. By the black rim of the forest they had dismounted and partaken of bread and water before pushing on with a listless persistence that won many miles to their credit.
The man Jaspar was a phlegmatic soul in the hot sphere of action. He was a circumspect being who preferred heading for the blue calm of a haven in stormy weather, to thrusting out into the tossing spume of the unknown. The girl Yeoland, on the contrary, had an abundant spirit, and an untamed temper. Her black eyes roved restlessly over the world, and she tilted her chin in the face of Fate. Jaspar, knowing her fibre, feared for her moods with the more level prudence of stagnant blood. Her obstinacy was a hazardous virtue, hawk-like in sentiment, not given to perching on the boughs of reason. Moreover, being cumbered with a generous burden of pity, he was in mortal dread of wounding her pale proud grief.
By way of being diplomatic, he began by hinting that there were necessities in life, trivial no doubt, but inevitable, as sleep and supper.
Lord John of Brissac is your friend, he meandered, "a strong lord, and a great; moreover, he hates those of Gambrevault, God chasten their souls! Fontenaye is no long ride from Gilderoy. Madame will lodge there till she can come by redress?"
Madame had no thought of being beholden to the gentleman in question. Jaspar understood as much from a very brief debate. Lord John of Brissac was forbidden favour, being as black a pard when justly blazoned as any seigneur of Gambrevault. The harper's chin wagged on maugre her contradiction.
We have bread for a day, he chirped, dropping upon banalities by way of seeming wise. "The nights are cold, madame, damp as a marsh. As for the water-pot----"
Water may be had--for the asking.
And bread?
I have money.
Then we ride for Gilderoy?
The assumption was made with an excellent unction that betrayed the seeming sincerity of the philosopher. Yeoland stared ahead over her horse's ears, with a clear disregard for Jaspar and his discretion.
We are like leaves blown about in autumn, she said to him, "wanderers with fortune. You have not grasped my temper. I warrant you, there is method in me."
Jaspar looked blank.
Strange method, madame, to ride nowhere, to compass nothing.
She turned on him with a sudden rapid gleam out of her passionate eyes.
Nothing! You call revenge nothing?
The harper appealed to his favourite saint.
St. Jude forfend that madame should follow such a marsh fire, he said.
They had drawn towards the margin of the heath. Southwards it sloped to the rim of a great pine forest, that seemed to clasp it with ebonian arms. The place was black, mysterious, impenetrable, fringed with a palisading of dark stiff trunks, but all else, a vast undulation of sombre plumes. Its spires waved with the wind. There was a soundless awe about its sable galleries, a saturnine gloom that hung like a curtain. In the vague distance, a misty height seemed to struggle above the ocean of trees, like the back of some great beast.
Yeoland, keen of face, reined in her jennet, and pointed Jaspar to this landscape of sombre hues. There was an alert lustre in her eyes; she drew her breath more quickly, like one whose courage kindles at the cry of a trumpet.
The Black Wild, she said with a little hiss of eagerness, and a glance that was almost fierce under her coal-black brows.
Jaspar shook his head with the cumbersome wit of an ogre.
Ha, yes, madame, a bloody region, packed with rumours, dark as its own trees; no stint of terror, I warrant ye. See yonder, the road to Gilderoy.
The girl in the green cloak seemed strongly stirred by her own thoughts. Her face had a wild elfin look for the moment, a beautiful and daring insolence that deified her figure.
And Gilderoy? she said abstractedly.
Gilderoy lies south-east; Gambrevault south-west many leagues. Southwards, one would find the sea, in due season. Eastwards, we touch Geraint, and the Roman road.
Yeoland nodded as though her mind were already adamant in the matter.
We will take to the forest, ran her decretal.
Here was crass sentiment extravagantly in the ascendant, mad wilfulness pinioning forth like a bat into gloom. Jaspar screwed his mouth into a red knot, blinked and waxed argumentative with a vehemence that did his circumspection credit.
A mad scheme.
What better harbour for the night than yonder trees?
Who will choose us a road? I pray you consider it.
Yeoland answered him quietly enough. She had set her will on the venture, was in a desperate mood, and could therefore scorn reason.
Jaspar, my friend, she said, "I am in a wild humour, and ripe for the wild region. Peril pleases me. The unknown ever draweth the heart, making promise of greater, stranger things. What have I to lose? If you play the craven, I can go alone."
The avenues of the pine forest engulfed the harper and the lady. The myriad crowded trunks hemmed them with a stubborn and impassive gloom. A faint wind moved in the tree-tops. Dim aisles struck into an ever-deepening mystery of shadow, as into the dark mazes of a dream.
The wild was as some primæval waste, desolate and terrible, a vast flood of sombre green rolling over hill and valley. Its thickets plunged midnight into the bosom of day. On the hills, the trees stood like traceried pinnacles, spears blood-red in the sunset, or splashed with the glittering magic of the moon. There were dells sunk deep beneath crags; choked with dense darkness, unsifted by the sun. Winding alleys white with pebbles as with the bones of the dead, wound through seething seas of gorse. In summer, heather sucked with purple lips at the tapestries of moss blazoning the ground, bronze, green, and gold. It was a wild region, and mysterious, a shadowland moaned over by the voice of a distressful wind.
Yeoland held southwards by the gilded vane of the sun. She had turned back her hood upon her shoulders, and fastened her black hair over her bosom with a brooch of amethysts. The girl was wise in woodlore and the philosophies of nature. The sounds and sights of the forest were like a gorgeous missal to her, blazoned with all manner of magic colours. She knew the moods of hawk and hound, had camped often under the steely stare of a winter sky, had watched the many phases of the dawn. Hers was a nature ripe for the hazardous intent of life. It was she who led, not Jaspar. The harper followed her with a martyred reason, having, for all his discontent, some faith in her keen eyes and the delicate decision of her chin.
There was a steady dejection in the girl's mood--a dejection starred, however, with red wrath like sparks glowing upon tinder. She was no Agnes, no Amorette, mere pillar of luscious beauty. Her eyes were as blue-black shields, flashing with many sheens in the face of day. The flaming tower, the dead figure in the forest grave, had thrust the gentler part out of her being. She was miserable, mute, yet full of a volcanic courage.
As for the harper, a rheumy dissatisfaction pervaded his temper. His blood ran cold as a toad's in winter weather. He blew upon his fingers, dreaming of inglenooks and hot posset, and the casual luxuries the forest did not promise. Yeoland considered not the old man's babblings. Her heart looked towards the dawn, and knew nothing of the twilight under the dark eaves of age.
They had pressed a mile or more into the waste, and the day was waxing sere and yellow in the west. Before them ran a huge thicket, its floor splashed with tawny splendours, the sable plumes touched with gold by the sun. Its deep bosom hung full of purple gloom, dusted with amber, wild and windless.
A sudden "hist" from his lady's lips made the harper start in the saddle. Her hand had snatched at his bridle. Both horses came to a halt. The man looked at her as they sat knee to knee; she was alert and vigilant, her eyes bright as the eyes of a hawk.
Marked you that? she said to him in a whisper.
Jaspar gave her a vacant stare and shook his head.
Nothing?
Boughs swaying in the wind, no more.
Yeoland enlightened him.
Tush. There's no wind moving. A glimmer of armour, yonder, up the slope.
Holy Jude!
A flash, it has gone.
They held silent under the drooping boughs, listening, with noiseless breath. The breeze made mysterious murmurings with a vague unrest; now and again a twig cracked, or some forest sound floated down like a filmy moth on the quiet air. The trees were dumb and saturnine, as though resenting suspicion of their sable aisles.
Jaspar, peering over his shoulder, jerked out a word of warning. Yeoland, catching the monosyllable from his lips, and following his stare, glanced back into the eternal shadows of the place.
I see nothing, she said.
Jaspar answered her slowly, his eyes still at gaze.
A shadow slipping from trunk to trunk.
Where?
I see it no longer. The saints succour us!
Yeoland's face was dead white under her hair; her mouth gaped like a circle of jet. She listened constantly. Her head moved in stately fashion on her slim neck, as she shot glances hither and thither into the glooms, her eyes challenging the world. She felt peril, but was no craven in the matter--a contrast to Jaspar, who shook as with an ague.
The harper's distress broke forth into petulant declaiming.
Trapped, he said; "I could have guessed as much, with all this fooling. These skulkers are like crows round carrion. Shall we lose much, madame?"
Gold, Jaspar, if they are content with such. What if they should be of Gambrevault!
The harper gave a quivering whistle, a shrill breath between his teeth, eloquent of the unpleasant savour of such a chance. It was beyond him for the moment whether he preferred being held up by a footpad, to being bullied by some ruffian of a feudatory. He had a mere bodkin of a dagger in his belt, and little lust for the letting of blood.
'Tis a chance, madame, he said, with a certain lame sententiousness, "that had not challenged my attention. Say nothing of Cambremont; one word would send us to the devil."
Am I a fool? Since these gentlemen will not declare themselves, let us hold on and tempt their purpose.
Thinking to see the swirl of shadows under the trees, the glimmer of steel in the forest's murk, they rode on at a lifeless trot. Nothing echoed to their thoughts. The woods stood impassive, steeped in solitude. There was a strange atmosphere of peace about the place that failed to harmonise their fears. Yet like a prophecy of wind there stole in persistently above the muffled tramp of hoofs, a dull, characterless sound, touched with the crackling of rotten wood, that seemed to hint at movement in the shadows.
The pair pressed on vigilant and silent. Anon they came to a less multitudinous region, where the trees thinned, and a columned ride dwindled into infinite gloom. Betwixt the black stems of the trees flashed sudden a streak of scarlet, torchlike in the shadows. An armed rider in a red cloak, mounted on a sable horse, kept vigil silently between the boles of two great firs. He was immobile as rock, his spear set rigid on his thigh, his red plume sweeping the green fringes of the trees.
This solemn figure stood like a sanguinary challenge to Yeoland and the harper. Here at least was something tangible in the flesh, more than a mere shadow. The pair drew rein, questioning each other mutely with their eyes, finding no glimmer of hope on either face.
As they debated with their glances over the hazard, a voice came crying weirdly through the wood.
Pass on, it said, "pass on. Pay ye the homage of the day."
This forest cry seemed to loosen the dilemma. Certainly it bore wisdom in its counsel, seeing that it advised the inevitable, and ordered action. Yeoland, bankrupt of resource, took the unseen herald at his word, and rode on slowly towards the knight on the black horse.
The man abode their coming like a statue, his red cloak shining sensuously under the sombre green of the boughs. A canopy of golden fire arched him in the west. He sat his horse with a certain splendid arrogance, that puzzled not a little the conjectures of Yeoland and the harper. This was neither the mood nor the equipment of a vagabond soul. The fine spirit of the picture hinted briskly at Gambrevault.
The pair came to a halt under the two firs. The man towered above them on his horse, grim and gigantic, a great statue in black and burnished steel. His salade with beaver lowered shone ruddy in the sun. His saddle was of scarlet leather, bossed with brass and fringed with sable cord. Gules flamed on his shield, devoid of all device, a strong wedge of colour, bare and brave.
The girl caught the gleam of the man's eyes through the grid of his vizor. He appeared to be considering her much at his leisure with a keen silence, that was not wholly comforting. Palpably he was in no mood for haste, or for such casual courtesies that might have ebbed from his soundless strength.
Full two minutes passed before a deep voice rolled sonorously from the cavern of the casque.
Madame, it said, "be good enough to consider yourself my prisoner. Rest assured that I bring you no peril save the peril of an empty purse."
There was a certain powerful complacency in the voice, pealing with the deep clamour of a bell through the silence of the woods. The man seemed less ponderous and sinister, giant that he was. The girl's eyes fenced with him fearlessly under the trees.
Presumably, she said to him, "you are a notorious fellow; I have the misfortune to be ignorant of these parts and their possessors. Be so courteous as to unhelm to me."
Her tone did not stir the man from his reserve of gravity. Her words were indeed like so many ripples breaking against a rock. The voice retorted to her calmly from the helmet.
Madame, leave matters to my discretion.
She smiled in his face despite herself, a smile half of petulance, half of relish.
You pretend to wisdom, sir.
Forethought, madame.
Am I your prisoner?
No new thing, madame; I have possessed you since you ventured into these shadows.
He made a gesture with his spear, holding it at arm's length above his head, where it quivered like a reed in his staunch grip. A sound like the moving of a distant wind arose. The dark alleys of the wood grew silvered with a circlet of steel. The shafts of the sunset flickered on pike and bassinet, gleaming amid the verdured glooms. Again the man's spear shook, again the noise as of a wind, and the girdle of steel melted into the shadows.
Madame is satisfied?
She sucked in her breath through her red lips, and was mute.
Leave matters to my discretion. You there, in the brown smock, fall back twenty paces. Madame, I wait for you. Let us go cheek by jowl.
The man wheeled his horse, shook his spear, hurled a glance backward over his shoulder into the woods. There was no gainsaying him for the moment. Yeoland, bending to necessity, sent Jaspar loitering, while she flanked the black destrier with her brown jennet. She debated keenly within herself whither this adventure could be leading her, as she rode on with this unknown rider into the wilds.
The man in the red cloak was wondrous mute at first, an iron pillar of silence gleaming under the trees. The girl knew that he was watching her from behind his salade, for she caught often the white glimmer of his stare. He bulked largely in the descending gloom, a big man deep of chest, with shoulders like the broad ledges of some sea-washed rock. He was richly appointed both as to his armour and his trappings; to Yeoland his shield showed a blank face, and he carried no crest or token in his helmet.
They had ridden two furlongs or more before the man stepped from his pedestal of silence. He had been studying the girl with the mood of a philosopher, had seen her stark, strained look, the woe in her eyes, the firm closure of her lips. The strong pride of grief in her had pleased him; moreover he had had good leisure to determine the character of her courage. His first words were neither very welcome to the girl's ears nor productive of great comfort, so far as her apprehensions were concerned. Bluntly came the calm challenge from the casque.
Daughter of Rual of Cambremont, you have changed little these five years.
Yeoland gave the man a stare. Seeing that his features were screened by his helmet, the glance won her little satisfaction. She knew that he was watching her to his own profit, and her discovery, for the reflex look she had flashed at him, must have told him all he desired, if he had any claim to being considered observant. There was that also in the tone and tenor of his words that implied that he had ventured no mere tentative statement, but had spoken to assure her that her name and person were not unknown to him. Acting on the impression, she tacitly confessed to the justice of his charge.
Palpably, she said, "my face is known to you."
Even so, madame.
How long will you hold me at a disadvantage?
Is ignorance burdensome?
She imagined of a sudden that the man was smiling behind his beaver. Being utterly serious herself, she discovered an illogical lack of sympathy in the stranger's humour. Moreover she was striving to spell Gambrevault from the alphabet of word and gesture, and to come to an understanding with the doubts of the moment.
Messire, she began.
Madame, he retorted.
Are you mere stone?
For answer he lapsed into sudden reflection.
It is five years ago this Junetide, he said, "since the King and the Court came to Gilderoy."
Gilderoy?
You know the town, madame?
She stared back upon a sudden vision of the past, a past gorgeous with the crimson fires of youth. That Junetide she had worn a new green gown, a silver girdle, a red rose in her hair. There had been jousting in the Gilderoy meadows, much braying of trumpets, much splendour, much pomp of arms. She remembered the scent and colour of it all; the blaze of tissues of gold and green, purple and azure. She remembered the flickering of a thousand pennons in the wind, the fair women thronging the galleries like flowers burdening a bowl. The vision came to her undefiled for the moment, a dream-memory, calm as the first pure pageant of spring.
And you, messire? she said, with more colour of face and soul.
Rode in the King's train.
A noble?
Do I bulk for a cook or a falconer?
No, no. Yet you remember me?
As it were yesterday, walking in the meadows at your father's side--your father, that Rual who carried the banner when the King's men stormed Gaerlent these forty years ago. Not, madame, that I followed that war; I was a mass of swaddling-clothes puking in a cradle. So we grow old.
The girl's face had darkened again on the instant. The man in the red cloak saw her eyes grow big of pupil, her lips straightened into a colourless line. She held her head high, and stared into the purple gloom of the woods. Memories were with her. The present had an iron hand upon her heart.
Time changes many things, he said, with a discretion that desired to soften the silence; "we go from cradle to throne in one score years, from life to clay in a moment. Pay no homage to circumstance. The wave covers the rock, but the granite shows again its glistening poll when the water has fallen. A Hercules can strangle Fate. As for me, I know not whether I have soared in the estimation of heaven; yet I can swear that I have lost much of the vagabond, sinful soul that straddled my shoulders in the past."
There was a warm ruggedness about the man, a flippant self-knowledge, that touched the girl's fancy. He was either a strong soul, or an utter charlatan, posing as a Diogenes. She preferred the former picture in her heart, and began to question him again with a species of picturesque insolence.
I presume, messire, she said, "that you have some purpose in life. From my brief dealings with you, I should deem you a very superior footpad. I gather that it is your intention to rob me. I confess that you seem a gentleman at the business."
The man of the red cloak laughed in his helmet.
To be frank, madame, he said, "you may dub me a gatherer of taxes."
Explain.
Being unfortunates and outcasts from the lawful ways of life, my men and I seek to remedy the injustice of the world by levying toll on folk more happy than ourselves.
Then you condemn me as fortunate?
Your defence, madame.
The girl smiled with her lips, but her eyes were hard and bright as steel.
I might convince you otherwise, she said, "but no matter. Why should I be frank with a thief, even though he be nobly born?"
Because, madame, the thief may be of service to the lady.
I have little silver for your wallet.
Am I nothing but a money-bag!
She looked up at him with a straight stare; her voice was level, even imperious.
Put up your vizor, she said to him.
The man in the black harness hesitated, then obeyed her. She could see little of his face, however, save that it was bronzed, and that the eyes were very masterful. She ventured further in the argument, being bent on fathoming the baser instincts of the business.
Knight of the red shield, she said.
Madame?
I ask you an honest question. If you would serve me, speak the truth, and let me know my peril. Are you the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, or no?
The man never hesitated an instant. There was no wavering to cast doubt upon his sincerity, or upon his intelligence as a liar.
No, madame, he answered her, "I am not the Lord of Gambrevault and Avalon, and may I, for the sake of my own neck, never come single-handed within his walls. I have an old feud with the lords of Gambrevault, and when the chance comes, I shall settle it heavily to my credit. If you have any ill to say of the gentleman, pray say it, and be happy in my sympathy."
Ha, she said, with a sudden flash of malice, "I would give my soul for that fellow's head."
So, quoth the man, with a keen look, "that would be a most delectable bargain."
The stems thinned about them suddenly, and the sky grew great beyond a more meagre screen of boughs. To the west, breaking the blood-red canopy with an edge of agate, rocks towered heavenwards, smiting golden-fanged into a furnace of splendour. Waves of light beat in spray upon the billowy masses of the trees, dying in the east into a majestic mask of gloom.
Yeoland and the man in red came forth into a little glade, hollowed by the waters of a rush-edged pool. A stream, a scolloped sheet of foam, stumbled headlong into the mere, vanishing beyond like a frail white ghost into the woods. A fire danced in the open, and under the trees stood a pavilion of red cloth.
The man dismounted and held the girl's stirrup. A quick glance round the glade had shown her bales of merchandise, littering the green carpet of the place, horses tethered in the wood, men moving like gnomes about the fire. Even as she dismounted, streaks of steel shone out in the surrounding shadows. Armed men streamed in, and piled their pikes and bills about the pines.
At the western end of the glade, a gigantic fir, a forest patriarch, stood out above the more slender figures of his fellows. The grotesque roots, writhing like talons, tressled a bench of boughs and skins. Before the tree burnt a fire, the draught sweeping upwards to fan the fringe of the green fir's gown. The man in the black harness took Yeoland to the seat under the tree. The boughs arched them like a canopy, and the wood fire gave a lusty heat in the gloaming.
A boy had run forward to unhelm the knight in the red cloak. Casque and sword lay on the bench of boughs and skins. The girl's glance framed for the first time the man's face. She surveyed him at her leisure under drooping lids, with a species of reticent interest that escaped boldness. It was one of those incidents to her that stand up above the plain of life, and build individual history.
She saw a bronzed man with a tangle of tawny-red hair, a great beak of a nose, and a hooked chin. His eyes were like amber, darting light into the depth of life, alert, deep, and masterful. There was a rugged and indomitable vigour in the face. The mouth was of iron, yet not unkind; the jaw ponderous; the throat bovine. The mask of youth had palpably forsaken him; Life, that great chiseller of faces, had set her tool upon his features, moulding them into a strenuous and powerful dignity that suited his soul.
He appeared to fathom the spirit of the girl's scrutiny, nor did he take umbrage at the open and critical revision of her glances. He inferred calmly enough, that she considered him by no means blemishless in feature or in atmosphere. Probably he had long passed that age when the sanguine bachelor never doubts of plucking absolute favour from the eyes of a woman. The girl was not wholly enamoured of him. He was rational enough to read that in her glances.
Madame is in doubt, he said to her, with a glimmer of a smile.
As to what, messire?
My character.
You prefer the truth?
Am I not a philosopher?
Hear the truth then, messire, I would not have you for a master.
The man laughed, a quiet, soundless laugh through half-closed lips. There was something magnetic about his grizzled and ironical strength, cased in its shell of blackened steel. He had the air of one who had learnt to toy with his fellows, as with so many strutting puppets. The world was largely a stage to him, grotesque at some seasons, strenuous at others.
Ha, a miracle indeed, he said, "a woman who can tell the truth."
She ignored the gibe and ran on.
Your name, messire?
The man spread his hands.
Pardon the omission. I am known as Fulviac of the Forest. My heritage I judge to be the sword, and the shadows of these same wilds.
Yeoland considered him awhile in silence. The firelight flickered on his harness, glittering on the ribbed and jointed shoulder plates, striking a golden streak from the edge of each huge pauldron. Mimic flames burnt red upon his black cuirass, as in a darkened mirror. The night framed his figure in an aureole of gloom, as he sat with his massive head motionless upon its rock-like throat.
Five years ago, she said suddenly, "you rode as a noble in the King's train. Now you declare yourself a thief. These things do not harmonise unless you confess to a dual self."
Madame, he answered her, "I confess to nothing. If you would be wise, eschew the past, and consider the present at your service. I am named Fulviac, and I am an outlaw. Let that grant you satisfaction."
Yeoland glanced over the glade, walled in with the gloom of the woods, the stream foaming in the dusk, the armed men gathered about the further fire.
And these? she asked.
Are mine.
Outcasts also?
Say no hard things of them; they are folk whom the world has treated scurvily; therefore they are at feud with the world. The times are out of joint, tyrannous and heavy to bear. The nobles like millstones grind the poor into pulp, tread out the life from them, that the wine of pleasure may flow into gilded chalices. The world is trampled under foot. Pride and greed go hand in hand against us.
She looked at him under her long lashes, with the zest of cavil slumbering in her eyes. Autocracy was a hereditary right with her, even though feudalism had slain her sire.
I would have the mob held in check, she said to him.
And how? By cutting off a man's ears when he spits a stag. By splitting his nose for some small sin. By branding beggars who thieve because their children starve. Oh, equable and honest justice! God prevent me from being poor.
She looked at him with her great solemn eyes.
And you? she asked.
He spread his arms with a half-flippant dignity.
I, madame, I take the whole world into my bosom.
And play the Christ weeping over Jerusalem?
Madame, your wit is excellent.
A spit had been turning over the large fire, a haunch of venison being basted thereon by a big man in the cassock of a friar. Certain of Fulviac's fellows came forward bearing wine in silver-rimmed horns, white bread and meat upon platters of wood. They stood and served the pair with a silent and soldierly briskness that bespoke discipline. The girl's hunger was as healthy as her sleek, plump neck, despite the day's hazard and her homeless peril.
Dusk had fallen fast; the last pennon of day shone an eerie streak of saffron in the west. The forest stood wrapped in the stupendous stillness of the night. An impenetrable curtain of ebony closed the glade with its rush-edged pool.
Fulviac's servers had retreated to the fire, where a ring of rough faces shone in the wayward light. The sound of their harsh voices came up to the pair in concord with the perpetual murmur of the stream. Yeoland had shaken the bread-crumbs from her green gown. She was comforted in the flesh, and ready for further foining with the man who posed as her captor.
Sincerity is a rare virtue, she said, with a slight lifting of the angles of her mouth.
I can endorse that dogma.
Do you pretend to the same?
Possibly.
You love the poor, conceive their wrongs to be your own?
Fulviac smiled in his eyes like a man pleased with his own thoughts.
Have I not said as much?
Well?
I revere my own image.
And fame?
He commended her and unbosomed in one breath.
Pity, he said, "is often a species of splendid pride. We toil, we fight, we labour. Why? Because below all life and effort, there burns an immortal egotism, an eternal vanity. 'Liberty, liberty,' we cry, 'liberty and justice man for man.' Yet how the soul glows at the sound of its own voice! The human self hugs fame, and mutters, 'Lo, what a god am I in the eyes of the world!'"
Silence fell between them for a season, a silence deep and intangible as the darkness of the woods. The man's mood had recovered its subtle calm, even as a pool that has been stirred momentarily by the plashing of a stone sinks into rippleless repose. He sat with folded arms before the flare of the fire, watching the girl under his heavy brows.
She was very fair to look upon, slim, yet spirited as a band of steel. Her ears shone out from her dusky hair like apple blossoms in a mist of leaves. Her lips were blood-red, sensitive, clean as the petals of a rose. Her great grief had chastened her. From the curve of her neck to the delicate strength of her white hands, she was as rich an idyll as a man could desire.
Fulviac considered her with a thought that leant philosophically towards her beauty. He had grown weary of love in his time; the passions of youth had burnt to dry ashes; possibly he had been luckless in his knowledge of the sex. He had married a wife of irreproachable birth, a lady with a sharp nose and a lipless mouth, eyes of green, and a most unholy temper. She was dead, had been dead many years. The man had no delirious desire to meet her again in heaven. As for this girl, he had need of her for revolutionary reasons, and his mood to her was more that of a father. Her spirit pleased him. Moreover, he knew what he knew.
Gazing at the flames, he spread his hands to them, and entered again on the confines of debate. His voice had the steady, rhythmic insistence of a bell pealing a curfew. Its tone was that of a man not willing to be gainsaid.
Therefore, madame, I would have you understand that I desire in some measure to be a benefactor to the human race.
I take your word for it, she answered him.
That I am an ambitious man, somewhat vain towards fame, one that can glow in soul.
A human sun.
So.
That loves to be thought great through warming the universe.
Madame, you are epigrammatic.
Or enigmatic, messire.
As you will, he answered her; "your womanhood makes you an enigma; it is your birthright. Understand that I possess power."
Fifty cut-throats tied to a purse.
Consider me a serious figure in the world's sum.
As you will, messire. You are an outlaw, a leader of fifty vagabonds, a man with ideals as to the establishing of justice. You are going to subvert the country. Very good. I have learnt my lesson. But how is all this going to help me out of the wood?
Fulviac took his sword, and balanced it upon his wrist. The red light from the fire flashed on the swaying steel.
Our hopes are more near of kin, madame, than you imagine.
Well?
Flavian of Gambrevault's raiders burnt your home, slew your father, exterminated your brethren. This happened but a day ago. You do not love this Flavian of Gambrevault.
Her whole figure stiffened spasmodically as at the prick of a sword. Her eyes, with widely open pupils, flashed up to Fulviac's face. She questioned him through her set teeth with a passionate whisper of desire.
How do you know this?
His face mellowed; the arm bearing the sword was steady as the limb of an oak.
I am wiser in many ways than you imagine, he said. "Look at me, I am no longer young; I hate women; I patronise God. You are a mere child; to you life is dark and perilous as this wilderness of pines. Your trouble is known to me, because it is my business to know of such things. It was my deliberate intent that you should fall into my hands to-day."
The girl was still rigidly astonied. She stared at him mutely with dubious eyes. The man and his philosophy were beyond her for the moment.
Well? she said to him with a quaver of entreaty.
First, you will honour me by saying that I have your trust.
How may I promise you that?
Because I am surety for my own honour.
She smiled in his face despite the occasion.
You seem very sure of your own soul, she said.
Madame, it has taken me ten years to come by so admirable a state. Self-knowledge carried to the depths, builds up self-trust. I may take it for granted that you hate the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault?
Need you ask that!
Her eyes echoed the mood of the flame. Fulviac, watching her, saw the strong wrack of wrath twisting her delicate features for the moment into pathetic ugliness.
You have courage, he said to her.
Ample, messire.
Flavian of Gambrevault is the greatest lord in the south.
I am as wise.
On that score, this Flavian and Fulviac of the Forest are irreconcilable as day and night.
The man stood his sword pommel upwards in the grass, and ran on.
Some day I shall slay this same Flavian of Gambrevault. His blood will expiate the blood of these your kinsfolk. Therefore, madame, you will be my debtor.
That is all? she asked him with a wistfulness in her voice that was even piteous.
Fulviac looked long into the fire like a man whose thoughts channel under the crust of years. Pity for the girl had gone to the heart under the steel cuirass, a pity that was not the pander of desire. His eyes took a new meaning into their keen depths; he looked to have grown suddenly younger by some years. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its half-mocking and grandiose confidence. It was the voice of a man who strides generous and eager into the breach of fate.
Listen, he said to her, "I may tell you that your sorrow has armed my manhood. Give me my due; I am more than a mere vagabond. You have been cruelly dealt with; I take your cause upon the cross of my sword."
You, messire?
Even so. I need a good woman, a brave woman. You please me.
Well?
You are a necessity to me.
And why, messire?
For a matter of religion and of justice. Trust to my honour. You shall learn more in due season.
Yeoland, smitten with incredulity, stared at the man in mute surmise. Here was an amazing circumstance--robbery idealised, soul, body, purse, at one bold swoop. In her mystification, she could find nothing to say to the man for the moment, even though he had promised her a refuge.
You are very sure of yourself, she said at length.
I am a man.
Yet you leave me in ignorance.
Madame, we are to undertake great deeds together, great perils. I could hold up an astonishing future to your eyes, but for the present I keep silence. Rest assured that you shall be accorded such honour as the Virgin herself could desire. Remember that I give you promise of vengeance, and a home.
The girl drew a deep breath, as though taking the spirit of the hour into her bosom.
If I refuse? she said to him.
You cannot refuse, came the level retort.
And why, messire?
Your consent, though pleasant, is not necessary in the matter. I have long ago determined to appropriate you to my ambition.
Fulviac's lair lay deep within the waving wilderness of pines. Above the spires of the forest, a massive barrier of rock thrust up its rugged bartisans into the blue. East and west it stretched a mile or more, concavitated towards the north, and standing like a huge breakwater amid the sea of boughs.
The rocky plateau above was peopled by pines and rowans, thatched also with a wild tangle of briar, whin, and heather. Crannies cleft into it; caves tunnelled its massive bosom; innumerable minarets of stone mingled with the wind-wracked trees. The cliffs rose like the walls of a castle donjon from the forest floor, studded with dwarf trees, bearded with ferns and grass. The plateau was inaccessible from the forest save by a thin rocky track, where the western slope of the cliff tailed off to merge into the trees.
The significance of the place to Fulviac lay in the existence of a cavern or series of caves piercing the cliff, and opening both upon the southern and northern facades of the mass. A wooden causeway led to the southern entry, bridging a small gorge where a stream foamed under the pines. The yawn of the southern opening had been built up with great blocks of stone, and the rough walls pierced by narrow squints, and a gate opening under a rounded arch.
Within, the roof of the main cavern arched abruptly upwards, hollowing a great dome over the smooth floor beneath. This grotesque and rock-ripped hall served as guard-room and dormitory, a very various chamber. Winding ways smote from it into the black bowels of the cliff. The height of the main cavern dwindled as it tunnelled northwards into the rock. A second wall of stone partitioned the guard-room from a second and smaller chamber, lit always by a great lamp pendent from the ceiling, a chamber that served Fulviac as state-room.
From Fulviac's parlour the cavern narrowed to a throat-like gallery that had been expanded by human craft into a third and smaller room. This last rock chamber was wholly more healthy and habitable than the others. Its walls stood squarely from floor to rocky roof, and it was blessed with a wide casement, that stared northwards over a vista of obeisant trees. A postern gave entry to the room from a narrow platform, and from this ledge a stairway cut in the flank of the cliff dwindled into the murk of the forest below.
A more romantic atmosphere had swept into the bleak galleries of the place that winter. Plundered stores were ransacked, bales of merchandise ungirded, caskets and chests pilfered as for the endowing of the chamber of a queen. The northern room in the cliff blossomed into the rich opulence of a lady's bower. Its stone walls were panelled with old oak carvings taken from some ancient manor. There were tapestries of green, gold, and purple; an antique bed with a tester of silver silk, its flanks blazoned with coloured escutcheons. Painted glass, azure, red, and gold, jewelled the casement, showing also Sebastian bound to his martyr's tree. A Jew merchant plundered on the road had surrendered a set of brazen ewers, a lute inlaid with pearl, a carpet woven on the looms of the purple East. There were mirrors of steel about the walls. A carved prayer-desk, an embroidery frame, a crucifix wrought in ivory: Fulviac had consecrated all these to Yeoland, dead Rual's daughter.
A white lily amid a horde of thistles! The girl's life had drawn under the black shadow of the cliff, and into the clanging torrent of these rough men of the sword. It was a wild age and a wild region. Fulviac's rogues were like wolves in a forest lair, keen, bloody, and relentless. There was a rude strain of violence running through the strenuous mood of the place, like the song of Norse rovers, piercing the roar of the sea. Mystery enveloped the girl, war, and the sound of the sword. She fumbled at the riddle of Fate with the trembling fingers of one who unbars a prison gate in the hush of night. It was all strange and fantastic beyond the riot of a dream.
Madame, Fulviac had said to her when he had hung a key at her girdle, "I have bidden you trust me; remember that I trust you in turn. Take this room as your sanctuary. Lock me out when you will. I prepare, among other things, to perfect your vengeance."
Yeoland suffered him and her necessity. She was shrewdly wise in the conviction that it would be useless to rebel against the man. Though over-masterful and secretive, his purpose appeared benignant in the opulence of its favour. Moreover, the forest was as a vast web holding her within the maze of the unknown.
I have no alternative, she said to him, "I am in your power. And yet, I believe you are no villain."
Your charity pleases me. I am a man with a strong purpose.
For good?
Do I not need you?
Am I then so powerful a person?
You will learn anon.
You seem something of a mystic, she said to him.
Madame, he retorted, "trust my discretion. In due season I shall unfold to you certain aspects of life that will kindle your sympathies. I shall appeal to the woman in you. When you are wise you will commend my ambition."
You speak in riddles.
Wait. As yet you see through a glass darkly.
From the mountainous north to the warm southern sea, from the wooded west to the eastern fens, the good King ruled, holding many great barons in feudal faith, and casting his fetters of gold over Church and State. Chivalry moved through the world to the clangour of arms and the songs of the troubadour. Lutes sounded on terrace and in garden, fair women bloomed like roses, bathed in a sensuous blaze of romance. Baron made war upon baron; glory and death were crowned together. The painter spread his colours in the halls of the great; the goldsmith and the carver wrought wondrous things to charm the eye. Church bells tolled. Proud abbots carried the sword, and made fine flutter among the women. Innumerable saints crowded the avenues to heaven. It was a fair age and very lovely, full of colour and desire, music and the odour of romance.
And the poor? Their lot hung largely on the humour of an overlord, or the state of a gentleman's stomach. They had their saints' days, their games, their pageants, their miracle plays. They had hovels of clay and wattle; labour in wind and rain; plagues and pestilences in the rotting filth of their city alleys. They marked the great folk go by in silks and cloth of gold, saw the pomp and opulence of that other life, remembered their own rags and their squealing children.
And yet, consider the broad inclinations of the world. To eat, to be warm, to satisfy the flesh, to ease a lust, to drink beer. There was no very vast gulf betwixt the rich man and the poor. The one feasted to music, the other scraped a bone to the dirge of toil. They had like appetites, like satisfactions, and hell is considered to be Utopian in the extreme. The poor man envied the rich; the rich man ruled the poor. Envy, that jingling demagogue, has made riotous profit out of such a stew since the world was young.
Fulviac's cliff was shut out from the ken of man by leagues of woodland, moor, and waste. The great pine forest girded it in its inmost bosom. No wayfarers rode that way; no huntsman ranged so deep; the place had an evil rumour; many whom it had welcomed had never returned. Romancers had sung of it, the lay of Guingamor. Horror ruled black-browed over its pine-cumbered hills, its gloomy depths. Solitude abode there, as over a primæval sea, and there was no sound save the moan or storm-cry of the wind over its troubled trees.
According to legend lore, Romulus peopled Rome with the offscourings of Italy. Fulviac had emulated the device with the state-craft of a strong conspirator. The forest stood a grand accomplice, abetting him with its myriad sentinels, who gossiped solely with the wind. The venture had been finely conceived, finely edificated. A cliff, a cave, five-score armed men. Not a vast power on the face of it to threaten a system or to shake a throne. Superficialities were fallacious, the surface false and fair as glistening ice. The forest hid more than a company of ruffians banded together to resist tyranny. Enthusiasm, genius, vigour, such torches, like a burning hovel, can fling a city into flame.
As for the girl Yeoland, she was more than mocked by the swift vagaries of life. Two days of mordant realism had erased from her heart the dream visions of childhood. To be declared homeless, kinless, in one day; to be bereft of liberty the next! To what end? She stared round the richly-garnished room into which Fate had thrust her, fingered the pearl-set lute, gazed at her own face in the steel mirrors. She was the same woman, yet how differently circumstanced! Fulviac's mood had not hinted at love, or at any meaner jest. What power could he prophesy to his advantage in the mere fairness of her face? What was the gall of a woman's vengeance to a man who had conceived the downfall of a kingdom?
Her knowledge of psychology was rustic in the extreme, and she had no wit for the unravelling of Fulviac's subtleties. There were certain convictions, however, that abode with her even in her ignorance. She could have taken oath that he was no mere swashbuckler, no captain of outlaws, no mere spoiler of men. Moreover, she believed him to be the possessor of some honour, and a large guerdon of virility. Lastly, pity appealed her as a sentiment not to be discarded. The man, whoever he might be, appeared desirous of putting his broad shoulders betwixt her and the world.
Fulviac grew perspicuous sooner than she could have prophesied. He had a fine, cloud-soaring way with him that seemed to ignore the mole-hills of common circumspection. He had wit enough also to impose his trust on others with a certain graceful confidence that carried bribery in the very generosity of its hardiness.
March was upon them like a spirit of discord, wild, riotous weather, with the wind thundering like storm-waves upon the cliff. The pines were buffeting each other in the forest, and reeling beneath the scourgings of the breeze. Fulviac came to the girl one windy noon, when the caverns were full of the breath of the storm. His manner to her seemed as a significant prelude, heralding the deep utterance of some human epic.
Fulviac took the girl by a winding stair leading from the guard-room--a stair that circled upwards in the thickness of the rock some hundred steps or more, and opened into a basin-shaped pit on the plateau above. Dwarf trees and briars domed the hollow, giving vision of a grey and hurrying sky. The pair climbed a second stair that led to a rock perched like a pulpit on the margin of the southern precipice. The wind swept gusty and tempestuous over the cliff. It tossed back the girl's hood, made her stagger; she would have fallen had not Fulviac gripped her arm.
Below stretched an interminable waste of trees, of bowing pine-tops, and dishevelled boughs. The dull green of the forest merged into the grey of the cloud-strewn sky. On either hand the craggy bulwarks of the cliffs stretched east and west, its natural bartisans and battlements topped by a cornice of mysterious pines. It was a superb scene, rich with a wild liberty, stirred by the wizard chanting of the wind.
Fulviac watched the girl as she stood limned against the grey curtain of the sky. Her hair blew about her white throat and shoulders in sombre streams; her eyes were very bright under their dusky lashes; and the wind had kissed a stronger colour into her cheeks. She was clad in a kirtle of laurel-green cloth, bound about the waist with a girdle of silver. A white kerchief lay like snow over her shoulders and bosom; her green sleeves were slashed and puffed with crimson.
Wild country, he said, looking in her eyes.
Wild as the sea.
You are a romanticist.
She gave a curt laugh.
After what I have suffered!
Romance and sorrow go hand in hand. For the moment my words are more material. You see this cliff?
She turned to him and stood watching his face.
This cliff is the core of a kingdom. A granite wedge to hurl feudalism to ruins, to topple tyranny.
She nodded slowly, with a grave self-reservation.
You have hinted that you are ambitious, she said.
Ambition would have stormed heaven.
And your ladder?
The man made a strong gesture, like one who points a squadron to the charge. His eyes shone with a glint of grimness under his shaggy brows.
The rabid discontent of the poor, fermenting ever under the crust of custom. The hate of the toiler for the fop and the fool. The iron that lies under the rusting injustice of riches. The storm-cry of a people's vengeance against the tyrant and the torturer.
Yeoland, solemn of face, groped diligently amid her surmises. The man was a visionary by his own showing; it was impossible to mistake him for a fool. Like all beings of uncommon power, he combined imagination with that huge vigour of mind that moves the world. A vast element of strength lay coiled in him, subtle, yet overpowering as the body of some great reptile. The girl felt the gradual magic of his might mesmerising her with the inevitableness of its approach.
You have brought me here? she asked him.
As I promised.
Well?
To tell you something of the truth.
She looked at him with a penetrating frankness that was in spirit--laudatory.
You put great trust in me, she said.
That I may trust the more.
He sat himself down on a ledge of rock, and proceeded to parade before her imagination such visions as were well conceived to daze the reason of a girl taken fresh from a forest hermitage. He spoke of riot, revolution, and revenge; painted Utopias established beneath the benediction of a just personal tyranny, a country purged of oppression, a kingdom cleansed of pride. He told of arms stored in the warrens of the cliff, of grain and salted meat sufficient for an army. He pointed out the vast strength of the place, the plateau approachable only by the stairway in the cliff, and the narrow causeway towards the west. He described it as sufficient for the gathering and massing of a great host. Finally, he swept his hand over the leagues of forestland, dark as the sea, isleting the place from the ken of the world.
You understand me? he said to her.
She nodded and waited with closed lips. He gazed at the horizon, and spoke in parables.
The King and the nobles are throned upon a pile of brushwood. A torch is plunged beneath; a tempest scourges the beacon into a furnace. The kingdom burns.
Yes?
Consider me no mere visionary; I have the country at my back. For five years the work has gone on in secret. I have trusted nothing to chance. It needs a bold man to strike at a kingdom. I--Fulviac, am that man.
该作者其它作品
《The Red Saint》
The free city of Gilderoy climbed red-roofed up a rocky hill, a hill looped south-east and west by the blue breadth of the river Tamar. Its castle, coroneting the central rock, smote into the azure, a sheaf of glistening towers and turrets, vaned with gold. Lower still, the cathedral's sable crown brooded above a myriad red-tiled roofs and wooden gables. Many fair gardens blazoned the higher slopes of the city. Tall walls of grey stone ringed round the whole, grim and quaint with bartisan and turret. To the north, green meadows dipped to the billowy distance of the woods. The silver streak of the sea could be seen southwards from the platforms of the castle.
Gilderoy was a rich city and a populous, turbulent withal, holding honourable charters from the King, exceeding proud of its own freedom. Its Guilds were the wealthiest in all the south; the coffers of its Commune overflowed with gold. Nowhere was fairer cloth woven than in Gilderoy. Nowhere could be found more cunning smiths, more subtle armourers. The mansions of its rich merchant folk were wondrous opulent and great, bedight with goodly tapestry and all manner of rare furniture. Painters had gathered to it from the far south; its courtezans were the joy of the whole kingdom.
Two days after his confessions on the cliff, Fulviac took horse, mounted Yeoland on a white palfrey, and rode for Gilderoy through the forest. The man was upholstered as a merchant, in a plum-coloured cloak, a cap of sables, and a Venetian mail cape. Yeoland wore a light blue jupon edged with silver, a green kirtle, a cloak of brocaded Tartarin. She rode beside the man, demure as a daughter, her bridle of scarlet leather merry with silver bells. Two armed servants and some six packhorses completed the cavalcade.
Fulviac had fallen into one of his silent moods that day. He was saturnine and enigmatic as though immersed in thought. The girl won nothing from him as to the purpose of their ride. They were for Gilderoy; thus much he vouchsafed her, and no more. She had a shrewd belief that he was for giving her tangible evidence of the hazardous schemes that were fermenting under the surface of silence, and that she was to learn more of the tempest that was gathering in the dark. Being tactful in her generation, she asked him no questions, and kept her conjectures to herself.
They broke their ride to pass the night at a wayside hostelry, where the road from Gambrevault skirted the forest. Holding on at their good leisure on the following day, they entered Gilderoy by the northern gate, towards evening, with the cathedral bell booming a challenge to the distant sea. Crossing the great square with its tall mansions of carved oak and chiselled stone, they plunged into a narrow highway that curled downhill under a hundred overhanging gables. Set back in a murky court, a tavern hung out its gilded sign over the cobbles, a Golden Leopard, that groaned in the wind on its rusty hinges. The inn's casements glowed red under the gloom of roof and bracket. Fulviac rode into its stone-paved court with its balustraded gallery, its carved stairways, its creaking lamps swaying under the high-peaked gables.
Their horses were taken by a lean groom, blessed with a most malevolent squint. On the lower step of the gallery stair stood a rotund little man, with a bunch of keys reposing on his stomach, the light from a lantern overhead shining on his bald pate, as on a half sphere of alabaster. He seemed to sweat beef and beer at every pore. Shuffling his feet, he tilted his double chin to the sky, as though he were conducting a monologue under the stars.
No brew yet, he hummed in a high falsetto, throaty and puling from so ponderous a carcase.
Fulviac set one foot on the stairs.
St. Prosper's wine, fat Jean, he said.
The rotund soul turned his face suddenly earthwards, as though he had been jerked down by one leg out of heaven.
Ah, sire, it is you.
Who else? What of the good folk of Gilderoy?
Packed like a crowd of rats in a drain. Will your honour sup?
The man stood aside with a great sweep of the hand, and a garlic-ladened breath given full in Yeoland's face.
And the lady, sire, a cup of purple; the roads are dry?
Fulviac pushed up the stairs.
We are late, and supped as we came. Your private cellar will suit us better.
Of a truth, sire, most certainly.
Send the men back with the horses; Damian has his orders, and your money-bag.
Rely on my dispatch, sire.
Well, then, roll on.
Fat Jean, sweaty deity of pot and gridiron, took the keys from his girdle and a lantern from a niche in the wall. Going at a wheezy shuffle, he led them by a long passage and two circles of stairs to a cellar packed with hogsheads, tuns, and great vats of copper. From the first cellar a second opened, from the second, a third. In the last vault Jean rolled a cask from a corner, turned a flagstone on its side, showed them a narrow stairway descending into the dark.
Fulviac took the lantern, made a sign to Jean, and passed down the stairway with Yeoland at his heels. The tavern-keeper remained above in the cellar, and closed the stone when the last gleam of the light had died down the stair. He rolled the cask back into its place, and felt his way back by cellar and stairway to the benignant glow of his own tavern room.
Fulviac and the girl had descended the black well of the stair. Tunnels of gloom ran labyrinthine on every hand; a musty scent burdened the air, and fine sand covered the floor. Fulviac held the lantern shoulder-high, took Yeoland's wrist, and moved forward into a great gallery that sloped downwards into the depths of the rock. The place was silent as the death-chamber of a pyramid. The lantern fashioned fantastic shadows from the gloom.
Yeoland held close to the man with an instinct towards trust that made her smile at her own thoughts. Fulviac had been in her life little more than a week; yet his unequivocating strength had won largely upon her liking--in no sentimental sense indeed, but rather with the calm command of power. Possibly she feared him a very little. Yet with the despair of a wrecked mariner she clung to him, in spirit, as she would have clung to a rock.
As they passed down the gallery with the lantern swinging in Fulviac's hand, she began to question him with a quiet persistence.
What place is this? she said.
For retort, Fulviac pointed her to the wall, and held the lantern to aid her scrutiny. The girl saw numberless recesses excavated in the rock; some had been bricked up and bore tablets; others were packed with grinning skulls. There were scattered paintings on the walls, symbolic daubs, or scenes from scriptural history. The place was meaningless to the girl, save that the dead seemed ever with them.
Fulviac smiled at her solemn face.
The catacombs of the city of Gilderoy, he said; "yonder are the niches of the dead. These paintings were made by early folk, centuries ago. A veritable maze this, a gallery of skulls, a warren for ghosts to squeak in."
Yeoland had turned to scan a tablet on the wall.
We go to some secret gathering? she asked.
Fulviac laughed; the sound echoed through the passages with reverberating scorn.
The same dark fable, he said, "telling of vaults and secret stairs, passwords and poniards, masks and murder. Remember, little sister, you are to be black and subtle to the heart's chords. This is life, not a romance or an Italian fable. We are men here. There is to be no strutting on the stage."
The girl loitered a moment, as though her feet kept pace with her cogitations.
I am content, she said, "provided I may eschew poison, nor need run a bodkin under some wretch's ribs."
Be at peace on that score. I have not the heart to make a Rosamund of you.
Sudden out of a dark bye-passage, like a rat out of a hole, a man sprang at them and held a knife at Fulviac's throat. The mock merchant gave the password with great unconcern, putting his cap of sables back from off his face. The sentinel crossed himself, fell on one knee, and gave them passage. Turning a bluff buttress of stone, they came abruptly upon a short gallery that widened into a great circular chamber, pillared after the manner of a church.
A flare of torches harassed the shadowy vault, and played upon a thousand upturned faces that seemed to surge wave on wave out of the gloom. In the centre of the crypt stood an altar of black marble, and before it on the dais, a priest with a cowl down, a rough wooden crucifix in his hand. A knot of men in armour gleamed about the altar, ringing a clear space about the steps. Others, with drawn swords, kept the entries of the galleries leading to the cavern. A great quiet hung over the place, a silence solid as the rock above.
A group of armed men waited for Fulviac at the main entry to the crypt. He merged into their ranks, exchanging signs and words in an undertone with one who seemed in authority. The ring of figures pressed through the crowd towards the altar, Fulviac and Yeoland in their midst. Fulviac mounted the steps, and drew the girl up beside him. He uncovered his face to the mob with the gesture of a king uncovering to his people.
Fulviac, Fulviac!
The press swayed suddenly like the black waters of a lake, stirred by the rush of flood water through a broken dam. The ring of armed men gave up the shout with a sweeping of swords and a clangour of harness. The great cavern took up the cry, reverberating it from its thundering vault. A thousand hands were thrust up, as of the dead rising from the sea.
Yeoland watched the man's face with a mute kindling of enthusiasm. As she gazed, it beaconed forth a new dignity to her that she had never seen thereon before. A sudden grandeur of strength glowed from its weather-beaten features. The mouth and jaw seemed of iron; the eyes were full of a stormy fire. It was the face of a man transfigured, throned above himself on the burning pinnacle of power. He towered above the mob like some granite god, colossal in strength, colossal in courage. His manhood flamed out, a watch-fire to the world.
As the cry dwindled, the priest, who still kept his cowl down over his face, held his crucifix on high, and broke into the strident cadence of a rebel ballad. The people followed as by instinct, knowing the song of old. Many hundred voices gathered strenuously into the flood, the massed roar rolling through the great crypt, echoing along the galleries like the sound of some subterranean stream. It was a deep chant and a stirring, strong with the strength of the storm wind, fanatic as the sea.
The silence that fell at the end thereof was the more solemn in contrast to the thundering stanzas of the hymn. Under the flare of the torches, Fulviac stood forward to turn the task from the crucifix to the sword.
Men of Gilderoy.
A billow of cheering dashed again to the roof.
Fulviac, Fulviac!
The man suffered the cry to die into utter silence, before leaping into a riot of words, a harangue that had more justification in it than appeal. His voice filled the cavern with its volume and depth. It was more the voice of a captain thundering commands to a squadron of horse than the declamatory craft of the orator. Fulviac knew the mob, that they were rough and turbulent, and loved a demagogue. Scholastic subtleties could never fill their stomachs.
Men of Gilderoy, I come to you with the sword. Bombast, bombast, come hither all, I'll laden ye with devilry, puff you up with pride. Ha, who is for being strong, who for being master? Listen to me. Damnation and death, I have the kingdom in the palm of my hand. Liberty, liberty, liberty. We strike for the people. Geraint is ours; Gore is ours; all the southern coast waits for the beacons. Malgo of the Mountain holds the west like a storm cloud under his cloak. The east raves against the King. Good. Who is for the stronger side, for Fulviac, liberty, and the people?
He halted a moment, took breath, quieted all clamour with a sweep of the hand, plunged on again like a great carrack buffeting tall billows.
Are there spies here? By God, let them listen well, and save their skins. Go and tell what ye have heard. Set torch to tinder. Blood and fire, the country would be in arms before the King could stir. No, no, there are no spies in Gilderoy; we are all brothers here. By my sword, sirs, I swear to you, that before harvest tide, we shall sweep the nobles into the sea.
A great shout eddied up to answer him. Fulviac's voice pierced it like a trumpet cry.
Liberty, liberty, and the people!
Sound can intoxicate as well as wine. The thunder of war, the bray of clarions, can fire even the heart of the coward. The mob swirled about the altar of black marble, vociferous and eager. Torches rocked to and fro in the cavern; shadows leapt grotesquely gigantic over the rough groinings of the roof. Yet Fulviac had further and fiercer fuel for the fire. At a sign from him, the circle of armed men parted; two peasants stumbled forward bearing a cripple in their arms. They carried him up the steps and set him upon the altar before all the people, supporting him as he stared round upon the sea of faces.
He was a shrivelled being, yellow, black of eye, cadaverous. He looked like a man who had wallowed for years among toads in a pit, and had become as one of them. His voice was cracked and querulous, as he brandished a claw of a hand and screamed at the crowd.
Look at me, mates and brothers. Five years ago I was a tall man and lusty. I forbade the Lord of Margradel my wife. They racked and branded me, tossed me into a stinking pit. I am young, young. I shall never walk again.
A woman rushed from the crowd, grey-haired, fat, and bloated. She climbed the altar steps, and stretched out her hands in a kind of frenzy towards the people.
Look at me, men of Gilderoy. Last spring I had a daughter, a clean wench as ever danced. Seek her from John of Brissac and his devils. Ha, good words these for a mother. Men of Gilderoy, remember your children.
Fulviac's pageant gathered grimly before the mob. A blind man tottered up and pointed to his sightless eyes. A girl held up an infant, and told shrilly of its father's murder. One fellow displayed a tongueless mouth; another, a face distorted by the iron; a third had lost nose and ears; a fourth showed arms shrivelled and contracted by fire. It was a sinister appeal, strong yet piteous. The tyranny of the age showed in the bodies of these wronged and mutilated beings. They had been mere carrion tossed under the iron heel of power. The granite car of ruthless opulence and passion had crushed them under its reddened wheels.
At a gesture from Fulviac, the priest upon the steps threw back his cowl and stood forward in the torchlight. His face was the face of a zealot, fanatical, sanguine, lined with an energy that was prophetic of power. His eyes smouldered under their straight black brows. His hands, white and bony, quivered as he stretched them out towards the people.
They knew him on the instant; their clamour told as much. Often had the shadow of that thin figure fallen athwart the parched highways of stricken cities. Often had those hands tended death, those lips smitten awe into the souls of the drunkard and the harlot.
Prosper, Prosper the Preacher!
There rang a rude, rough joy in the clamour that was spontaneous and eloquent. It was the heart's cry of the people, wild, trusting, and passionate. Men and women broke through the circle of armed men, cast themselves upon the altar steps, kissed the friar's gown, and fawned on him. He put them back with a certain awkward dignity, and a hot colour upon his almost boyish face. The man had a fine humility, though the strenuous ideals of his soul ran in fire to the zenith.
Anon he signed a benediction, and a hush descended on the place.
God's peace to you, people of Gilderoy!
The clamour revived.
Preach to us, preach to us! came the cry.
The friar stretched forth his hands; his voice rang strong and strident over the packed upturned faces.
Children, what need have we of words! To-night have we not seen enough to scourge the manhood in us, to bear forth the Holy Cross of war? The evil beast is with us even yet; Mammon the Mighty treads you under foot. Ye saints, what cause more righteous since the martyrs fell? Look on these scars, these wrongs, these agonies. Preach! I am dumb beside such witnesses as these.
The crypt thundered to him when he lowered his hands. It was the cry of men bankrupt of liberty, thirsty for revenge. Fulviac grappled the climax, and stood forward with uplifted sword. His lion's roar sounded above the din.
Go, people of Gilderoy, he cried, "go--but remember. When castles burn, and bolts scream, when spears splinter, and armies crash to the charge, remember your children and your wrongs. Strike home for God, and for your liberty."
The crowd had streamed from the cavern, swirling like black water under the tossing torches, the hollow galleries reverberating to the rush of many feet. Prosper had gone, borne away by the seditious captains of the Commune and the armed burghers who had guarded the entries. A great silence had fallen upon the crypt. Fulviac and the girl were left by the altar of black marble, their one lamp burning solitary in the gulf of gloom.
Fulviac had the air of a man whose favourite hawk had flown with fettle, and brought her quarry tumbling out of the clouds. He was warm with the zest of it, and his tawny eyes sparkled.
May the Virgin smile on us! he said. "Gilderoy will serve our ends."
The girl's eyes searched him gravely.
You make holy war, she charged him.
Ha, my sister, it is well to profess a strong conviction in the justice of one's cause. Tell men they are heroes, patriots, martyrs, and you will make good fighting stuff. Applaud fanaticism, make great parade of righteousness, hail the Deity as patron, assemble all the saints under your banner. Ha, trust me, that is a way to topple a kingdom. Come, we must stir.
By many labyrinthine passages, strange galleries of death, they passed together from the dark deeps of the catacombs. At one point the roof shone silvered as with dew, and the air stood damp as in a marsh on a winter's eve. The river Tamar flowed above them in its rocky bed, so Fulviac told the girl. Anon they came out by a narrow stair that opened by a briar-grown throat into a thicket of old oaks in the Gilderoy meadows. The stairhead was covered by a species of stone trap that could be covered and concealed by sods. In the thicket a man awaited them with the bridles of three horses over his arm. Fulviac held Yeoland's stirrup, and they rode out, the three of them, from under the trees.
A full moon swam in a purple black sky amid a shower of shimmering stars. Gilderoy, with its climbing towers and turrets, stood out white under the moon. The city walls gleamed like alabaster in the magic glow. In the meadows the ringlets of the river glimmered. Far and distant rose the nebulous midnight of the woods.
Fulviac had bared his head to an inconstant and torpid breeze. They were riding for the west along a bridle track that curled grey and dim through the sombre meadows. The calm, soundless vault of the world rose now in contrast to the canopies of stone and the passion-throes of the catacombs. Human moil and effort seemed infinitely little under the eternal scrutiny of the stars. So thought the man for the moment, as he rode with his chin sunk upon his breast, watching keenly the girl at his side.
Yeoland was young. All the roses of youth were budding about her soul; idealism, like the essence of crushed violets, hovered heavy over the world. Her soul as yet was no frayed and listless lute, thrummed into discords by the bony hand of care. She was built for love, a temple of white marble, lit by lamps of rubeous glory. Colours flashed through the red sanctuaries of the flesh. Yet pain and great woe had smitten her. The grim destinies of earth seemed bent on thrusting an innocent pilgrim into the turbulent contradictions of life.
The pageant in the catacombs that night had stirred her strangely beyond belief. The fantastic faces, the zeal, the hot words of gesturing enthusiasm, these were things new to her, therefore the more vivid and convincing. New worlds, new passions, seemed to burst into being under the stars. She was utterly silent as she rode, looking forth into the night. Her hood had fallen back; her face shone white and clear; her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Fulviac, like a chess-player who had evolved some subtle scheme, rode and watched her with a smile deep in his eyes. For the moment he was content to leave her to the magic of her own thoughts.
At certain rare seasons in life, virgin light floods down into the heart, as from some oriel opened in heaven. The world stands under a grander scheme of chiaroscuro; men comprehend where they once scoffed. It was thus that Yeoland rose inspired, like a spiritual Venus from a sea of dreams. As molten glass is shaped speedily into fair and exquisite device, so the red wax of her heart had taken the impress of the hour. Gilderoy had stirred her like a blazoned page of romance.
Fulviac caught the girl's half glance at him; read in measure the meaning of her mood. Her lips were half parted as though she had words upon her tongue, but still hesitated from some scruple of pride. He straightened in the saddle, and waited for her to unbosom to him with a confident reserve.
Well? he said at length, since she still lingered in her silence.
How much one may learn in a day, she answered, drawing her white palfrey nearer to his horse.
Fulviac agreed with her.
The man on the end of the rope, he said, "learns in two minutes that which has puzzled philosophers since Adam loved Eve."
She turned to him with an eagerness that was almost passionate even in its suppressed vigour.
How long was it before you came to pity your fellows?
Some minutes, not more.
And the conversion?
Shall satisfy you one day. For the present I will buckle up so unsavoury a fable in my bosom. Tell me what you have learnt at Gilderoy.
Yeoland looked at the moon. The man saw great sadness upon her face, but also an inspired radiance that made its very beauty the more remarkable. He foresaw in an instant that they were coming to deeper matters. Superficialities, the mannerisms of life, were falling away. The girl's heart beat near to his; he felt a luminous sympathy of spirit rise round them like the gold of a Byzantine background.
Come, he said, with a burst of beneficence, "you are beginning to understand me."
She jerked a swift glance at him, like the look of a half-tamed falcon.
You are a man, for all your sneers and vapourings.
I had a heart once. Call me an oak, broken, twisted, aged, but an oak still.
Yeoland drew quite close to him, so that her skirt almost brushed his horse's flank. Fulviac's shadow fell athwart her. Only her face shone clear in the moonlight.
I have ceased, she said, "to look upon life as a stretch of blue, a laughing dawn."
Good.
I have learnt that woe is the crown of years.
Good again.
That life is full of violence and wrong.
A platitude. Yes. Life consists in learning platitudes.
I am only one woman among thousands.
A revelation.
You jeer.
Not so. Few women learn the truth of your proverb.
Lastly, my trouble is not the only woe in the world. That it is an error to close up grief in the casket of self.
Fulviac flapped his bridle, and looked far ahead into the cavern of the night. He was silent awhile in thought. When he spoke again, he delivered himself of certain curt cogitations, characteristic confessions that were wholly logical.
I am a selfish vagabond, he said; "I appeal to Peter's keys whether all ambition is not selfish. I am an egotist for the good of others. The stronger my ambition, the stronger the hope of the land in generous justice. I live to rule, to rule magnanimously, yet with an iron sceptre. There, you have my creed."
And God? she asked him.
Is a most useful subordinate.
You do not mean that?
I do not.
She saw again the mutilated beings in the catacombs, aye, even her own home flaming to the sky, and the white face of her dead father. Faith and devotion were great in her for the moment. Divine vengeance beaconed over the world, a torch borne aloft by the hand of Pity.
It is God's war, she said to him with a finer solemnity sounding in her voice; "you have stirred the woman in me. Is that enough?"
Enough, he answered her.
And the rest?
God shall make all plain in due season.
Gilderoy had dwindled into the east; its castle's towers still netted the moonlight from afar. The meadowlands had ceased, and trees strode down in multitudes to guard the track. The night was still and calm, with a whisper of frost in the crisp, sparkling air. The world seemed roofed with a dome of dusky steel.
Before them a shallow valley lay white in the light of the moon. Around climbed the glimmering turrets of the trees, rank on rank, solemn and tumultuous. The bare gable ends of a ruined chapel rose in the valley. Fulviac drew aside by a bridle path that ran amid rushes. To the left, from the broken wall of the curtilage, a great beech wood ascended, its boughs black against the sky, its floor ankle-deep with fallen leaves. The chapel stood roofless under the moon. Hollies, a sable barrier that glistened in the moonlight, closed the ruin on the south. Yews cast their gloom about the walls. A tall cross in the forsaken graveyard stretched out its mossy arms east and west.
The armed groom took the horses and tethered them under a clump of pines by the wall. Fulviac and the girl Yeoland passed up through weeds and brambles to the porch. A great briar rose had tangled the opening with a thorny web, as though to hold the ruin from the hand of man. The tiled floor was choked with grass; a rickety door drooped rotten on its rusty hinges.
Fulviac pushed through and beckoned the girl to follow. Within, all was ruinous and desolate, the roof fallen, the casements broken.
We must find harbour here, said the man, "our horses go far to-morrow."
A cheerful hostel, this.
Its wildness makes it safe. You fear the cold. I'll see to that.
No. I am hungry.
The high altar still stood below the small rose window in the east, where the rotting fragments of a triptych hid the stonework. There was a great carved screen of stone on either side, curiously recessed as though giving access to an ambulatory. The altar stood in dense shadow, with broken timber and a tangle of briars ringing a barrier about its steps. On the southern side of the nave, a patch of tiled flooring still stood riftless, closed in by two fallen pillars. The groom came in with two horse-cloaks, and Fulviac spread them on the tiles. He also gave her a small flask of wine, and a silver pyx holding meat and bread.
We crusaders must not grumble at the rough lodging, he said to her; "wrap yourself in these cloaks, and play the Jacob with a stone pillow."
She smiled slightly in her eyes. The groom brought in a saddle, ranged it with a saddle cloth covering it, that it might rest her head.
And you? she said to Fulviac.
Damian and I hold the porch.
You will be cold.
I have a thick hide. The Lady of Geraint give you good rest!
He threaded his way out amid the fallen stones and pillars, and closed the rickety gate. The groom, a tall fellow in a battered bassinet and a frayed brigantine, stood by the yew trees, as on guard. Fulviac gestured to him. The man moved away towards the eastern end of the chapel, where laurels grew thick and lusty about the walls. When he returned Fulviac was sitting hunched on a fallen stone in the corner of the porch, as though for sleep. The man dropped a guttural message into his master's ear, and propped himself in the other angle of the porch.
An hour passed; the moon swam past the zenith towards the west; a vast quiet watched over the world, and no wind rippled in the woods. In the sky the stars shivered, and gathered more closely their silver robes. In the curtilage the ruined tombs stared white and desolate at the moon.
An owl's cry sounded in the woods. Sudden and strange, as though dropped from the stars, faint music quivered on the frost-brilliant air. It gathered, died, grew again, with a mysterious flux of sweetness, as of some song stealing from the Gardens of the Dead. Flute, cithern, and viol were sounding under the moon, merging a wizard chant into the magic of the hour. Angels, crimson-winged, in green attire, seemed to descend the burning stair of heaven.
A sudden great radiance lit the ruin, a glory of gold streaming from the altar. Cymbals clashed; waves of shimmering light surged over the broken walls. Incense, like purple smoke, curled through the casements. The music rushed in clamorous rapture to the stars. A voice was heard crying in the chapel, elfin and wild, yet full of a vague rich sanctity. It ceased sudden as the brief moan of a prophecy. The golden glow elapsed; the music sank to silence. Nought save the moonlight poured in silver omnipotence over the ruin.
From the chapel came the sound of stumbling footsteps amid the stones. A hand clutched at the rotting door, jerked it open, as in terror. The girl Yeoland came out into the porch, and stood swaying white-faced in the shadow.
Fulviac.
Her voice was hoarse and whispering, strained as the overwrought strings of a lute. The man did not stir. She bent down, dragged at his cloak, calling to him with a quick and gathering vehemence. He shook himself, as from the thongs of sleep, stood up and stared at her. The groom still crouched in the dark corner.
Fulviac.
She thrust her way through the briars into the moonlight. Her hood had fallen back, her hair loose upon her shoulders; her eyes were full of a supernatural stupor, and she seemed under the spell of some great shock of awe. She trembled so greatly, that Fulviac followed her, and held her arm.
Speak. What has chanced to you?
She still shook like some flower breathed upon by the oracular voice of God. Her hands were torn and bloody from the thorns.
The Virgin has appeared to me.
Are you mad?
The Virgin.
Some ghost or phantom.
No, no, hear me.
She stretched out her hands like one smitten blind, and took breath swiftly in sudden gasps.
Hear me, I was but asleep, woke, and heard music. The Virgin came out upon the altar, her face like the moon, her robes white as the stars. There was great light, great glory. And she spoke to me. Mother of God, what am I that I should be chosen thus!
Speak. Can this be true?
The truth, the truth!
Fulviac fell on his knees with a great gesture of awe. The girl, her face turned to the moon, stood quivering like a reed, her lips moving as if in prayer.
Her message, child?
Ah, it was this: 'Go forth a virgin, and lead the hosts of the Lord.'
Fulviac's face was in shadow. He thrust up his hands to the heavens, but would not so much as glance at the girl above him. His voice rang out in the silence of the night:--
Gloria tibi, Sancta Maria! Gloria tibi, Domine!