The prophecies of the King proved the power of their pinions before fourteen suns had passed over the Black Wild's heart. Richard of Lauretia had plotted to starve Fulviac into giving him battle, or into a retreat from the forest upon Gilderoy. The royal prognostications were pitiless and unflinching as candescent steel. It was no mere battle-ground that he sought, but rather an amphitheatre where he might martyr the rebel host like a mob of revolted slaves.
Whatever tidings may have muttered on the breeze, riders came in hotly to the royal pavilion towards the noon of the fourteenth day. There was soon much stir on the hills hard by Geraint. Knights and nobles thronged the royal tent, captains clanged shoulders, gallopers rode south and west with fiery despatches to Morolt and Sir Simon of Imbrecour. Battle breathed in the wind. Before night came, the King's pavilion had vanished from the hills; his columns were winding round the northern hem of the forest, to strike the road that ran from Geraint to Gilderoy.
The royal scouts and rangers had not played their master false. A river of steel was curling through the black depths of the wild, threading the valleys towards the east. The King's scouts had caught the glimmer of armour sifting through the trees. They had slunk about the rebel host for days while they lay camped in their thousands about the cliff. Colgran and his small company had passed through unheeded, but they were up like hawks when the whole host moved.
That midnight Fulviac's columns rolled from the outstanding thickets of the wild, and held in serried masses for the road to Gilderoy. The King's procrastination had launched them on this last desperate venture. They would have starved in the forest as Fulviac had foreseen; their hopes lay in reaching Gilderoy, which was well victualled, throwing themselves therein, making what terms they could, or die fighting behind its walls. Thus under cover of night they slipped from the forest, trusting to leave the King's men guarding an empty lair.
The brisk forethought of Richard of Lauretia had out-gamed the rebels, however, in the hazardous moves of war. They were answering to his opening like wild duck paddling towards a decoy. Ten miles west of Gilderoy there stretched a valley, walled southwards by tall heights, banded through the centre by the river Tamar. At its eastern extremity a line of hills rolled down to touch the river. The road from Geraint ran through the valley, hugging the southern bank of the river after crossing it westwards by a fortified bridge. Fulviac and his host would follow that road, marching betwixt the river and the hills. It was in this valley that Richard of Lauretia had conceived the hurtling climax of the war.
Forewarned in season, Sir Simon of Imbrecour and his bristling squadrons were riding through the night on Gilderoy, shaping a crescent course towards the east. Morolt and the giants of the north were striding in his track, skirting the southern spires of the forest, to press level with the rebel march, screened by the hills. The King and his Lauretians came down from Geraint. They were to seize the bridge across the Tamar, pour over, and close the rebels on the rear.
It was near dawn when Fulviac's columns struck the highroad from Geraint, and entered the valley where the Tamar shimmered towards Gilderoy. Mist covered the world, shot through with the gold threads of the dawn. The river gleamed and murmured fitfully in the meadows; the southern heights glittered in the growing day; the purple slopes of the Black Wild had melted dimly into the west.
The mist stood dense in the flats where the Geraint road bridged the river. The northern slopes seemed steeped in vapoury desolation, the road winding into a waste of green. Fulviac and his men marched on, chuckling as they thought of the royal troops watching the empty alleys of the forest. Fulviac took no care to secure the bridge across the Tamar. With the line of hills before them breasted, they would see the spires of Gilderoy, glittering athwart the dawn.
The columns were well in the lap of the valley before two light horsemen came galloping in from the far van, calling on Fulviac, who rode under the red banner, that the road to Gilderoy had been seized. Fulviac and Sforza rode forward with a squadron of horse to reconnoitre. As they advanced at a canter, the mists cleared from the skirts of the encircling hills. Far to the east, on the green slopes that rolled towards the Tamar, they saw the sun smite upon a thousand points of steel. Pennons danced in the shimmering atmosphere, shields flickered, armour shone. A torrent of gems seemed poured from the dawn's lap upon the emerald bosoms of the hills. They were the glittering horsemen of Sir Simon of Imbrecour, who had ridden out of the night and seized on the road to Gilderoy.
Fulviac halted his company, and standing in the stirrups, scanned the hillside under his hand. He frowned, thrust forth his chin, turned on Sforza who rode at his side.
Trapped, he said with a twist of the lip; "Dick of the Iron Hand has fooled us. 'Twas done cunningly, though it brings us to a parlous passage. They hold the road."
The Gonfaloniere tugged at his ragged beard, and looked white under the arch of his open salade.
Better advance on them, he said; "I would give good gold to be safe in the streets of Gilderoy."
Fulviac sneered, and shook his head.
There are ten thousand spears on yonder slopes, the lustiest blood in the land. Count their banners and their pennons, the stuff tells an honest tale. Pah, they would drive our rapscallions into the river. Send back and bid our banners halt.
They wheeled and cantered towards the long black columns plodding through the meadows. Far to the west over the green plain they saw spears flash against the sun, a glimmering tide spreading from the river. The Lauretians had crossed the bridge and were hurrying on the rebels' heels. Fulviac's trumpets sounded the halt. He thundered his orders to his captains, bade them mass their men in the meadows, and hedge their pikes for the crash of battle.
A shout reached him from his squadrons of horse who had marched on the southern wing. They were pointing to the heights with sword and spear. Fulviac reined round, rode forward to some rising ground, and looked southwards under his hand. The heights bounding the valley shone with steel. A myriad glistening stars shimmered under the sun. Morolt's northerners had shown their shields; the hills bristled with their bills and spears.
Fulviac shrugged his shoulders, lowered his beaver, and rode back towards his men. He saw Yeoland the Saint's red banner waving above the dusky squares. He remembered the girl's pale face and the hands that had toyed with the gilded silks in the dark chamber upon the cliff. Though the sun shone and the earth glistened, he knew in his heart that he should see that face no more.
Richard of Lauretia had forged his crescent of steel. South, east, and west the royal trumpets sounded; northwards ran the Tamar, closing the meadows. Fulviac and his men were trapped in the green valley. A golden girdle of chivalry hemmed the mob in the lap of the emerald meadows. All about them blazed the panoply of war.
Fulviac, pessimist that he was, took to his heart that hour the lofty tranquillity of a Scandinavian hero. His courage was of that stout, sea-buffeting fibre that stiffened its beams against the tide of defeat. He set forth his shield, tossed up his sword, rode through the ranks with the spirit of a Roland. Life leapt the stronger in him at the challenge of the Black Raven of death. His captains could have sworn that he looked for victory in the moil, so bluff and strenuous was his mood that day.
Sforza came cringing to him, glib-lipped and haggard, to speak of a parley. Fulviac shook his shield in the man's white face, set his ruffians to dig trenches in the meadows, and to range the waggons as a barricade.
Parley, forsooth, quoth he; "talk no more to me of parleys when I have twoscore thousand smiters at my back. Let Dick of the Iron Hand come down to us with the sword. Ha, sirs, are we stuffed with hay! We will rattle the royal bones and make them dance a fandango to the devil."
His spirit diffused itself through the ranks of the rough soldiery. They cheered wheresoever he went, kindling their courage like a torch, and tossed their pikes to him with strenuous insolence.
My children, he would roar to them as he passed, "the day has come, we have drawn these skulkers to a tussle. See to it, sirs, let us maul these velvet gentlemen, these squires of the cushion. By the Lord, we will feast anon in Gilderoy, and rifle the King's baggage."
As for Richard of the Iron Hand, he was content to claim the arduous blessings of the day. He held his men in leash upon the hills, resting them and their horses after the marchings of the night. Wine was served out; clarions and sackbuts sounded through the ranks; the King made his nobles a rich feast in his pavilion pitched by Sir Morolt's banner. As the day drew on, he thrust strong outposts towards the meadows, ordered his troops to sleep through the long night under arms. Their watch-fires gemmed a lurid bow under the sky, with Tamar stringing it, a chord of silver. In the meadows the rebel masses lay a black pool of gloom under the stars.
Fulviac sat alone in his tent at midnight, his drawn sword across his knees. His captains had left him, some to watch, others to sleep on the grass in their armour, Sforza the Gonfaloniere to sneak in the dark to the King's lines. Silence covered the valley, save for the voices of the sentinels and the sound of the royal trumpets blowing the changes on the hills. Their watch-fires hung athwart the sky like a chain of flashing rubies.
Fulviac sat motionless as a statue, staring out into the night. Death, like a grey wraith, stood beside his chair; the unknown, a black and unsailed sea, stretched calm and imageless beneath his feet. Life and the ambition thereof tottered and crumbled like a quaking ruin. Love quenched her torch of gold. The man saw the stars above him, heard in the silence of thought a thousand worlds surging through the infinitudes of the heavens. What then was this mortal pillar of clay, that it should grudge its dust to the womb of the world?
And ambition? He thought of Yeoland and her wounded heart; of Gambrevault and Avalon; of La Belle Forêt smoking amid its ruins. He had torched fame through the land, and painted his prowess in symbols of fire. Now that death challenged him on the strand of the unknown, should he, Fulviac, fear the unsailed sea!
His heart glowed in him with a transcendent insolence. Lifting his sword, he pressed the cold steel to his lips, brandished it in the faces of the stars. Then, with a laugh, he lay down upon a pile of straw and slept.
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《The Red Saint》
Dawn rolled out of the east, red and riotous, its crimson spears streaming towards the zenith. Over the far towers of Gilderoy swept a roseate and golden mist, over the pine-strewn heights, over Tamar silvering the valley. A wind piped hoarsely through the thickets, like a shrill prelude to the organ-throated roar of war.
The landscape shimmered in the broadening light, green tapestries arabesqued with gold. To the east, Sir Simon's multitudinous squadrons ran like rare terraces of flowers, dusted with the scintillant dew of steel. Westwards dwindled the long ranks of the Lauretians. On the heights, Morolt's shields flickered in the sun. About a hillock in the valley, the rebel host stood massed in a great circle, a whorl of helmets, bills, and pikes; Fulviac's red pavilion starred the centre like the red roof of a church rising above a town.
On the southern heights, Richard of Lauretia had watched the dawn rise behind the towers of Gilderoy. He was on horseback, in full panoply of war, his gorgeous harness and trappings dazzling the sun. Knights, nobles, trumpeters were round him, a splendid pool of chivalry, while east and west stretched the ranks of the grim and gigantic soldiery of the north.
Hard by the royal standard with its Sun of Gold, a corpse dangled from the branch of a great fir. It swayed slightly in the wind, black and sinister against the gilded curtain of the dawn. It was the body of Sforza the adventurer from the south, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy, whom the King had hanged to grace his double treachery.
As the light increased, sweeping along the glittering frieze of war, Morolt of Gorm and Regis stood forward before the King. He was a lean man, tall and vigorous as a bow of steel, his black eyes darting fire under his thatch of close-cropped hair. The nobles had put him forward that morning as a man born to claim a boon upon the brink of battle. Fierce and virile, he bared his sword to the sun, and pointed with mailed hand to the rebel host in the valley.
Sire, a boon for your loyal servants.
The King's face was as a mask of steel heated to white heat, ardent and pitiless. He had the spoilers of his kingdom under his heel, and was not the man to flinch at vengeance.
Say on, Morolt, what would ye?
We are men, sire, and these wolves have slaughtered our kinsfolk.
Am I held to be a lamb, sirs!
A rough laugh eddied up. Morolt shook his sword.
Give them into our hand, sire, he said; "there shall be no need of ropes and dungeons."
The iron men cheered him. Richard the King lifted up his baton; his strong voice swept far in the hush of the dawn.
Sirs, he said to them, "take the Black Leopard of Imbrecour for your pattern, rend and slay, let none escape you. Every man of my host wears a white cross on his sword arm. Let that badge only stay your vengeance. As for these whelps of treason, they have butchered our children, shamed our women, clawed and torn at their King's throne. To-day who thinks of mercy! Go down, sirs, to the slaughter."
A roar of joy rose from those rough warriors; they tossed their swords, gripped hands and embraced, called on the saints to serve them. Strong passions were loose, steaming like the incense of sacked cities into heaven. There was much to avenge, much to expurgate. That day their swords were to drink blood; that day they were to crush and kill.
In the valley, Fulviac's huge coil of humanity lay sullen and silent, watching the spears upon the hills. Their russets and sables contrasted with the gorgeous colouring of the feudalists. The one shone like a garden; the other resembled a field lying fallow. The romance and pomp of war gathered to pour down upon the squalid realism of mob tyranny. Beauty and the beast, knight and scullion faced each other on the stage that morning.
Gallopers were riding east and west bearing the King's commands to Sire Julian, Duke of Layonne, who headed the Lauretians, and to Simon of Imbrecour upon the hills. The King would not tempt the moil that day, but left the sweat and thunder of it to his captains, content to play the Cæsar on the southern heights. His commands had gone forth to the host. The first assault was to be made by twenty thousand northmen under Morolt, and a like force under Julian of Layonne. The whole crescent of steel was to contract upon the meadows, and consolidate its iron wall about Fulviac and his rebels. Simon of Imbrecour was to leash his chivalry from the first rush of the fight. His knights should ride in when the rebel ranks were broken.
An hour before noon, the royal trumpets blew the advance, and a great shout surged through the shimmering ranks.
Advance, Black Leopard of Imbrecour.
Advance, Golden Sun of Lauretia.
Advance, Grey Wolf of the North.
With clarions and fifes playing, drums beating, banners blowing, the whole host closed its semilune of steel upon the dusky mass in the meadows. The northerners were chanting an old Norse ballad, a grim, ice-bound song of the sea and the shriek of the sword. Sir Simon's spears were rolling over the green slopes, their trumpets and bugles blowing merrily. From the west, the Lauretians were coming up with their pikes dancing in the sun. The thunder of the advance seemed to shake the hills.
Fulviac watched the feudalists from beneath his banner in the meadows. His captains were round him, grim men and silent, girding their spirits for the prick of battle.
By St. Peter, said the man under the red flag, "these fireflies come on passably. A fair host and a splendid. If their courage suits their panoply, we shall have hot work to-day."
Faith, quoth Colgran, who had returned from Gilderoy, "I would rather sweep a flower-garden than a muck-heap. We are good for twice their number, massed as we are like rocks upon a sea-shore."
To your posts, sirs, were Fulviac's last words to them; "whether we fall or conquer, what matters it if we die like men!"
Billows of red, green, and blue, dusted with silver, Morolt and his Berserkers rolled to the charge. They had cast aside their pikes, and taken to shield and axe, such axes as had warred in the far past for the faith of Odin. Fulviac's rebels had massed their spears into a hedge of steel, and though Morolt's men came down at a run, the spear points stemmed the onrush like a wall.
Despite this avalanche of iron, the rebel ring stove off the tide of war. They were stout churls and hardy, these peasant plunderers; death admonished them; despair tightened their sinews and propped up their shields. The shimmering flood swirled on their spear points like tawny billows tossing round a rock. It lapped and eddied, rushed up in spray, seeking an inlet, yet finding none. The Lauretian feudatories had swarmed to the charge. Fulviac withstood them, and held their panoply at bay.
Richard the King watched the battle from the southern heights. He saw Morolt's men roll down, saw the fight seethe and glitter, swirl in a wild vortex round the rebel spears. The war wolves gathered, the tempest waxed, and still the black ring held. Like steel upon a granite rock the onslaughts sparked on it, but clove no breach. Under the late noon sun the valley reeked with dust and din. The royal host was as a dragon of gold, gnashing and writhing about an iron tower.
It was then that the King smote his thigh, plucked off his signet, sent it by Bertrand his herald to Sir Simon and his knights.
Go down at the gallop, ran the royal bidding, "cleave me this rock, and splinter it to dust. Spare neither man nor horse. Cleave in or perish."
The black banner of Imbrecour flapped forth; the trumpets clamoured. Sir Simon's knights might well have graced Boiardo's page, and girded Albracca with their stalwart spears. They tightened girths, set shields for the charge, and rode down nobly to avenge or fall.
As a great ship sails to break a harbour boom, so did the squadrons of the King crash down with fewtred spears on Fulviac's host. They rode with the wind, leaping and thundering like an iron flood. No slackening was there, no wavering of this ponderous bolt. It rushed like a huge rock down a mountain's flank, smoking and hurtling on the wall of spears.
The corn was scythed and trodden under foot. Ranks rocked and broke like earth before a storm-scourged sea. The spears of Imbrecour flashed on, smote and sucked vengeance, cleaving a breach into the core of war. The knights slew, took scarlet for their colour, and made the moment murderous with steel. Into the breach the King's wolves followed them; Morolt's grim axemen stumbled in, rending and hurling the black mass to shreds. Battle became butchery. The day was won.
What boots it to chronicle the scene that travelled as a forest fire in the track of Sir Simon's chivalry? The iron hand of the King closed upon the wrecked victims in the valley. Knight and noble trampled the peasantry; rapine and lust were put to the sword. The Blatant Beast was slain by the spear of Romance. The boor and the demagogue were trodden as straw before the threshing-floor of vengeance. The fields were a shroud of scarlet; Tamar ran like wine; thorn and bramble were fruited red with blood. On the heights the tall pines waved over the splendid masque of death.
It was late in the day when Morolt and his hillsmen, with certain of Sir Simon's knights, forced their way through the wreckage of the fight, to the hillock where stood the banner of the Saint. South, east, and west the rout bubbled into the twilight, a riot of slaughter seething to the distant woods. About Yeoland's banner had gathered the last of the Forest brotherhood, grey wolves red to the throat with battle. Sullen and indomitable, they had gathered in a dusky knot of steel as the day sped into the kindling west. Even Morolt's fierce followers stood still, like hounds that had brought the boar to bay. Simon of Imbrecour spurred out before the spears, lifted a shattered sword, and called on Fulviac by name.
Traitor, we challenge ye.
A burly figure in harness of a reddish hue towered up beneath the fringe of the banner of the Saint. He carried an axe slanted over his shoulder, as he stood half a head above the tallest of his men. As Sir Simon challenged him, he lifted his salade, and bared his face to the war dogs who hemmed him in.
Black Leopard of the West, we meet again.
The Lord of Imbrecour peered at him keenly from under his vizor.
Come, sirs, and end it, quoth the man in red, "buffet for buffet, and sword to sword. I fling ye a gauge to death and the devil. Come, sirs, let us end it; I bide my time."
Morolt sprang forward with sword aloft.
Traitor and rebel, I have seen your face before.
Fulviac laughed, a brave burst of scorn. He tossed his axe to them, and spread his arms.
Ha, Morolt, I have foined with ye of old. Saints and martyrs, have I avenged myself upon the lap-dogs of the court! Here will we fight our last battle. Bury me, sirs, as Fulk of Argentin, the King's brother, whom men thought dead these seven years.
A sudden silence hovered above that remnant of a beaten host. The red banner drooped, hung down about its staff. Morolt, uttering a strange cry, smote his bosom with his iron hand. Old Simon crossed himself, turned back and rode thence slowly from the field.
Morolt's voice, gruff and husky, sounded the charge. When he and his war dogs had made an end, they took Fulviac's head and bore it wrapped in Yeoland's banner to the King.
Under the starry pall of night, the last cry of the clarion of tragedy sounded over wood and meadow. Gilderoy, proud city of the south, had closed her gates against the royal host, wise at the eleventh hour as to the measure of the King's mercy. The wreckage from the battle in the valley had washed on Tamar's bosom past the walls, corpses jostling each other in the stream of death. Vultures had hovered in the azure sky. There was no doom for Gilderoy save the doom of the sword.
The moon rose red amid a whorl of dusky clouds, veiled as with scarlet for the last orgies of war. Gilderoy had been carried by assault. Morolt's barbarians were pouring through the streets; the gates yawned towards the night; bells boomed and clashed. The townsfolk were scurrying like rats for the great square where the remnant of the garrison had barricaded the entries, gathering for a death-struggle under the umbrage of the cathedral towers.
Richard the King had ridden into Gilderoy by the northern gate with Sir Simon of Imbrecour and a strong guard of knights and men-at-arms. Fulviac's head danced on a spear beside the Golden Banner of Lauretia. The citadel had opened its gates to Sire Julian of Layonne. In the square before the ruined abbey of the Benedictines the King and his nobles gathered to await the judgment of the hour.
A great bell boomed through the night, a deep panting sound in the warm gloom. Torrents of steel clashed through the narrow streets, gleaming under the torch flare, bubbling towards the last rampart of revolt. From the cathedral square arose a wild, whimpering outcry, the wailing of women mingling with the hoarse clamour of the last assault.
Word was brought to the King by one of Morolt's esquires, that the townsfolk were holding the great square behind their barricades, and pouring a hot fire from the houses upon his troops. Morolt desired the King's ring and his commands before taking to the resource of the sword. Richard of the Iron Hand was in no mood for mercy. His decree went forth from before the gate of the ruined abbey.
Consider no church as a sanctuary. Fire the houses about the square. Gilderoy shall burn.
The city's doom was sealed by those iron words. The torch took up the handiwork of the sword. A gradual glow began to rise above the house-tops; smoke billowed up, black and voluminous, dusted with a myriad ruddy stars. Flames rose from casement and from gable, from chimney, spirelet, roof, and tower. The houses were faced with wood, dry as tinder, crisp for the torch as a summer-bleached prairie. The flames ran like a red flood from roof to roof, with a roar as from huge reptiles battling in a burning pit. The great square, with the glittering pinnacles of its cathedral, was girded in with fire and sword.
Men were stabbing and hewing upon the barricades where Morolt's feudatories had stormed up from the gloom of the streets. Beneath the light of the burning houses, swords were tossed, the dead forgotten and trodden under foot. It was not long before the barriers were carried by assault and the avengers of Belle Forêt poured pitiless into the great square.
The citizens of Gilderoy had packed their women and children into the sanctuary of the cathedral choir. They were penned there amid the gorgeous gildings of the place, a shivering flock swarming in the frescoed chapels, huddled beneath the painted figures of the saints. The glow of the burning city beat in through the jewelled glass, building the huge aisles in a glittering cavern windowed with living gems. Darkness and dawn struggled and fought under the thundering vaults. From without came the wild babel, the hoarse death-moan of a people.
In the great square the fight went on, a ruthless mêlée, strong and terrible. Gilderoy had slaughtered her noblesse. She made expiation for the deed that night with the heart's blood of her children. Vengeance and despair grappled and swayed in that great pit of death. The blazing streets walled in a red inferno, where passions ran like Satanic wine. Gilderoy, proud city of the south, quivered and expired beneath the iron gauntlet of the King.
Modred of Gambrevault moved through the press with Morolt of the North fighting at his side. They had a common quest that night, a common watchword, chastening the vengeance of their men.
Seek the Saint. Save Yeoland of Gambrevault.
It was as a hoarse shout, feeble and futile amid the bluster of a storm. What hope was there for this pale-faced Madonna amid the burning wreck of Gilderoy? She was as a lily in a flaming forest. Modred sought for her with voice and sword, thinking of Flavian and the vow upon the cliff. Though the city lightened, black Modred's heart was steeped in gloom. Death and despair seemed armed against his hope.
On the eastern quarter a little court stood back from the great square. A fountain played in the centre, the water-jet, thrown from a mermaid's bosom, sparkling like a plume of gems. The walls of the court were streaked with flame, its casements tawny with yellow light. The breath of the place was as the breath of a furnace; a quaking crowd filled it, driven to bay by the swords shining in the square.
Modred was a tall man, a pine standing amid hollies. Staring into the murk of the court wreathed round with a garland of fire, he saw, above the heads of the crowd, a woman standing on the steps of the fountain, leaning against the brim of the basin. Her hair blew loose from under her open bassinet; her white face like a flower was turned mutely to the night. A cuirass glimmered under her cloud of hair. Modred, when he saw her, sent up a shout like that of a wrecked mariner sighting a sail over tumbling waves. He tossed his sword, charged forward into the court, began to buffet his way towards the figure by the fountain.
A knot of soldiery, taking his shout as a rallying cry, stormed after him into the court. There was a great crush in the entry, men tumbling in, and using their swords as poniards. The townsfolk were scattered like blown leaves towards the burning houses. In the hot turmoil of the moment the girl was swept from the fountain steps, and carried by a struggling bunch of figures towards a corner of the court. Modred lost sight of her for the moment, as he ploughed forward through the press.
Flames were rushing from casement and from roof; the breath of the place was as the breath of a burning desert. The Gilderoy rebels pent in the court were being put to the sword. Through the swirl of the struggle Yeoland's bassinet shone out again. Modred saw her standing alone, shading her face with her hands like some wild, desperate thing, knowing not whither to escape. He pushed on, calling her by name. Before he could reach her the gabled front of a house undermined by the fire lurched forward, tottered, and came down with a roar.
A blazing brand struck Modred on the helmet. He staggered, beheld a shower of sparks, felt a scorching wind upon his face. The stones were littered with crackling woodwork, glowing timber, reeking tiles. He was stunned for a moment as by the blow of a mace. Flames were leaping heavenwards from the houses, wiping out the mild faces of the stars with their ruthless hands.
With a great cry Modred had started forward like a charging bull. He dragged aside the smouldering wreckage of gable and roof, tore the rafters aside, nor heeded the heat, for his harness helped him. His great body quivered as he drew the girl out and lifted her from the stones. Her green kirtle was alight, and with the strong instinct of the moment he ran with her to the fountain and plunged her bodily in the broad basin.
Panting, he bore her across the great square in his arms. Yeoland was making a little moaning whimper, but for all else lay quiet as a half-dead bird. Modred dared not look into her face; the scent of her scorched hair beat up into his nostrils. He ground his teeth and cursed Fate as he ran. Was it for this that they had bulwarked Gambrevault?
Autumn had cast her scarlet girdle about Avalon; the woods were aflame with the splendours of the dying year. The oaks stood pavilions of green and gold; the beeches domes of burnished bronze; from their silver stems, birches fountained forth showers of amber. It was a season of crystal skies, of cloud galleons, bulwarked with gold, sailing the wine-red west. Wild Autumn wandered in the ruined woods, her long hair streaking the gilded gloom, her voice elfin under the stars. Even as she passed, the crisp leaves swirled and fell, a pall for the dying year.
Avalon slumbered amid her lilies and the painted woods, gorgeous as rare tapestries, curtaining her meadows. Her mere laughed and glimmered amid the flags and lily leaves, and lapped at the lichened bases of her towers. Avalon had arisen from her desolation. No longer were her chambers void, her gates broken, her courts the haunt of death. The bat and the screech-owl had fled from her towers. She had lifted up her face to the dawn, like a mourner who turns from the grave to gaze again upon the golden face of joy.
Time with his scythe of silver rested on the hills. The black dragon of war had crawled sated to the labyrinths of the past; the red throne of ambition had been consumed by fire. Peace came forth with her white-faced choir, swinging their golden censers, shedding a purple perfume of hope over the blackened land. The death wolves had slunk to the wilds, the vultures had soared from the fields. A splendid calm had descended upon the land, a silence as of heaven after the hideous masque of war. The cloud-wrack and thunder had passed from the sky. Men heard again the voice of God.
Six weeks had gone since the sacking of Gilderoy, and dead Duessa's bower in Avalon had been garnished for a second mistress. A white rose lurked in a whorl of green. The oriel, with its re-jewelled glass, looked out upon the transient splendours of the woods. Tapestry clothed the walls, showing knights and maidens wandering through flowering meads. Rare furniture had been taken from the wrecked palaces of Gilderoy and given to the Lord Flavian by the King.
That autumntide Modred played seneschal in Avalon. He had cleansed and regarnished the castle by his lord's command, and garrisoned it with men taken from the King's own guard. Moreover, in Gilderoy he had found an old man groping miserlike amid the ruins, filthy and querulous. The pantaloon when challenged had confessed to the name of Aurelius, and the profession of Medicine by royal patent in that city. The townsfolk had spared his pompous neck for the sake of the benefits of his craft. From the fat, proud, prosperous worthy he had cringed into a wrinkled, flap-cheeked beggar. Him Modred had caught like a veritable pearl from the gutter, and brought with other household perquisites into Avalon.
In this rich refuge Aurelius awoke as from an unsavoury and penurious dream. He regained some of his plump, sage swagger, his rotund phraseology, his autocratic dogmatism in matters Æsculapian. The atmosphere of Avalon agreed with his gullet. Above all things, he was held to be a man of tact.
In dead Duessa's bower there still hung her mirror of steel, whose sheeny surface had often answered to her languorous eyes and moon-white face. Duessa's hair had glimmered before this good friend's flattery. Gems, necklet, broideries, and tiars had sunk deep into its magic memory. The mirror could have told truths and expounded philosophies, had there been some Merlin to conjure with the past.
Aurelius of Gilderoy played the necromancer under more rational auspices. He was a benignant soul, subtle, sympathetic to the brink of dotage. His professional hint was that dead Duessa's mirror should be exiled from the bower of Avalon. The oracle spoke with much beneficence as to the delusions of the sick, and the demoniac influence of melancholy upon the brain. Yet his wisdom was withstood in the very quarter where he had trusted to find obedience and understanding. Dead Duessa's mirror still hung in the Lady Yeoland's bower.
One calm evening, when the west stood a great arch of ruddy gold, a slim girl knelt in the oriel with her face buried in her hands. She was clad in a gown of peacock blue, fitting close to her slight figure, and girded about the hips with a girdle of green leather. Her black hair poured upon her shoulders, clouding her face, yet leaving bare the base of her white neck where it curved from her pearly shoulders. She drooped her head as she knelt before the casement, where the light entered to her, azure and green, vermilion and purple, silver and rose.
Anon she rose softly, turned towards the mirror hanging on the wall, gazed into its depths with a species of bewitched fear. One glance given, she turned away with a shudder, hid her face in her hands, walked the room in a mute frenzy of self-horror. Presently she knelt again before the window-seat, struggled in prayer, turning her face piteously to an open casement where the golden woods stood under the red wand of the west. The light waned a little. She rose up again from her knees, shook her hair forward so that it bathed her face, trod slowly towards the mirror, stared at herself therein.
The crystal bowl was broken, the ivory throne dishonoured! The blush of the rose had faded, the gleam of the opal fallen to dust. Youth and its sapphire shield had passed into the gloom of dreams. The stars and the moon were magical no more.
She wavered away from the window to a dark corner, hid her face in the arras. The same wild cry rang like a piteous requiem through her brain. The man lived and loved her, and she had come to this! Burning Gilderoy had stolen her beauty, made her a mockery of her very self. God, that Fate should compel her to lift her scars to the eyes of love!
In the gathering dusk, she went again to the mirror, peered therein, with strained eyes and a tremor of the lip. The twilight softened somewhat the bitterness of truth. She shook her hair forward, saw her eyes gleam, fingered her white throat, and smiled a little. Presently she lit a taper, held it with wavering hand, peered at the steel panel once again. She cried out, jerked away, and crushed the frail light under her foot.
Darkness increased, seeming to clothe her misery. She wandered through the room, twisting her black hair about her wrist, moaning and darting piteous glances into the gloom. Once she took a poniard from a table, fingered the point, pressed her hand over her heart, threw the knife away with a gesture of despair. On the morrow the man would come to her. What would she see in those grey eyes of his? Horror and loathing, ah God, not that!
Anon she grew calmer and less distressed, prayed awhile, lit a lamp, delved in an ambry built in the wall. That night her hands worked zealously, while the moon shimmered on the mere, setting silver wrinkles on its agate face. The woods were still and solemn as death, deep with the voiceless sympathy of the hour. Black lace hung upon Yeoland's hands; the sable thread ran through and through; her white fingers quivered in the light of the lamp.
Her few hours of sleep that night were wild and feverish, smitten through with piteous dreams. On the morrow she bound a black fillet about her brows, and let the dusky mask of lace fall over face and bosom. She prayed a long while before her crucifix, but she did not gaze again into dead Duessa's mirror.
That same evening Modred the seneschal blasphemed Aurelius in the garden of Avalon. The man of the sword was in no easy humour; his convictions emerged from his hairy mouth with a vigour that was not considerate.
Dotard, you have no more wit than a pelican.
My lord, I embrace truth.
Damn truth; what eyes have you for a goodly close!
Aurelius spread his hands with the air of a martyr.
The physician, my lord, he said, "should ever deserve the confidence of his patron."
For retort, Modred shouldered him into the thick of a rose bush.
Pedant, quoth he, "crab-apple, say a word on this matter, and I will drown you in the moat."
Aurelius gathered his robes and still ruffled it like an autocrat.
Barbarity, sir, is the argument of fools.
Bag of bones, rot in your wrinkled hide, keep your froth for sick children.
Sir!
You have as much soul as a rat in a sewer. Come, list to me, breathe a word of this, and I'll starve you in our topmost turret. Leave truth alone, gaffer, with your rheumy, broken-kneed wisdom. You have no wit in these matters, no, not a crust. Blurt a word, and I pack you off to grovel in Gilderoy.
The man of physic shrugged his shoulders, seemed grieved and incredulous, prepared to wash his hands of the whole business.
Have your way, my lord; you are too hot-blooded for me; I will meddle no further.
Ha, Master Gallipot, you shall acknowledge anon that I have a soul.
Trumpets were blowing in Avalon of the Twelve Towers, echoing through the valley where the sun shone upon the woods, the sere leaves glittering like golden byzants as they fell. The sky was a clear canopy, drawn as blue silk from height to height, tenting the green meadows. Avalon's towers rose black and strong above the sheen of her quiet waters.
From Gambrevault came the Lord Flavian to claim his wife once more. Through the brief days of autumn Aurelius of Gilderoy had decreed him an exile from the Isle of Orchards, pleading for the girl's frail breath and her lily soul that might fade if set too soon in the noon of love. In Gambrevault the Lord Flavian had moped like a prisoned falcon, listening to the far cry of the war, hungry for the touch of a woman's hand. Modred had snatched the Madonna of the Pine Forest from burning Gilderoy. She had been throned at last above the tides of violence and wrong.
That day the Lord Flavian rode in state for Avalon, even as an Arthurian, prince coming with splendour from some high-souled quest. The woods had blazoned their banners for his march. Trumpets hailed him from the towers and battlements. The sun, like a great patriarch, smoothed his gold beard and beamed upon the world.
Over the bridge and beneath the gate, Modred led his master's horse. The garrison had gathered in the central court; they tossed their swords, and cheered for Gambrevault. Trumpets set the wild woods wailing. Bombards thundered from the towers.
In the court, amid the panoply of arms, Flavian dismounted, took Modred's hand, leant upon the great man's shoulder.
Old friend, is she well?
Ah, sire, youth turns to youth.
Let my minstrels play below the stair some old song of Tristan and Iseult. And now I go to her. Lead on.
In dead Duessa's bower a drooping figure knelt before a crucifix in prayer. Foreshadowings of misery and woe were stirring in the woman's heart. She had heard the bray of trumpets on the towers, the thunder of cannon, the shouts of strong men cheering in the court. She heard lute, viol, and flute strike up from afar a mournful melody sweet with an antique woe.
Time seemed to crawl like a wounded snake in the grass. The figures on the arras gestured and grimaced; the jewelled glass in the oriel burnt in through the dark lattice of her veil. She heard footsteps on the stairs; Modred's deep voice, joyous and strangely tender. A hand fumbled at the latch. Starting up, she ran towards the shadows, and hid her face in the folds of the arras.
The door had closed and all was silent.
Yeoland.
The cry smote through her like joy barbed with bitterness. She shuddered and caught her breath, swayed as she stood with the arras hiding her face.
Wife, wife.
With sudden strength, compelling herself, she peered round, and saw a figure standing in the shadow, a man with white face turned towards the light, his hands stretched out like a little child's. She stood motionless, breathing fast with short, convulsive breaths, her lips quivering beneath her veil.
I am here, she said to him, husky, tremulous, and faint.
Yeoland.
Ah!
I hear your voice; come near to me.
She wavered forward three steps into the room, stood staring strangely at the figure by the door.
Yeoland, are you near?
My God!
I give myself to you, a broken man. Ah, where are your hands?
Sudden comprehension seized her; she went very near to him, gazing in his face.
Speak.
Wife, I shall never see the sky again, nor watch the stars at night, nor the moon, nor the sea. I shall never look on Avalon, her green woods and her lilies, and her sleeping mere. I shall never behold your face again. I am blind, I am blind.
She gave a great cry, tore the veil from her face, and cast it far from her.
Husband, I come to you.
His hands were groping in the dark, groping like souls that sought the light. She went near him, weeping, caught his fingers, kissed them with her lips. The man's arms circled her; she hung therein, and buried her head in his bosom.
My love, my own.
I am blind; your hair bathes my face.
Ah, you are blind, mine eyes are yours, and I your wife will be your sun. No more pain shall compass you; there shall be no more grieving, no more tears.
Yeoland.
Husband.
God in heaven, I give Thee thanks for this.