XXXIVAugust came in with storm and rain, and a dreary wind blew from the south-west, huddling masses of cloud over a spiritless sky. Southwards, the sea tumbled, a grey expanse edged with foam, its great breakers booming dismally upon the cliffs. The wind swept over Gambrevault, moaning and wailing over battlement and tower, driving the rain in drifting sheets. The bombards still belched and smoked under their penthouses, and the arms of the catapults rose and fell against the sullen sky.The eighteenth night of the siege came out of the east like a thunder bank, and the grey shivering ghost of the day fled over the western hills. When darkness had fallen, the walls of Gambrevault were invisible from the trenches. Here and there a light shone out like a spark in tinder; the sky above was black as a cavern, unbroken by the crack or cranny of a star.Flavian, fully armed, kept watch upon the breach with a strong company of men-at-arms. He had taken the ugly measure of the night to heart, and had prepared accordingly. Under the shelter of the wall men slept, wrapped in their cloaks, with their weapons lying by them. The sentinels had been doubled on the battlements, though little could be seen in the blank murk, and even the keep had to be looked for before its mass disjointed itself from the background of the night.It was treacherous weather, and just the season for an adventurous enemy to creep from the trenches and attempt to rush the breach. Flavian leant upon his long sword, and brooded. The black ends of the broken wall stood up hugely on either hand; rubble and fallen masonry paved the breach, and a rough rampart of debris had been piled along the summit. Around him shone the dull armour of his men, as they stood on guard in the rain.The storm deadened soul and body, yet kept Flavian vigilant with its boisterous laughter, a sound that might stifle the tramp of stormers pouring to the breach. He was not lonely, for a lover can do without the confidences of others, when he has a woman to speak with in his heart. In fancy he can lavish the infinite tenderness of the soul, caress, quarrel, kiss, comfort, with all the idealisms of the imagination. The spirit lips we touch are sweeter and more red than those in the flesh. To the true man love is the grandest asceticism the world can produce.Flavian's figure straightened suddenly as it leant bowed in thought upon the sword. He was alert and vigilant, staring into darkness that baffled vision and hid the unknown. A dull, characterless sound was in the air. Whether it was the wind, the sea, or something more sinister, he could not tell. Calling one of his knights to his side, they stood together listening on the wreckage of the wall.A vague clink, clink, came in discord to the wind, a sound that suggested the cautious moving of armed men. A hoarse voice was growling warily in the distance, as though giving orders. The shrilling noise of steel grew more obvious each moment; the black void below appeared to grow full of movement, to swirl and eddy like a lagoon, whose muddy waters are disturbed by some huge reptile at night. The sudden hoarse cries of sentinels rose from the walls. Feet stumbled on the debris at the base of the breach; stormers were on the threshold of Gambrevault.A trumpet blared in the entry; the guard closed up on the rampart; sleeping men started from the shadows of the wall, seized sword and shield as the trumpets' bray rang in their ears. Colgran's stormers, discovered in their purpose, cast caution to the winds, and sent up a shout that should have wakened all Gambrevault.In the darkness and the driving rain, neither party could see much of the other. The stormers came climbing blindly up the pile of wreckage in serried masses. Flavian and his knights, who held the rampart, big men and large-hearted, smote at the black tide of bodies that rolled to their swords. It was grim work in the dark. It was no sleepy, disorderly rabble that held the breach, but a tense line of steel, that stemmed the assault like a wall. The stormers pushed up and up, to break and deliquesce before those terrible swords. Modred's deep voice sounded through the din, as he smote with his great axe, blows that would have shaken an oak. There was little shouting; it was breathless work, done in earnest. Colgran's men showed pluck, fought well, left a rampart of dead to their credit, a squirming, oozing barrier, but came no nearer forcing the breach.They had lost the propitious moment, and the whole garrison was under arms, ready to repulse the attacks made at other points. Scaling ladders had been jerked forward and reared against the walls; men swarmed up, but the rebels gained no lasting foothold on the battlements. They were beaten back, their ladders hurled down, masonry toppled upon the mass below. Many a man lay with neck or back broken in the confused tangle of humanity at the foot of the castle.Colgran ordered up fresh troops. It was his policy to wear out the garrison by sheer importunity and the stress of numbers. He could afford to lose some hundred men; every score were precious now to Flavian. It was a system of counter barter in blood, till the weaker vessel ran dry. The Lord of Gambrevault understood this rough philosophy well enough, and husbanded his resources. He could not gamble with death, and so changed his men when the opportunity offered, to give breathing space to all. Conscious of the strong stimulus of personal heroism, he kept to the breach himself, and fought on through every assault with Modred's great axe swinging at his side. He owed his life more than once to those gorilla-like arms and that crescent of steel.In the outer court, certain of the women folk with Yeoland dealt out wine and food, and tended the wounded. In the chapel, tapers glimmered, lighting the frescoes and the saints, the priest chanting at the altar, the women and children who knelt in the shadowy aisles praying for those who fought upon the walls. Panic hovered over the pale faces, the fear, the shivering, weeping, pleading figures. There was little heroism in Gambrevault chapel, save the heroism of supplication. While swords tossed and men groped for each other in the wind and rain, old Peter the cellarer lay drunk in a wine bin, and lame Joan, who tended the linen, was snivelling in the chapel and fingering the gold angels sewn up in her tunic.Five times did Colgran's men assault the breach that night, each repulse leaving its husks on the bloody wreckage, its red libations to the swords of Gambrevault. The last and toughest tussle came during the grey prologue before dawn. The place was so packed with the dead and stricken, that it was well-nigh impassable. For some minutes the struggle hung precariously on the summit of the pass, but with the dawn the peril dwindled and elapsed. The stormers revolted from the shambles; they had fought their fill; had done enough for honour; were sick and weary. No taunt, command, or imprecation could keep them longer in that gate of death. Colgran's rebels retreated on their trenches.And with the dawn Flavian looked round upon the breach, and saw all the horror of the place in one brief moment. Cloven faces, hacked bodies, distortions, tortures, blood everywhere. He looked round over his own men; saw their meagre ranks, their weariness, their wounds, their exultation that lapsed silently into a kind of desperate awe. Some tried to cheer him, and at the sound he felt an unutterable melancholy descend upon his soul. The men were like so many sickly ghosts, a wan and battered flock, a ragged remnant. He saw the whole truth in a moment, as a man sees life, death, and eternity pass before him in the flashing wisdom of a single thought.And this was war, this cataclysm of insatiate wrath! His men were too few, too bustled, to hold the breach against such another storm. His trumpets blared the retreat, a grim and tragic fanfare. They dragged out their wounded, abandoned the pile of rubbish for which they had fought, and withdrew sullenly within the inner walls. Colgran, though repulsed, had taken the outer ward of Gambrevault.As one stumbling from a dream, Flavian found himself in the castle garden. The place was full of the freshness that follows rain; and it was not till the scent of flowers met him like an odour of peace, that he marked that the sky was blue and the dawn like saffron. The storm-clouds had gone, and the wind was a mere breeze, a moist breath from the west, bearing a curious contrast to the furious temper of the night.Flavian, looking like a white-faced debauchee, limped through the court, and climbed the stairway of the keep to the banqueting hall and his own state chambers. Several of his knights followed him at a distance and in silence. He felt sick as a dog, and burdened with unutterable care, that weighed upon him like a prophecy. He had held the breach against heavy odds, and he was brooding over the cost. There was honour in the sheer physical heroism of the deed; but he had lost old friends and tried servants, had sacrificed his outer walls; there was little cause for exultation in the main.He stumbled into the banqueting hall like a man into a tavern."Wine, wine, for the love of God."A slim figure in green came out from the oriel, and a pair of dark eyes quivered over the man's grey face and blood-stained armour. The girl's hands went out to him, and she seemed like a child roused in the night from the influence of some evil dream."You are wounded."She took him by the arm and shoulder, and was able to force him into a chair, so limp, so impotent, was he for the moment. His face had the uncanny pallor of one who was about to faint; his eyes stared at her in a dazed and wistful way."My God, you are not going to die!"He shook his head, smiled weakly, and groped for her hand. She broke away, brought wine, and began to trickle it between his lips. Several of his knights came in, and looked on awkwardly from the doorway at the girl leaning over the man's chair, with her arm under his head. Yeoland caught sight of them, coloured and called them forward.The man's faintness had passed. He saw Modred and beckoned him to his chair."Take her away," in a whisper.Yeoland heard the words, started round, and clung to his hand. There was a strange look upon her face. Flavian spoke slowly to her."Girl, I am not a savoury object, fresh from the carnage of a breach. Leave me to my surgeon. I would only save you pain. As for dying, I feel like an Adam. Go to your room, child; I will be with you before long."She held both his hands, looked in his eyes a moment, then turned away with Modred and left him. She was very pale, and there was a tremor about her lips.Irrelevant harness soon surrendered to skilled fingers. No great evil had been done, thanks to the fine temper of Flavian's armour; the few gashes, washed, oiled, and dressed, left him not seriously the worse for the night's tussle. Wine and food recovered his manhood. He was barbered, perfumed, dressed, and turned out by his servants, a very handsome fellow, with a fine pallor and a pathetic limp.His first care was to see his own men attended to, the wounded properly bestowed, a good supply of food and wine dealt out. He had a brave word and a smile for all. As he passed, he found Father Julian the priest administering the Host to those whose dim eyes were closing upon earth and sky.Modred, that iron man, who never seemed weary, was stalking the battlements, and getting the place prepared for the next storm that should break. Flavian renounced responsibilities for the moment, and crossed the garden to Yeoland's room. He entered quietly, looked about him, saw a figure prostrate on the cushions of the window seat.He crossed the room very quickly, knelt down and touched the girl's hair. Her face was hidden in the cushions. She turned slowly on her side, and looked at him with a wan, pitiful stare; her eyes were timid, but empty of tears."Ah, girl, what troubles you?"She did not look at him, though he held her hands."Are you angry with me?""No, no.""What is it, then?"She spoke very slowly, in a suppressed and toneless voice."Will you tell me the truth?"He watched her as though she were a saint."I have had a horrible thought in my heart, and it has wounded me to death.""Tell it me, tell it me.""That you had repented all----""Repented!""Of all the ruin I am bringing upon you; that you were beginning to think----"He gave a deep cry."You believed that!"She lay back on the cushions with a great sigh. Flavian had his arms about her, as he bent over her till their lips nearly touched."How could you fear!""I am so much a woman.""Yes----""And something is all the world to me, even though----""Well?""I would die happy."He understood her whole heart, and kissed her lips."Little woman, I had come here to this room to ask you one thing more. You can guess it.""Ah----""Father Julian."She drew his head down upon her shoulder, and he knelt a long while in silence, with her bosom rising and falling under his cheek."I am happy," he said at last; "child-wife, child-husband, let us go hand in hand into heaven."XXXVSo with Colgran and his rebels beating at the inner gate, Flavian of Gambrevault took Yeoland to wife, and was married that same eve by Father Julian in the castle chapel. There was pathetic cynicism in the service, celebrating as it did the temporal blending of two bodies who bade fair by their destinies to return speedily to dust. The chant might have served as a requiem, or a dirge for the fall of the mighty. It was a tragic scene, a solemn ceremony, attended by grim-faced men in plated steel, by frightened women and sickly children. Famine, disease, and death headed the procession, jigged with the torches, danced like skeletons about a bier. Trumpets and cannon gave an epithalamium; bones might have been scattered in lieu of flowers, and wounds espoused in place of favours. For a marriage pageant war pointed to the grinning corpses in the breach and the clotted ruins. It was such a ceremony that might have appealed to a Stoic, or to a Marius brooding amid the ruins of Carthage.Peril chastens the brave, and death is as wine to the heart of the saint. Even as the sky seems of purer crystal before a storm, so the soul pinions to a more luminous heroism when the mortal tragedy of life nears the "explicit." As the martyrs exulted in their spiritual triumph, or as Pico of Mirandola beheld transcendent visions on his bed of death, when the Golden Lilies of France waved into luckless Florence, so Flavian and Yeoland his wife took to their hearts a true bridal beauty.When the door was closed on them that night, a mysterious cavern, a spiritual shrine of gold, came down as from heaven to cover their souls. They had no need of the subtleties of earth, of music and of colour, of flowers, or scent, or song. They were the world, the sky, the sea, the infinite. Imperishable atoms from the alembic of God, they fused soul with soul, became as one fair gem that wakes a thousand lustres in its sapphire unity. To such a festival bring no fauns and dryads, no lewd and supple goddess, no Orphean flute. Rather, let Christ hold forth His wounded hands, and let the wings of angels glimmer like snow over the alchemy of souls.Flavian knelt beside the bed and prayed. He had the girl's hand in his, and her dark hair swept in masses over the pillow, framing her spiritual face as a dark cloud holds the moon. Her bed-gown was of the whitest lace and linen, like foam bounding the violet coverlet that swept to her bosom. The light from the single lamp burnt steadily in her great dark eyes.Flavian lifted up his face from the coverlet and looked long at her."Dear heart, have no fear of me," he said.She smiled wonderfully, and read all the fine philosophy of his soul."God be thanked, you are a good man.""Ah, child, you are so wonderful that I dare not touch you; I have such grand awe in my heart that even your breath upon my face makes me bow down as though an angel touched my forehead.""All good and great love is of heaven.""Pure as the lilies in the courts of God. Every fragment of you is like to me as a pearl from the lips of angels; your flesh is of silver, your bosom as snow from Lebanon, girded with the gold of truth. Oh, second Adam, thanks be to thee for thy philosophy."She put out her hands and touched his hair; their eyes were like sea and sky in summer, tranquil, tender, and unshadowed."I love you for this purity, ah, more and more than I can tell.""True love is ever pure.""And for me, such love as yours. Never to see the wolfish stare, the flushed forehead, and the loosened lip; never to feel the burning breath. God indeed be thanked for this.""Have no fear of me.""Ah, like a white gull into a blue sky, like water into a crystal bowl, I give myself into your arms."XXXVIA week had passed, and the Gambrevault trumpets blew the last rally; her drums rumbled on the battlements of the keep where the women and children had been gathered, a dumb, panic-ridden flock, huddled together like sheep in a pen. The great banner flapped above their heads with a solemn and sinuous benediction. The sun was spreading on the sea a golden track towards the west, and the shouts of the besiegers rose from the courts.On the stairs and in the banqueting hall the last remnant of the garrison had gathered, half-starved men, silent and grim as death, game to the last finger. They handled their swords and waited, moving restlessly to and fro like caged leopards. They knew what was to come, and hungered to have it over and done with. It was the waiting that made them curse in undertones. A few were at prayer on the stone steps. Father Julian stood with his crucifix at the top of the stairway, and began to chant the "Miserere"; some few voices followed him.In the inner court Colgran's men surged in their hundreds like an impatient sea. They had trampled down the garden, overthrown the urns and statues, pulped the flowers under their feet. On the outer walls archers marked every window of the keep. In the inner court cannoneers were training the gaping muzzle of a bombard against the gate. A sullen and perpetual clamour sounded round the grey walls, like the roar of breakers about a headland.Flavian stood on the dais of the banqueting hall and listened to the voices of the mob without. Yeoland, in the harness Fulviac had given her, held at his side. The man's beaver was up, and he looked pale, but calm and resolute as a Greek god. That morning his own armour, blazoned with the Gambrevault arms, had disappeared from his bed-side, a suit of plain black harness left in its stead. No amount of interrogation, no command, had been able to wring a word from his knights or esquires. So he wore the black armour now perforce, and prepared to fight his last fight like a gentleman and a Christian.Yeoland's hand rested in his, and they stood side by side like two children, looking into each other's eyes. There was no fear on the girl's face, nothing but a calm resolve to be worthy of the hour and of her love, that buoyed her like a martyr. The man's glances were very sad, and she knew well what was in his heart when he looked at her. They had taken their vows, vows that bound them not to survive each other."Are you afraid, little wife?""No, I am content.""Strange that we should come to this. My heart grieves for you.""Never grieve for me; I do not fear the unknown.""We shall go out hand in hand.""To the shore of that eternal sea; and I feel no wind, and hear no moaning of the bar.""The stars are above us.""Eternity.""No mere glittering void.""But the face of God."A cannon thundered; a sudden, sullen roar followed, a din of clashing swords, the noise of men struggling in the toils."They have broken in."Flavian's grasp tightened on her wrist; his face was rigid, his eyes stern."Be strong," he said."I am not afraid.""The Virgin bless you."The uproar increased below. The rebels were storming the stairway; they came up and up like a rising tide in the mazes of a cavern. A wave of struggling figures surged into the hall: men, cursing, stabbing, hewing, writhing on the floor, a tangle of humanity. Flavian's knights in the hall ranged themselves to hold the door.It was then that Flavian saw his own state armour doing duty in the press, its blazonings marking out the wearer to the swords of Colgran's men. It was Godamar, Flavian's esquire, who had stolen his lord's harness, and now fought in it to decoy death, and perhaps save his master. The mute heroism of the deed drew Flavian from the dais."I would speak with Godamar," he said."Do not leave me.""Ah! dear heart; when the last wave gathers I shall be at your side."Yeoland, with her poniard bare in her hand, stood and watched the tragic despair of that last fight, the struggling press of figures at the door--the few holding for a while a mob at bay. Her eyes followed the man in the black harness; she saw him before the tossing thicket of pikes and partisans; she saw his sword dealing out death in that Gehenna of blasphemy and blood.A crash of shattered glass came unheard in the uproar. Men had planted ladders against the wall, and broken in by the oriel; one after another they sprang down into the hall. The first crept round by the wainscotting, climbed the dais, seized Yeoland from behind, and held her fast.As by instinct the poniard had been pointed at her own throat; the thing was twisted out of her hand, and tossed away along the floor. She struggled with the man in a kind of frenzy, but his brute strength was too stiff and stark for her. Even above the moil and din Flavian heard her cry to him, turned, sprang back, to be met by the men who had entered by the oriel. They hemmed him round and hewed at him, as he charged like a boar at bay. One, two were down. Swords rang on his harness. A fellow dodged in from behind and stabbed at him under the arm. Yeoland saw the black figure reel, recover itself, reel again, as a partisan crashed through his vizor. His sword clattered to the floor. So Colgran's men cut the Lord Flavian down in the sight of his young wife.The scene appeared to transfer itself to an infinite distance; a mist came before the girl's eyes; the uproar seemed far, faint, and unreal. She tried to cry out, but no voice came; she strove to move, but her limbs seemed as stone. A sound like the surging of a sea sobbed in her ears, and she had a confused vision of men being hunted down and stabbed in the corners of the hall. A mob of wolf-like beings moved before her, cursing, cheering, brandishing smoking steel. She felt herself lifted from her feet, and carried breast-high in a man's arms. Then oblivion swept over her brain.PART IVXXXVIIFortune had not blessed the cause of the people with that torrential triumph toiled for by their captains. The flood of war had risen, had overwhelmed tall castles and goodly cities, yet there were heights that had baulked its frothy turmoil, mountains that had hurled it back upon the valleys. Victory was like a sphere of glass tossed amid the foam of two contending torrents.In the west, Sir Simon of Imbrecour, that old leopard wise in war, had raised the royal banner at his castle of Avray. The nobles of the western marches had joined him to a spear; many a lusty company had ridden in, to toss sword and shield in faith to the King. From his castle of Avray Sir Simon had marched south with the flower of the western knighthood at his heels. He had caught Malgo on the march from Conan, even as his columns were defiling from the mountains. Sir Simon had leapt upon the wild hillsmen and rebel levies like the fierce and shaggy veteran that he was. A splendid audacity had given the day as by honour to the royal arms. Malgo's troops had been scattered to the winds, and he himself taken and beheaded on the field under the black banner of the house of Imbrecour.In the east, Godamar the free-lance lay with his troops in Thorney Isle, closed in and leaguered by the warlike Abbot of Rocroy. The churchman had seized the dyke-ways of the fens, and had hemmed the rebels behind the wild morasses. As for the eastern folk, they were poor gizardless creatures; having faced about, they had declared for the King, and left Godamar to rot within the fens. The free-lance had enough ado to keep the abbot out. His marching to join Fulviac was an idle and strategetical dream.Last of all, the barons of the north--fierce, rugged autocrats, had gathered their half-barbarous retainers, and were marching on Lauretia to uphold the King. They were grim folk, flint and iron, nurtured amid the mountains and the wild woods of the north. They marched south like Winter, black and pitiless, prophetic of storm-winds, sleet, and snow. Some forty thousand men had gathered round the banner of Sir Morolt of Gorm and Regis, and, like the Goths pouring into Italy, they rolled down upon the luxurious provinces of the south.Fortune had decreed that about Lauretia, the city of the King, the vultures of war should wet their talons. It was a rich region, gemmed thick with sapphire meres set in deep emerald woods. Lauretia, like a golden courtesan, lay with her white limbs cushioned amid gorgeous flowers. Her bosom was full of odours and of music; her lap littered with the fragrant herbs of love. No perils, save those of moonlit passion, had ever threatened her. Thus it befell that when the storm-clouds gathered, she cowered trembling on her ivory couch, the purple wine of pleasure soaking her sinful feet.In a broad valley, five leagues south of the city, Fulviac's rebels fought their first great fight with Richard of the Iron Hand. A warrior's battle, rank to rank and sword to sword, the fight had burnt to the embers before the cressets were red in the west. Fulviac had headed the last charge that had broken the royal line, and rolled the shattered host northwards under the cloak of night. Dawn had found Fulviac marching upon Lauretia, eager to let loose the lusts of war upon that rich city of sin. He was within three leagues of the place, when a jaded rider overtook him, to tell of Malgo's death and of the battle in the west. Yet another league towards the city his outriders came galloping back with the news that the northern barons had marched in and joined the King. Outnumbered, and threatened on the flank, Fulviac turned tail and held south again, trusting to meet Godamar marching from the fens.He needed the shoulders of an Atlas those September days, for rumour burdened him with tidings that were ominous and heavy. Godamar lay impotent, hedged in the morasses; Malgo was dead, his mountaineers scattered. Sir Simon of Imbrecour was leading in the western lords to swell the following of the King. Vengeance gathered hotly on the rebel rear, as Fulviac retreated by forced marches towards the south.It was at St. Gore, a red-roofed town packed on a hill, amid tall, dreaming woods, that Colgran, with the ten thousand who had leaguered Gambrevault, drew to the main host again. Fulviac had quartered a portion of his troops in the town, and had camped the rest in the meadows without the crumbling, lichen-grown walls. He had halted but for a night on the retreat from Lauretia, and had taken a brief breath in the moil and sweat of the march. His banner had been set up in the market-square before a rickety hostel of antique tone and temper. His guards lounged on the benches under the vines; his captains drank in the low-ceilinged rooms, swore and argued over the rough tables.It was evening when Colgran's vanguard entered the town by the western gate. His men had tramped all day in the sun, and were parched and weary. None the less, they stiffened their loins, and footed it through the streets with a veteran swagger to show their mettle. Fulviac came out and stood in the wooden gallery of the inn, watching them defile into the market-square. They tossed their pikes to him as they poured by, and called on him by name--"Fulviac, Fulviac!"He was glad enough of their coming, for he needed men, and the rough forest levies were in Colgran's ranks. Ten thousand pikes and brown bills to bristle up against the King's squadrons! There was strength in the glitter and the rolling dust of the columns. Yet before all, the man's tawny eyes watched for a red banner, and a woman in armour upon a white horse, Yeoland, wife of Flavian of Gambrevault.In due season he saw her, a pale, spiritless woman, wan and haggard, thin of neck and dark of eye. The bloom seemed to have fallen from her as from the crushed petals of a rose. The red banner, borne by a man upon a black horse, danced listlessly upon its staff. She rode with slack bridle, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, but into the vague distance as into the night of the past.Around her tramped Colgran's pikemen in jerkins of leather and caps of steel. The woman moved with them as though they were so many substanceless ghosts, stalking like shadows down the highway of death. Her face was bloodless, bleached by grievous apathy and chill pride. The bronzed faces round her were dim and unreal, a mob of masks, void of life and meaning. Sorrow had robed her in silent snow. The present was no more propitious to her than a winter forest howling under the moon.Before the hostelry the column came to a halt with grounded pikes. The woman on the white horse stirred from her stupor, looked up, and saw Fulviac. He was standing with slouched shoulders in the gallery above her, his hands gripping the wooden rail. Their eyes met in a sudden mesmeric stare that brought badges of red to the girl's white cheeks. There was the look upon his face that she had known of old, when perilous care weighed heavy upon his stubborn shoulders. His eyes bewildered her. They had a light in them that spoke neither of anger nor reproach, yet a look such as Arthur might have cast upon fallen Guinivere.They took her from her horse, and led her mute and passive into the steel-thronged inn. Up a winding stair she was brought into a sombre room whose latticed casements looked towards the west. By an open window stood Fulviac, chin on chest, his huge hands clasped behind his back. Colgran, in dusky harness, was speaking to him in his rough, incisive jargon. The woman knew that the words concerned her heart. At a gesture from Fulviac, the free-lance cast a fierce glance at her, and retreated.The man did not move from the window, but stood staring in morose silence at the reddening west. Hunched shoulders and bowed head gave a certain powerful pathos to the figure statuesque and silent against the crimson curtain of the sky. The very air of the room seemed burdened and saturated with the gloomy melancholy of the man's mood. War, with its thousand horrors, furrowed his brow and bowed his great shoulders beneath its bloody yoke. Her woman's instinct told her that he was lonely, for the soul that had ministered to him breathed for him no more.He turned on her suddenly with a terse greeting that startled her thoughts like doves in a pine wood."Welcome to you, Lady of Gambrevault."There was a bluff bitterness in his voice that forewarned her of his ample wisdom. Colgran had surrendered her, heart and tragedy in one, to Fulviac's mercy. A looming cloud of passion shadowed the man's face, making him seem gaunt and rough to her for the moment. She remembered him standing over Duessa's body in Sforza's palace at Gilderoy. Life had too little promise for her to engender fear of any man, even of Fulviac at his worst."I trust, Madame Yeoland, that you are merry?"The taunt touched her, yet she answered him listlessly enough."Do what you will; scoff if it pleases you."Fulviac shrugged his shoulders, and tossed his lion's mane from his broad forehead."It is a grim world this," he said; "when thrones burn, should we seek to quench them with our tears! Whose was the fault that God made you too much a woman? Red heart, heart of the rose, a traitorous comrade art thou, and an easy foe."She had no answer on her lips, and he turned and paced the room before her, darting swift glances into her face."So they killed him?" he said, more quietly anon; "poor child, forget him, it was the fate of war. Even to the grave he took the love I might never wear."She shuddered and hid her face."Fulviac, have pity!""Pity?""This is a judgment, God help my soul!""A judgment?""For serving my own heart before the Virgin's words."The man stopped suddenly in his stride, and looked at her as though her words had touched him like a bolt betwixt the jointings of his harness. There was still the morose frown upon his face, the half closure of the lids over the tawny eyes. He gripped his chin with one of his bony hands, and turned his great beak of a nose upwards with a gesture of self-scorn."Since the damned chicanery of chance so wills it," he said, "I will confess to you, that my confession may ease your conscience. The Madonna in that forest chapel was framed of flesh and blood.""Fulviac!""Of flesh and blood, my innocent, tricked out to work my holy will. We needed a Saint, we cleansers of Christendom; ha, noble justiciaries that we are. Well, well, the Virgin served us, and tripped back to a warm nest at Gilderoy, reincarnated by high heaven."Yeoland stood motionless in the shadows of the room, like one striving to reason amid the rush of many thoughts. She showed no wrath at her betrayal; her pale soul was too white for scarlet passion. The significance of life had vanished in a void of gloom. She stood like Hero striving to catch her lover's voice above the moan of the sea.Fulviac unbuckled his sword and threw it with a crash upon the table. He thrust his arms above his head, stretched his strong sinews, took deep breaths into his knotted throat."The truth is out," he said to her; "come, madame, confess to me in turn."Yeoland faced him with quivering lips, and a tense straining of her fingers."What have I to tell?" she asked."Nothing?""Save that I loved the Lord Flavian, and that he is dead.""Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.""Ah, you are avenged," she said, "you have crushed my heart; may the thought comfort you."Her parched apathy seemed to elapse of a sudden, and she lost her calmness in an outburst of passion. She was athirst for solitude, to be cloistered from the rough cavil of the world. Colour glowed upon her sunken cheeks as she stretched out her arms to the man with a piteous vehemence."Fulviac----""Girl.""Ah, for God's love, end now this mockery. Take this armour from me, for it burns my bosom. Let me go, that I may hide my wounds in peace.""Peace!" he said, with a twinge of scorn."Fulviac, can you not pity me? I am broken and bruised, men stare and jeer. Oh, my God, only to be out of sight and alone!"The man stood by the window looking out into the sky with lowering brows. The west burnt red above the house-tops; from the street came the noise of men marching."Do not kill yourself," he said with laconic brevity."Why do you say that?""There is truth in the suspicion.""Ah, what is life to me!""We Christians still have need of you."The man's seeming scorn scourged her anguish to a shrill despair. The hot blood swept more swiftly through her worn, white body."Cursed be your ambition," she said to him; "must you torture me before the world?""Perhaps.""I renounce this lying part.""As you will, madame; it will only make you look the greater fool.""Ah, you are brutal."He turned to her with the look of one enduring unuttered anguish in the spirit. His strong pride throttled passion, twisting his rough face into tragic ugliness."No, believe it not," he said; "I desire even for your heart's sake that you should make the best of an evil fortune. Learn to smile again; pretend to a zest in life. I have fathomed hell in my grim years, and my words are true. Time loves youth and recovers its sorrow. Know this and ponder it: 'tis better to play the hypocrite than to suffer the world to chuckle over one's tears."XXXVIIIThe royal host had massed about the walls of Lauretia, and marched southwards to surprise Fulviac at St. Gore. Half the chivalry of the land had gathered under the standard of the King. Sir Simon of Imbrecour had come in from the west with ten thousand spears and five thousand bowmen. The Northerners under Morolt boasted themselves twoscore thousand men, and there were the loyal levies of the midland provinces to march under "The Golden Sun" upon the south. Never had such panoply of war glittered through the listening woods. Their march was as the onrush of a rippling sea; the noise of their trumpets as the cry of a tempest over towering trees.Chivalry, golden champion of beauty, had much to avenge, much to expurgate. The peasant folk had plunged the land into ruin and red war. Castles smoked under the summer sky; the noble dead lay unburied in the high places of pride. To the wolf cry of the people there could be no answer save the hiss of the sword. Before the high altar at Lauretia, the King had sworn on relics and the Scriptures, to deal such vengeance as should leave the land cowering for centuries in terror of his name.Southwards from St. Gore there stretched for some fifteen leagues the province of La Belle Forêt, a region of rich valleys and romantic woods, green and quiet under the tranquil sky. Its towns were mere gardens, smothered deep in flowers, full of cedars and fair cypresses. Its people were simple, happy, and devout. War had not set foot there for two generations, and the land overflowed with the good things of life. Its vineyards purpled the valleys; its pastures harboured much cattle. Its houses were filled with rich furniture and silks, chests laden with cloth of gold, caskets of gems, ambries packed with silver plate. The good folk of La Belle Forêt had held aloof from the revolt. Peace-loving and content in their opulence, they had no fondness for anarchy and war.It was into this fair province that Fulviac led his arms on the march south for Gilderoy and the great forest by the sea. Belle Forêt, neutral and luxurious, was spoil for the spoiler, stuff for the sword. Plundering, marauding, burning, butchering, Fulviac's rebels poured through like a host of Huns. Strength promised licence; there was little asceticism in the cause, though the sacred banner flew in the van with an unction that was truly pharisaical. From that flood of war, the provincials fled as from a plague. It was Fulviac's policy to devastate the land, to hinder the march of the royal host. Desolation spread like winter over the fields; Fulviac's ravagers left ruin and despair and a great silence to mark their track.The march became a bloody parable before three days had passed. Fulviac had taken burning faggots upon his back, and the iron collar of war weighed heavy on him that autumn season. It was a grim moral and a terrible. He had called up fiends from hell, and their antics mocked him. Storm as he would, even his strong wrath was like fire licking at granite. Death taunted him, and Murder rode as a witness at his side. The mob of mad humanity was like a ravenous sea, hungry, pitiless, and insatiate. Even his stout heart was shocked by the bestial passions war had roused. His men were mutinous to all restraint. Fight they would when he should marshal them; but for their lusts they claimed a wolf-like and delirious liberty.Yeoland the Saint rode on her white horse through La Belle Forêt, like a pale ghost dazed by the human miseries of war. A captive, she had surrendered herself to Fate; her heart was as a sea-bird wearied by long buffetings in the wind. There was no desire in her for life, no spark of passion, no hope save for the sounding of a convent bell. She imagined calmly the face of death. Her grave stretched green and quiet to her fancy, under some forest tree.Even her hebetude of soul gave way at last before the horrors of that bloody march. She saw towns smouldering and flames licking the night sky, heard walls crack and roofs fall with a roar and an uprushing of fire. She saw the peasant folk crouching white and stupefied about their ruined homes. She heard the cry of the children, the wailing of women, the cracked voices of old men cursing Fulviac as he rode by. She saw the crops burnt in the fields; cattle slaughtered and their carcases left to rot in the sun.The deeds of those grim days moved in her brain with a vividness that never abated. War with all its ruthlessness, its devilry, its riotous horror, burnt in upon her soul. The plash of blood, the ruin, the despair, appalled her till she yearned and hungered for the end. Life seemed to have become a hideous purgatory, flaming and shrieking under the stars.She appealed to Fulviac with the vehemence of despair. The man was obdurate and moody, burdened by the knowledge that these horrors were beyond him. His very impotence was bitterness itself to his strong spirit. In the silent passion of his shame, he buckled a sullen scorn about his manhood, scoffed and mocked when the woman pleaded. He was like a Titan struggling in the toils of Fate, flinging forth scorn to mask his anguish. He had let war loose upon the land, and the riot mocked him like a turbulent sea.One noon they rode together through a town that had closed its gates to them, and had been taken by assault. On the hills around stood the solemn woods watching in silence the scene beneath. Corpses stiffened in the gutters; children shrieked in burning attics. By the cross in the market-square soldiers were staving in wine casks, the split lees mingling with the blood upon the cobbles. Ruffians rioted in the streets. Lust and violence were loose like wolves.Fulviac clattered through the place with Yeoland and his guards, a tower of steel amid the reeking ruins. He looked neither to the right hand nor the left, but rode with set jaw and sullen visage for the southern gate, and the green quiet of the fields. His tawny eyes smouldered under his casque; his mouth was as stone, stern yet sorrowful. He spoke never a word, as though his thoughts were too grim for the girl's ears.Yeoland rode at his side in silence, shivering in thought at the scenes that had passed before her eyes. She was as a lily whose pure petals quailed before the sprinkling plash of blood. Her soul was of too delicate a texture for the rude blasts of war.She turned on Fulviac anon, and taunted him out of the fulness of her scorn."This is your crusade for justice," she said to him; "ah, there is a curse upon us. You have let fiends loose."He did not retort to her for the moment, but rode gazing into the gilded glories of the woods. Even earth's peace was bitter to him at that season, but bitterer far was the woman's scorn."War is war," he said to her at last; "we cannot leave the King fat larders.""And all this butchery, this ruin?""Blame war for it.""And brutal men.""Mark you," he said to her, with some deepening of his voice, "I am no god; I cannot make angels of devils. The sea has risen, can I cork it in a bottle, or tie the storm wind up in a sack? Give me my due. I am human, not a demi-god."She understood his mood, and pitied him in measure, for he had a burden on his soul sufficient for a Hercules. His men were half mutinous; they would fight for him, but he could not stem their lusts. He was as a stout ship borne upon the backs of riotous waves."Well would it have been," she said, "if you had never raised this storm.""It is easy to be wise at the eleventh hour," he answered her."Can you not stay it even now?""Woman, can I stem the sea!""The blood of thousands dyes your hands."He twisted in the saddle as though her words gored him to the quick. His face twitched, his eyes glittered."My God, keep silence!""Fulviac.""Taunt me no longer. Have I not half hell boiling in my heart?"Thus Fulviac and his rebels passed on spoiling towards Gilderoy and the sea, where Sforza lay camped with forces gathered from the south. The great forest beckoned them; they knew its trammels, and hoped for strategies therein. Like a vast web of gloom it proffered harbour to the wolves of war, for they feared the open, and the vengeful onrush of the royal chivalry.Meanwhile, the armies of the King came down upon Belle Forêt, a great horde of steel. From its black ashes the country welcomed them with the dumb lips of death. Ruin and slaughter appealed them on the march; the smoke of war ascended to their nostrils. Fierce was the cry for vengeance in the ranks, as the host poured on like a golden dawn treading on the dark heels of night.
XXXIV
August came in with storm and rain, and a dreary wind blew from the south-west, huddling masses of cloud over a spiritless sky. Southwards, the sea tumbled, a grey expanse edged with foam, its great breakers booming dismally upon the cliffs. The wind swept over Gambrevault, moaning and wailing over battlement and tower, driving the rain in drifting sheets. The bombards still belched and smoked under their penthouses, and the arms of the catapults rose and fell against the sullen sky.
The eighteenth night of the siege came out of the east like a thunder bank, and the grey shivering ghost of the day fled over the western hills. When darkness had fallen, the walls of Gambrevault were invisible from the trenches. Here and there a light shone out like a spark in tinder; the sky above was black as a cavern, unbroken by the crack or cranny of a star.
Flavian, fully armed, kept watch upon the breach with a strong company of men-at-arms. He had taken the ugly measure of the night to heart, and had prepared accordingly. Under the shelter of the wall men slept, wrapped in their cloaks, with their weapons lying by them. The sentinels had been doubled on the battlements, though little could be seen in the blank murk, and even the keep had to be looked for before its mass disjointed itself from the background of the night.
It was treacherous weather, and just the season for an adventurous enemy to creep from the trenches and attempt to rush the breach. Flavian leant upon his long sword, and brooded. The black ends of the broken wall stood up hugely on either hand; rubble and fallen masonry paved the breach, and a rough rampart of debris had been piled along the summit. Around him shone the dull armour of his men, as they stood on guard in the rain.
The storm deadened soul and body, yet kept Flavian vigilant with its boisterous laughter, a sound that might stifle the tramp of stormers pouring to the breach. He was not lonely, for a lover can do without the confidences of others, when he has a woman to speak with in his heart. In fancy he can lavish the infinite tenderness of the soul, caress, quarrel, kiss, comfort, with all the idealisms of the imagination. The spirit lips we touch are sweeter and more red than those in the flesh. To the true man love is the grandest asceticism the world can produce.
Flavian's figure straightened suddenly as it leant bowed in thought upon the sword. He was alert and vigilant, staring into darkness that baffled vision and hid the unknown. A dull, characterless sound was in the air. Whether it was the wind, the sea, or something more sinister, he could not tell. Calling one of his knights to his side, they stood together listening on the wreckage of the wall.
A vague clink, clink, came in discord to the wind, a sound that suggested the cautious moving of armed men. A hoarse voice was growling warily in the distance, as though giving orders. The shrilling noise of steel grew more obvious each moment; the black void below appeared to grow full of movement, to swirl and eddy like a lagoon, whose muddy waters are disturbed by some huge reptile at night. The sudden hoarse cries of sentinels rose from the walls. Feet stumbled on the debris at the base of the breach; stormers were on the threshold of Gambrevault.
A trumpet blared in the entry; the guard closed up on the rampart; sleeping men started from the shadows of the wall, seized sword and shield as the trumpets' bray rang in their ears. Colgran's stormers, discovered in their purpose, cast caution to the winds, and sent up a shout that should have wakened all Gambrevault.
In the darkness and the driving rain, neither party could see much of the other. The stormers came climbing blindly up the pile of wreckage in serried masses. Flavian and his knights, who held the rampart, big men and large-hearted, smote at the black tide of bodies that rolled to their swords. It was grim work in the dark. It was no sleepy, disorderly rabble that held the breach, but a tense line of steel, that stemmed the assault like a wall. The stormers pushed up and up, to break and deliquesce before those terrible swords. Modred's deep voice sounded through the din, as he smote with his great axe, blows that would have shaken an oak. There was little shouting; it was breathless work, done in earnest. Colgran's men showed pluck, fought well, left a rampart of dead to their credit, a squirming, oozing barrier, but came no nearer forcing the breach.
They had lost the propitious moment, and the whole garrison was under arms, ready to repulse the attacks made at other points. Scaling ladders had been jerked forward and reared against the walls; men swarmed up, but the rebels gained no lasting foothold on the battlements. They were beaten back, their ladders hurled down, masonry toppled upon the mass below. Many a man lay with neck or back broken in the confused tangle of humanity at the foot of the castle.
Colgran ordered up fresh troops. It was his policy to wear out the garrison by sheer importunity and the stress of numbers. He could afford to lose some hundred men; every score were precious now to Flavian. It was a system of counter barter in blood, till the weaker vessel ran dry. The Lord of Gambrevault understood this rough philosophy well enough, and husbanded his resources. He could not gamble with death, and so changed his men when the opportunity offered, to give breathing space to all. Conscious of the strong stimulus of personal heroism, he kept to the breach himself, and fought on through every assault with Modred's great axe swinging at his side. He owed his life more than once to those gorilla-like arms and that crescent of steel.
In the outer court, certain of the women folk with Yeoland dealt out wine and food, and tended the wounded. In the chapel, tapers glimmered, lighting the frescoes and the saints, the priest chanting at the altar, the women and children who knelt in the shadowy aisles praying for those who fought upon the walls. Panic hovered over the pale faces, the fear, the shivering, weeping, pleading figures. There was little heroism in Gambrevault chapel, save the heroism of supplication. While swords tossed and men groped for each other in the wind and rain, old Peter the cellarer lay drunk in a wine bin, and lame Joan, who tended the linen, was snivelling in the chapel and fingering the gold angels sewn up in her tunic.
Five times did Colgran's men assault the breach that night, each repulse leaving its husks on the bloody wreckage, its red libations to the swords of Gambrevault. The last and toughest tussle came during the grey prologue before dawn. The place was so packed with the dead and stricken, that it was well-nigh impassable. For some minutes the struggle hung precariously on the summit of the pass, but with the dawn the peril dwindled and elapsed. The stormers revolted from the shambles; they had fought their fill; had done enough for honour; were sick and weary. No taunt, command, or imprecation could keep them longer in that gate of death. Colgran's rebels retreated on their trenches.
And with the dawn Flavian looked round upon the breach, and saw all the horror of the place in one brief moment. Cloven faces, hacked bodies, distortions, tortures, blood everywhere. He looked round over his own men; saw their meagre ranks, their weariness, their wounds, their exultation that lapsed silently into a kind of desperate awe. Some tried to cheer him, and at the sound he felt an unutterable melancholy descend upon his soul. The men were like so many sickly ghosts, a wan and battered flock, a ragged remnant. He saw the whole truth in a moment, as a man sees life, death, and eternity pass before him in the flashing wisdom of a single thought.
And this was war, this cataclysm of insatiate wrath! His men were too few, too bustled, to hold the breach against such another storm. His trumpets blared the retreat, a grim and tragic fanfare. They dragged out their wounded, abandoned the pile of rubbish for which they had fought, and withdrew sullenly within the inner walls. Colgran, though repulsed, had taken the outer ward of Gambrevault.
As one stumbling from a dream, Flavian found himself in the castle garden. The place was full of the freshness that follows rain; and it was not till the scent of flowers met him like an odour of peace, that he marked that the sky was blue and the dawn like saffron. The storm-clouds had gone, and the wind was a mere breeze, a moist breath from the west, bearing a curious contrast to the furious temper of the night.
Flavian, looking like a white-faced debauchee, limped through the court, and climbed the stairway of the keep to the banqueting hall and his own state chambers. Several of his knights followed him at a distance and in silence. He felt sick as a dog, and burdened with unutterable care, that weighed upon him like a prophecy. He had held the breach against heavy odds, and he was brooding over the cost. There was honour in the sheer physical heroism of the deed; but he had lost old friends and tried servants, had sacrificed his outer walls; there was little cause for exultation in the main.
He stumbled into the banqueting hall like a man into a tavern.
"Wine, wine, for the love of God."
A slim figure in green came out from the oriel, and a pair of dark eyes quivered over the man's grey face and blood-stained armour. The girl's hands went out to him, and she seemed like a child roused in the night from the influence of some evil dream.
"You are wounded."
She took him by the arm and shoulder, and was able to force him into a chair, so limp, so impotent, was he for the moment. His face had the uncanny pallor of one who was about to faint; his eyes stared at her in a dazed and wistful way.
"My God, you are not going to die!"
He shook his head, smiled weakly, and groped for her hand. She broke away, brought wine, and began to trickle it between his lips. Several of his knights came in, and looked on awkwardly from the doorway at the girl leaning over the man's chair, with her arm under his head. Yeoland caught sight of them, coloured and called them forward.
The man's faintness had passed. He saw Modred and beckoned him to his chair.
"Take her away," in a whisper.
Yeoland heard the words, started round, and clung to his hand. There was a strange look upon her face. Flavian spoke slowly to her.
"Girl, I am not a savoury object, fresh from the carnage of a breach. Leave me to my surgeon. I would only save you pain. As for dying, I feel like an Adam. Go to your room, child; I will be with you before long."
She held both his hands, looked in his eyes a moment, then turned away with Modred and left him. She was very pale, and there was a tremor about her lips.
Irrelevant harness soon surrendered to skilled fingers. No great evil had been done, thanks to the fine temper of Flavian's armour; the few gashes, washed, oiled, and dressed, left him not seriously the worse for the night's tussle. Wine and food recovered his manhood. He was barbered, perfumed, dressed, and turned out by his servants, a very handsome fellow, with a fine pallor and a pathetic limp.
His first care was to see his own men attended to, the wounded properly bestowed, a good supply of food and wine dealt out. He had a brave word and a smile for all. As he passed, he found Father Julian the priest administering the Host to those whose dim eyes were closing upon earth and sky.
Modred, that iron man, who never seemed weary, was stalking the battlements, and getting the place prepared for the next storm that should break. Flavian renounced responsibilities for the moment, and crossed the garden to Yeoland's room. He entered quietly, looked about him, saw a figure prostrate on the cushions of the window seat.
He crossed the room very quickly, knelt down and touched the girl's hair. Her face was hidden in the cushions. She turned slowly on her side, and looked at him with a wan, pitiful stare; her eyes were timid, but empty of tears.
"Ah, girl, what troubles you?"
She did not look at him, though he held her hands.
"Are you angry with me?"
"No, no."
"What is it, then?"
She spoke very slowly, in a suppressed and toneless voice.
"Will you tell me the truth?"
He watched her as though she were a saint.
"I have had a horrible thought in my heart, and it has wounded me to death."
"Tell it me, tell it me."
"That you had repented all----"
"Repented!"
"Of all the ruin I am bringing upon you; that you were beginning to think----"
He gave a deep cry.
"You believed that!"
She lay back on the cushions with a great sigh. Flavian had his arms about her, as he bent over her till their lips nearly touched.
"How could you fear!"
"I am so much a woman."
"Yes----"
"And something is all the world to me, even though----"
"Well?"
"I would die happy."
He understood her whole heart, and kissed her lips.
"Little woman, I had come here to this room to ask you one thing more. You can guess it."
"Ah----"
"Father Julian."
She drew his head down upon her shoulder, and he knelt a long while in silence, with her bosom rising and falling under his cheek.
"I am happy," he said at last; "child-wife, child-husband, let us go hand in hand into heaven."
XXXV
So with Colgran and his rebels beating at the inner gate, Flavian of Gambrevault took Yeoland to wife, and was married that same eve by Father Julian in the castle chapel. There was pathetic cynicism in the service, celebrating as it did the temporal blending of two bodies who bade fair by their destinies to return speedily to dust. The chant might have served as a requiem, or a dirge for the fall of the mighty. It was a tragic scene, a solemn ceremony, attended by grim-faced men in plated steel, by frightened women and sickly children. Famine, disease, and death headed the procession, jigged with the torches, danced like skeletons about a bier. Trumpets and cannon gave an epithalamium; bones might have been scattered in lieu of flowers, and wounds espoused in place of favours. For a marriage pageant war pointed to the grinning corpses in the breach and the clotted ruins. It was such a ceremony that might have appealed to a Stoic, or to a Marius brooding amid the ruins of Carthage.
Peril chastens the brave, and death is as wine to the heart of the saint. Even as the sky seems of purer crystal before a storm, so the soul pinions to a more luminous heroism when the mortal tragedy of life nears the "explicit." As the martyrs exulted in their spiritual triumph, or as Pico of Mirandola beheld transcendent visions on his bed of death, when the Golden Lilies of France waved into luckless Florence, so Flavian and Yeoland his wife took to their hearts a true bridal beauty.
When the door was closed on them that night, a mysterious cavern, a spiritual shrine of gold, came down as from heaven to cover their souls. They had no need of the subtleties of earth, of music and of colour, of flowers, or scent, or song. They were the world, the sky, the sea, the infinite. Imperishable atoms from the alembic of God, they fused soul with soul, became as one fair gem that wakes a thousand lustres in its sapphire unity. To such a festival bring no fauns and dryads, no lewd and supple goddess, no Orphean flute. Rather, let Christ hold forth His wounded hands, and let the wings of angels glimmer like snow over the alchemy of souls.
Flavian knelt beside the bed and prayed. He had the girl's hand in his, and her dark hair swept in masses over the pillow, framing her spiritual face as a dark cloud holds the moon. Her bed-gown was of the whitest lace and linen, like foam bounding the violet coverlet that swept to her bosom. The light from the single lamp burnt steadily in her great dark eyes.
Flavian lifted up his face from the coverlet and looked long at her.
"Dear heart, have no fear of me," he said.
She smiled wonderfully, and read all the fine philosophy of his soul.
"God be thanked, you are a good man."
"Ah, child, you are so wonderful that I dare not touch you; I have such grand awe in my heart that even your breath upon my face makes me bow down as though an angel touched my forehead."
"All good and great love is of heaven."
"Pure as the lilies in the courts of God. Every fragment of you is like to me as a pearl from the lips of angels; your flesh is of silver, your bosom as snow from Lebanon, girded with the gold of truth. Oh, second Adam, thanks be to thee for thy philosophy."
She put out her hands and touched his hair; their eyes were like sea and sky in summer, tranquil, tender, and unshadowed.
"I love you for this purity, ah, more and more than I can tell."
"True love is ever pure."
"And for me, such love as yours. Never to see the wolfish stare, the flushed forehead, and the loosened lip; never to feel the burning breath. God indeed be thanked for this."
"Have no fear of me."
"Ah, like a white gull into a blue sky, like water into a crystal bowl, I give myself into your arms."
XXXVI
A week had passed, and the Gambrevault trumpets blew the last rally; her drums rumbled on the battlements of the keep where the women and children had been gathered, a dumb, panic-ridden flock, huddled together like sheep in a pen. The great banner flapped above their heads with a solemn and sinuous benediction. The sun was spreading on the sea a golden track towards the west, and the shouts of the besiegers rose from the courts.
On the stairs and in the banqueting hall the last remnant of the garrison had gathered, half-starved men, silent and grim as death, game to the last finger. They handled their swords and waited, moving restlessly to and fro like caged leopards. They knew what was to come, and hungered to have it over and done with. It was the waiting that made them curse in undertones. A few were at prayer on the stone steps. Father Julian stood with his crucifix at the top of the stairway, and began to chant the "Miserere"; some few voices followed him.
In the inner court Colgran's men surged in their hundreds like an impatient sea. They had trampled down the garden, overthrown the urns and statues, pulped the flowers under their feet. On the outer walls archers marked every window of the keep. In the inner court cannoneers were training the gaping muzzle of a bombard against the gate. A sullen and perpetual clamour sounded round the grey walls, like the roar of breakers about a headland.
Flavian stood on the dais of the banqueting hall and listened to the voices of the mob without. Yeoland, in the harness Fulviac had given her, held at his side. The man's beaver was up, and he looked pale, but calm and resolute as a Greek god. That morning his own armour, blazoned with the Gambrevault arms, had disappeared from his bed-side, a suit of plain black harness left in its stead. No amount of interrogation, no command, had been able to wring a word from his knights or esquires. So he wore the black armour now perforce, and prepared to fight his last fight like a gentleman and a Christian.
Yeoland's hand rested in his, and they stood side by side like two children, looking into each other's eyes. There was no fear on the girl's face, nothing but a calm resolve to be worthy of the hour and of her love, that buoyed her like a martyr. The man's glances were very sad, and she knew well what was in his heart when he looked at her. They had taken their vows, vows that bound them not to survive each other.
"Are you afraid, little wife?"
"No, I am content."
"Strange that we should come to this. My heart grieves for you."
"Never grieve for me; I do not fear the unknown."
"We shall go out hand in hand."
"To the shore of that eternal sea; and I feel no wind, and hear no moaning of the bar."
"The stars are above us."
"Eternity."
"No mere glittering void."
"But the face of God."
A cannon thundered; a sudden, sullen roar followed, a din of clashing swords, the noise of men struggling in the toils.
"They have broken in."
Flavian's grasp tightened on her wrist; his face was rigid, his eyes stern.
"Be strong," he said.
"I am not afraid."
"The Virgin bless you."
The uproar increased below. The rebels were storming the stairway; they came up and up like a rising tide in the mazes of a cavern. A wave of struggling figures surged into the hall: men, cursing, stabbing, hewing, writhing on the floor, a tangle of humanity. Flavian's knights in the hall ranged themselves to hold the door.
It was then that Flavian saw his own state armour doing duty in the press, its blazonings marking out the wearer to the swords of Colgran's men. It was Godamar, Flavian's esquire, who had stolen his lord's harness, and now fought in it to decoy death, and perhaps save his master. The mute heroism of the deed drew Flavian from the dais.
"I would speak with Godamar," he said.
"Do not leave me."
"Ah! dear heart; when the last wave gathers I shall be at your side."
Yeoland, with her poniard bare in her hand, stood and watched the tragic despair of that last fight, the struggling press of figures at the door--the few holding for a while a mob at bay. Her eyes followed the man in the black harness; she saw him before the tossing thicket of pikes and partisans; she saw his sword dealing out death in that Gehenna of blasphemy and blood.
A crash of shattered glass came unheard in the uproar. Men had planted ladders against the wall, and broken in by the oriel; one after another they sprang down into the hall. The first crept round by the wainscotting, climbed the dais, seized Yeoland from behind, and held her fast.
As by instinct the poniard had been pointed at her own throat; the thing was twisted out of her hand, and tossed away along the floor. She struggled with the man in a kind of frenzy, but his brute strength was too stiff and stark for her. Even above the moil and din Flavian heard her cry to him, turned, sprang back, to be met by the men who had entered by the oriel. They hemmed him round and hewed at him, as he charged like a boar at bay. One, two were down. Swords rang on his harness. A fellow dodged in from behind and stabbed at him under the arm. Yeoland saw the black figure reel, recover itself, reel again, as a partisan crashed through his vizor. His sword clattered to the floor. So Colgran's men cut the Lord Flavian down in the sight of his young wife.
The scene appeared to transfer itself to an infinite distance; a mist came before the girl's eyes; the uproar seemed far, faint, and unreal. She tried to cry out, but no voice came; she strove to move, but her limbs seemed as stone. A sound like the surging of a sea sobbed in her ears, and she had a confused vision of men being hunted down and stabbed in the corners of the hall. A mob of wolf-like beings moved before her, cursing, cheering, brandishing smoking steel. She felt herself lifted from her feet, and carried breast-high in a man's arms. Then oblivion swept over her brain.
PART IV
XXXVII
Fortune had not blessed the cause of the people with that torrential triumph toiled for by their captains. The flood of war had risen, had overwhelmed tall castles and goodly cities, yet there were heights that had baulked its frothy turmoil, mountains that had hurled it back upon the valleys. Victory was like a sphere of glass tossed amid the foam of two contending torrents.
In the west, Sir Simon of Imbrecour, that old leopard wise in war, had raised the royal banner at his castle of Avray. The nobles of the western marches had joined him to a spear; many a lusty company had ridden in, to toss sword and shield in faith to the King. From his castle of Avray Sir Simon had marched south with the flower of the western knighthood at his heels. He had caught Malgo on the march from Conan, even as his columns were defiling from the mountains. Sir Simon had leapt upon the wild hillsmen and rebel levies like the fierce and shaggy veteran that he was. A splendid audacity had given the day as by honour to the royal arms. Malgo's troops had been scattered to the winds, and he himself taken and beheaded on the field under the black banner of the house of Imbrecour.
In the east, Godamar the free-lance lay with his troops in Thorney Isle, closed in and leaguered by the warlike Abbot of Rocroy. The churchman had seized the dyke-ways of the fens, and had hemmed the rebels behind the wild morasses. As for the eastern folk, they were poor gizardless creatures; having faced about, they had declared for the King, and left Godamar to rot within the fens. The free-lance had enough ado to keep the abbot out. His marching to join Fulviac was an idle and strategetical dream.
Last of all, the barons of the north--fierce, rugged autocrats, had gathered their half-barbarous retainers, and were marching on Lauretia to uphold the King. They were grim folk, flint and iron, nurtured amid the mountains and the wild woods of the north. They marched south like Winter, black and pitiless, prophetic of storm-winds, sleet, and snow. Some forty thousand men had gathered round the banner of Sir Morolt of Gorm and Regis, and, like the Goths pouring into Italy, they rolled down upon the luxurious provinces of the south.
Fortune had decreed that about Lauretia, the city of the King, the vultures of war should wet their talons. It was a rich region, gemmed thick with sapphire meres set in deep emerald woods. Lauretia, like a golden courtesan, lay with her white limbs cushioned amid gorgeous flowers. Her bosom was full of odours and of music; her lap littered with the fragrant herbs of love. No perils, save those of moonlit passion, had ever threatened her. Thus it befell that when the storm-clouds gathered, she cowered trembling on her ivory couch, the purple wine of pleasure soaking her sinful feet.
In a broad valley, five leagues south of the city, Fulviac's rebels fought their first great fight with Richard of the Iron Hand. A warrior's battle, rank to rank and sword to sword, the fight had burnt to the embers before the cressets were red in the west. Fulviac had headed the last charge that had broken the royal line, and rolled the shattered host northwards under the cloak of night. Dawn had found Fulviac marching upon Lauretia, eager to let loose the lusts of war upon that rich city of sin. He was within three leagues of the place, when a jaded rider overtook him, to tell of Malgo's death and of the battle in the west. Yet another league towards the city his outriders came galloping back with the news that the northern barons had marched in and joined the King. Outnumbered, and threatened on the flank, Fulviac turned tail and held south again, trusting to meet Godamar marching from the fens.
He needed the shoulders of an Atlas those September days, for rumour burdened him with tidings that were ominous and heavy. Godamar lay impotent, hedged in the morasses; Malgo was dead, his mountaineers scattered. Sir Simon of Imbrecour was leading in the western lords to swell the following of the King. Vengeance gathered hotly on the rebel rear, as Fulviac retreated by forced marches towards the south.
It was at St. Gore, a red-roofed town packed on a hill, amid tall, dreaming woods, that Colgran, with the ten thousand who had leaguered Gambrevault, drew to the main host again. Fulviac had quartered a portion of his troops in the town, and had camped the rest in the meadows without the crumbling, lichen-grown walls. He had halted but for a night on the retreat from Lauretia, and had taken a brief breath in the moil and sweat of the march. His banner had been set up in the market-square before a rickety hostel of antique tone and temper. His guards lounged on the benches under the vines; his captains drank in the low-ceilinged rooms, swore and argued over the rough tables.
It was evening when Colgran's vanguard entered the town by the western gate. His men had tramped all day in the sun, and were parched and weary. None the less, they stiffened their loins, and footed it through the streets with a veteran swagger to show their mettle. Fulviac came out and stood in the wooden gallery of the inn, watching them defile into the market-square. They tossed their pikes to him as they poured by, and called on him by name--
"Fulviac, Fulviac!"
He was glad enough of their coming, for he needed men, and the rough forest levies were in Colgran's ranks. Ten thousand pikes and brown bills to bristle up against the King's squadrons! There was strength in the glitter and the rolling dust of the columns. Yet before all, the man's tawny eyes watched for a red banner, and a woman in armour upon a white horse, Yeoland, wife of Flavian of Gambrevault.
In due season he saw her, a pale, spiritless woman, wan and haggard, thin of neck and dark of eye. The bloom seemed to have fallen from her as from the crushed petals of a rose. The red banner, borne by a man upon a black horse, danced listlessly upon its staff. She rode with slack bridle, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, but into the vague distance as into the night of the past.
Around her tramped Colgran's pikemen in jerkins of leather and caps of steel. The woman moved with them as though they were so many substanceless ghosts, stalking like shadows down the highway of death. Her face was bloodless, bleached by grievous apathy and chill pride. The bronzed faces round her were dim and unreal, a mob of masks, void of life and meaning. Sorrow had robed her in silent snow. The present was no more propitious to her than a winter forest howling under the moon.
Before the hostelry the column came to a halt with grounded pikes. The woman on the white horse stirred from her stupor, looked up, and saw Fulviac. He was standing with slouched shoulders in the gallery above her, his hands gripping the wooden rail. Their eyes met in a sudden mesmeric stare that brought badges of red to the girl's white cheeks. There was the look upon his face that she had known of old, when perilous care weighed heavy upon his stubborn shoulders. His eyes bewildered her. They had a light in them that spoke neither of anger nor reproach, yet a look such as Arthur might have cast upon fallen Guinivere.
They took her from her horse, and led her mute and passive into the steel-thronged inn. Up a winding stair she was brought into a sombre room whose latticed casements looked towards the west. By an open window stood Fulviac, chin on chest, his huge hands clasped behind his back. Colgran, in dusky harness, was speaking to him in his rough, incisive jargon. The woman knew that the words concerned her heart. At a gesture from Fulviac, the free-lance cast a fierce glance at her, and retreated.
The man did not move from the window, but stood staring in morose silence at the reddening west. Hunched shoulders and bowed head gave a certain powerful pathos to the figure statuesque and silent against the crimson curtain of the sky. The very air of the room seemed burdened and saturated with the gloomy melancholy of the man's mood. War, with its thousand horrors, furrowed his brow and bowed his great shoulders beneath its bloody yoke. Her woman's instinct told her that he was lonely, for the soul that had ministered to him breathed for him no more.
He turned on her suddenly with a terse greeting that startled her thoughts like doves in a pine wood.
"Welcome to you, Lady of Gambrevault."
There was a bluff bitterness in his voice that forewarned her of his ample wisdom. Colgran had surrendered her, heart and tragedy in one, to Fulviac's mercy. A looming cloud of passion shadowed the man's face, making him seem gaunt and rough to her for the moment. She remembered him standing over Duessa's body in Sforza's palace at Gilderoy. Life had too little promise for her to engender fear of any man, even of Fulviac at his worst.
"I trust, Madame Yeoland, that you are merry?"
The taunt touched her, yet she answered him listlessly enough.
"Do what you will; scoff if it pleases you."
Fulviac shrugged his shoulders, and tossed his lion's mane from his broad forehead.
"It is a grim world this," he said; "when thrones burn, should we seek to quench them with our tears! Whose was the fault that God made you too much a woman? Red heart, heart of the rose, a traitorous comrade art thou, and an easy foe."
She had no answer on her lips, and he turned and paced the room before her, darting swift glances into her face.
"So they killed him?" he said, more quietly anon; "poor child, forget him, it was the fate of war. Even to the grave he took the love I might never wear."
She shuddered and hid her face.
"Fulviac, have pity!"
"Pity?"
"This is a judgment, God help my soul!"
"A judgment?"
"For serving my own heart before the Virgin's words."
The man stopped suddenly in his stride, and looked at her as though her words had touched him like a bolt betwixt the jointings of his harness. There was still the morose frown upon his face, the half closure of the lids over the tawny eyes. He gripped his chin with one of his bony hands, and turned his great beak of a nose upwards with a gesture of self-scorn.
"Since the damned chicanery of chance so wills it," he said, "I will confess to you, that my confession may ease your conscience. The Madonna in that forest chapel was framed of flesh and blood."
"Fulviac!"
"Of flesh and blood, my innocent, tricked out to work my holy will. We needed a Saint, we cleansers of Christendom; ha, noble justiciaries that we are. Well, well, the Virgin served us, and tripped back to a warm nest at Gilderoy, reincarnated by high heaven."
Yeoland stood motionless in the shadows of the room, like one striving to reason amid the rush of many thoughts. She showed no wrath at her betrayal; her pale soul was too white for scarlet passion. The significance of life had vanished in a void of gloom. She stood like Hero striving to catch her lover's voice above the moan of the sea.
Fulviac unbuckled his sword and threw it with a crash upon the table. He thrust his arms above his head, stretched his strong sinews, took deep breaths into his knotted throat.
"The truth is out," he said to her; "come, madame, confess to me in turn."
Yeoland faced him with quivering lips, and a tense straining of her fingers.
"What have I to tell?" she asked.
"Nothing?"
"Save that I loved the Lord Flavian, and that he is dead."
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
"Ah, you are avenged," she said, "you have crushed my heart; may the thought comfort you."
Her parched apathy seemed to elapse of a sudden, and she lost her calmness in an outburst of passion. She was athirst for solitude, to be cloistered from the rough cavil of the world. Colour glowed upon her sunken cheeks as she stretched out her arms to the man with a piteous vehemence.
"Fulviac----"
"Girl."
"Ah, for God's love, end now this mockery. Take this armour from me, for it burns my bosom. Let me go, that I may hide my wounds in peace."
"Peace!" he said, with a twinge of scorn.
"Fulviac, can you not pity me? I am broken and bruised, men stare and jeer. Oh, my God, only to be out of sight and alone!"
The man stood by the window looking out into the sky with lowering brows. The west burnt red above the house-tops; from the street came the noise of men marching.
"Do not kill yourself," he said with laconic brevity.
"Why do you say that?"
"There is truth in the suspicion."
"Ah, what is life to me!"
"We Christians still have need of you."
The man's seeming scorn scourged her anguish to a shrill despair. The hot blood swept more swiftly through her worn, white body.
"Cursed be your ambition," she said to him; "must you torture me before the world?"
"Perhaps."
"I renounce this lying part."
"As you will, madame; it will only make you look the greater fool."
"Ah, you are brutal."
He turned to her with the look of one enduring unuttered anguish in the spirit. His strong pride throttled passion, twisting his rough face into tragic ugliness.
"No, believe it not," he said; "I desire even for your heart's sake that you should make the best of an evil fortune. Learn to smile again; pretend to a zest in life. I have fathomed hell in my grim years, and my words are true. Time loves youth and recovers its sorrow. Know this and ponder it: 'tis better to play the hypocrite than to suffer the world to chuckle over one's tears."
XXXVIII
The royal host had massed about the walls of Lauretia, and marched southwards to surprise Fulviac at St. Gore. Half the chivalry of the land had gathered under the standard of the King. Sir Simon of Imbrecour had come in from the west with ten thousand spears and five thousand bowmen. The Northerners under Morolt boasted themselves twoscore thousand men, and there were the loyal levies of the midland provinces to march under "The Golden Sun" upon the south. Never had such panoply of war glittered through the listening woods. Their march was as the onrush of a rippling sea; the noise of their trumpets as the cry of a tempest over towering trees.
Chivalry, golden champion of beauty, had much to avenge, much to expurgate. The peasant folk had plunged the land into ruin and red war. Castles smoked under the summer sky; the noble dead lay unburied in the high places of pride. To the wolf cry of the people there could be no answer save the hiss of the sword. Before the high altar at Lauretia, the King had sworn on relics and the Scriptures, to deal such vengeance as should leave the land cowering for centuries in terror of his name.
Southwards from St. Gore there stretched for some fifteen leagues the province of La Belle Forêt, a region of rich valleys and romantic woods, green and quiet under the tranquil sky. Its towns were mere gardens, smothered deep in flowers, full of cedars and fair cypresses. Its people were simple, happy, and devout. War had not set foot there for two generations, and the land overflowed with the good things of life. Its vineyards purpled the valleys; its pastures harboured much cattle. Its houses were filled with rich furniture and silks, chests laden with cloth of gold, caskets of gems, ambries packed with silver plate. The good folk of La Belle Forêt had held aloof from the revolt. Peace-loving and content in their opulence, they had no fondness for anarchy and war.
It was into this fair province that Fulviac led his arms on the march south for Gilderoy and the great forest by the sea. Belle Forêt, neutral and luxurious, was spoil for the spoiler, stuff for the sword. Plundering, marauding, burning, butchering, Fulviac's rebels poured through like a host of Huns. Strength promised licence; there was little asceticism in the cause, though the sacred banner flew in the van with an unction that was truly pharisaical. From that flood of war, the provincials fled as from a plague. It was Fulviac's policy to devastate the land, to hinder the march of the royal host. Desolation spread like winter over the fields; Fulviac's ravagers left ruin and despair and a great silence to mark their track.
The march became a bloody parable before three days had passed. Fulviac had taken burning faggots upon his back, and the iron collar of war weighed heavy on him that autumn season. It was a grim moral and a terrible. He had called up fiends from hell, and their antics mocked him. Storm as he would, even his strong wrath was like fire licking at granite. Death taunted him, and Murder rode as a witness at his side. The mob of mad humanity was like a ravenous sea, hungry, pitiless, and insatiate. Even his stout heart was shocked by the bestial passions war had roused. His men were mutinous to all restraint. Fight they would when he should marshal them; but for their lusts they claimed a wolf-like and delirious liberty.
Yeoland the Saint rode on her white horse through La Belle Forêt, like a pale ghost dazed by the human miseries of war. A captive, she had surrendered herself to Fate; her heart was as a sea-bird wearied by long buffetings in the wind. There was no desire in her for life, no spark of passion, no hope save for the sounding of a convent bell. She imagined calmly the face of death. Her grave stretched green and quiet to her fancy, under some forest tree.
Even her hebetude of soul gave way at last before the horrors of that bloody march. She saw towns smouldering and flames licking the night sky, heard walls crack and roofs fall with a roar and an uprushing of fire. She saw the peasant folk crouching white and stupefied about their ruined homes. She heard the cry of the children, the wailing of women, the cracked voices of old men cursing Fulviac as he rode by. She saw the crops burnt in the fields; cattle slaughtered and their carcases left to rot in the sun.
The deeds of those grim days moved in her brain with a vividness that never abated. War with all its ruthlessness, its devilry, its riotous horror, burnt in upon her soul. The plash of blood, the ruin, the despair, appalled her till she yearned and hungered for the end. Life seemed to have become a hideous purgatory, flaming and shrieking under the stars.
She appealed to Fulviac with the vehemence of despair. The man was obdurate and moody, burdened by the knowledge that these horrors were beyond him. His very impotence was bitterness itself to his strong spirit. In the silent passion of his shame, he buckled a sullen scorn about his manhood, scoffed and mocked when the woman pleaded. He was like a Titan struggling in the toils of Fate, flinging forth scorn to mask his anguish. He had let war loose upon the land, and the riot mocked him like a turbulent sea.
One noon they rode together through a town that had closed its gates to them, and had been taken by assault. On the hills around stood the solemn woods watching in silence the scene beneath. Corpses stiffened in the gutters; children shrieked in burning attics. By the cross in the market-square soldiers were staving in wine casks, the split lees mingling with the blood upon the cobbles. Ruffians rioted in the streets. Lust and violence were loose like wolves.
Fulviac clattered through the place with Yeoland and his guards, a tower of steel amid the reeking ruins. He looked neither to the right hand nor the left, but rode with set jaw and sullen visage for the southern gate, and the green quiet of the fields. His tawny eyes smouldered under his casque; his mouth was as stone, stern yet sorrowful. He spoke never a word, as though his thoughts were too grim for the girl's ears.
Yeoland rode at his side in silence, shivering in thought at the scenes that had passed before her eyes. She was as a lily whose pure petals quailed before the sprinkling plash of blood. Her soul was of too delicate a texture for the rude blasts of war.
She turned on Fulviac anon, and taunted him out of the fulness of her scorn.
"This is your crusade for justice," she said to him; "ah, there is a curse upon us. You have let fiends loose."
He did not retort to her for the moment, but rode gazing into the gilded glories of the woods. Even earth's peace was bitter to him at that season, but bitterer far was the woman's scorn.
"War is war," he said to her at last; "we cannot leave the King fat larders."
"And all this butchery, this ruin?"
"Blame war for it."
"And brutal men."
"Mark you," he said to her, with some deepening of his voice, "I am no god; I cannot make angels of devils. The sea has risen, can I cork it in a bottle, or tie the storm wind up in a sack? Give me my due. I am human, not a demi-god."
She understood his mood, and pitied him in measure, for he had a burden on his soul sufficient for a Hercules. His men were half mutinous; they would fight for him, but he could not stem their lusts. He was as a stout ship borne upon the backs of riotous waves.
"Well would it have been," she said, "if you had never raised this storm."
"It is easy to be wise at the eleventh hour," he answered her.
"Can you not stay it even now?"
"Woman, can I stem the sea!"
"The blood of thousands dyes your hands."
He twisted in the saddle as though her words gored him to the quick. His face twitched, his eyes glittered.
"My God, keep silence!"
"Fulviac."
"Taunt me no longer. Have I not half hell boiling in my heart?"
Thus Fulviac and his rebels passed on spoiling towards Gilderoy and the sea, where Sforza lay camped with forces gathered from the south. The great forest beckoned them; they knew its trammels, and hoped for strategies therein. Like a vast web of gloom it proffered harbour to the wolves of war, for they feared the open, and the vengeful onrush of the royal chivalry.
Meanwhile, the armies of the King came down upon Belle Forêt, a great horde of steel. From its black ashes the country welcomed them with the dumb lips of death. Ruin and slaughter appealed them on the march; the smoke of war ascended to their nostrils. Fierce was the cry for vengeance in the ranks, as the host poured on like a golden dawn treading on the dark heels of night.