XXXIXIn a cave whose narrow mouth cut a rough cameo from the snow and azure of the sky, a man lay sleeping upon a bed of heather. The surge of the sea rose from the bastions of the cliff, where foam glittered and swirled over the black rocks that thrust their dripping brows above the tide. Gulls were winging over the waves, whose green crests shone brilliant under the sun. On a distant headland, bleak and sombre, the towers of a castle broke the turquoise crescent of the heavens.In one corner of the cave a feeble fire flickered, the smoke therefrom curling along the roof to vanish in a thin blue plume of vapour. Beside the bed lay a pile of armour, with a broken casque like a cleft skull to crown it. Dried herbs and a loaf of rye bread lay on a flat boulder near the fire. The figure on the heather was covered by a stained yet gorgeously blazoned surcoat, that seemed an incongruous quilt for such a couch. Near the cave's entry a great axe glittered on the floor, an axe whose notched edge had tested the metal of many a bassinet.Down a rough path cut in the face of the cliff scrambled a gaunt, hollow-chested figure, doubleted in soiled scarlet, battered shoes on feet, a black beard bristling on the stubborn chin. A red cloth was bound about the man's head. He breathed hard as he clambered down the cliff, as though winded by fast running. Sweat stood on his forehead. Beneath him ran the sea, a pit of foam, swirling and muttering amid the rocks.He reached the entry of the cave and dived therein like a fox into an "earth." Standing by the bed, he looked for a moment at the unconscious figure with the air of one unwilling to wake a weary comrade from his sleep. At last he went down on his knees by the heather, and touched the sleeping man's cheek with the gentle gesture of a woman. The figure stirred at the touch; two thin hands groped over the green and azure quilt. The kneeling man gripped them in his great brown paws, and held them fast."Modred."The voice was toneless, husky, and without spirit."Sire.""Ah, these waking moments. It had been better if you had let me rot in Gambrevault.""Courage, sire, you wake to a better fortune.""There is new life in your voice.""The King has come at last."The man on the heather raised himself upon one elbow. His face looked grey and starved in the half gloom of the cave. He lifted up one hand with a gesture of joy."The King!"Modred of the black beard smiled at him like a father. His hands trembled as he put the man back gently on the heather, and smoothed the coverlet."Lie still, sire.""Ah, this is life, once more.""Patience, patience. Let us have no woman's moods, no raptures. Ha, I am a tyrannous dog. Did I drag you for dead out of Gambrevault to let you break your heart over Richard of Lauretia! Lie quiet, sire; you have no strength to gamble with as yet."The man on the heather reached out again for Modred's hand."The rough dog should have been born a woman," he said to him.Modred laughed."There is a great heart under that hairy chest of yours."The moist mutterings of the sea came up to them from the rocky shore beneath. Clouds in white masses pressed athwart the arch of day. Modred, seated on a boulder beside the bed, eyed the prostrate figure thereon with a gaunt and tender pity. He was a stark man and strenuous, yet warm of heart for all his bull's strength and steely sinew. Youth lay at his feet, thin and impotent, a white willow wand quivering beside a black and knotty oak.Modred rose up and stood by the opening of the cave, his broad shoulders well-nigh filling the entry as he looked out over the sea. Far over the amethystine waters, a hundred pearl-white sails glimmered beyond the cliffs of Gambrevault. The sun smote on gilded prow and blazoned bulwark, and upon a thousand streamers tonguing to the breeze.Modred stretched out his great arms and smiled, a grim shimmer of joy over his ruffian's face. Standing at the mouth of the cave, he began to speak to the man couched in the inner gloom."Yonder, beyond Gambrevault," he said, "I see a hundred sails treading towards us over the sea. They are the King's ships: God cherish them; their bulwarks gleam in the sun."Flavian twisted restlessly amid the heather."A grand sight, old friend."Modred stood silent, fingering his chin. His voice broke forth again with a bluff exultation that seemed to echo the roar of the waves."St. Philip, that is well.""More ships?""Nay, sire, they raise the royal banner on the keep of Gambrevault. I see spears shine. Listen to the shouting. The King's men hold the headland."This time the voice from the cave was less eager, and tinged with pain."Modred, old friend, I lie here like a stone while the trumpets call to me.""Sire, say not so.""Ah, for an hour's youth again, one day in the sun, one moment under the moon.""Sire, I would change with you if God would grant it me.""Bless you, old friend; I would not grant it you if I were God."A trumpet cried to them from the cliff, sudden, shrill, and imperious. Modred, leaning against the rock with his hand over his eyes, started from the cave, and began to climb the path. He muttered and swore into his beard as he ascended, queer oaths, spasmodic and fantastic. His black eyes were hazy for the moment. Contemptuous and fervid, he brushed the tears away with a great brown hand.On the green downs above him rolling to the peerless sky, he saw armour gleam and banners blush. A fanfare of trumpets rolled over the sea. It was Richard the King.Modred bent at the royal stirrup, and kissed the jewelled hand. Above him a keen, steely-eyed visage looked out from beneath a gold-crowned bassinet. It was the face of a soldier and a tyrant, handsome, haughty, yet opulently gracious. The red lips curled under the black tusks of the long moustache. The big, clean-shaven jaw was a promontory of marble thrust forth imperiously over the world."Well, man, what of our warden?"Modred crossed himself, pointed to the cliff, muttered a few words into the King's ear."So," came the terse response, "that was an evil fortune. So splendid a youth, a bright beam of chivalry. Come, lead me to him."The royal statue of steel dismounted and stalked down with knights and heralds towards the cliff. Leaning upon Modred's shoulder, Richard of the Iron Hand trod the rough path leading to the little cave. He bowed his golden crown at the entry, stooped like a suppliant, stood before the Lord Flavian's bed.The gloom troubled him for a moment. Anon, he saw the recumbent figure on the heather, the pile of harness, the brown loaf, and the meagre fire. He throned himself on the boulder beside the bed, and laid a white hand on the sick man's shoulder."Lie still," he said, as Flavian turned to rise; "to-day, my lord, we can forego ceremony."Courtesy is the golden crown of power, forged from a poet's song, and the wisdom of the gods. The royal favour donned its robe of red that day, proffered its gracious signet to the lips of praise, held forth the sceptre of a radiant pity. Even the iron of truth becomes as silver on the lips of kings. Justice herself flatters, when ranged in simple white before a royal throne."My Lord of Gambrevault," quoth Richard of the Iron Hand, "be it known to you that your stout walls have saved my kingdom. You held the barbican of loyalty till true friends rallied to the country's citadel. Bravely have you sounded your clarions in the gate of fame. My lord, I give to you the gratitude of a king."Flattery strutted in the cave, gathering her robes with jewelled hand, gorgeous as an Eastern queen. Concerning the fate of a certain rebel Saint, the royal pardon waxed patriarchal in laconic phrases."Say no more, my lord; the boon is yours. Have I not a noble woman queening it beside me on my throne, flinging the beams of her bright eyes through all my life? This quest shall be heralded to the host; I will offer gold for the damsel's capture. Take this ring from me, no pledge as betwixt Jews, but as a talisman of good to come."So spoke the royal gratitude. When the King had gone, Modred returned to carry his lord heavenwards to the meadows. He found him prone upon the heather, covering his eyes with his thin hands as the western sunlight streaked the gloom."Sire," said Modred, kneeling down beside the bed.The effigy on the heather stirred itself and reached out a hand into Modred's bosom."Man, man, I am in great darkness of soul. Who shall comfort me!"Modred bent to him, laid a great palm on the white forehead."Courage, sire, courage.""Ah, the pity of it, to lie here like a log when swords ring and peril threatens her.""Sire, we shall win her back again.""My God, only to touch her hands once more, to feel the warmth of her pure bosom, and the thrill of her rich hair.""We shall win her, sire. Doubt it not.""All life is a doubt.""Before God, I swear it!""Modred!""Before God, I swear it!"He sprang up, thrust out his arms till the sinews cracked, filled his great chest with the breath of the sea. Suddenly he stopped, strained at a rock lying at the cave's mouth, lifted it, and hurled it from him, saw it smite foam from the water beneath."Fate, take my gauge," he cried, with a fierce glorying in his strength; "come, sire, put your hands about my neck. I will bear you to your castle of Gambrevault."XLFulviac and his rebels had plunged into the great pine forest for refuge from the multitudinous glitter of the royal spears. The wilderness engulfed them, throwing wide its sable gates to take the war wolves in. The trees moaned like tall sibyls burdened with prophetic woe. The gold had long fallen from the gorse; the heather's purple hills were dim. Mystery abode there; a sound as of tragedy rose with the hoarse piping of the autumn wind.From the north and from the west the royal "arms" had drawn as a glittering net towards the sea of pines. A myriad splendid warriors streaked the wilds, like rich rods flowering at some magic trumpet cry. The King's host swept the hills, their banners blazing towards the solemn woods. Gambrevault was theirs, and Avalon of the Mere. Morolt's northerners had marched upon Geraint, to find it a dead city, empty of life and of human sound. Only Gilderoy stood out for Fulviac. The King had failed to leaguer it as yet, for reasons cherished in his cunning brain.Some twoscore thousand men had marched with Fulviac into the forest's sanctuary. Over the hills the royal horse had pressed them hard, cutting down stragglers, hanging on their rear. Fulviac's host was a horde of "foot"; he had not a thousand riders to hurl against the chivalry of the King. On the bold, bleak uplands of the north and west the royal horsemen would have whelmed him like a sea. Necessity turned strategist at that hour. Fulviac and his rebels poured with their stagnant columns into the wilds.The thickets teemed with steel; the myriad pike points glittered like silver moths through the dense green gloom. Once more the great cliff echoed to the clangour of war and the sword. Fulviac had drawn thither and camped his men upon the heights, and under the shadow of its mighty walls. Watch-fires smoked on the hills. Every alley had its sentinel, a net of steel thrown forth to await the coming of the King. Fulviac had gathered his cubs into this lair, trusting to trammel the nobles in the labyrinths of the forest. It was a forlorn hope, the cunning purpose of despair. The spoilers of Belle Forêt were wise in their generation; little mercy would they win from the Iron Hand of Richard of Lauretia.Like a pale pearl set in ebony, Yeoland the Saint had been established again in her bower of stone. The room was even as she had left it that misty summer dawn. Prayer-desk, lute, and crucifix were there, mute relics of a passionate past. How much had befallen her in those packed weeks of peril; how great a guerdon of woe had been lavished on her heart! Love was as the last streak of gold in a fading west; only the stars recalled the unwavering lamps of heaven.The cliff-room and its relics tortured her very soul. She would glance at the Sebastian of the casement, and remember with a shuddering rush of woe the man in whose arms she had slumbered as a wife. Death had deified him in her heart. She remembered his grey eyes, his splendid youth, his passion, his pure chivalry. He gazed down on her like a dream hero from a gloom of dusky gold. The bitter ecstasy of the past spoke to her only of the infinite beneficence of death. The grave yearned for her, and she had no hope to live.Those drear days she saw little of Fulviac. The man seemed to shirk her pale, sad face and brooding eyes. Her grief stung him more fiercely than all the flames nurtured in the glowing pit of war. Moreover, he was cumbered with the imminent peril of his cause, and the facing of a stormy fortune. His one hope lay in some great battle in the woods, where the King's mailed chivalry would be cumbered by the trees. He made many a feint to tempt the nobles to this wild tussle. The cliff stood as adamant, a vast bulwark to uphold the rebels. Yet Nature threatened him with other arguments. His stores were meagre, his mouths many. Victory and starvation dangled upon the opposing beams of Fate.If Fulviac feared procrastination, Richard of Lauretia favoured the same. Wise sluggard that he was, he curbed the vengeance of his clamorous soldiery, content to temporise with the inevitable trend of fortune. His light horse scoured the country, garnering food and forage from the fat lands north of Geraint. Time fought for him, and the starving wolves were trapped. Sufficient was it that he held his crescent of steel upon the hills, leaving unguarded the barren wilds that rolled on Gilderoy towards the east.A week passed, dull and lustreless. The forest waved dark and solemn under the autumn sky; no torrents of steel gushed from its sable gates; no glittering squadrons plunged into its shadows. The King's men lay warm about their watch-fires on the hills, fattening on good food, tingling for the trumpet cry that should herald the advance. Richard of the Iron Hand smiled and passed the hours at chess in his great pavilion pitched on the slopes towards Geraint. Simon of Imbrecour held the southern marches; Morolt and his northerners guarded the west.It was grey weather, sullen and storm-laden, eerie of voice. The Black Wild tossed like a sombre sea over hill and valley, its spires rocking under the scurrying sky, its myriad galleries shrill with the cry of the wind. There was no rest there, no breathless silence under the frail moon. The trees moaned like a vast choir wailing the downfall of a god. The wild seemed full of death, and of the dead, as though the souls of those slaughtered in the war screamed about Fulviac's lair. The sentinels, grey figures in a sombre atmosphere, watched white-faced in the thickets. The clarions of the storm might mask the onrush of the royal chivalry.Yeoland the Saint lay full length upon a carved settle before a dying fire. She was listening to the wind as it roared over the cliff, amid the shrill clamour of the trees. It was such an eve as when Flavian had rattled at the postern to offer her love, and a throne at Avalon. She had spoken of war, and war had sundered them, given death to desire, and a tomb to hope. The glow of the fire played upon the girl's face and shone in her brooding eyes. Night was falling, and the gloom increased.She heard footsteps in the gallery, the clangour of a scabbard against the rock. The door swung back, and Fulviac stood in the entry, clad in full harness save for his casque. There were deep furrows upon his forehead. His lids looked heavy from lack of sleep, and his eyes were bloodshot. The tinge of grey in his tawny hair had increased to a web of silver.He came in without a word, set his hands on the back of the settle, and stared at the fire. Yeoland had started up; she sat huddled in the angle, looking in his face with a mute surmise. Fulviac's face was sorrowful, yet strong as steel; the lips were firm, the eyes sullen and sad. He was as a man who stared ruin betwixt the brows, nor quailed from the scrutiny though death stood ready on the threshold."Cloak yourself," he said to her at last; "be speedy; buckle this purse to your girdle."She sprang up as the leather pouch rattled on the settle, and stood facing Fulviac with her back to the fire."Whither do we ride?""I send you under escort to Gilderoy.""And you?"He smiled, tightened his sword belt with a vicious gesture, and still stared at the hearth."My lot lies here," he said to her; "I meet my doom alone. What need to drag you deeper into the dark?"She understood him on the instant, and the black thoughts moving in his mind. Disasters thickened about the cliff; perils were clamorous as the wind-rocked trees. Fulviac feared the worst; she knew that from his face."You send me to Gilderoy?" she said."I have so determined it.""And why?""Need you doubt my discretion?"The flames flashed and gleamed upon his breastplate, and deepened the shadows upon his face. His eyes were sorrowful, yet full of a strenuous fire."The sky darkens," he said to her, "and the King's hosts watch the forest. I had thought to draw them into the wilds, but the fox of Lauretia has smelt a snare. Our stores lessen; we are in the last trench."She moved away into a dark corner of the room, raised the carved lid of a chest, and began to draw clothes therefrom, fingering them listlessly, as though her thoughts wavered. Fulviac leant with folded arms upon the settle, seemed even oblivious of her presence under the burden of his fate."Fulviac," she said at last, glancing at him over a drooping shoulder.He turned his head and looked at her."Must I go then to Gilderoy?""The road is open," he answered, with no obvious kindling of his sympathy; "there will be bloody work here anon; you will be safer behind stone walls.""And the King?" she asked him.He straightened suddenly, like a man tossing some great burden from off his soul."Ha, girl! are you blind as to what shall follow? Richard of the Iron Hand waits for us with fivescore thousand men. We shall fight--by God, yes!--and make a bloody end; there will be much slaughter and work for the sword. The King will crush us as a falling rock crushes a scorpion. There will be no mercy. Death waits. Put on that cloak of thine."She stood motionless a moment, listening to the moaning of the wind. The man's grim spirit troubled her. She remembered that he had bulwarked her in her homeless days, had dealt her much pity out of his rugged heart. He was alone now, and shadowed by death. Thus it befell that she cast the cloak aside upon the bed, and stood forward with quivering lips before the fire."Fulviac.""Little sister.""Ah! God pardon me; I have been a weak and graceless friend. You have been good to me, beyond my gratitude. The past has gone for ever; what is left to me now? Shall I not meet death at your side?"He stood back from her, looking in her eyes, breathing hard, combating his own heart. He loved the girl in his fierce, staunch way; she was the one light left him in the gathering gloom. Now death offered him her soul. He tottered, stretched out his hands to her, snatched them back with a great burst of pride."No, this cannot be.""Ah!""I have dared the storm; alone will I fall beneath its vengeance. You shall go this night to Gilderoy."She thrust out her hands to him, but he turned away his face."Ah! little sister, this war was conceived for God, but the devil leavened it. I have gambled with fire, and the ashes return upon my head. I give you life; 'tis little I may give. Come now, obey me, these are my last words."She turned from him very quietly in the shadow, hiding her face with her arm. Picking up her cloak, she drew it slowly about her shoulders, Fulviac watching her, a pillar of steel."They wait for you in the forest," he said; "go down the stair. Colgran rides with you to Gilderoy. He is to be trusted."She drooped her head, staggered to the door, darted back again with a low cry and a gush of tears."Fulviac.""Little woman.""God keep you! Kiss me, this once."He bent to her, touched her forehead with his lips, thrust her again towards the door."Go, my child."And she went forth slowly from him, weeping, into the night.XLIThe 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.XLIIDawn 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.
XXXIX
In a cave whose narrow mouth cut a rough cameo from the snow and azure of the sky, a man lay sleeping upon a bed of heather. The surge of the sea rose from the bastions of the cliff, where foam glittered and swirled over the black rocks that thrust their dripping brows above the tide. Gulls were winging over the waves, whose green crests shone brilliant under the sun. On a distant headland, bleak and sombre, the towers of a castle broke the turquoise crescent of the heavens.
In one corner of the cave a feeble fire flickered, the smoke therefrom curling along the roof to vanish in a thin blue plume of vapour. Beside the bed lay a pile of armour, with a broken casque like a cleft skull to crown it. Dried herbs and a loaf of rye bread lay on a flat boulder near the fire. The figure on the heather was covered by a stained yet gorgeously blazoned surcoat, that seemed an incongruous quilt for such a couch. Near the cave's entry a great axe glittered on the floor, an axe whose notched edge had tested the metal of many a bassinet.
Down a rough path cut in the face of the cliff scrambled a gaunt, hollow-chested figure, doubleted in soiled scarlet, battered shoes on feet, a black beard bristling on the stubborn chin. A red cloth was bound about the man's head. He breathed hard as he clambered down the cliff, as though winded by fast running. Sweat stood on his forehead. Beneath him ran the sea, a pit of foam, swirling and muttering amid the rocks.
He reached the entry of the cave and dived therein like a fox into an "earth." Standing by the bed, he looked for a moment at the unconscious figure with the air of one unwilling to wake a weary comrade from his sleep. At last he went down on his knees by the heather, and touched the sleeping man's cheek with the gentle gesture of a woman. The figure stirred at the touch; two thin hands groped over the green and azure quilt. The kneeling man gripped them in his great brown paws, and held them fast.
"Modred."
The voice was toneless, husky, and without spirit.
"Sire."
"Ah, these waking moments. It had been better if you had let me rot in Gambrevault."
"Courage, sire, you wake to a better fortune."
"There is new life in your voice."
"The King has come at last."
The man on the heather raised himself upon one elbow. His face looked grey and starved in the half gloom of the cave. He lifted up one hand with a gesture of joy.
"The King!"
Modred of the black beard smiled at him like a father. His hands trembled as he put the man back gently on the heather, and smoothed the coverlet.
"Lie still, sire."
"Ah, this is life, once more."
"Patience, patience. Let us have no woman's moods, no raptures. Ha, I am a tyrannous dog. Did I drag you for dead out of Gambrevault to let you break your heart over Richard of Lauretia! Lie quiet, sire; you have no strength to gamble with as yet."
The man on the heather reached out again for Modred's hand.
"The rough dog should have been born a woman," he said to him.
Modred laughed.
"There is a great heart under that hairy chest of yours."
The moist mutterings of the sea came up to them from the rocky shore beneath. Clouds in white masses pressed athwart the arch of day. Modred, seated on a boulder beside the bed, eyed the prostrate figure thereon with a gaunt and tender pity. He was a stark man and strenuous, yet warm of heart for all his bull's strength and steely sinew. Youth lay at his feet, thin and impotent, a white willow wand quivering beside a black and knotty oak.
Modred rose up and stood by the opening of the cave, his broad shoulders well-nigh filling the entry as he looked out over the sea. Far over the amethystine waters, a hundred pearl-white sails glimmered beyond the cliffs of Gambrevault. The sun smote on gilded prow and blazoned bulwark, and upon a thousand streamers tonguing to the breeze.
Modred stretched out his great arms and smiled, a grim shimmer of joy over his ruffian's face. Standing at the mouth of the cave, he began to speak to the man couched in the inner gloom.
"Yonder, beyond Gambrevault," he said, "I see a hundred sails treading towards us over the sea. They are the King's ships: God cherish them; their bulwarks gleam in the sun."
Flavian twisted restlessly amid the heather.
"A grand sight, old friend."
Modred stood silent, fingering his chin. His voice broke forth again with a bluff exultation that seemed to echo the roar of the waves.
"St. Philip, that is well."
"More ships?"
"Nay, sire, they raise the royal banner on the keep of Gambrevault. I see spears shine. Listen to the shouting. The King's men hold the headland."
This time the voice from the cave was less eager, and tinged with pain.
"Modred, old friend, I lie here like a stone while the trumpets call to me."
"Sire, say not so."
"Ah, for an hour's youth again, one day in the sun, one moment under the moon."
"Sire, I would change with you if God would grant it me."
"Bless you, old friend; I would not grant it you if I were God."
A trumpet cried to them from the cliff, sudden, shrill, and imperious. Modred, leaning against the rock with his hand over his eyes, started from the cave, and began to climb the path. He muttered and swore into his beard as he ascended, queer oaths, spasmodic and fantastic. His black eyes were hazy for the moment. Contemptuous and fervid, he brushed the tears away with a great brown hand.
On the green downs above him rolling to the peerless sky, he saw armour gleam and banners blush. A fanfare of trumpets rolled over the sea. It was Richard the King.
Modred bent at the royal stirrup, and kissed the jewelled hand. Above him a keen, steely-eyed visage looked out from beneath a gold-crowned bassinet. It was the face of a soldier and a tyrant, handsome, haughty, yet opulently gracious. The red lips curled under the black tusks of the long moustache. The big, clean-shaven jaw was a promontory of marble thrust forth imperiously over the world.
"Well, man, what of our warden?"
Modred crossed himself, pointed to the cliff, muttered a few words into the King's ear.
"So," came the terse response, "that was an evil fortune. So splendid a youth, a bright beam of chivalry. Come, lead me to him."
The royal statue of steel dismounted and stalked down with knights and heralds towards the cliff. Leaning upon Modred's shoulder, Richard of the Iron Hand trod the rough path leading to the little cave. He bowed his golden crown at the entry, stooped like a suppliant, stood before the Lord Flavian's bed.
The gloom troubled him for a moment. Anon, he saw the recumbent figure on the heather, the pile of harness, the brown loaf, and the meagre fire. He throned himself on the boulder beside the bed, and laid a white hand on the sick man's shoulder.
"Lie still," he said, as Flavian turned to rise; "to-day, my lord, we can forego ceremony."
Courtesy is the golden crown of power, forged from a poet's song, and the wisdom of the gods. The royal favour donned its robe of red that day, proffered its gracious signet to the lips of praise, held forth the sceptre of a radiant pity. Even the iron of truth becomes as silver on the lips of kings. Justice herself flatters, when ranged in simple white before a royal throne.
"My Lord of Gambrevault," quoth Richard of the Iron Hand, "be it known to you that your stout walls have saved my kingdom. You held the barbican of loyalty till true friends rallied to the country's citadel. Bravely have you sounded your clarions in the gate of fame. My lord, I give to you the gratitude of a king."
Flattery strutted in the cave, gathering her robes with jewelled hand, gorgeous as an Eastern queen. Concerning the fate of a certain rebel Saint, the royal pardon waxed patriarchal in laconic phrases.
"Say no more, my lord; the boon is yours. Have I not a noble woman queening it beside me on my throne, flinging the beams of her bright eyes through all my life? This quest shall be heralded to the host; I will offer gold for the damsel's capture. Take this ring from me, no pledge as betwixt Jews, but as a talisman of good to come."
So spoke the royal gratitude. When the King had gone, Modred returned to carry his lord heavenwards to the meadows. He found him prone upon the heather, covering his eyes with his thin hands as the western sunlight streaked the gloom.
"Sire," said Modred, kneeling down beside the bed.
The effigy on the heather stirred itself and reached out a hand into Modred's bosom.
"Man, man, I am in great darkness of soul. Who shall comfort me!"
Modred bent to him, laid a great palm on the white forehead.
"Courage, sire, courage."
"Ah, the pity of it, to lie here like a log when swords ring and peril threatens her."
"Sire, we shall win her back again."
"My God, only to touch her hands once more, to feel the warmth of her pure bosom, and the thrill of her rich hair."
"We shall win her, sire. Doubt it not."
"All life is a doubt."
"Before God, I swear it!"
"Modred!"
"Before God, I swear it!"
He sprang up, thrust out his arms till the sinews cracked, filled his great chest with the breath of the sea. Suddenly he stopped, strained at a rock lying at the cave's mouth, lifted it, and hurled it from him, saw it smite foam from the water beneath.
"Fate, take my gauge," he cried, with a fierce glorying in his strength; "come, sire, put your hands about my neck. I will bear you to your castle of Gambrevault."
XL
Fulviac and his rebels had plunged into the great pine forest for refuge from the multitudinous glitter of the royal spears. The wilderness engulfed them, throwing wide its sable gates to take the war wolves in. The trees moaned like tall sibyls burdened with prophetic woe. The gold had long fallen from the gorse; the heather's purple hills were dim. Mystery abode there; a sound as of tragedy rose with the hoarse piping of the autumn wind.
From the north and from the west the royal "arms" had drawn as a glittering net towards the sea of pines. A myriad splendid warriors streaked the wilds, like rich rods flowering at some magic trumpet cry. The King's host swept the hills, their banners blazing towards the solemn woods. Gambrevault was theirs, and Avalon of the Mere. Morolt's northerners had marched upon Geraint, to find it a dead city, empty of life and of human sound. Only Gilderoy stood out for Fulviac. The King had failed to leaguer it as yet, for reasons cherished in his cunning brain.
Some twoscore thousand men had marched with Fulviac into the forest's sanctuary. Over the hills the royal horse had pressed them hard, cutting down stragglers, hanging on their rear. Fulviac's host was a horde of "foot"; he had not a thousand riders to hurl against the chivalry of the King. On the bold, bleak uplands of the north and west the royal horsemen would have whelmed him like a sea. Necessity turned strategist at that hour. Fulviac and his rebels poured with their stagnant columns into the wilds.
The thickets teemed with steel; the myriad pike points glittered like silver moths through the dense green gloom. Once more the great cliff echoed to the clangour of war and the sword. Fulviac had drawn thither and camped his men upon the heights, and under the shadow of its mighty walls. Watch-fires smoked on the hills. Every alley had its sentinel, a net of steel thrown forth to await the coming of the King. Fulviac had gathered his cubs into this lair, trusting to trammel the nobles in the labyrinths of the forest. It was a forlorn hope, the cunning purpose of despair. The spoilers of Belle Forêt were wise in their generation; little mercy would they win from the Iron Hand of Richard of Lauretia.
Like a pale pearl set in ebony, Yeoland the Saint had been established again in her bower of stone. The room was even as she had left it that misty summer dawn. Prayer-desk, lute, and crucifix were there, mute relics of a passionate past. How much had befallen her in those packed weeks of peril; how great a guerdon of woe had been lavished on her heart! Love was as the last streak of gold in a fading west; only the stars recalled the unwavering lamps of heaven.
The cliff-room and its relics tortured her very soul. She would glance at the Sebastian of the casement, and remember with a shuddering rush of woe the man in whose arms she had slumbered as a wife. Death had deified him in her heart. She remembered his grey eyes, his splendid youth, his passion, his pure chivalry. He gazed down on her like a dream hero from a gloom of dusky gold. The bitter ecstasy of the past spoke to her only of the infinite beneficence of death. The grave yearned for her, and she had no hope to live.
Those drear days she saw little of Fulviac. The man seemed to shirk her pale, sad face and brooding eyes. Her grief stung him more fiercely than all the flames nurtured in the glowing pit of war. Moreover, he was cumbered with the imminent peril of his cause, and the facing of a stormy fortune. His one hope lay in some great battle in the woods, where the King's mailed chivalry would be cumbered by the trees. He made many a feint to tempt the nobles to this wild tussle. The cliff stood as adamant, a vast bulwark to uphold the rebels. Yet Nature threatened him with other arguments. His stores were meagre, his mouths many. Victory and starvation dangled upon the opposing beams of Fate.
If Fulviac feared procrastination, Richard of Lauretia favoured the same. Wise sluggard that he was, he curbed the vengeance of his clamorous soldiery, content to temporise with the inevitable trend of fortune. His light horse scoured the country, garnering food and forage from the fat lands north of Geraint. Time fought for him, and the starving wolves were trapped. Sufficient was it that he held his crescent of steel upon the hills, leaving unguarded the barren wilds that rolled on Gilderoy towards the east.
A week passed, dull and lustreless. The forest waved dark and solemn under the autumn sky; no torrents of steel gushed from its sable gates; no glittering squadrons plunged into its shadows. The King's men lay warm about their watch-fires on the hills, fattening on good food, tingling for the trumpet cry that should herald the advance. Richard of the Iron Hand smiled and passed the hours at chess in his great pavilion pitched on the slopes towards Geraint. Simon of Imbrecour held the southern marches; Morolt and his northerners guarded the west.
It was grey weather, sullen and storm-laden, eerie of voice. The Black Wild tossed like a sombre sea over hill and valley, its spires rocking under the scurrying sky, its myriad galleries shrill with the cry of the wind. There was no rest there, no breathless silence under the frail moon. The trees moaned like a vast choir wailing the downfall of a god. The wild seemed full of death, and of the dead, as though the souls of those slaughtered in the war screamed about Fulviac's lair. The sentinels, grey figures in a sombre atmosphere, watched white-faced in the thickets. The clarions of the storm might mask the onrush of the royal chivalry.
Yeoland the Saint lay full length upon a carved settle before a dying fire. She was listening to the wind as it roared over the cliff, amid the shrill clamour of the trees. It was such an eve as when Flavian had rattled at the postern to offer her love, and a throne at Avalon. She had spoken of war, and war had sundered them, given death to desire, and a tomb to hope. The glow of the fire played upon the girl's face and shone in her brooding eyes. Night was falling, and the gloom increased.
She heard footsteps in the gallery, the clangour of a scabbard against the rock. The door swung back, and Fulviac stood in the entry, clad in full harness save for his casque. There were deep furrows upon his forehead. His lids looked heavy from lack of sleep, and his eyes were bloodshot. The tinge of grey in his tawny hair had increased to a web of silver.
He came in without a word, set his hands on the back of the settle, and stared at the fire. Yeoland had started up; she sat huddled in the angle, looking in his face with a mute surmise. Fulviac's face was sorrowful, yet strong as steel; the lips were firm, the eyes sullen and sad. He was as a man who stared ruin betwixt the brows, nor quailed from the scrutiny though death stood ready on the threshold.
"Cloak yourself," he said to her at last; "be speedy; buckle this purse to your girdle."
She sprang up as the leather pouch rattled on the settle, and stood facing Fulviac with her back to the fire.
"Whither do we ride?"
"I send you under escort to Gilderoy."
"And you?"
He smiled, tightened his sword belt with a vicious gesture, and still stared at the hearth.
"My lot lies here," he said to her; "I meet my doom alone. What need to drag you deeper into the dark?"
She understood him on the instant, and the black thoughts moving in his mind. Disasters thickened about the cliff; perils were clamorous as the wind-rocked trees. Fulviac feared the worst; she knew that from his face.
"You send me to Gilderoy?" she said.
"I have so determined it."
"And why?"
"Need you doubt my discretion?"
The flames flashed and gleamed upon his breastplate, and deepened the shadows upon his face. His eyes were sorrowful, yet full of a strenuous fire.
"The sky darkens," he said to her, "and the King's hosts watch the forest. I had thought to draw them into the wilds, but the fox of Lauretia has smelt a snare. Our stores lessen; we are in the last trench."
She moved away into a dark corner of the room, raised the carved lid of a chest, and began to draw clothes therefrom, fingering them listlessly, as though her thoughts wavered. Fulviac leant with folded arms upon the settle, seemed even oblivious of her presence under the burden of his fate.
"Fulviac," she said at last, glancing at him over a drooping shoulder.
He turned his head and looked at her.
"Must I go then to Gilderoy?"
"The road is open," he answered, with no obvious kindling of his sympathy; "there will be bloody work here anon; you will be safer behind stone walls."
"And the King?" she asked him.
He straightened suddenly, like a man tossing some great burden from off his soul.
"Ha, girl! are you blind as to what shall follow? Richard of the Iron Hand waits for us with fivescore thousand men. We shall fight--by God, yes!--and make a bloody end; there will be much slaughter and work for the sword. The King will crush us as a falling rock crushes a scorpion. There will be no mercy. Death waits. Put on that cloak of thine."
She stood motionless a moment, listening to the moaning of the wind. The man's grim spirit troubled her. She remembered that he had bulwarked her in her homeless days, had dealt her much pity out of his rugged heart. He was alone now, and shadowed by death. Thus it befell that she cast the cloak aside upon the bed, and stood forward with quivering lips before the fire.
"Fulviac."
"Little sister."
"Ah! God pardon me; I have been a weak and graceless friend. You have been good to me, beyond my gratitude. The past has gone for ever; what is left to me now? Shall I not meet death at your side?"
He stood back from her, looking in her eyes, breathing hard, combating his own heart. He loved the girl in his fierce, staunch way; she was the one light left him in the gathering gloom. Now death offered him her soul. He tottered, stretched out his hands to her, snatched them back with a great burst of pride.
"No, this cannot be."
"Ah!"
"I have dared the storm; alone will I fall beneath its vengeance. You shall go this night to Gilderoy."
She thrust out her hands to him, but he turned away his face.
"Ah! little sister, this war was conceived for God, but the devil leavened it. I have gambled with fire, and the ashes return upon my head. I give you life; 'tis little I may give. Come now, obey me, these are my last words."
She turned from him very quietly in the shadow, hiding her face with her arm. Picking up her cloak, she drew it slowly about her shoulders, Fulviac watching her, a pillar of steel.
"They wait for you in the forest," he said; "go down the stair. Colgran rides with you to Gilderoy. He is to be trusted."
She drooped her head, staggered to the door, darted back again with a low cry and a gush of tears.
"Fulviac."
"Little woman."
"God keep you! Kiss me, this once."
He bent to her, touched her forehead with his lips, thrust her again towards the door.
"Go, my child."
And she went forth slowly from him, weeping, into the night.
XLI
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.
XLII
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.