[image]"THE SWORD SLASHED NORD'S GORGET, BURIED ITS BLADE IN THE BULL-LIKE NECK."The man's hand snatched at the girl's bridle; he dragged her and her horse out of the press. She had a confused vision of carnage, of stabbing swords and trampling hoofs. She saw her banner-bearer fall forward on his horse's neck, thrust through with a sword, while Modred seized the banner staff from his impotent hand. The rebel column had deliquesced and vanished. In its stead she was girdled by grim and exultant horsemen whose swords flashed in the sun.Trumpets blew the retreat. A thousand glittering riders swarmed about her and the knight with the red plume. She had his words confusedly in her ears, strong, passionate words, heroic, yet utterly tender. They rode uphill together amid the clangour of his men. In a minute they had won the ridge, and were swinging down the further slope with their faces towards Gambrevault.XXXParis and Helen have been dead centuries, yet in that universal world of the mind they still live, young and glorious as when the Grecian galleys ploughed foam through the blue Ægean. The world loves a lover. Troilus stages our own emotions for us in godlier wise than we poor realists can hope to do. We owe an eternal gratitude to those who have stood for love in history. All men might well desire to play the Tristan to Iseult of the Irish eyes. We forget Gemma Donati, and follow with Dante's wistful idealism the gleaming figure of Beatrice in Paradise.Now the Lord Flavian was one of those happy persons who seem to stumble into heaven either by prodigious instinct or remarkable good-fortune. God gives to many men gold; to others intellect; to some truth; to few, a human echo, a harmony in the spirit, the right woman in the world. Many of us are such unstable folk that we vibrate vastly to a beautiful face and hail heaven in a pair of violet eyes. The chance is that such a business turns out miserably. It is a wise rule to search the world through to find your Beatrice, or bide celibate to the end. Happy is the man whose instinctive choice is ratified by all the wisest poetry of heaven. Happy is he who finds a ruby as he rakes the ephemeral flower-gardens of life, a gem eternally bright and beautiful, durable, unchanging, flashing light ever into the soul. It is given to few to love wisely, to love utterly, to love till death.That summer day Flavian saw life at its zenith, as he rode through the woods on the way to Gambrevault. The horse had dropped to a trot, and the man had taken off his helmet and hung it at his saddle-bow. He was still red from the mêlée; his eyes were bright and triumphant. The girl at his side looked at him half-timidly, a tremor upon her lip, her glances clouded. The terrific action of the last hour still seemed to weigh upon her senses, and she seemed fated to be the sport of contending sentiments. No sooner had she struggled to some level of saintliness than love rushed in with burning wings, and lo, all the tinsel of her religion fell away, and she was a mere Eve, a child of Nature.Flavian watched her with the tenderness of a strong man, who is ready to give his life for the woman he serves. Love seemed to rise from her and play upon him like perfume from a bowl of violets; her eyes transfigured him, and he longed to touch her hair."At last.""Lord?""Treat me as a man, I hate that epithet.""You are a great signor.""What are titles, testaments, etiquettes to us! I am only great so long as you trust and honour me.""Your power might appear precarious.""As you will.""Yet war is loose!"He looked round upon the sea of men that rolled on every hand."And war at its worst. I have seen enough in three days to make me loathe your partisans and their principles.""Perhaps.""It is a wicked and inhuman business.""What are you going to do with me?" she said."Remove you from the hands of butchers and offal-mongers; put you like a pearl in a casket in my own castle of Gambrevault.""You incur the greater peril.""Have I not told you that no woman loves a coward?"She was silent awhile, with her eyes wistful and melancholy, as though some spiritual conflict were passing in her mind. Bitterness escaped in the man's words for all his tenderness and chivalry. He needed an answer. Anon she capitulated and appeared to surrender herself absolutely to circumstance. She began to tell Flavian of her adoption by Fulviac, of her vision in the ruined chapel, of the part assigned to her as a woman ordained by heaven. He heard her in silence, finding quaint pleasure in listening to her voice, having never heard her talk at such length before. Her voice's modulations, its pathos, its many tones, were more subtle to him than any music, and seemed to steep in oblivion the grim realities of the last few days. He watched the play of thought upon her face, sun and shadow, calm and unrest. He began to comprehend the discords he had flung into her life; she was no longer a riddle to him; her confessions portrayed her soul in warm and delicate colouring--colouring pathetic and heroically pure. He had a glorious sense of joy in an instinctive conviction that this girl was worthy of all the highest chivalry a man's heart can conceive of.Though he had a strong suspicion that he could humanise her Madonna for her, he refrained from argument, refrained from dilating on the iniquities her so-called crusades had already perpetrated. Moreover, the girl had opened her heart to him with a delicious and innocent ingenuousness. He felt that the hour had blessed him sufficiently; that personalities would be gross and impertinent in the light of that sympathy that seemed suddenly to have enveloped them like a golden cloud. The girl appeared to have surrendered herself spiritually into his keeping, not sorry in measure that a strong destiny had decided her doubts for her. They were to let political considerations and the ephemeral turmoils of the times sink under their feet. It was sufficient for them to be but a man and a woman, to forget the forbidden fruit, and the serpent and his lore. God walked the world; they were not ashamed to hear His voice.So they came with their glittering horde of horsemen to Gambrevault, and rode over the green downs with towers beckoning from the blue. The Gilderoy forces were still miles away, and could not have threatened the retreat on Gambrevault had they been wise as to the event. Yeoland rode close at Flavian's side. He touched her hand, looked in her eyes, saw the colour stream to her cheeks, knew that she no longer was his enemy."Yonder stands Gambrevault," were his words; "its walls shall bulwark you against the world. Trust me and my eternal faith to you. I shall see God more clearly for looking in your eyes."He lodged her in a chamber in the keep, a room that had been his mother's and still held the furniture, books, and music she had used. Its window looked out on the castle garden, and over the double line of walls to the meadows and woods beyond. Maud, the castellan's wife, was bidden to wait upon her. Flavian gave her the keys of his mother's chests, where silks, samites, sarcenets galore, lace and all manner of golden fripperies, were stored. The ewers of the room were of silver, its hangings of violet cloth, its bed inlaid with ivory and hung with purple velvet. It had a shelf full of beautifully illumined books, a prayer-desk and a small altar, a harp, a lute, an embroidery frame, and numberless curios. Thus by the might of the sword Yeoland was installed in the great castle of Gambrevault.So Duessa and Balthasar were dead. The girl had told Flavian what had passed in Sforza's palace; the news shocked him more than he would have dreamed. The dead wound us with their unapproachableness and the mute pathos of their pale, imagined faces. They are like our own sins that stare at us from the night sky, irrevocable and beyond us for ever. Flavian ordered tapers to be burnt and masses said in the castle chapel for the souls of these two unfortunates. He himself spent more than an hour in silent prayer before he confessed, received penance and absolution.That evening, at Flavian's prayer, Yeoland came down to meet him in the castle garden, with the castellan's two girls to serve her as maids of honour. She had put aside her armour, and was clad in a jacket of violet cloth, fitting close to the figure, and a skirt of light blue silk. In the old yew walk, stately and solemn, amid the bright parterres and stone urns gushing colour, the two children slipped away and left Yeoland and the man alone.She seemed to have lost much of her restraint, much of her independence, of her reserve, in a few short hours. Her mood inclined towards silence and a certain delightful solemnity such as a lover loves. Her eyes met the man's with a rare trust; her hands went into his with all the ideal faith he had forecast in his dreams.They stood together under the yews, full of youth and innocent joy of soul, timid, happily sad, content to be mere children. Flavian touched her hands as he would have touched a lily. She seemed too wonderful, too pure, too transcendent to be fingered. A supreme, a godly timidity possessed him; he had such love in his heart as only the strong and the pure can know, such love as makes a man a saint unto himself, a being wrapped round with the rarest chivalry of heaven.Their words were very simple and infrequent."I have been thinking," said the girl."Yes?""How war seems ever in the world.""How else should I have won you?"She sighed and looked up over his shoulder at the sunlight glimmering gold through the yews."I have been thinking how I bring you infinite peril. They will not lose me easily. What if I bring you to ruin?""I take everything to myself.""They believe me a saint.""And I!""My conscience will reproach me, but now----""Well?""I am too happy to remember."Their eyes met and flashed all the unutterable truths of the soul. Flavian kissed her hand."Forget it all," he said, "save the words I spoke to you over that forest grave. Whatever doom may come upon me, though death frown, I care not; all the sky is at sunset, all the world is full of song. I could meet God to-morrow with a smile, since you have shown me all your heart."From a little stone pavilion hidden by laurels the voices of flutes and viols swirled out upon the air. The west grew faint, and twilight increased; night kissed and closed the azure eyes of the day. Under the yew boughs, Flavian and Yeoland walked hand in hand; the music spoke for them; the night made their faces pale and spiritual under the trees. They said little; a tremor of the fingers, a glance, a sigh were enough. When the west had faded, and the last primrose streak was gone, Flavian kissed the girl's lips and sent her back to the two children, who were curled on a bench by the laurels, listening sleepily to the music of flute and viol.The man's soul was too scintillant and joyous to shun the stars. He passed up on to the battlements, and listened to the long surge of the summer sea.And as he paced the battlements that night, he saw red, impish specks of flame start out against the black background of the night. They were the rebel watchfires burning on the hills, sinister eyes, red with the distant prophecy of war.XXXIIt would be difficult to describe the thundercloud of thought that came down upon Fulviac's face when news was brought him of the capture of the girl Yeoland and the decimation of the vanguard from Geraint. There was something even Satanic upon his face for the moment. He was not a pleasant person when roused, and roused he was that day like any ogre. His tongue ran through the whole gamut of blasphemy before he recovered a finer dignity and relapsed into a grim reserve. His men spoke to him with great suavity. He had decreed that Nord of the Hammer should be hanged for negligence, but the decree was unnecessary, since Flavian's sword had already settled the matter.The Gilderoy forces therefore turned northwards, with their great baggage and siege train, and in due course came upon the Gerainters bivouacking on the ridge where the battle had taken place. The green slopes were specked with dark motionless figures, dead horses, and the wreckage of war. Men were burying the dead upon the battlefield. Yeoland's guard had been slaughtered almost to a man; and the whole affair had damped very considerably the ardour of certain of the less trustworthy levies.But Fulviac was not the man to sit and snivel over a defeat; he knew well enough that he had good men behind him, tough fighting stuff, fired by fanaticism and a long sense of wrong. He harangued his whole force, black-guarded with his lion's roar those concerned in the march from Geraint, treating them to such a scourging with words that they snarled and clamoured to be led on at once to prove their mettle. Their leaders had been at fault, nor did Fulviac keep their spirits cooling in the wind. The power of his own personality was great, and he had twenty thousand men at his back, who knew that to fail meant death and torture. They had received a check from the Lord of Gambrevault; it was absolutely essential to the cause that they should wipe out the defeat, recapture their Saint and sacred banner, crush Gambrevault once and for ever. To this strenuous tune they marched on towards the sea, and that night lit their fires on the hills that ringed Gambrevault on the north.As the sun climbed up and spread a curtain of gold over down and upland, those on the walls of Gambrevault saw steel glinting on the hills, the pikes and casques of Fulviac's horde. Yeoland saw them from her casement, as she stood and combed her hair. Flavian, watching with certain knights on the keep, confronted the event with a merry smile. The shimmering line of silver on the hills had broadened to a darker band, splashed lavishly with steel. The rebel host was coming on in a half moon, with each horn to the sea. Its centre held towards the ford and the dismantled Gambrevault mills, positions strongly held on the southern bank by a redoubt and stockaded trenches.The criticisms delivered by those watching from the keep were various and forcible."By Jeremy--a rare mob!""Let them grip at Gambrevault," said Modred, "and they shall clutch at a cactus. Look at that long baggage train in the rear. Damn them, I guess they have the siege train from Gilderoy.""We shall sweat a trifle."Quoth Tristram, "They have little time to spare for a leaguer, rotting in trenches, if they are to make the country rise. They'll not leaguer us."Flavian watched the advance under his hand."Fortunately or unfortunately, gentlemen," he said, "we have taken their Saint, their oracle, and their sacred banner. I imagine they will do their best to dispossess us. It is time we made for the meadows; I reckon we shall have hot work to-day."When leaving the keep, Flavian crossed the castle garden, and caught under the tunnel of yews the flutter of a woman's gown. Sunlight glimmered through and wove a shimmering network in the air. Green and violet swept the stones; a white face shone in the shadows.He went to her and kissed her hands. His eyes were brave and joyous as she looked into them, and there was no shadow of fear upon his face. Trumpets were blowing in the meadows, piercing the confused hum of men running to arms."War, ever war!""You are sad?""Fulviac has the whole kingdom at his back.""If he led the world, I should not waver.""With me it is different; I am a woman and you know my heart.""So well that I seek to know nothing else in the world, I desire no greater wisdom than my love. You are with me, and my heart sings. No harm can come to you whatever doom may fall on Gambrevault.""Think you my thoughts are all of my own safety?""Ah, golden one, never fear for me. What is life? a little joy, a little pain, and then eternity. I would rather have an hour's glory in the sun than fifty years of grey monotony. It is something to fight, and even to die, for the love of a woman. There is no shadow over my soul."There was a great heroism in his voice, and her eyes caught the light from his. She touched his cuirass with her slim white fingers."God keep you!""Ha, I do not smell of earth to-day, nor dream of requiems.""No, you will come back to me.""Give me your scarf."She took the green silk and knotted it about his arm; a rich colour shone in her cheeks, her eyes were warm and wonderfully luminous."God keep you!"So he kissed her lips and left her.The rebel horde had rolled down in their thousands from the hills. Flavian saw their black masses moving from the woods, as he rode down from the great gate. It was evident to him that Fulviac would try and force the ford and win his way to the open meadows beyond. The river ran fast with a deep but narrow channel, and there was only one other ford some nine miles upstream. His own men were under arms in the meadows. With his knights round him, Flavian rode down to the redoubt and trenches by the river-bank, packed as they already were with archers and men-at-arms. He was loudly cheered as he reined in and scanned the rebel columns moving over the downs.Fulviac had ridden forward with a company of spears to reconnoitre. He saw the captured banner of The Maid hoisted derisively on Gambrevault keep; he saw the redoubt and the stockades covering the ford; the foot massed in the meadows; Flavian's mounted men-at-arms drawn up under the castle walls. Sforza and several captains of note were with Fulviac. The man was in a grim mood, a slashing Titanic humour. The passage of the river was to be forced, Flavian's men engaged in the meadows. He would drive them into Gambrevault before nightfall. Then they would cast their leaguer, bring up the siege train taken from Gilderoy, and batter at Gambrevault till they could storm the place.Early in the day Fulviac detached a body of two thousand men under Colgran, a noted free-lance, to march upstream, cross by the upper ford, and threaten Flavian on the flank. The fighting began at ten of the clock, when Fulviac's bowmen scattered along the river and opened fire upon the stockades. Flavian's archers and arbalisters responded. A body of five thousand rebels advanced with great mantlets upon wheels to the northern bank and entrenched themselves there. A second body, with waggons laden with timber and several flat-bottomed boats, poured down to the river a mile higher up, and began to throw a rough, raft-like bridge across the stream. At half-past ten masses of men-at-arms splashed through the water at the ford, under cover of a hot fire from the archers lining the bank, and began an assault upon the redoubt and the stockades.By twelve o'clock the bridge higher up the stream had been completed, and a glittering line of pikes poured across, to be met on the southern bank by Geoffrey Longsword and a body of men-at-arms. It was hand to hand, and hot and strenuous as could be. Men grappled, stabbed, hacked, bellowed like a herd of bulls. Flavian had reinforced the defenders of the ford, who still held Fulviac at bay, despite a heavy archery fire and the almost continuous assaults poured against the stockades. Yet by one o'clock Fulviac's levies had forced the passage of the bridge and gained footing on the southern bank. Longsword's men, outnumbered and repulsed, were falling back before the black masses of foot that now poured into the meadows.The situation was critical enough, as Flavian had long seen, as he galloped hotly from point to point. Fulviac's rebels had shown more valour than he had ever prophesied. Flavian packed all his remaining foot into the trenches, and putting himself at the head of his knights and mounted men-at-arms, rode down to charge the troops who had crossed by the pontoons. Here chivalry availed him to the full. By a succession of tremendous rushes, he drove the rebels back into the river, did much merciless slaughter, cut the ropes that held the bridge to the southern bank, so that the whole structure veered downstream. The peril seemed past, when he was startled by the cry that the redoubt had been carried, and that Fulviac held the ford.Looking south, he saw the truth with his own eyes. His troops were falling back in disorder upon Gambrevault, followed by an ever-growing mass, that swarmed exultantly into the meadows. The last and successful assault had been led by Fulviac in person. Flavian had to grip the truth. The rebels outnumbered him by more than five to one; and he had underrated their discipline and fighting spirit. He was wiser before the sun went down."Come, gentlemen, we shall beat them yet.""Shall we charge them, sire?""Blow bugles, follow me, sirs; I am in no mood for defeat."That afternoon there was grim work in the Gambrevault meadows. Five times Flavian charged Fulviac's columns, hurling them back towards the river, only to be repulsed in turn by the fresh masses that poured over by the ford. He made much slaughter, lost many good men in the mad, whirling mêlées. Desperate heroism inspired on either hand. Once he stood in great peril of his own life, having been unhorsed and surrounded by a mob of rebel pikes. He was saved by the devotion and heroism of Modred and his household knights. With the chivalry of a Galahad, he did all that a man could to keep the field. Colgran's flanking column appeared over the downs, and Fulviac had his whole host on the southern bank of the river. The masses advanced like one man, pennons flying, trumpets clanging. Flavian would have charged again, but for the vehement dissuasion of certain of his elder knights. He contented himself with covering the retreat of his foot, while the great gate of Gambrevault opened its black maw to take them in. Many of his mercenaries had deserted to the rebels. So stubborn and bloody had been the day, that he had lost close upon half his force by death and desertion; no quarter had been given on either side. He heard the surging shouts of exultation from the meadows, as he rode sullen and wearied into Gambrevault. The great gates thundered to, the portcullises rattled down. Fulviac had his man shut up in Gambrevault.XXXIIThe leaguer was drawn that night about the towers of Gambrevault, and the castle stood clasped betwixt the watch-fires and the sea. Fulviac's rebels, toiling from evening until dawn, banked and staked a rampart to close the headland. From the north alone could Gambrevault be approached, precipices plunging south, east, and west to front the sea. Athwart the grassy isthmus Fulviac drew his works, running from cliff to cliff, brown earth-banks bristling with timber. Mortars, bombards, basilics, and great catapults had been brought from Gilderoy to batter the walls. Redoubts, covered by strong mantlets, were established in the meadows. Several small war galleys guarded the castle on the side of the sea.Nor was this labour permitted to pass unrebuked before the leaguered folk upon the headland. There were sallies, assaults, bloody tussles in the trenches, skirmishes upon the causeway. Yet these fiercenesses brought no flattering boon to the besieged. The knights and men-at-arms were masterful enough with an open field to serve them, but behind their barricades Fulviac's rebels held the advantage. The command went forth from Modred the seneschal that there were to be no more sorties delivered against the trenches.On the second day of the leaguer the cannonade began. Bombard and mortar belched flame and smoke; the huge catapults strove with their gigantic arms; arbalisters wound their windlasses behind the ramparts. Shot screamed and hurtled, crashed and thundered against the walls, bringing down mortar and masonry in rattling showers. The battlements of Gambrevault spouted flame; archers plied their bows in bartisan and turret. A shroud of dust and smoke swirled about the place, the chaotic clamour of the siege sending the gulls wheeling and wailing from the cliffs.On the very second day Flavian was brought low by a shot hurling a fragment of masonry upon his thigh and bruising it to the bone. Stiff and faint, he was laid abed in his own state room, unable to stir for the twinging tendons, loth enough to lie idle. Modred, bluff, lusty smiter, took the command from him, and walked the walls. Hourly he came in to his lord's chamber to tell of the cannonade and the state of the castle. Even Flavian from his cushions could see that the man's black face looked grim and sinister."How do they vex us?" was his question, as the thunder came to them from the meadows.Modred clinked his heels against the wainscotting of the window seat, and strove to sweeten his looks. He was not a man given to blandishing the truth."Their damned bombards are too heavy for us. We are dumb.""Impossible!""Sire, we shall have to hold Gambrevault by the sword."The man on the bed started up on his elbow, only to fall back again with a spasmodic twitching of the forehead."And our bombards?" he asked."Are toppled off their trunnions.""Ha!""For the rest, sire, I have ordered our men to keep cover. The bowmen shoot passably. The outer battlements are swept.""And the walls?"Modred grimaced and stroked his beard."There are cracks in the gate-house," quoth he, "that I could lay my fist in."What goodlier fortune for a man than to lie bruised when Love bears to him the bowl of dreams! What softer balm than the touch of a woman's hand! What more subtle music than her voice! The girl Yeoland had betrayed a new wilfulness to the world, in that she now claimed as her guerdon the care of the man's heart. She was in and about his room, a shadow moving in the sunlight, a shaft of youth, supple and very tender. Her eyes had a rarer lustre, her face more of the dawn tint of the rose. Love stirred within her soul like the sound of angels psaltering on the golden battlements of heaven.As she sat often beside him, Flavian won the whole romance from her, gradual as glistening threads of silk drawn from a scarlet purse. She waxed very solemn over her tale, was timid at times, and exceeding sorrowful for all her passion. Some shadowy fear seemed to companion her beside the couch, some wraith prophetic of a tragic end. She loved the man, yet feared her love, even as it had been a sword shimmering above his head. Peril compassed them like an angry sea; she heard the bombards thundering in the meadows."Ah, sire," she said to him one morning, as she thrust the flowers she had gathered in the garden into a brazen bowl, "I am heavy at heart. Who shall pity me?"He turned towards her on his cushions with a smile that was not prophetic of the tomb."Do I weary you?""Ah no, not that.""Why then are you sad?"She held up a white hand in the gloom of the room, her hair falling like a black cloud upon her bosom."Listen," she said to him."I am not deaf.""The thunder of war.""Well, well, my heart, should I fear it?""It is I who fear.""Ah," he said, taking her hand into his bosom, "put such fears far from you. We shall not end this year in dust."A week passed and the man was on the walls again, bold and ruddy as a youthful Jove. Seven days had gone, swelling with their hours the great concourse in the meadows. Pikes had sprouted on the hills like glistening corn, to roll and merge into the girding barrier of steel. The disloyal south had gathered to Fulviac before Gambrevault like dust in a dry corner in the month of March. A great host teemed betwixt the river and the cliffs. Through all, the rack and thunder of the siege went on, drowning the sea's voice, flinging a storm-cloud over the stubborn walls. In Gambrevault men looked grim, and muttered of succour and the armies of the King.Yet Flavian was content. He had taken a transcendent spirit into his soul; he lived to music; drank love and chivalry like nectar from the gods. The woman's nearness made each hour a chalice of gold. He possessed her red heart, looked deep into her eyes, put her slim hands into his bosom. Her voice haunted him like music out of heaven. He was a dreamer, a Lotos-eater, whose brain seemed laden with all the perfumes of the East. Ready was he to drain the purple wine of life even to the dregs, and to find death in the cup if the Fates so willed it.And Fulviac?War had held a poniard at his throat, turning him to the truth with the threat of steel. Grim and implacable, he stalked the meadows, bending his brows upon the towers of Gambrevault. This girl of the woods was no more a dream to him, but supple love, ardent flesh, blood-red reality. Lean, leering thoughts taunted the lascivious fears within his brain. His moods were silent yet tempestuous. Gambrevault mocked him. Vengeance burnt in his palm like a globe of molten iron.His dogged temper roused his captains to strenuous debate. Fifty thousand men were idle before the place, and the siege dragged like a homily. Their insinuations were strong and strident. The countryside was emptying its broad larder; Malgo and Godamar of the Fens were marching from east and west. Ten thousand men could leaguer Gambrevault. It behoved Fulviac to pluck up his spears and march on Lauretia, proud city of the King.For a season Fulviac was stubborn as Gambrevault itself. His yellow eyes glittered, and he tossed back his lion's mane from off his forehead."Till the place is ours," so ran his dogma, "I stir never a foot. See to it, sirs, we will put these skulkers to the sword."His captains were strenuous in retort."You mar the cause," said Sforza over the council-board, thin-lipped and subtle."Give me ten thousand men," quoth Colgran the free-lance, "by my bones I will take the place and bring the Maid out scatheless."Prosper the Priest put in his plea."You are our torch," he said, "our beacon. Malgo is on the march; Godamar has massed behind the creeks of Thorney Isle. The country waits for you. Leave Gambrevault to Colgran."And again the free-lance made his oath."Give me ten thousand men," quoth he, "by Peter's blood the place shall tumble in a month."That same evening, as a last justification of his stubborn will, Fulviac sent forward a trumpeter under a white flag to parley with the besieged. The herald's company drew to the walls as the sun sank over the sea, setting the black towers in a splendour as of fire. Fulviac's troops were under arms in the meadows, their pikes glittering with sinister meaning into the purple of the coming night. The Lord of Gambrevault, in full harness, met the white flag, his knights round him, a crescent of steel.Fulviac's trumpeter proclaimed his terms. They were insolently simple, surrender absolute with the mere blessings of life and limb, a dungeon for the lords, a proffer of traitorous service to the men. Yeoland the Saint was to be sent forth scatheless. The castle was to be garrisoned and held by the rebels.Flavian laughed at the bluff insolence of the demand."Ha, sirs," he said, "we are the King's men here. Get you gone before my gate. Say to yonder traitor in the meadows, 'We quail not before scullions and at the frowns of cooks.'"Thus, under the red canopy of the warring west, ended the parley at the gate of Gambrevault. The white flag tripped back behind the trenches; the castle trumpets blew a fanfare to grace its flight. Yeoland the Saint heard it, and her lamp of hope burnt dim.That night Fulviac paced the meadows, his eyes scanning the black mass upon the cliffs. Dark as was his humour, reason ruled him at the climax, powerful to extort the truth. Primæval instincts were strong in him, yet he put them back that hour out of his heart. Robust and vigorous, he trampled passion under foot. At dawn his orders went forth to the captains and the council."Colgran shall command. Ten thousand men shall serve him. Let him storm the place, grant no terms, spare Yeoland the Maid alone. Let him butcher the garrison, and let the ruin rot. When all have been put to the sword, let him march and join me before the city of Lauretia."XXXIIISo Fulviac with his host passed northwards from Gambrevault, leaving Colgran and his ten thousand to guard the trenches. Flavian saw the black columns curl away over the green slopes, their pikes glittering against the blue fringe of the horizon, their banners blowing to the breeze. The red pavilion stood no longer in the meadows; the man on the black horse rode no more behind the barricades. Ominous was the marching of the host over the hills, a prophecy of many battles before the King's men could succour Gambrevault.The gate-house stood in ruins, a shattered pile of masonry barriering the causeway from the meadows. The outer curtain wall on the north had been pierced between two towers; the stone-work crumbled fast, opening a gradual breach to the rebel sea dammed behind the trenches. The battlements were rent and ruinous; many a turret gaped and tottered. Still the bombards thundered, hurling their salvos of shot against the place, belching flame even through the night, while the arms of the great slings toiled like giant hands in the dark.As for the girl Yeoland, her joy was dim and flickering, mocked with constant prophecies of woe. The sounds of the siege haunted her perpetually. Shafts wailed and whistled, bombards roared, the walls reeked and cracked. A corner in the garden under the yew walk was the single nook left her open to the blue hope of heaven. The clamour of the leaguer woke a hundred echoes in her heart. Above all shone the man's strong face and passionate eyes; above the moon, the stars, the blue vault of day, death spread his sable wings, a cloud of gloom.On the sixteenth day of the siege, Colgran made an assault in force upon the ruins of the gate-house. Despite its chaotic state, Flavian clung to the ruin, and held the stormers at bay. Thrice Colgran's rebels advanced to the attack, and came hand-to-hand with the defenders over the crumbling piles of stone; thrice they were beaten back and driven to retreat upon their trenches. Colgran renounced the gate-house as impregnable; the slings and bombards were turned upon the outer wall to widen the breach already made therein.It was plain enough even to Yeoland that the siege was bearing slowly yet surely against Gambrevault. More than half a month had passed, and still no succouring spears shone upon the hills, no sail upon the sea. Poor food and summer heat, the crowding of the garrison had opened a gate to fever and disease. She saw the stern and moody faces of the soldiery, their loyalty that took fresh and hectic fire from the courage of their lord. She saw the broken walls and ruined battlements, and heard the rebels shouting in their trenches.As the man's peril grew more real and significant, a fear more vehement entered into her heart. Sleep left her; she began to look white and weary, with dark shadows under her eyes. The man's warm youth accused her like a tree that should soon be smitten by the axe. His fine heroism was a veritable scourge, making the future full of discords, a charnel-house glimmering with bleached bones. She began to know how closely their lives were mingled, even as wine in a cup of gold. He was lord and husband to her in the spirit. Her red heart quaked for him like the shivering petals of an autumn rose.On the day of the assault upon the gate-house, he came back to her wounded in the arm and shoulder. He was faint, but brave and even merry. She would suffer none to come in to him, as he sat in a carved chair in her room that opened on the garden. The sight of blood when harness and gamboison were taken from the caked wounds quickened her fears into a fever of self-torture. She bathed the wounds and dressed them with fragrant oil and linen. Twilight filled the room, and it was not till her tears fell upon his hand that the man found that she was weeping.He drew her towards him with sudden great tenderness, as she knelt and looked into his face. Her eyes swam with tears, her lips quivered."My life, why do you weep?"She started away from him with sudden strength, and stood by the window, trembling."Give me my armour and my banner," she said; "let me ride to the trenches and barter terms by my surrender. Sire, let me go, let me go."He looked at her sadly under his brows, with forehead wrinkled."You would leave me?""Ah yes, to save you from the sword. Is it easy for me to ask you this?""You crave more than I can give.""No, no.""I cannot surrender you.""And for love, you would doom all Gambrevault!""Ah!" he cried, "I am wounded, and you would wound me the more."She gave a whimper of pain, ran to him, and crept into his arms. As her sobs shook her, he bent many times and kissed her hair."Weep not for me," he said; "even when the end comes no harm can touch you. I cannot parley with these wolves; there are women and children under my roof; should I open my gates to a savage mob?""This is your doom," she said to him."I take it, child, from heaven."She wept no more, for a richer heroism took fire within her heart. She knelt to the man while he held her face betwixt his hands, bent over her, and kissed her forehead."Courage, courage, what is death!""My God, to lose you.""There, am I not flesh and blood? God knows, I would rather have death than give you to these vultures."She knelt before him with her face transfigured."And death, death can touch me also."
[image]"THE SWORD SLASHED NORD'S GORGET, BURIED ITS BLADE IN THE BULL-LIKE NECK."
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"THE SWORD SLASHED NORD'S GORGET, BURIED ITS BLADE IN THE BULL-LIKE NECK."
The man's hand snatched at the girl's bridle; he dragged her and her horse out of the press. She had a confused vision of carnage, of stabbing swords and trampling hoofs. She saw her banner-bearer fall forward on his horse's neck, thrust through with a sword, while Modred seized the banner staff from his impotent hand. The rebel column had deliquesced and vanished. In its stead she was girdled by grim and exultant horsemen whose swords flashed in the sun.
Trumpets blew the retreat. A thousand glittering riders swarmed about her and the knight with the red plume. She had his words confusedly in her ears, strong, passionate words, heroic, yet utterly tender. They rode uphill together amid the clangour of his men. In a minute they had won the ridge, and were swinging down the further slope with their faces towards Gambrevault.
XXX
Paris and Helen have been dead centuries, yet in that universal world of the mind they still live, young and glorious as when the Grecian galleys ploughed foam through the blue Ægean. The world loves a lover. Troilus stages our own emotions for us in godlier wise than we poor realists can hope to do. We owe an eternal gratitude to those who have stood for love in history. All men might well desire to play the Tristan to Iseult of the Irish eyes. We forget Gemma Donati, and follow with Dante's wistful idealism the gleaming figure of Beatrice in Paradise.
Now the Lord Flavian was one of those happy persons who seem to stumble into heaven either by prodigious instinct or remarkable good-fortune. God gives to many men gold; to others intellect; to some truth; to few, a human echo, a harmony in the spirit, the right woman in the world. Many of us are such unstable folk that we vibrate vastly to a beautiful face and hail heaven in a pair of violet eyes. The chance is that such a business turns out miserably. It is a wise rule to search the world through to find your Beatrice, or bide celibate to the end. Happy is the man whose instinctive choice is ratified by all the wisest poetry of heaven. Happy is he who finds a ruby as he rakes the ephemeral flower-gardens of life, a gem eternally bright and beautiful, durable, unchanging, flashing light ever into the soul. It is given to few to love wisely, to love utterly, to love till death.
That summer day Flavian saw life at its zenith, as he rode through the woods on the way to Gambrevault. The horse had dropped to a trot, and the man had taken off his helmet and hung it at his saddle-bow. He was still red from the mêlée; his eyes were bright and triumphant. The girl at his side looked at him half-timidly, a tremor upon her lip, her glances clouded. The terrific action of the last hour still seemed to weigh upon her senses, and she seemed fated to be the sport of contending sentiments. No sooner had she struggled to some level of saintliness than love rushed in with burning wings, and lo, all the tinsel of her religion fell away, and she was a mere Eve, a child of Nature.
Flavian watched her with the tenderness of a strong man, who is ready to give his life for the woman he serves. Love seemed to rise from her and play upon him like perfume from a bowl of violets; her eyes transfigured him, and he longed to touch her hair.
"At last."
"Lord?"
"Treat me as a man, I hate that epithet."
"You are a great signor."
"What are titles, testaments, etiquettes to us! I am only great so long as you trust and honour me."
"Your power might appear precarious."
"As you will."
"Yet war is loose!"
He looked round upon the sea of men that rolled on every hand.
"And war at its worst. I have seen enough in three days to make me loathe your partisans and their principles."
"Perhaps."
"It is a wicked and inhuman business."
"What are you going to do with me?" she said.
"Remove you from the hands of butchers and offal-mongers; put you like a pearl in a casket in my own castle of Gambrevault."
"You incur the greater peril."
"Have I not told you that no woman loves a coward?"
She was silent awhile, with her eyes wistful and melancholy, as though some spiritual conflict were passing in her mind. Bitterness escaped in the man's words for all his tenderness and chivalry. He needed an answer. Anon she capitulated and appeared to surrender herself absolutely to circumstance. She began to tell Flavian of her adoption by Fulviac, of her vision in the ruined chapel, of the part assigned to her as a woman ordained by heaven. He heard her in silence, finding quaint pleasure in listening to her voice, having never heard her talk at such length before. Her voice's modulations, its pathos, its many tones, were more subtle to him than any music, and seemed to steep in oblivion the grim realities of the last few days. He watched the play of thought upon her face, sun and shadow, calm and unrest. He began to comprehend the discords he had flung into her life; she was no longer a riddle to him; her confessions portrayed her soul in warm and delicate colouring--colouring pathetic and heroically pure. He had a glorious sense of joy in an instinctive conviction that this girl was worthy of all the highest chivalry a man's heart can conceive of.
Though he had a strong suspicion that he could humanise her Madonna for her, he refrained from argument, refrained from dilating on the iniquities her so-called crusades had already perpetrated. Moreover, the girl had opened her heart to him with a delicious and innocent ingenuousness. He felt that the hour had blessed him sufficiently; that personalities would be gross and impertinent in the light of that sympathy that seemed suddenly to have enveloped them like a golden cloud. The girl appeared to have surrendered herself spiritually into his keeping, not sorry in measure that a strong destiny had decided her doubts for her. They were to let political considerations and the ephemeral turmoils of the times sink under their feet. It was sufficient for them to be but a man and a woman, to forget the forbidden fruit, and the serpent and his lore. God walked the world; they were not ashamed to hear His voice.
So they came with their glittering horde of horsemen to Gambrevault, and rode over the green downs with towers beckoning from the blue. The Gilderoy forces were still miles away, and could not have threatened the retreat on Gambrevault had they been wise as to the event. Yeoland rode close at Flavian's side. He touched her hand, looked in her eyes, saw the colour stream to her cheeks, knew that she no longer was his enemy.
"Yonder stands Gambrevault," were his words; "its walls shall bulwark you against the world. Trust me and my eternal faith to you. I shall see God more clearly for looking in your eyes."
He lodged her in a chamber in the keep, a room that had been his mother's and still held the furniture, books, and music she had used. Its window looked out on the castle garden, and over the double line of walls to the meadows and woods beyond. Maud, the castellan's wife, was bidden to wait upon her. Flavian gave her the keys of his mother's chests, where silks, samites, sarcenets galore, lace and all manner of golden fripperies, were stored. The ewers of the room were of silver, its hangings of violet cloth, its bed inlaid with ivory and hung with purple velvet. It had a shelf full of beautifully illumined books, a prayer-desk and a small altar, a harp, a lute, an embroidery frame, and numberless curios. Thus by the might of the sword Yeoland was installed in the great castle of Gambrevault.
So Duessa and Balthasar were dead. The girl had told Flavian what had passed in Sforza's palace; the news shocked him more than he would have dreamed. The dead wound us with their unapproachableness and the mute pathos of their pale, imagined faces. They are like our own sins that stare at us from the night sky, irrevocable and beyond us for ever. Flavian ordered tapers to be burnt and masses said in the castle chapel for the souls of these two unfortunates. He himself spent more than an hour in silent prayer before he confessed, received penance and absolution.
That evening, at Flavian's prayer, Yeoland came down to meet him in the castle garden, with the castellan's two girls to serve her as maids of honour. She had put aside her armour, and was clad in a jacket of violet cloth, fitting close to the figure, and a skirt of light blue silk. In the old yew walk, stately and solemn, amid the bright parterres and stone urns gushing colour, the two children slipped away and left Yeoland and the man alone.
She seemed to have lost much of her restraint, much of her independence, of her reserve, in a few short hours. Her mood inclined towards silence and a certain delightful solemnity such as a lover loves. Her eyes met the man's with a rare trust; her hands went into his with all the ideal faith he had forecast in his dreams.
They stood together under the yews, full of youth and innocent joy of soul, timid, happily sad, content to be mere children. Flavian touched her hands as he would have touched a lily. She seemed too wonderful, too pure, too transcendent to be fingered. A supreme, a godly timidity possessed him; he had such love in his heart as only the strong and the pure can know, such love as makes a man a saint unto himself, a being wrapped round with the rarest chivalry of heaven.
Their words were very simple and infrequent.
"I have been thinking," said the girl.
"Yes?"
"How war seems ever in the world."
"How else should I have won you?"
She sighed and looked up over his shoulder at the sunlight glimmering gold through the yews.
"I have been thinking how I bring you infinite peril. They will not lose me easily. What if I bring you to ruin?"
"I take everything to myself."
"They believe me a saint."
"And I!"
"My conscience will reproach me, but now----"
"Well?"
"I am too happy to remember."
Their eyes met and flashed all the unutterable truths of the soul. Flavian kissed her hand.
"Forget it all," he said, "save the words I spoke to you over that forest grave. Whatever doom may come upon me, though death frown, I care not; all the sky is at sunset, all the world is full of song. I could meet God to-morrow with a smile, since you have shown me all your heart."
From a little stone pavilion hidden by laurels the voices of flutes and viols swirled out upon the air. The west grew faint, and twilight increased; night kissed and closed the azure eyes of the day. Under the yew boughs, Flavian and Yeoland walked hand in hand; the music spoke for them; the night made their faces pale and spiritual under the trees. They said little; a tremor of the fingers, a glance, a sigh were enough. When the west had faded, and the last primrose streak was gone, Flavian kissed the girl's lips and sent her back to the two children, who were curled on a bench by the laurels, listening sleepily to the music of flute and viol.
The man's soul was too scintillant and joyous to shun the stars. He passed up on to the battlements, and listened to the long surge of the summer sea.
And as he paced the battlements that night, he saw red, impish specks of flame start out against the black background of the night. They were the rebel watchfires burning on the hills, sinister eyes, red with the distant prophecy of war.
XXXI
It would be difficult to describe the thundercloud of thought that came down upon Fulviac's face when news was brought him of the capture of the girl Yeoland and the decimation of the vanguard from Geraint. There was something even Satanic upon his face for the moment. He was not a pleasant person when roused, and roused he was that day like any ogre. His tongue ran through the whole gamut of blasphemy before he recovered a finer dignity and relapsed into a grim reserve. His men spoke to him with great suavity. He had decreed that Nord of the Hammer should be hanged for negligence, but the decree was unnecessary, since Flavian's sword had already settled the matter.
The Gilderoy forces therefore turned northwards, with their great baggage and siege train, and in due course came upon the Gerainters bivouacking on the ridge where the battle had taken place. The green slopes were specked with dark motionless figures, dead horses, and the wreckage of war. Men were burying the dead upon the battlefield. Yeoland's guard had been slaughtered almost to a man; and the whole affair had damped very considerably the ardour of certain of the less trustworthy levies.
But Fulviac was not the man to sit and snivel over a defeat; he knew well enough that he had good men behind him, tough fighting stuff, fired by fanaticism and a long sense of wrong. He harangued his whole force, black-guarded with his lion's roar those concerned in the march from Geraint, treating them to such a scourging with words that they snarled and clamoured to be led on at once to prove their mettle. Their leaders had been at fault, nor did Fulviac keep their spirits cooling in the wind. The power of his own personality was great, and he had twenty thousand men at his back, who knew that to fail meant death and torture. They had received a check from the Lord of Gambrevault; it was absolutely essential to the cause that they should wipe out the defeat, recapture their Saint and sacred banner, crush Gambrevault once and for ever. To this strenuous tune they marched on towards the sea, and that night lit their fires on the hills that ringed Gambrevault on the north.
As the sun climbed up and spread a curtain of gold over down and upland, those on the walls of Gambrevault saw steel glinting on the hills, the pikes and casques of Fulviac's horde. Yeoland saw them from her casement, as she stood and combed her hair. Flavian, watching with certain knights on the keep, confronted the event with a merry smile. The shimmering line of silver on the hills had broadened to a darker band, splashed lavishly with steel. The rebel host was coming on in a half moon, with each horn to the sea. Its centre held towards the ford and the dismantled Gambrevault mills, positions strongly held on the southern bank by a redoubt and stockaded trenches.
The criticisms delivered by those watching from the keep were various and forcible.
"By Jeremy--a rare mob!"
"Let them grip at Gambrevault," said Modred, "and they shall clutch at a cactus. Look at that long baggage train in the rear. Damn them, I guess they have the siege train from Gilderoy."
"We shall sweat a trifle."
Quoth Tristram, "They have little time to spare for a leaguer, rotting in trenches, if they are to make the country rise. They'll not leaguer us."
Flavian watched the advance under his hand.
"Fortunately or unfortunately, gentlemen," he said, "we have taken their Saint, their oracle, and their sacred banner. I imagine they will do their best to dispossess us. It is time we made for the meadows; I reckon we shall have hot work to-day."
When leaving the keep, Flavian crossed the castle garden, and caught under the tunnel of yews the flutter of a woman's gown. Sunlight glimmered through and wove a shimmering network in the air. Green and violet swept the stones; a white face shone in the shadows.
He went to her and kissed her hands. His eyes were brave and joyous as she looked into them, and there was no shadow of fear upon his face. Trumpets were blowing in the meadows, piercing the confused hum of men running to arms.
"War, ever war!"
"You are sad?"
"Fulviac has the whole kingdom at his back."
"If he led the world, I should not waver."
"With me it is different; I am a woman and you know my heart."
"So well that I seek to know nothing else in the world, I desire no greater wisdom than my love. You are with me, and my heart sings. No harm can come to you whatever doom may fall on Gambrevault."
"Think you my thoughts are all of my own safety?"
"Ah, golden one, never fear for me. What is life? a little joy, a little pain, and then eternity. I would rather have an hour's glory in the sun than fifty years of grey monotony. It is something to fight, and even to die, for the love of a woman. There is no shadow over my soul."
There was a great heroism in his voice, and her eyes caught the light from his. She touched his cuirass with her slim white fingers.
"God keep you!"
"Ha, I do not smell of earth to-day, nor dream of requiems."
"No, you will come back to me."
"Give me your scarf."
She took the green silk and knotted it about his arm; a rich colour shone in her cheeks, her eyes were warm and wonderfully luminous.
"God keep you!"
So he kissed her lips and left her.
The rebel horde had rolled down in their thousands from the hills. Flavian saw their black masses moving from the woods, as he rode down from the great gate. It was evident to him that Fulviac would try and force the ford and win his way to the open meadows beyond. The river ran fast with a deep but narrow channel, and there was only one other ford some nine miles upstream. His own men were under arms in the meadows. With his knights round him, Flavian rode down to the redoubt and trenches by the river-bank, packed as they already were with archers and men-at-arms. He was loudly cheered as he reined in and scanned the rebel columns moving over the downs.
Fulviac had ridden forward with a company of spears to reconnoitre. He saw the captured banner of The Maid hoisted derisively on Gambrevault keep; he saw the redoubt and the stockades covering the ford; the foot massed in the meadows; Flavian's mounted men-at-arms drawn up under the castle walls. Sforza and several captains of note were with Fulviac. The man was in a grim mood, a slashing Titanic humour. The passage of the river was to be forced, Flavian's men engaged in the meadows. He would drive them into Gambrevault before nightfall. Then they would cast their leaguer, bring up the siege train taken from Gilderoy, and batter at Gambrevault till they could storm the place.
Early in the day Fulviac detached a body of two thousand men under Colgran, a noted free-lance, to march upstream, cross by the upper ford, and threaten Flavian on the flank. The fighting began at ten of the clock, when Fulviac's bowmen scattered along the river and opened fire upon the stockades. Flavian's archers and arbalisters responded. A body of five thousand rebels advanced with great mantlets upon wheels to the northern bank and entrenched themselves there. A second body, with waggons laden with timber and several flat-bottomed boats, poured down to the river a mile higher up, and began to throw a rough, raft-like bridge across the stream. At half-past ten masses of men-at-arms splashed through the water at the ford, under cover of a hot fire from the archers lining the bank, and began an assault upon the redoubt and the stockades.
By twelve o'clock the bridge higher up the stream had been completed, and a glittering line of pikes poured across, to be met on the southern bank by Geoffrey Longsword and a body of men-at-arms. It was hand to hand, and hot and strenuous as could be. Men grappled, stabbed, hacked, bellowed like a herd of bulls. Flavian had reinforced the defenders of the ford, who still held Fulviac at bay, despite a heavy archery fire and the almost continuous assaults poured against the stockades. Yet by one o'clock Fulviac's levies had forced the passage of the bridge and gained footing on the southern bank. Longsword's men, outnumbered and repulsed, were falling back before the black masses of foot that now poured into the meadows.
The situation was critical enough, as Flavian had long seen, as he galloped hotly from point to point. Fulviac's rebels had shown more valour than he had ever prophesied. Flavian packed all his remaining foot into the trenches, and putting himself at the head of his knights and mounted men-at-arms, rode down to charge the troops who had crossed by the pontoons. Here chivalry availed him to the full. By a succession of tremendous rushes, he drove the rebels back into the river, did much merciless slaughter, cut the ropes that held the bridge to the southern bank, so that the whole structure veered downstream. The peril seemed past, when he was startled by the cry that the redoubt had been carried, and that Fulviac held the ford.
Looking south, he saw the truth with his own eyes. His troops were falling back in disorder upon Gambrevault, followed by an ever-growing mass, that swarmed exultantly into the meadows. The last and successful assault had been led by Fulviac in person. Flavian had to grip the truth. The rebels outnumbered him by more than five to one; and he had underrated their discipline and fighting spirit. He was wiser before the sun went down.
"Come, gentlemen, we shall beat them yet."
"Shall we charge them, sire?"
"Blow bugles, follow me, sirs; I am in no mood for defeat."
That afternoon there was grim work in the Gambrevault meadows. Five times Flavian charged Fulviac's columns, hurling them back towards the river, only to be repulsed in turn by the fresh masses that poured over by the ford. He made much slaughter, lost many good men in the mad, whirling mêlées. Desperate heroism inspired on either hand. Once he stood in great peril of his own life, having been unhorsed and surrounded by a mob of rebel pikes. He was saved by the devotion and heroism of Modred and his household knights. With the chivalry of a Galahad, he did all that a man could to keep the field. Colgran's flanking column appeared over the downs, and Fulviac had his whole host on the southern bank of the river. The masses advanced like one man, pennons flying, trumpets clanging. Flavian would have charged again, but for the vehement dissuasion of certain of his elder knights. He contented himself with covering the retreat of his foot, while the great gate of Gambrevault opened its black maw to take them in. Many of his mercenaries had deserted to the rebels. So stubborn and bloody had been the day, that he had lost close upon half his force by death and desertion; no quarter had been given on either side. He heard the surging shouts of exultation from the meadows, as he rode sullen and wearied into Gambrevault. The great gates thundered to, the portcullises rattled down. Fulviac had his man shut up in Gambrevault.
XXXII
The leaguer was drawn that night about the towers of Gambrevault, and the castle stood clasped betwixt the watch-fires and the sea. Fulviac's rebels, toiling from evening until dawn, banked and staked a rampart to close the headland. From the north alone could Gambrevault be approached, precipices plunging south, east, and west to front the sea. Athwart the grassy isthmus Fulviac drew his works, running from cliff to cliff, brown earth-banks bristling with timber. Mortars, bombards, basilics, and great catapults had been brought from Gilderoy to batter the walls. Redoubts, covered by strong mantlets, were established in the meadows. Several small war galleys guarded the castle on the side of the sea.
Nor was this labour permitted to pass unrebuked before the leaguered folk upon the headland. There were sallies, assaults, bloody tussles in the trenches, skirmishes upon the causeway. Yet these fiercenesses brought no flattering boon to the besieged. The knights and men-at-arms were masterful enough with an open field to serve them, but behind their barricades Fulviac's rebels held the advantage. The command went forth from Modred the seneschal that there were to be no more sorties delivered against the trenches.
On the second day of the leaguer the cannonade began. Bombard and mortar belched flame and smoke; the huge catapults strove with their gigantic arms; arbalisters wound their windlasses behind the ramparts. Shot screamed and hurtled, crashed and thundered against the walls, bringing down mortar and masonry in rattling showers. The battlements of Gambrevault spouted flame; archers plied their bows in bartisan and turret. A shroud of dust and smoke swirled about the place, the chaotic clamour of the siege sending the gulls wheeling and wailing from the cliffs.
On the very second day Flavian was brought low by a shot hurling a fragment of masonry upon his thigh and bruising it to the bone. Stiff and faint, he was laid abed in his own state room, unable to stir for the twinging tendons, loth enough to lie idle. Modred, bluff, lusty smiter, took the command from him, and walked the walls. Hourly he came in to his lord's chamber to tell of the cannonade and the state of the castle. Even Flavian from his cushions could see that the man's black face looked grim and sinister.
"How do they vex us?" was his question, as the thunder came to them from the meadows.
Modred clinked his heels against the wainscotting of the window seat, and strove to sweeten his looks. He was not a man given to blandishing the truth.
"Their damned bombards are too heavy for us. We are dumb."
"Impossible!"
"Sire, we shall have to hold Gambrevault by the sword."
The man on the bed started up on his elbow, only to fall back again with a spasmodic twitching of the forehead.
"And our bombards?" he asked.
"Are toppled off their trunnions."
"Ha!"
"For the rest, sire, I have ordered our men to keep cover. The bowmen shoot passably. The outer battlements are swept."
"And the walls?"
Modred grimaced and stroked his beard.
"There are cracks in the gate-house," quoth he, "that I could lay my fist in."
What goodlier fortune for a man than to lie bruised when Love bears to him the bowl of dreams! What softer balm than the touch of a woman's hand! What more subtle music than her voice! The girl Yeoland had betrayed a new wilfulness to the world, in that she now claimed as her guerdon the care of the man's heart. She was in and about his room, a shadow moving in the sunlight, a shaft of youth, supple and very tender. Her eyes had a rarer lustre, her face more of the dawn tint of the rose. Love stirred within her soul like the sound of angels psaltering on the golden battlements of heaven.
As she sat often beside him, Flavian won the whole romance from her, gradual as glistening threads of silk drawn from a scarlet purse. She waxed very solemn over her tale, was timid at times, and exceeding sorrowful for all her passion. Some shadowy fear seemed to companion her beside the couch, some wraith prophetic of a tragic end. She loved the man, yet feared her love, even as it had been a sword shimmering above his head. Peril compassed them like an angry sea; she heard the bombards thundering in the meadows.
"Ah, sire," she said to him one morning, as she thrust the flowers she had gathered in the garden into a brazen bowl, "I am heavy at heart. Who shall pity me?"
He turned towards her on his cushions with a smile that was not prophetic of the tomb.
"Do I weary you?"
"Ah no, not that."
"Why then are you sad?"
She held up a white hand in the gloom of the room, her hair falling like a black cloud upon her bosom.
"Listen," she said to him.
"I am not deaf."
"The thunder of war."
"Well, well, my heart, should I fear it?"
"It is I who fear."
"Ah," he said, taking her hand into his bosom, "put such fears far from you. We shall not end this year in dust."
A week passed and the man was on the walls again, bold and ruddy as a youthful Jove. Seven days had gone, swelling with their hours the great concourse in the meadows. Pikes had sprouted on the hills like glistening corn, to roll and merge into the girding barrier of steel. The disloyal south had gathered to Fulviac before Gambrevault like dust in a dry corner in the month of March. A great host teemed betwixt the river and the cliffs. Through all, the rack and thunder of the siege went on, drowning the sea's voice, flinging a storm-cloud over the stubborn walls. In Gambrevault men looked grim, and muttered of succour and the armies of the King.
Yet Flavian was content. He had taken a transcendent spirit into his soul; he lived to music; drank love and chivalry like nectar from the gods. The woman's nearness made each hour a chalice of gold. He possessed her red heart, looked deep into her eyes, put her slim hands into his bosom. Her voice haunted him like music out of heaven. He was a dreamer, a Lotos-eater, whose brain seemed laden with all the perfumes of the East. Ready was he to drain the purple wine of life even to the dregs, and to find death in the cup if the Fates so willed it.
And Fulviac?
War had held a poniard at his throat, turning him to the truth with the threat of steel. Grim and implacable, he stalked the meadows, bending his brows upon the towers of Gambrevault. This girl of the woods was no more a dream to him, but supple love, ardent flesh, blood-red reality. Lean, leering thoughts taunted the lascivious fears within his brain. His moods were silent yet tempestuous. Gambrevault mocked him. Vengeance burnt in his palm like a globe of molten iron.
His dogged temper roused his captains to strenuous debate. Fifty thousand men were idle before the place, and the siege dragged like a homily. Their insinuations were strong and strident. The countryside was emptying its broad larder; Malgo and Godamar of the Fens were marching from east and west. Ten thousand men could leaguer Gambrevault. It behoved Fulviac to pluck up his spears and march on Lauretia, proud city of the King.
For a season Fulviac was stubborn as Gambrevault itself. His yellow eyes glittered, and he tossed back his lion's mane from off his forehead.
"Till the place is ours," so ran his dogma, "I stir never a foot. See to it, sirs, we will put these skulkers to the sword."
His captains were strenuous in retort.
"You mar the cause," said Sforza over the council-board, thin-lipped and subtle.
"Give me ten thousand men," quoth Colgran the free-lance, "by my bones I will take the place and bring the Maid out scatheless."
Prosper the Priest put in his plea.
"You are our torch," he said, "our beacon. Malgo is on the march; Godamar has massed behind the creeks of Thorney Isle. The country waits for you. Leave Gambrevault to Colgran."
And again the free-lance made his oath.
"Give me ten thousand men," quoth he, "by Peter's blood the place shall tumble in a month."
That same evening, as a last justification of his stubborn will, Fulviac sent forward a trumpeter under a white flag to parley with the besieged. The herald's company drew to the walls as the sun sank over the sea, setting the black towers in a splendour as of fire. Fulviac's troops were under arms in the meadows, their pikes glittering with sinister meaning into the purple of the coming night. The Lord of Gambrevault, in full harness, met the white flag, his knights round him, a crescent of steel.
Fulviac's trumpeter proclaimed his terms. They were insolently simple, surrender absolute with the mere blessings of life and limb, a dungeon for the lords, a proffer of traitorous service to the men. Yeoland the Saint was to be sent forth scatheless. The castle was to be garrisoned and held by the rebels.
Flavian laughed at the bluff insolence of the demand.
"Ha, sirs," he said, "we are the King's men here. Get you gone before my gate. Say to yonder traitor in the meadows, 'We quail not before scullions and at the frowns of cooks.'"
Thus, under the red canopy of the warring west, ended the parley at the gate of Gambrevault. The white flag tripped back behind the trenches; the castle trumpets blew a fanfare to grace its flight. Yeoland the Saint heard it, and her lamp of hope burnt dim.
That night Fulviac paced the meadows, his eyes scanning the black mass upon the cliffs. Dark as was his humour, reason ruled him at the climax, powerful to extort the truth. Primæval instincts were strong in him, yet he put them back that hour out of his heart. Robust and vigorous, he trampled passion under foot. At dawn his orders went forth to the captains and the council.
"Colgran shall command. Ten thousand men shall serve him. Let him storm the place, grant no terms, spare Yeoland the Maid alone. Let him butcher the garrison, and let the ruin rot. When all have been put to the sword, let him march and join me before the city of Lauretia."
XXXIII
So Fulviac with his host passed northwards from Gambrevault, leaving Colgran and his ten thousand to guard the trenches. Flavian saw the black columns curl away over the green slopes, their pikes glittering against the blue fringe of the horizon, their banners blowing to the breeze. The red pavilion stood no longer in the meadows; the man on the black horse rode no more behind the barricades. Ominous was the marching of the host over the hills, a prophecy of many battles before the King's men could succour Gambrevault.
The gate-house stood in ruins, a shattered pile of masonry barriering the causeway from the meadows. The outer curtain wall on the north had been pierced between two towers; the stone-work crumbled fast, opening a gradual breach to the rebel sea dammed behind the trenches. The battlements were rent and ruinous; many a turret gaped and tottered. Still the bombards thundered, hurling their salvos of shot against the place, belching flame even through the night, while the arms of the great slings toiled like giant hands in the dark.
As for the girl Yeoland, her joy was dim and flickering, mocked with constant prophecies of woe. The sounds of the siege haunted her perpetually. Shafts wailed and whistled, bombards roared, the walls reeked and cracked. A corner in the garden under the yew walk was the single nook left her open to the blue hope of heaven. The clamour of the leaguer woke a hundred echoes in her heart. Above all shone the man's strong face and passionate eyes; above the moon, the stars, the blue vault of day, death spread his sable wings, a cloud of gloom.
On the sixteenth day of the siege, Colgran made an assault in force upon the ruins of the gate-house. Despite its chaotic state, Flavian clung to the ruin, and held the stormers at bay. Thrice Colgran's rebels advanced to the attack, and came hand-to-hand with the defenders over the crumbling piles of stone; thrice they were beaten back and driven to retreat upon their trenches. Colgran renounced the gate-house as impregnable; the slings and bombards were turned upon the outer wall to widen the breach already made therein.
It was plain enough even to Yeoland that the siege was bearing slowly yet surely against Gambrevault. More than half a month had passed, and still no succouring spears shone upon the hills, no sail upon the sea. Poor food and summer heat, the crowding of the garrison had opened a gate to fever and disease. She saw the stern and moody faces of the soldiery, their loyalty that took fresh and hectic fire from the courage of their lord. She saw the broken walls and ruined battlements, and heard the rebels shouting in their trenches.
As the man's peril grew more real and significant, a fear more vehement entered into her heart. Sleep left her; she began to look white and weary, with dark shadows under her eyes. The man's warm youth accused her like a tree that should soon be smitten by the axe. His fine heroism was a veritable scourge, making the future full of discords, a charnel-house glimmering with bleached bones. She began to know how closely their lives were mingled, even as wine in a cup of gold. He was lord and husband to her in the spirit. Her red heart quaked for him like the shivering petals of an autumn rose.
On the day of the assault upon the gate-house, he came back to her wounded in the arm and shoulder. He was faint, but brave and even merry. She would suffer none to come in to him, as he sat in a carved chair in her room that opened on the garden. The sight of blood when harness and gamboison were taken from the caked wounds quickened her fears into a fever of self-torture. She bathed the wounds and dressed them with fragrant oil and linen. Twilight filled the room, and it was not till her tears fell upon his hand that the man found that she was weeping.
He drew her towards him with sudden great tenderness, as she knelt and looked into his face. Her eyes swam with tears, her lips quivered.
"My life, why do you weep?"
She started away from him with sudden strength, and stood by the window, trembling.
"Give me my armour and my banner," she said; "let me ride to the trenches and barter terms by my surrender. Sire, let me go, let me go."
He looked at her sadly under his brows, with forehead wrinkled.
"You would leave me?"
"Ah yes, to save you from the sword. Is it easy for me to ask you this?"
"You crave more than I can give."
"No, no."
"I cannot surrender you."
"And for love, you would doom all Gambrevault!"
"Ah!" he cried, "I am wounded, and you would wound me the more."
She gave a whimper of pain, ran to him, and crept into his arms. As her sobs shook her, he bent many times and kissed her hair.
"Weep not for me," he said; "even when the end comes no harm can touch you. I cannot parley with these wolves; there are women and children under my roof; should I open my gates to a savage mob?"
"This is your doom," she said to him.
"I take it, child, from heaven."
She wept no more, for a richer heroism took fire within her heart. She knelt to the man while he held her face betwixt his hands, bent over her, and kissed her forehead.
"Courage, courage, what is death!"
"My God, to lose you."
"There, am I not flesh and blood? God knows, I would rather have death than give you to these vultures."
She knelt before him with her face transfigured.
"And death, death can touch me also."