Chapter II: Part I: I (2)

"As you will, messire. You are an outlaw, a leader of fifty vagabonds, a man with ideals as to the establishing of justice. You are going to subvert the country. Very good. I have learnt my lesson. But how is all this going to help me out of the wood?"

Fulviac took his sword, and balanced it upon his wrist. The red light from the fire flashed on the swaying steel.

"Our hopes are more near of kin, madame, than you imagine."

"Well?"

"Flavian of Gambrevault's raiders burnt your home, slew your father, exterminated your brethren. This happened but a day ago. You do not love this Flavian of Gambrevault."

Her whole figure stiffened spasmodically as at the prick of a sword. Her eyes, with widely open pupils, flashed up to Fulviac's face. She questioned him through her set teeth with a passionate whisper of desire.

"How do you know this?"

His face mellowed; the arm bearing the sword was steady as the limb of an oak.

"I am wiser in many ways than you imagine," he said. "Look at me, I am no longer young; I hate women; I patronise God. You are a mere child; to you life is dark and perilous as this wilderness of pines. Your trouble is known to me, because it is my business to know of such things. It was my deliberate intent that you should fall into my hands to-day."

The girl was still rigidly astonied. She stared at him mutely with dubious eyes. The man and his philosophy were beyond her for the moment.

"Well?" she said to him with a quaver of entreaty.

"First, you will honour me by saying that I have your trust."

"How may I promise you that?"

"Because I am surety for my own honour."

She smiled in his face despite the occasion.

"You seem very sure of your own soul," she said.

"Madame, it has taken me ten years to come by so admirable a state. Self-knowledge carried to the depths, builds up self-trust. I may take it for granted that you hate the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault?"

"Need you ask that!"

Her eyes echoed the mood of the flame. Fulviac, watching her, saw the strong wrack of wrath twisting her delicate features for the moment into pathetic ugliness.

"You have courage," he said to her.

"Ample, messire."

"Flavian of Gambrevault is the greatest lord in the south."

"I am as wise."

"On that score, this Flavian and Fulviac of the Forest are irreconcilable as day and night."

The man stood his sword pommel upwards in the grass, and ran on.

"Some day I shall slay this same Flavian of Gambrevault. His blood will expiate the blood of these your kinsfolk. Therefore, madame, you will be my debtor."

"That is all?" she asked him with a wistfulness in her voice that was even piteous.

Fulviac looked long into the fire like a man whose thoughts channel under the crust of years. Pity for the girl had gone to the heart under the steel cuirass, a pity that was not the pander of desire. His eyes took a new meaning into their keen depths; he looked to have grown suddenly younger by some years. When he spoke again, his voice had lost its half-mocking and grandiose confidence. It was the voice of a man who strides generous and eager into the breach of fate.

"Listen," he said to her, "I may tell you that your sorrow has armed my manhood. Give me my due; I am more than a mere vagabond. You have been cruelly dealt with; I take your cause upon the cross of my sword."

"You, messire?"

"Even so. I need a good woman, a brave woman. You please me."

"Well?"

"You are a necessity to me."

"And why, messire?"

"For a matter of religion and of justice. Trust to my honour. You shall learn more in due season."

Yeoland, smitten with incredulity, stared at the man in mute surmise. Here was an amazing circumstance--robbery idealised, soul, body, purse, at one bold swoop. In her mystification, she could find nothing to say to the man for the moment, even though he had promised her a refuge.

"You are very sure of yourself," she said at length.

"I am a man."

"Yet you leave me in ignorance."

"Madame, we are to undertake great deeds together, great perils. I could hold up an astonishing future to your eyes, but for the present I keep silence. Rest assured that you shall be accorded such honour as the Virgin herself could desire. Remember that I give you promise of vengeance, and a home."

The girl drew a deep breath, as though taking the spirit of the hour into her bosom.

"If I refuse?" she said to him.

"You cannot refuse," came the level retort.

"And why, messire?"

"Your consent, though pleasant, is not necessary in the matter. I have long ago determined to appropriate you to my ambition."

VI

Fulviac's lair lay deep within the waving wilderness of pines. Above the spires of the forest, a massive barrier of rock thrust up its rugged bartisans into the blue. East and west it stretched a mile or more, concavitated towards the north, and standing like a huge breakwater amid the sea of boughs.

The rocky plateau above was peopled by pines and rowans, thatched also with a wild tangle of briar, whin, and heather. Crannies cleft into it; caves tunnelled its massive bosom; innumerable minarets of stone mingled with the wind-wracked trees. The cliffs rose like the walls of a castle donjon from the forest floor, studded with dwarf trees, bearded with ferns and grass. The plateau was inaccessible from the forest save by a thin rocky track, where the western slope of the cliff tailed off to merge into the trees.

The significance of the place to Fulviac lay in the existence of a cavern or series of caves piercing the cliff, and opening both upon the southern and northern facades of the mass. A wooden causeway led to the southern entry, bridging a small gorge where a stream foamed under the pines. The yawn of the southern opening had been built up with great blocks of stone, and the rough walls pierced by narrow squints, and a gate opening under a rounded arch.

Within, the roof of the main cavern arched abruptly upwards, hollowing a great dome over the smooth floor beneath. This grotesque and rock-ripped hall served as guard-room and dormitory, a very various chamber. Winding ways smote from it into the black bowels of the cliff. The height of the main cavern dwindled as it tunnelled northwards into the rock. A second wall of stone partitioned the guard-room from a second and smaller chamber, lit always by a great lamp pendent from the ceiling, a chamber that served Fulviac as state-room.

From Fulviac's parlour the cavern narrowed to a throat-like gallery that had been expanded by human craft into a third and smaller room. This last rock chamber was wholly more healthy and habitable than the others. Its walls stood squarely from floor to rocky roof, and it was blessed with a wide casement, that stared northwards over a vista of obeisant trees. A postern gave entry to the room from a narrow platform, and from this ledge a stairway cut in the flank of the cliff dwindled into the murk of the forest below.

A more romantic atmosphere had swept into the bleak galleries of the place that winter. Plundered stores were ransacked, bales of merchandise ungirded, caskets and chests pilfered as for the endowing of the chamber of a queen. The northern room in the cliff blossomed into the rich opulence of a lady's bower. Its stone walls were panelled with old oak carvings taken from some ancient manor. There were tapestries of green, gold, and purple; an antique bed with a tester of silver silk, its flanks blazoned with coloured escutcheons. Painted glass, azure, red, and gold, jewelled the casement, showing also Sebastian bound to his martyr's tree. A Jew merchant plundered on the road had surrendered a set of brazen ewers, a lute inlaid with pearl, a carpet woven on the looms of the purple East. There were mirrors of steel about the walls. A carved prayer-desk, an embroidery frame, a crucifix wrought in ivory: Fulviac had consecrated all these to Yeoland, dead Rual's daughter.

A white lily amid a horde of thistles! The girl's life had drawn under the black shadow of the cliff, and into the clanging torrent of these rough men of the sword. It was a wild age and a wild region. Fulviac's rogues were like wolves in a forest lair, keen, bloody, and relentless. There was a rude strain of violence running through the strenuous mood of the place, like the song of Norse rovers, piercing the roar of the sea. Mystery enveloped the girl, war, and the sound of the sword. She fumbled at the riddle of Fate with the trembling fingers of one who unbars a prison gate in the hush of night. It was all strange and fantastic beyond the riot of a dream.

"Madame," Fulviac had said to her when he had hung a key at her girdle, "I have bidden you trust me; remember that I trust you in turn. Take this room as your sanctuary. Lock me out when you will. I prepare, among other things, to perfect your vengeance."

Yeoland suffered him and her necessity. She was shrewdly wise in the conviction that it would be useless to rebel against the man. Though over-masterful and secretive, his purpose appeared benignant in the opulence of its favour. Moreover, the forest was as a vast web holding her within the maze of the unknown.

"I have no alternative," she said to him, "I am in your power. And yet, I believe you are no villain."

"Your charity pleases me. I am a man with a strong purpose."

"For good?"

"Do I not need you?"

"Am I then so powerful a person?"

"You will learn anon."

"You seem something of a mystic," she said to him.

"Madame," he retorted, "trust my discretion. In due season I shall unfold to you certain aspects of life that will kindle your sympathies. I shall appeal to the woman in you. When you are wise you will commend my ambition."

"You speak in riddles."

"Wait. As yet you see through a glass darkly."

From the mountainous north to the warm southern sea, from the wooded west to the eastern fens, the good King ruled, holding many great barons in feudal faith, and casting his fetters of gold over Church and State. Chivalry moved through the world to the clangour of arms and the songs of the troubadour. Lutes sounded on terrace and in garden, fair women bloomed like roses, bathed in a sensuous blaze of romance. Baron made war upon baron; glory and death were crowned together. The painter spread his colours in the halls of the great; the goldsmith and the carver wrought wondrous things to charm the eye. Church bells tolled. Proud abbots carried the sword, and made fine flutter among the women. Innumerable saints crowded the avenues to heaven. It was a fair age and very lovely, full of colour and desire, music and the odour of romance.

And the poor? Their lot hung largely on the humour of an overlord, or the state of a gentleman's stomach. They had their saints' days, their games, their pageants, their miracle plays. They had hovels of clay and wattle; labour in wind and rain; plagues and pestilences in the rotting filth of their city alleys. They marked the great folk go by in silks and cloth of gold, saw the pomp and opulence of that other life, remembered their own rags and their squealing children.

And yet, consider the broad inclinations of the world. To eat, to be warm, to satisfy the flesh, to ease a lust, to drink beer. There was no very vast gulf betwixt the rich man and the poor. The one feasted to music, the other scraped a bone to the dirge of toil. They had like appetites, like satisfactions, and hell is considered to be Utopian in the extreme. The poor man envied the rich; the rich man ruled the poor. Envy, that jingling demagogue, has made riotous profit out of such a stew since the world was young.

Fulviac's cliff was shut out from the ken of man by leagues of woodland, moor, and waste. The great pine forest girded it in its inmost bosom. No wayfarers rode that way; no huntsman ranged so deep; the place had an evil rumour; many whom it had welcomed had never returned. Romancers had sung of it, the lay of Guingamor. Horror ruled black-browed over its pine-cumbered hills, its gloomy depths. Solitude abode there, as over a primaeval sea, and there was no sound save the moan or storm-cry of the wind over its troubled trees.

According to legend lore, Romulus peopled Rome with the offscourings of Italy. Fulviac had emulated the device with the state-craft of a strong conspirator. The forest stood a grand accomplice, abetting him with its myriad sentinels, who gossiped solely with the wind. The venture had been finely conceived, finely edificated. A cliff, a cave, five-score armed men. Not a vast power on the face of it to threaten a system or to shake a throne. Superficialities were fallacious, the surface false and fair as glistening ice. The forest hid more than a company of ruffians banded together to resist tyranny. Enthusiasm, genius, vigour, such torches, like a burning hovel, can fling a city into flame.

As for the girl Yeoland, she was more than mocked by the swift vagaries of life. Two days of mordant realism had erased from her heart the dream visions of childhood. To be declared homeless, kinless, in one day; to be bereft of liberty the next! To what end? She stared round the richly-garnished room into which Fate had thrust her, fingered the pearl-set lute, gazed at her own face in the steel mirrors. She was the same woman, yet how differently circumstanced! Fulviac's mood had not hinted at love, or at any meaner jest. What power could he prophesy to his advantage in the mere fairness of her face? What was the gall of a woman's vengeance to a man who had conceived the downfall of a kingdom?

Her knowledge of psychology was rustic in the extreme, and she had no wit for the unravelling of Fulviac's subtleties. There were certain convictions, however, that abode with her even in her ignorance. She could have taken oath that he was no mere swashbuckler, no captain of outlaws, no mere spoiler of men. Moreover, she believed him to be the possessor of some honour, and a large guerdon of virility. Lastly, pity appealed her as a sentiment not to be discarded. The man, whoever he might be, appeared desirous of putting his broad shoulders betwixt her and the world.

Fulviac grew perspicuous sooner than she could have prophesied. He had a fine, cloud-soaring way with him that seemed to ignore the mole-hills of common circumspection. He had wit enough also to impose his trust on others with a certain graceful confidence that carried bribery in the very generosity of its hardiness.

March was upon them like a spirit of discord, wild, riotous weather, with the wind thundering like storm-waves upon the cliff. The pines were buffeting each other in the forest, and reeling beneath the scourgings of the breeze. Fulviac came to the girl one windy noon, when the caverns were full of the breath of the storm. His manner to her seemed as a significant prelude, heralding the deep utterance of some human epic.

Fulviac took the girl by a winding stair leading from the guard-room--a stair that circled upwards in the thickness of the rock some hundred steps or more, and opened into a basin-shaped pit on the plateau above. Dwarf trees and briars domed the hollow, giving vision of a grey and hurrying sky. The pair climbed a second stair that led to a rock perched like a pulpit on the margin of the southern precipice. The wind swept gusty and tempestuous over the cliff. It tossed back the girl's hood, made her stagger; she would have fallen had not Fulviac gripped her arm.

Below stretched an interminable waste of trees, of bowing pine-tops, and dishevelled boughs. The dull green of the forest merged into the grey of the cloud-strewn sky. On either hand the craggy bulwarks of the cliffs stretched east and west, its natural bartisans and battlements topped by a cornice of mysterious pines. It was a superb scene, rich with a wild liberty, stirred by the wizard chanting of the wind.

Fulviac watched the girl as she stood limned against the grey curtain of the sky. Her hair blew about her white throat and shoulders in sombre streams; her eyes were very bright under their dusky lashes; and the wind had kissed a stronger colour into her cheeks. She was clad in a kirtle of laurel-green cloth, bound about the waist with a girdle of silver. A white kerchief lay like snow over her shoulders and bosom; her green sleeves were slashed and puffed with crimson.

"Wild country," he said, looking in her eyes.

"Wild as the sea."

"You are a romanticist."

She gave a curt laugh.

"After what I have suffered!"

"Romance and sorrow go hand in hand. For the moment my words are more material. You see this cliff?"

She turned to him and stood watching his face.

"This cliff is the core of a kingdom. A granite wedge to hurl feudalism to ruins, to topple tyranny."

She nodded slowly, with a grave self-reservation.

"You have hinted that you are ambitious," she said.

"Ambition would have stormed heaven."

"And your ladder?"

The man made a strong gesture, like one who points a squadron to the charge. His eyes shone with a glint of grimness under his shaggy brows.

"The rabid discontent of the poor, fermenting ever under the crust of custom. The hate of the toiler for the fop and the fool. The iron that lies under the rusting injustice of riches. The storm-cry of a people's vengeance against the tyrant and the torturer."

Yeoland, solemn of face, groped diligently amid her surmises. The man was a visionary by his own showing; it was impossible to mistake him for a fool. Like all beings of uncommon power, he combined imagination with that huge vigour of mind that moves the world. A vast element of strength lay coiled in him, subtle, yet overpowering as the body of some great reptile. The girl felt the gradual magic of his might mesmerising her with the inevitableness of its approach.

"You have brought me here?" she asked him.

"As I promised."

"Well?"

"To tell you something of the truth."

She looked at him with a penetrating frankness that was in spirit--laudatory.

"You put great trust in me," she said.

"That I may trust the more."

He sat himself down on a ledge of rock, and proceeded to parade before her imagination such visions as were well conceived to daze the reason of a girl taken fresh from a forest hermitage. He spoke of riot, revolution, and revenge; painted Utopias established beneath the benediction of a just personal tyranny, a country purged of oppression, a kingdom cleansed of pride. He told of arms stored in the warrens of the cliff, of grain and salted meat sufficient for an army. He pointed out the vast strength of the place, the plateau approachable only by the stairway in the cliff, and the narrow causeway towards the west. He described it as sufficient for the gathering and massing of a great host. Finally, he swept his hand over the leagues of forestland, dark as the sea, isleting the place from the ken of the world.

"You understand me?" he said to her.

She nodded and waited with closed lips. He gazed at the horizon, and spoke in parables.

"The King and the nobles are throned upon a pile of brushwood. A torch is plunged beneath; a tempest scourges the beacon into a furnace. The kingdom burns."

"Yes?"

"Consider me no mere visionary; I have the country at my back. For five years the work has gone on in secret. I have trusted nothing to chance. It needs a bold man to strike at a kingdom. I--Fulviac, am that man."

VII

The free city of Gilderoy climbed red-roofed up a rocky hill, a hill looped south-east and west by the blue breadth of the river Tamar. Its castle, coroneting the central rock, smote into the azure, a sheaf of glistening towers and turrets, vaned with gold. Lower still, the cathedral's sable crown brooded above a myriad red-tiled roofs and wooden gables. Many fair gardens blazoned the higher slopes of the city. Tall walls of grey stone ringed round the whole, grim and quaint with bartisan and turret. To the north, green meadows dipped to the billowy distance of the woods. The silver streak of the sea could be seen southwards from the platforms of the castle.

Gilderoy was a rich city and a populous, turbulent withal, holding honourable charters from the King, exceeding proud of its own freedom. Its Guilds were the wealthiest in all the south; the coffers of its Commune overflowed with gold. Nowhere was fairer cloth woven than in Gilderoy. Nowhere could be found more cunning smiths, more subtle armourers. The mansions of its rich merchant folk were wondrous opulent and great, bedight with goodly tapestry and all manner of rare furniture. Painters had gathered to it from the far south; its courtezans were the joy of the whole kingdom.

Two days after his confessions on the cliff, Fulviac took horse, mounted Yeoland on a white palfrey, and rode for Gilderoy through the forest. The man was upholstered as a merchant, in a plum-coloured cloak, a cap of sables, and a Venetian mail cape. Yeoland wore a light blue jupon edged with silver, a green kirtle, a cloak of brocaded Tartarin. She rode beside the man, demure as a daughter, her bridle of scarlet leather merry with silver bells. Two armed servants and some six packhorses completed the cavalcade.

Fulviac had fallen into one of his silent moods that day. He was saturnine and enigmatic as though immersed in thought. The girl won nothing from him as to the purpose of their ride. They were for Gilderoy; thus much he vouchsafed her, and no more. She had a shrewd belief that he was for giving her tangible evidence of the hazardous schemes that were fermenting under the surface of silence, and that she was to learn more of the tempest that was gathering in the dark. Being tactful in her generation, she asked him no questions, and kept her conjectures to herself.

They broke their ride to pass the night at a wayside hostelry, where the road from Gambrevault skirted the forest. Holding on at their good leisure on the following day, they entered Gilderoy by the northern gate, towards evening, with the cathedral bell booming a challenge to the distant sea. Crossing the great square with its tall mansions of carved oak and chiselled stone, they plunged into a narrow highway that curled downhill under a hundred overhanging gables. Set back in a murky court, a tavern hung out its gilded sign over the cobbles, a Golden Leopard, that groaned in the wind on its rusty hinges. The inn's casements glowed red under the gloom of roof and bracket. Fulviac rode into its stone-paved court with its balustraded gallery, its carved stairways, its creaking lamps swaying under the high-peaked gables.

Their horses were taken by a lean groom, blessed with a most malevolent squint. On the lower step of the gallery stair stood a rotund little man, with a bunch of keys reposing on his stomach, the light from a lantern overhead shining on his bald pate, as on a half sphere of alabaster. He seemed to sweat beef and beer at every pore. Shuffling his feet, he tilted his double chin to the sky, as though he were conducting a monologue under the stars.

"No brew yet," he hummed in a high falsetto, throaty and puling from so ponderous a carcase.

Fulviac set one foot on the stairs.

"St. Prosper's wine, fat Jean," he said.

The rotund soul turned his face suddenly earthwards, as though he had been jerked down by one leg out of heaven.

"Ah, sire, it is you."

"Who else? What of the good folk of Gilderoy?"

"Packed like a crowd of rats in a drain. Will your honour sup?"

The man stood aside with a great sweep of the hand, and a garlic-ladened breath given full in Yeoland's face.

"And the lady, sire, a cup of purple; the roads are dry?"

Fulviac pushed up the stairs.

"We are late, and supped as we came. Your private cellar will suit us better."

"Of a truth, sire, most certainly."

"Send the men back with the horses; Damian has his orders, and your money-bag."

"Rely on my dispatch, sire."

"Well, then, roll on."

Fat Jean, sweaty deity of pot and gridiron, took the keys from his girdle and a lantern from a niche in the wall. Going at a wheezy shuffle, he led them by a long passage and two circles of stairs to a cellar packed with hogsheads, tuns, and great vats of copper. From the first cellar a second opened, from the second, a third. In the last vault Jean rolled a cask from a corner, turned a flagstone on its side, showed them a narrow stairway descending into the dark.

Fulviac took the lantern, made a sign to Jean, and passed down the stairway with Yeoland at his heels. The tavern-keeper remained above in the cellar, and closed the stone when the last gleam of the light had died down the stair. He rolled the cask back into its place, and felt his way back by cellar and stairway to the benignant glow of his own tavern room.

Fulviac and the girl had descended the black well of the stair. Tunnels of gloom ran labyrinthine on every hand; a musty scent burdened the air, and fine sand covered the floor. Fulviac held the lantern shoulder-high, took Yeoland's wrist, and moved forward into a great gallery that sloped downwards into the depths of the rock. The place was silent as the death-chamber of a pyramid. The lantern fashioned fantastic shadows from the gloom.

Yeoland held close to the man with an instinct towards trust that made her smile at her own thoughts. Fulviac had been in her life little more than a week; yet his unequivocating strength had won largely upon her liking--in no sentimental sense indeed, but rather with the calm command of power. Possibly she feared him a very little. Yet with the despair of a wrecked mariner she clung to him, in spirit, as she would have clung to a rock.

As they passed down the gallery with the lantern swinging in Fulviac's hand, she began to question him with a quiet persistence.

"What place is this?" she said.

For retort, Fulviac pointed her to the wall, and held the lantern to aid her scrutiny. The girl saw numberless recesses excavated in the rock; some had been bricked up and bore tablets; others were packed with grinning skulls. There were scattered paintings on the walls, symbolic daubs, or scenes from scriptural history. The place was meaningless to the girl, save that the dead seemed ever with them.

Fulviac smiled at her solemn face.

"The catacombs of the city of Gilderoy," he said; "yonder are the niches of the dead. These paintings were made by early folk, centuries ago. A veritable maze this, a gallery of skulls, a warren for ghosts to squeak in."

Yeoland had turned to scan a tablet on the wall.

"We go to some secret gathering?" she asked.

Fulviac laughed; the sound echoed through the passages with reverberating scorn.

"The same dark fable," he said, "telling of vaults and secret stairs, passwords and poniards, masks and murder. Remember, little sister, you are to be black and subtle to the heart's chords. This is life, not a romance or an Italian fable. We are men here. There is to be no strutting on the stage."

The girl loitered a moment, as though her feet kept pace with her cogitations.

"I am content," she said, "provided I may eschew poison, nor need run a bodkin under some wretch's ribs."

"Be at peace on that score. I have not the heart to make a Rosamund of you."

Sudden out of a dark bye-passage, like a rat out of a hole, a man sprang at them and held a knife at Fulviac's throat. The mock merchant gave the password with great unconcern, putting his cap of sables back from off his face. The sentinel crossed himself, fell on one knee, and gave them passage. Turning a bluff buttress of stone, they came abruptly upon a short gallery that widened into a great circular chamber, pillared after the manner of a church.

A flare of torches harassed the shadowy vault, and played upon a thousand upturned faces that seemed to surge wave on wave out of the gloom. In the centre of the crypt stood an altar of black marble, and before it on the dais, a priest with a cowl down, a rough wooden crucifix in his hand. A knot of men in armour gleamed about the altar, ringing a clear space about the steps. Others, with drawn swords, kept the entries of the galleries leading to the cavern. A great quiet hung over the place, a silence solid as the rock above.

A group of armed men waited for Fulviac at the main entry to the crypt. He merged into their ranks, exchanging signs and words in an undertone with one who seemed in authority. The ring of figures pressed through the crowd towards the altar, Fulviac and Yeoland in their midst. Fulviac mounted the steps, and drew the girl up beside him. He uncovered his face to the mob with the gesture of a king uncovering to his people.

"Fulviac, Fulviac!"

The press swayed suddenly like the black waters of a lake, stirred by the rush of flood water through a broken dam. The ring of armed men gave up the shout with a sweeping of swords and a clangour of harness. The great cavern took up the cry, reverberating it from its thundering vault. A thousand hands were thrust up, as of the dead rising from the sea.

Yeoland watched the man's face with a mute kindling of enthusiasm. As she gazed, it beaconed forth a new dignity to her that she had never seen thereon before. A sudden grandeur of strength glowed from its weather-beaten features. The mouth and jaw seemed of iron; the eyes were full of a stormy fire. It was the face of a man transfigured, throned above himself on the burning pinnacle of power. He towered above the mob like some granite god, colossal in strength, colossal in courage. His manhood flamed out, a watch-fire to the world.

As the cry dwindled, the priest, who still kept his cowl down over his face, held his crucifix on high, and broke into the strident cadence of a rebel ballad. The people followed as by instinct, knowing the song of old. Many hundred voices gathered strenuously into the flood, the massed roar rolling through the great crypt, echoing along the galleries like the sound of some subterranean stream. It was a deep chant and a stirring, strong with the strength of the storm wind, fanatic as the sea.

The silence that fell at the end thereof was the more solemn in contrast to the thundering stanzas of the hymn. Under the flare of the torches, Fulviac stood forward to turn the task from the crucifix to the sword.

"Men of Gilderoy."

A billow of cheering dashed again to the roof.

"Fulviac, Fulviac!"

The man suffered the cry to die into utter silence, before leaping into a riot of words, a harangue that had more justification in it than appeal. His voice filled the cavern with its volume and depth. It was more the voice of a captain thundering commands to a squadron of horse than the declamatory craft of the orator. Fulviac knew the mob, that they were rough and turbulent, and loved a demagogue. Scholastic subtleties could never fill their stomachs.

"Men of Gilderoy, I come to you with the sword. Bombast, bombast, come hither all, I'll laden ye with devilry, puff you up with pride. Ha, who is for being strong, who for being master? Listen to me. Damnation and death, I have the kingdom in the palm of my hand. Liberty, liberty, liberty. We strike for the people. Geraint is ours; Gore is ours; all the southern coast waits for the beacons. Malgo of the Mountain holds the west like a storm cloud under his cloak. The east raves against the King. Good. Who is for the stronger side, for Fulviac, liberty, and the people?"

He halted a moment, took breath, quieted all clamour with a sweep of the hand, plunged on again like a great carrack buffeting tall billows.

"Are there spies here? By God, let them listen well, and save their skins. Go and tell what ye have heard. Set torch to tinder. Blood and fire, the country would be in arms before the King could stir. No, no, there are no spies in Gilderoy; we are all brothers here. By my sword, sirs, I swear to you, that before harvest tide, we shall sweep the nobles into the sea."

A great shout eddied up to answer him. Fulviac's voice pierced it like a trumpet cry.

"Liberty, liberty, and the people!"

Sound can intoxicate as well as wine. The thunder of war, the bray of clarions, can fire even the heart of the coward. The mob swirled about the altar of black marble, vociferous and eager. Torches rocked to and fro in the cavern; shadows leapt grotesquely gigantic over the rough groinings of the roof. Yet Fulviac had further and fiercer fuel for the fire. At a sign from him, the circle of armed men parted; two peasants stumbled forward bearing a cripple in their arms. They carried him up the steps and set him upon the altar before all the people, supporting him as he stared round upon the sea of faces.

He was a shrivelled being, yellow, black of eye, cadaverous. He looked like a man who had wallowed for years among toads in a pit, and had become as one of them. His voice was cracked and querulous, as he brandished a claw of a hand and screamed at the crowd.

"Look at me, mates and brothers. Five years ago I was a tall man and lusty. I forbade the Lord of Margradel my wife. They racked and branded me, tossed me into a stinking pit. I am young, young. I shall never walk again."

A woman rushed from the crowd, grey-haired, fat, and bloated. She climbed the altar steps, and stretched out her hands in a kind of frenzy towards the people.

"Look at me, men of Gilderoy. Last spring I had a daughter, a clean wench as ever danced. Seek her from John of Brissac and his devils. Ha, good words these for a mother. Men of Gilderoy, remember your children."

Fulviac's pageant gathered grimly before the mob. A blind man tottered up and pointed to his sightless eyes. A girl held up an infant, and told shrilly of its father's murder. One fellow displayed a tongueless mouth; another, a face distorted by the iron; a third had lost nose and ears; a fourth showed arms shrivelled and contracted by fire. It was a sinister appeal, strong yet piteous. The tyranny of the age showed in the bodies of these wronged and mutilated beings. They had been mere carrion tossed under the iron heel of power. The granite car of ruthless opulence and passion had crushed them under its reddened wheels.

At a gesture from Fulviac, the priest upon the steps threw back his cowl and stood forward in the torchlight. His face was the face of a zealot, fanatical, sanguine, lined with an energy that was prophetic of power. His eyes smouldered under their straight black brows. His hands, white and bony, quivered as he stretched them out towards the people.

They knew him on the instant; their clamour told as much. Often had the shadow of that thin figure fallen athwart the parched highways of stricken cities. Often had those hands tended death, those lips smitten awe into the souls of the drunkard and the harlot.

"Prosper, Prosper the Preacher!"

There rang a rude, rough joy in the clamour that was spontaneous and eloquent. It was the heart's cry of the people, wild, trusting, and passionate. Men and women broke through the circle of armed men, cast themselves upon the altar steps, kissed the friar's gown, and fawned on him. He put them back with a certain awkward dignity, and a hot colour upon his almost boyish face. The man had a fine humility, though the strenuous ideals of his soul ran in fire to the zenith.

Anon he signed a benediction, and a hush descended on the place.

"God's peace to you, people of Gilderoy!"

The clamour revived.

"Preach to us, preach to us!" came the cry.

The friar stretched forth his hands; his voice rang strong and strident over the packed upturned faces.

"Children, what need have we of words! To-night have we not seen enough to scourge the manhood in us, to bear forth the Holy Cross of war? The evil beast is with us even yet; Mammon the Mighty treads you under foot. Ye saints, what cause more righteous since the martyrs fell? Look on these scars, these wrongs, these agonies. Preach! I am dumb beside such witnesses as these."

The crypt thundered to him when he lowered his hands. It was the cry of men bankrupt of liberty, thirsty for revenge. Fulviac grappled the climax, and stood forward with uplifted sword. His lion's roar sounded above the din.

"Go, people of Gilderoy," he cried, "go--but remember. When castles burn, and bolts scream, when spears splinter, and armies crash to the charge, remember your children and your wrongs. Strike home for God, and for your liberty."

VIII

The crowd had streamed from the cavern, swirling like black water under the tossing torches, the hollow galleries reverberating to the rush of many feet. Prosper had gone, borne away by the seditious captains of the Commune and the armed burghers who had guarded the entries. A great silence had fallen upon the crypt. Fulviac and the girl were left by the altar of black marble, their one lamp burning solitary in the gulf of gloom.

Fulviac had the air of a man whose favourite hawk had flown with fettle, and brought her quarry tumbling out of the clouds. He was warm with the zest of it, and his tawny eyes sparkled.

"May the Virgin smile on us!" he said. "Gilderoy will serve our ends."

The girl's eyes searched him gravely.

"You make holy war," she charged him.

"Ha, my sister, it is well to profess a strong conviction in the justice of one's cause. Tell men they are heroes, patriots, martyrs, and you will make good fighting stuff. Applaud fanaticism, make great parade of righteousness, hail the Deity as patron, assemble all the saints under your banner. Ha, trust me, that is a way to topple a kingdom. Come, we must stir."

By many labyrinthine passages, strange galleries of death, they passed together from the dark deeps of the catacombs. At one point the roof shone silvered as with dew, and the air stood damp as in a marsh on a winter's eve. The river Tamar flowed above them in its rocky bed, so Fulviac told the girl. Anon they came out by a narrow stair that opened by a briar-grown throat into a thicket of old oaks in the Gilderoy meadows. The stairhead was covered by a species of stone trap that could be covered and concealed by sods. In the thicket a man awaited them with the bridles of three horses over his arm. Fulviac held Yeoland's stirrup, and they rode out, the three of them, from under the trees.

A full moon swam in a purple black sky amid a shower of shimmering stars. Gilderoy, with its climbing towers and turrets, stood out white under the moon. The city walls gleamed like alabaster in the magic glow. In the meadows the ringlets of the river glimmered. Far and distant rose the nebulous midnight of the woods.

Fulviac had bared his head to an inconstant and torpid breeze. They were riding for the west along a bridle track that curled grey and dim through the sombre meadows. The calm, soundless vault of the world rose now in contrast to the canopies of stone and the passion-throes of the catacombs. Human moil and effort seemed infinitely little under the eternal scrutiny of the stars. So thought the man for the moment, as he rode with his chin sunk upon his breast, watching keenly the girl at his side.

Yeoland was young. All the roses of youth were budding about her soul; idealism, like the essence of crushed violets, hovered heavy over the world. Her soul as yet was no frayed and listless lute, thrummed into discords by the bony hand of care. She was built for love, a temple of white marble, lit by lamps of rubeous glory. Colours flashed through the red sanctuaries of the flesh. Yet pain and great woe had smitten her. The grim destinies of earth seemed bent on thrusting an innocent pilgrim into the turbulent contradictions of life.

The pageant in the catacombs that night had stirred her strangely beyond belief. The fantastic faces, the zeal, the hot words of gesturing enthusiasm, these were things new to her, therefore the more vivid and convincing. New worlds, new passions, seemed to burst into being under the stars. She was utterly silent as she rode, looking forth into the night. Her hood had fallen back; her face shone white and clear; her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Fulviac, like a chess-player who had evolved some subtle scheme, rode and watched her with a smile deep in his eyes. For the moment he was content to leave her to the magic of her own thoughts.

At certain rare seasons in life, virgin light floods down into the heart, as from some oriel opened in heaven. The world stands under a grander scheme of chiaroscuro; men comprehend where they once scoffed. It was thus that Yeoland rose inspired, like a spiritual Venus from a sea of dreams. As molten glass is shaped speedily into fair and exquisite device, so the red wax of her heart had taken the impress of the hour. Gilderoy had stirred her like a blazoned page of romance.

Fulviac caught the girl's half glance at him; read in measure the meaning of her mood. Her lips were half parted as though she had words upon her tongue, but still hesitated from some scruple of pride. He straightened in the saddle, and waited for her to unbosom to him with a confident reserve.

"Well?" he said at length, since she still lingered in her silence.

"How much one may learn in a day," she answered, drawing her white palfrey nearer to his horse.

Fulviac agreed with her.

"The man on the end of the rope," he said, "learns in two minutes that which has puzzled philosophers since Adam loved Eve."

She turned to him with an eagerness that was almost passionate even in its suppressed vigour.

"How long was it before you came to pity your fellows?"

"Some minutes, not more."

"And the conversion?"

"Shall satisfy you one day. For the present I will buckle up so unsavoury a fable in my bosom. Tell me what you have learnt at Gilderoy."

Yeoland looked at the moon. The man saw great sadness upon her face, but also an inspired radiance that made its very beauty the more remarkable. He foresaw in an instant that they were coming to deeper matters. Superficialities, the mannerisms of life, were falling away. The girl's heart beat near to his; he felt a luminous sympathy of spirit rise round them like the gold of a Byzantine background.

"Come," he said, with a burst of beneficence, "you are beginning to understand me."

She jerked a swift glance at him, like the look of a half-tamed falcon.

"You are a man, for all your sneers and vapourings."

"I had a heart once. Call me an oak, broken, twisted, aged, but an oak still."

Yeoland drew quite close to him, so that her skirt almost brushed his horse's flank. Fulviac's shadow fell athwart her. Only her face shone clear in the moonlight.

"I have ceased," she said, "to look upon life as a stretch of blue, a laughing dawn."

"Good."

"I have learnt that woe is the crown of years."

"Good again."

"That life is full of violence and wrong."

"A platitude. Yes. Life consists in learning platitudes."

"I am only one woman among thousands."

"A revelation."

"You jeer."

"Not so. Few women learn the truth of your proverb."

"Lastly, my trouble is not the only woe in the world. That it is an error to close up grief in the casket of self."

Fulviac flapped his bridle, and looked far ahead into the cavern of the night. He was silent awhile in thought. When he spoke again, he delivered himself of certain curt cogitations, characteristic confessions that were wholly logical.

"I am a selfish vagabond," he said; "I appeal to Peter's keys whether all ambition is not selfish. I am an egotist for the good of others. The stronger my ambition, the stronger the hope of the land in generous justice. I live to rule, to rule magnanimously, yet with an iron sceptre. There, you have my creed."

"And God?" she asked him.

"Is a most useful subordinate."

"You do not mean that?"

"I do not."

She saw again the mutilated beings in the catacombs, aye, even her own home flaming to the sky, and the white face of her dead father. Faith and devotion were great in her for the moment. Divine vengeance beaconed over the world, a torch borne aloft by the hand of Pity.

"It is God's war," she said to him with a finer solemnity sounding in her voice; "you have stirred the woman in me. Is that enough?"

"Enough," he answered her.

"And the rest?"

"God shall make all plain in due season."

Gilderoy had dwindled into the east; its castle's towers still netted the moonlight from afar. The meadowlands had ceased, and trees strode down in multitudes to guard the track. The night was still and calm, with a whisper of frost in the crisp, sparkling air. The world seemed roofed with a dome of dusky steel.

Before them a shallow valley lay white in the light of the moon. Around climbed the glimmering turrets of the trees, rank on rank, solemn and tumultuous. The bare gable ends of a ruined chapel rose in the valley. Fulviac drew aside by a bridle path that ran amid rushes. To the left, from the broken wall of the curtilage, a great beech wood ascended, its boughs black against the sky, its floor ankle-deep with fallen leaves. The chapel stood roofless under the moon. Hollies, a sable barrier that glistened in the moonlight, closed the ruin on the south. Yews cast their gloom about the walls. A tall cross in the forsaken graveyard stretched out its mossy arms east and west.

The armed groom took the horses and tethered them under a clump of pines by the wall. Fulviac and the girl Yeoland passed up through weeds and brambles to the porch. A great briar rose had tangled the opening with a thorny web, as though to hold the ruin from the hand of man. The tiled floor was choked with grass; a rickety door drooped rotten on its rusty hinges.

Fulviac pushed through and beckoned the girl to follow. Within, all was ruinous and desolate, the roof fallen, the casements broken.

"We must find harbour here," said the man, "our horses go far to-morrow."

"A cheerful hostel, this."

"Its wildness makes it safe. You fear the cold. I'll see to that."

"No. I am hungry."

The high altar still stood below the small rose window in the east, where the rotting fragments of a triptych hid the stonework. There was a great carved screen of stone on either side, curiously recessed as though giving access to an ambulatory. The altar stood in dense shadow, with broken timber and a tangle of briars ringing a barrier about its steps. On the southern side of the nave, a patch of tiled flooring still stood riftless, closed in by two fallen pillars. The groom came in with two horse-cloaks, and Fulviac spread them on the tiles. He also gave her a small flask of wine, and a silver pyx holding meat and bread.

"We crusaders must not grumble at the rough lodging," he said to her; "wrap yourself in these cloaks, and play the Jacob with a stone pillow."

She smiled slightly in her eyes. The groom brought in a saddle, ranged it with a saddle cloth covering it, that it might rest her head.

"And you?" she said to Fulviac.

"Damian and I hold the porch."

"You will be cold."

"I have a thick hide. The Lady of Geraint give you good rest!"

He threaded his way out amid the fallen stones and pillars, and closed the rickety gate. The groom, a tall fellow in a battered bassinet and a frayed brigantine, stood by the yew trees, as on guard. Fulviac gestured to him. The man moved away towards the eastern end of the chapel, where laurels grew thick and lusty about the walls. When he returned Fulviac was sitting hunched on a fallen stone in the corner of the porch, as though for sleep. The man dropped a guttural message into his master's ear, and propped himself in the other angle of the porch.

An hour passed; the moon swam past the zenith towards the west; a vast quiet watched over the world, and no wind rippled in the woods. In the sky the stars shivered, and gathered more closely their silver robes. In the curtilage the ruined tombs stared white and desolate at the moon.

An owl's cry sounded in the woods. Sudden and strange, as though dropped from the stars, faint music quivered on the frost-brilliant air. It gathered, died, grew again, with a mysterious flux of sweetness, as of some song stealing from the Gardens of the Dead. Flute, cithern, and viol were sounding under the moon, merging a wizard chant into the magic of the hour. Angels, crimson-winged, in green attire, seemed to descend the burning stair of heaven.

A sudden great radiance lit the ruin, a glory of gold streaming from the altar. Cymbals clashed; waves of shimmering light surged over the broken walls. Incense, like purple smoke, curled through the casements. The music rushed in clamorous rapture to the stars. A voice was heard crying in the chapel, elfin and wild, yet full of a vague rich sanctity. It ceased sudden as the brief moan of a prophecy. The golden glow elapsed; the music sank to silence. Nought save the moonlight poured in silver omnipotence over the ruin.

From the chapel came the sound of stumbling footsteps amid the stones. A hand clutched at the rotting door, jerked it open, as in terror. The girl Yeoland came out into the porch, and stood swaying white-faced in the shadow.

"Fulviac."

Her voice was hoarse and whispering, strained as the overwrought strings of a lute. The man did not stir. She bent down, dragged at his cloak, calling to him with a quick and gathering vehemence. He shook himself, as from the thongs of sleep, stood up and stared at her. The groom still crouched in the dark corner.

"Fulviac."

She thrust her way through the briars into the moonlight. Her hood had fallen back, her hair loose upon her shoulders; her eyes were full of a supernatural stupor, and she seemed under the spell of some great shock of awe. She trembled so greatly, that Fulviac followed her, and held her arm.

"Speak. What has chanced to you?"

She still shook like some flower breathed upon by the oracular voice of God. Her hands were torn and bloody from the thorns.

"The Virgin has appeared to me."

"Are you mad?"

"The Virgin."

"Some ghost or phantom."

"No, no, hear me."

She stretched out her hands like one smitten blind, and took breath swiftly in sudden gasps.

"Hear me, I was but asleep, woke, and heard music. The Virgin came out upon the altar, her face like the moon, her robes white as the stars. There was great light, great glory. And she spoke to me. Mother of God, what am I that I should be chosen thus!"

"Speak. Can this be true?"

"The truth, the truth!"

Fulviac fell on his knees with a great gesture of awe. The girl, her face turned to the moon, stood quivering like a reed, her lips moving as if in prayer.

"Her message, child?"