Chapter III: Part I: I (3)

"Ah, it was this: 'Go forth a virgin, and lead the hosts of the Lord.'"

Fulviac's face was in shadow. He thrust up his hands to the heavens, but would not so much as glance at the girl above him. His voice rang out in the silence of the night:--

"Gloria tibi, Sancta Maria! Gloria tibi, Domine!"

IX

Faith, golden crown of the Christian! Self-mesmerism, subtle alchemy of the mind! How the balance of belief swings between these twain!

A spiritual conception born in a woman's brain is as a savour of rich spices sweetening all the world. How great a power of obstinacy stirs in one small body! A pillar of fire, a shining grail. She will bring forth the finest gems that hang upon her bosom, the ruby of heroism, the sapphire of pity. She will cast all her store of gold into the lap of Fate. Give to her some radiant dream of hope, and she may prove the most splendid idealist, even if she do not prove a wise one. Remember the women who watched about the Cross of Christ.

There had been trickery in the miracle, a tinge of flesh in the vision. The Virgin, in the ruck of religion, had suffered herself to be personated by a clever little "player" from Gilderoy, aided and idealised by a certain notorious charlatan who dealt in magic, was not above aiding ecclesiastical mummeries on occasions, and conspiring for the solemn production of miracles. A priest's juggling box, a secret door at the back of the altar used in bygone days for the manipulation of a wonder-working image, musicians, incense, and Greek fire. These had made the portent possible. As for Fulviac, rugged plotter, he was as grave as an abbot over the business; his words were wondrous beatific; he spoke of the interventions of Heaven with bated breath.

It was a superstitious age, touched with phantasy and gemmed with magic. Relics were casketed in gold and silver; holy blood amazed with yearly liquefactions the souls of the devout; dreamers gazed into mirrors, crystals, finger-nails, for visions of heaven. Jewels were poured in scintillant streams at the white feet of the Madonna. It was all done with rare mysticism, colour, and rich music. The moon ruled marriage, corn, and kine. The saints, like a concourse of angels, walked with melancholy splendour through the wilds.

As for the girl Yeoland, she had the heart of a woman in the noblest measure, a red heart, pure yet passionate. The world waxed prophetic that shrill season. She was as full of dreams and phantasies as an astrologer's missal. Nothing amazed her, and yet all earth was mysterious. The wind spoke in magic syllables; the trees were oracular; the stars, white hands tracing symbols in the sky. She was borne above herself on the pinions of ecstasy, heard seraph wings sweep the air, saw the glimmer of their robes passing the portals of the night. Mysticism moved through the world like the sound of lutes over a moonlit sea.

One March morning, Fulviac came to her in the northern chamber of the cliff. Yeoland had masses of scarlet cloth and threads of gold upon her knees, for she was broidering a banner, the banner of the Maid of Gilderoy. Her eyes were full of violet shadow. She wore a cross over her bosom, emeralds set in silver; a rosary, dangling on her wrist, told how her prayers kept alternate rhythm with her fingers. Fulviac crooked the knee to the crucifix upon the wall, sat down near her on a rich bench of carved cedar wood.

The man was in a beneficent mood, and beamed on her like a lusty summer. He had tidings on his tongue, tidings that he hoarded with the craft of an epicure. It was easy to mark when the world trundled well with his humour. He put forth smiles like a great oak whose boughs glisten in the sun.

"You will tire yourself, little sister."

She looked at him with one of her solemn glances, a glance that spoke of vigils, soul-searchings, and prayer.

"My fingers tire before my heart," she said to him.

"Rest, rest."

"Do I seem weary to you?"

"Nay, you are fresh as the dawn."

He brushed back the tawny hair from off his forehead, and the lines about his mouth softened.

"I have news from the west."

"Ah!"

"We gather and spread like fire in a forest. The mountain men are with us, ready to roll down from the hills with hauberk and sword. In two months Malgo will have sent the bloody cross through all the west."

The golden thread ran through the girl's white fingers; the beads of her rosary rattled; she seemed to be weaving the destiny of a kingdom into the device upon her banner.

"How is it with us here?" she asked him.

"I have a thousand stout men and true camped upon the cliff. Levies are coming in fast, like steel to a magnet. In a month we shall outbulk a Roman legion."

"And Gilderoy?"

"Gilderoy and Geraint will give us a score thousand pikemen."

"The stars fight for us."

Fulviac took her lute from the carved bench and began to thrum the chords of an old song.

"Spears crash, and swords clang,
Fame maddens the world.
Come battle and love.
Iseult--
Ah, Iseult."

He broke away with a last snap at the strings, and set the lute aside.

"Bear with me," he said.

Her dark eyes questioned him over her banner.

"I offer you the first victim."

"Ah!"

"Flavian of Gambrevault."

An indefinite shadow descended upon the girl's face. The inspired radiance seemed dimmed for the moment; the crude realism of her thoughts rang in discord to her dreams. She lost the glimmering thread from her needle. Her hands trembled a little as she played with the scarlet folds of the banner.

"Well?"

"A lad of mine bears news--a black-eyed rogue from the hills of Carlyath, sharp as a sword's point, quaint as an elf. I sent him gleaning, and he has done bravely. You would hear his tale from his own lips?"

She nodded and seemed distraught.

"Yes. Bring him in to me," she said.

Fulviac left her, to return with a slim youth sidling in behind him like a shadow. The lad had a nut-brown skin and ruddy cheeks, a pair of twinkling eyes, a thatch of black hair over his forehead. Bred amid the hills of Carlyath, where the women were scarlet Eves, and the land a paradise, he had served in Gilderoy as apprentice to an armourer. Carlyath's wilds and the city's roguery had mingled in him fantastic strains of extravagant sentiment and cunning. Half urchin, half elf, he stood with bent knees and slouched shoulders, his black eyes alert on Fulviac, his lord.

The man thrust him forward by the collar, with an eloquent gesture.

"The whole tale. Try your wit."

The Carlyath lad advanced one foot, and with an impudent southern smirk, remarked--

"This, madame, is an infatuated world."

Thus, sententiously delivered, he plunged into a declamation with a picturesque and fanciful extravagance that he had imbibed from the strolling romancers of his own land.

"In the city of Gilderoy," he said, speaking very volubly and with many gestures, "there lives a lady of surpassing comeliness. Her eyes are as the sky, her cheeks as June roses, her hair a web of gold. She is a right fair lady, and daily she sits at her broad casement, singing, and plaiting her hair into shackles of gold. She has bound the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault in a net starred with poppies, scarlet poppies of the field, so that he ever dreams dreams of scarlet, and sees visions of lips warm as wine. Daily the Lord Flavian scours the country between Avalon and the fair city of Gilderoy, till the very dust complains of his fury, and the green grass curses his horse's heels. But the lady with the hair of gold compasses him like the sunset; she has stolen the eyes of heaven, and the stars are blind."

Fulviac smiled over the extreme subtlety of the rendering. It was a delicate matter, delicately handled. The Carlyath lad had wit, and a most seraphic tongue.

"What more?"

"There is yet another lady at Avalon."

"Well?"

"A lady whose name is Duessa, a lady with black hair and a blacker temper. Lord Flavian has a huge horror of her tongue. Therefore he rides like a thief, without trumpets, to Gilderoy."

"Yet more."

The lad spread his hands with an inimitable gesture, shrugged, and heaved a most Christian sigh.

"The Lady Duessa is the Lord Flavian's wife," he said.

"Surely."

"Therefore, sire, he is a coward."

The lad drew back with a bow and a scrape of the foot, keeping his eyes on the floor with the discretion of a veteran lackey. At a sign from Fulviac, he slipped away, and left Yeoland and the man alone.

The girl's hands were idle in her lap; the great scarlet banner trailed in rich folds about her feet. There was a white mask of thought upon her face, and her eyes searched the distance with an oblivious stare. All the strong discords of the past rushed clamorous to her brain; her consecrated dreams were as so many angels startled by the assaults of hell.

She rose from her chair, cast the casement wide, and stood gazing over the forest. Youth seemed in the breeze, and the clear voice of the Spring. The green woods surged with liberty; the strong zest of life breathed in their bosoms. In the distance the pines seemed to beckon to her, to wave their caps in windy exultation.

Fulviac had stood watching her with the calm scrutiny of one wise in the passionate workings of the soul. He suffered her to possess her thoughts in silence for a season, to come by a steady comprehension of the past. Presently he gathered the red banner, and hung it on the frame, went softly to her and touched her sleeve.

"Shall they kill him on the road?" he asked.

She pondered a moment, and did not answer him.

"It is easy," he said, "and a matter of sheer justice."

The words seemed to steel her decision.

"No," she said, "let them bring him here--to me."

"So be it," he answered her.

Fulviac found her cold and taciturn, desirous of solitude. He humoured the mood, and she was still staring from the window when he left her. The woodland had melted before her into an oblivious mist. In its stead she saw a tower flaming amid naked trees, a white face staring heavenwards with the marble tranquillity of death.

X

Down through the woods of Avalon rode the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, down towards the forest track in the grey face of the dawn. In the meadows and beyond the orchards, water shone, and towers stood mistily. The voice of Spring pulsed in the air, songs of green woods, the wild wine of violets, pavements of primrose gold. Birds piped lustily in wood and thicket, and the ascending sun lavished his glittering archery from the chariots of the clouds.

The Lord Flavian was inordinately cheerful that morning, as he rode in green and red through the prophetic woods. Heart and weather were in kindred keeping, and his youth sang like a brook after April rains. The woods danced in dew. Far on its rocky hill the towers of Gilderoy would soon beckon him above the trees. Beneath the shadow of the cathedral tower stood a gabled house with gilded vanes and roofs of generous red. There in Gilderoy, in a room hung with cloth of purple and gold, white arms waited, and the bosom of a golden Helen held love like a red rose in a pool of milky spikenard.

Picture a slim but muscular man with the virile figure of a young David, a keen, smooth face, a halo of brown hair, eyes eloquent as a woman's. Picture a good grey horse trapped in red and green, full of fettle as a colt, burly as a bull. Picture the ermined borderings, the jewelled clasps, brigantine of quilted velvet, fur-lined bassinet bright as a star. Youth, clean, adventurous, aglow to the last finger-tip, impetuous to the tune of thirty breaths a minute. Youth with all its splendid waywardness, its generosities, its immense self-intoxications. Youth with the voice of a Golden Summer in its heart, and for its plume the gorgeous fires of eve.

Wealth often breeds apathy and parsimonious instincts. It is the beggar whose purse bursts with joy, whose soul blazes generous red upon the clouds. As for Flavian of Gambrevault and Avalon, he was rich but no miser, proud yet not haughty, sanguine but not vicious. Like many a man inspired by an instinctive idealism, his heart ran before his reason: they not having come cheek by jowl as in later years. He was very devout, yet very worldly; very ardent, yet over hasty. Mark him then, a lovable fool in the eyes of philosophy; a cup of mingled wine, both white and red. He was a great lord; yet his serfs loved him.

The Lady Duessa's parents, good folk, had been blessed with aspirations. Gambrevault and Avalon had bulked very gloriously under the steel-blue vault of pride. Moreover, their daughter was a sensuous being, who panted for poetic surroundings, and lived to music. A boy of twenty; a passionate, dark-eyed, big-bosomed houri of twenty and five; bell, book, and ring--such had been the bridal bargain consummated on church principles five years ago or more. A youth of twenty is not supremely wise concerning the world, or his own heart. The Lord Flavian's marriage had not proved a magic blessing to him. Parentally sealed marriage deeds are the edicts of the devil.

Quickly are the mighty fallen, and the chalices of love broken. It was no mere chance ambuscade that waited open-mouthed for Flavian, Lord of Gambrevault and Avalon, Warden of the Southern Marches, Knight of the Order of the Rose, as he rode that morning to Gilderoy, a disciple of Venus. In a certain perilous place, the road ran betwixt walls of rock, and under the umbrage of overhanging trees. Twenty men with pike and gisarme swarming out of the woods; a short scuffle and a stabbed horse; a gag in the mouth, a bandage over the eyes, a mule's back, half a dozen thongs of stout leather. That same evening the Lord Flavian was brought like a bale of merchandise into Fulviac's guard-room, and tumbled on a heap of straw in a corner.

They were grim men, these forest rangers, not given to pity, or the light handling of a feud. A poniard point was their pet oath, a whip of the sword the best word with an enemy. They bit their thumb nails at creation, and were not gentle in the quest of a creed. Fulviac heard their news, and commended them. They were like the ogres of the old fables; the red blood of a lusty aristocrat smelt fresh for the sword's supper.

The girl Yeoland was at her prayer-desk with a blazoned breviary under her fingers, when Fulviac came to her with tidings of the day's capture. She knelt with her hands crossed upon her bosom, as Fulviac stood in the darkened doorway. To the man she appeared as the Madonna in some picture of the Annunciation, the yellow light from the lamp streaming down upon her with a lustre of sanctity.

"They have brought the boar home."

"Dead?"

"Nay; but his corpse candle walks the cavern."

For the girl it was a descent from spiritual themes to the stark realism of life. She left her prayer-desk with a little sigh. Her hands trembled as she drew a scarlet cloak about her, and fastened it with a girdle of green leather. Her eyes dwelt on Fulviac's face with a species of dusky pain.

"Come," he said to her.

"Whither?"

"To judge him."

"Not before all, not in the guard-room."

"Leave it to me," he said. "Be forewarned. We deal with no mere swashbuckler."

They went together to Fulviac's parlour, where a great brazen lamp hung from the roof, and a book bound in black leather lay chained on the table. Yeoland took the man's carved chair, while he stood behind her leaning on the rail. She was paler than was her wont. Now and again she pressed a hand to her breast, as though to stay the too rapid beating of her heart.

Two guards bearing partisans came in from the guard-room with a man bound and blindfold between them. A third followed, bearing a two-handed sword naked over his shoulder. He was known as Nord of the Hammer, an armourer like to a Norse Volund, burly, strong as a bear. The door was barred upon them. One of the guards plucked the cloth from the bound man's face.

In the malicious imagery of thought, Yeoland had often pictured to herself this Flavian of Gambrevault, a coarse, florid ruffian, burly and brutal, a fleshly demigod in the world of feudalism. So much for conjecture. What she beheld was a straight-lipped, clean-limbed man, slim as a cypress, supple as good steel. The face was young yet strong, the grey eyes clear and fearless. Moreover there was a certain lonely look about him that invoked pity, and angered her in an enigmatic way. She was wrath with him for being what he was, for contradicting the previous imaginings of her mind.

Flavian of Gambrevault stood bound before her, an aristocrat of aristocrats, outraged in pride, yet proud beyond complaint. The self-mastery of his breeding kept him a stately figure despite his tumbling and his youth, one convinced of lordship and the powerful splendour of his name. The whole affair to him was illogical, preposterous, insolent. A gentleman of the best blood in the kingdom could not be hustled out of his dignity by the horse-play of a bevy of cut-throats.

Possibly the first vision to snare the man's glance was the elfin loveliness of the girl, who sat throned in the great chair as on a judgment seat. He marked the rose-white beauty of her skin, her sapphire eyes gleaming black in certain lights, her ebon hair bound with a fillet of sky-blue leather. Moreover, it was plain to the man in turn that this damoisel in the red gown was deciphering his features in turn with a curiosity that was no vapid virtue. As for Fulviac, he watched them both with his amber-brown eyes, eyes that missed no movement in the mask of life. To him the scene under the great brazen lamp was a study in moods and emotions.

The aristocrat was the first to defy the silence. He had stared round the room at his leisure, and at each of its motionless figures in turn. The great sword, slanted in gleaming nakedness over Nord's shoulder, appeared to fascinate him for the moment. Despite his ambiguous sanctity, he showed no badge of panic or distress.

Ignoring the woman, he challenged Fulviac, who leant upon the chair rail, watching him with an enigmatic smile.

"Goodman in the red doublet," quoth he, "when you have stared your fill at me, I will ask you to read me the moral of this fable."

Fulviac stroked his chin with the air of a man who holds an adversary at some subtle disadvantage.

"Messire," he said, "address yourself to madame--here; you are her affair in the main."

The Warden of the Southern Marches bowed as by habit. His grey eyes reverted to Yeoland's face, searching it with a certain courteous curiosity that took her beauty for its justification. The woman was an enigma to him, a most magical sphinx whose riddle taunted his reason.

"Madame," he began.

The girl stiffened in her chair at the word.

"You hold me at a disadvantage, seeing that I am ignorant of sin or indiscretion against you. If it is a question of gold----"

"Messire!"

He swept her exclamation suavely aside and ran on mellifluously.

"If it is a question of gold, let me beseech you to be frank with me. I will covenant with you instanter. My seneschal at Gambrevault will unbolt my coffers, and ease your greed. Pray be outspoken. I will renounce the delight of lodging here for a purse of good rose nobles."

There was the faintest tinge of insolence in the man's voice, an insolence that exaggerated to the full the charge of plunder in his words. Whether he hinted at blood money or no, there was sufficient poison in the sneer to fire the brain and scorch the heart to vengeance.

The woman had risen from her chair, and stood gripping the carved woodwork with a passion that set her arms quivering like bands of tightened steel. The milk-white calm had melted from her face. Wrath ran riot in her blood. So large were her pupils that her eyes gleamed red.

"Ha, messire, I bring you to justice, and you offer me gold."

The man stared; his eyes did not quail from hers.

"Justice, madame! Of what sin then am I accused? On my soul, I know not who you are."

She calmed herself a little, shook back her hair from her shoulders, fingered her throat, breathing fast the while.

"My name, messire? Ha, you shall have it. I am Yeoland, daughter of that Rual of Cambremont whom you slaughtered at the gate of his burning house. I--am the sister of those fair sons whom you did to death. Blood money, forsooth! God grant, messire, that you are in honest mind for heaven, for you die to-night."

The man had bent to catch her words. He straightened suddenly like a tree whose throat is loosed from the grim grip of the wind. He went grey as granite, flushed red again as a dishonoured girl. The words had touched him with the iron of truth.

"Hear me," he said to her.

"Ah, you would lie."

"By Heaven, no; give me an hour's justice."

"Murderer."

"Before God, you wrong me."

He stood with twitching lips, shackled hands twisting one within the other. For the instant words eluded him, like fruit jerked from the mouth of a thirst-maddened Tantalus. Anon, his manhood gathered in him, rushed forth redly like blood from a stricken throat.

"Daughter of Rual, hear me, I tell you the truth. I, Flavian of Gambrevault, had in my pay a company of hired 'spears,' rough devils from the north. The braggarts served me against John of Brissac, were half their service drunk and mutinous. When Lententide had come, their captain swore to me, 'Lording, pay us and let us go. We have spilt blood near Gilderoy,' scullion blood he swore, 'give us good bounty, and let us march.' So at his word I gave them largesse, and packed them from Gambrevault with pennons flying. Methought they and their brawlings were at an end. Before God and the saints, I never knew of this."

Yeoland considered him, strenuous as he seemed towards truth. He was young, passionate, sanguine; for one short moment she pitied him, and pondered his innocence in her heart. It was then that Fulviac plucked at her sleeve, spoke in her ear, words that hardened her like a winter frost.

She stared in the man's eyes, as she gave him his death-thrust with the sureness of hate.

"Blood for blood," were her words to him.

"Is this justice!"

"I have spoken."

"Monstrously. Hear me----"

"Messire, make your peace with Heaven, I give you till daylight."

The man stumbled against the table, white as the moon. Youth strove in him, the crimson fountain of life's wine, the wild cry of the dawn. His eyes were great with a superhuman hunger. Fulviac's strong voice answered him.

"Hence, hence. At dawn, Nord, do your duty."

XI

Give doubt the password, and the outer battlements are traitorously stormed. Parley with pity, and the white banner flutters on the keep.

Provided her emotions inspire her, a woman is strong; let her take to logic, and she is a rushlight wavering in the wind. In her red heart lies her divinity; her feet are of clay when reason rules her head.

The girl Yeoland took doubt to her chamber that night, a malicious sprite, sharp of wit and wild of eye. All the demons of discord were loosed in the silence of the night. Pandora's box stood open, and the hours were void of sleep; faces crowded the shadows, voices wailed in the gloom. Her thoughts rioted like frightened bats fluttering and squeaking round a torch. Sleep, like a pale Cassandra, stood aloof and watched the mask of these manifold emotions.

Turn and twist as she would amid her fevered pillows, a wild voice haunted her, importunate and piteous. As the cry of one sinking in a stormy sea, it rang out with a passionate vehemence. Moreover, there was a subtle echo in her own heart, a strong appeal that did not spare her, toss and struggle as she would. Decision fluttered like a wounded bird. Malevolence rushed back as an ocean billow from the bastion of a cliff that emblemed mercy.

With a beating of wings and a discordant clamour, a screech-owl buffeted the casement. A lamp still burnt beneath the crucifix; the glow had beaconed the bird out of the night. Starting up with a shiver of fear, she quenched the lamp, and crept back to bed. The darkness seemed to smother her like a cloak; the silence took to ghostly whisperings; a death-watch clicked against the wall.

The night crawled on like a funeral cortege. Baffled, outfaced, sleepless, she rose from her tumbled bed, and paced the room as in a fever. Still wakefulness and a thousand dishevelled thoughts that hung about her like her snoodless hair. Again and again, she heard the distant whirr and rattle of wheels, the clangour of the wire, as the antique clock in Fulviac's chamber smote away the hours of night. Each echo of the sound seemed to spur to the quick her wavering resolution. Time was flying, jostling her thoughts as in a mill race. With the dawn, the Lord Flavian would die.

Anon she flung the casement wide and stared out into the night. A calm breeze moved amid the masses of ivy, and played upon her face. She bared her breast to its breath, and stood motionless with head thrown back, her white throat glimmering amid her hair. Below, the sombre multitudes of the trees showed dim and ghostly, deep with mystery. A vague wind stirred the branches; the dark void swirled with unrest, breaking like a midnight sea upon a cliff. A few straggling stars peeped through the lattice of the sky.

She leant against the sill, rested her chin upon her palms, and brooded. Thoughts, fierce, passionate, and clamorous, came crying like gusts of wind through a ruined house. Death and dead faces, blood, the yawn of sepulchres, life and the joy of it, all these passed as visions of fire before her fancy. Vengeance and pity agonised her soul. She answered yea and nay with the same breath; condemned and pardoned with contradicting zeal. Youth lifted up its face to her, piteous and beautiful. Death reached out a rattling hand into her bosom.

Presently, a far glow began to creep into the sky; a gradual greyness absorbed the shadows of the night. The day was dawning. From the forest, the trembling orisons of the birds thrilled like golden light into the air. Unutterable joy seemed to flood forth from the piping throats. Even the trees seemed to quiver to the sound. With a rush of bitter passion, she closed the casement, cast herself upon her bed, and strove to pray.

Again came the impotent groping into nothingness. A dense mist seemed to rise betwixt her soul and the white face of the Madonna. Aspiration lessened like an afterglow, and dissolved away into a dark void of doubt. Prayer eluded her; the utterances of her heart died in a miserable endeavour, and she could not think.

The spiritual storm wore itself away as the dawn streamed in with a glimmer of gold. Yeoland lay and stared at the casement, and the figure of Sebastian rendered radiant by the dawn, the whiteness of his limbs tongued with dusky rills of blood, where the barbs had smitten into the flesh. Sombre were the eyes, and shadowy with suffering. A halo of gold gilded the youthful face. The painted glass about him blazed like a shower of gems.

The Sebastian of the casement recalled to her with wizard power the face of the man whom death claimed at dawn. The thought woke no new passion in her. The night's vigil had left her reason like a skein of tangled silk, and with the day she verged towards a wearied apathy. The voice of pity in her waned to an infrequent whisper that came like the rustling of leaves on a summer night. She realised that it had dawned an hour or more; that the man had knelt and fallen to Nord's sword.

Suddenly the silence was snapped by a far outcry sounding in the bowels of the cliff. Gruff voices seemed to echo and re-echo like breakers in a cavern. A horn blared. She heard the thudding of a door, the shrilling of mail, the clangour of iron steps passing up the gallery.

Shivering, she raised herself upon her elbow to listen. Were they bringing her the man's head, grey and blood-dabbled, with closed lids and mangled neck? She fell back again upon her pillows, pressed her hands to her face with a great revulsion of pity, for the image had burnt in upon her brain.

The clangour of harness drew near, with an iron rhythm as of the march of destiny. It ceased outside the door. A heavy hand beat upon the panelling.

"Who knocks?"

Her own voice, strained and shrill, startled her like an owl's hoot. Fulviac's deep bass answered her from the passage.

"Unbar to me, I must speak with you."

She started up from the bed in passionless haste, ran to a closet, drew out a cloak and wrapped it about her shoulders. Her bare feet showed white under her night-gear as she slid the bolt from its socket, and let the man in. He was fully armed save for his salade, which he carried in the hollow of his arm. His red cloak swept his heels. A tower of steel, there was a clangorous bluster about him that bespoke action.

The girl had drawn apart, shivering, and gathering her cloak about her, for in the gloom of the place she had thought for an instant that Fulviac carried a mangled head.

"A rider has brought news," he said to her. "John of Brissac's men have taken Prosper the Preacher, to hang him, as their lord has vowed, over the gate of Fontenaye. They are on the march home from Gilderoy, ten lances and a company of arbalestiers. I ride to ambuscado them. Prosper shall not hang!"

She stood with her back to the casement, and looked at him with a restless stare. Her thoughts were with the man whose grey eyes had pleaded with her through the night. Her fears clamoured like captives at the gate of a dungeon.

"What is more, this vagabond of Avalon has been begging twelve hours' grace to scrape his soul clean for Peter."

"Ah!" she said, with a sudden stark earnestness.

"I will give him till sunset----"

"If I suffer it----"

"The dog has spirit. I would thrust no man into the dark till he has struck a bargain with his own particular saints."

She drew back, sank down into a chair with her hair half hiding her face.

"You are right in being merciful," she said very slowly.

Magic riddle of life; rare roseate rod of love. Was it youth leaping towards youth, the cry of the lark to the dawn, the crimson flowering of a woman's pity? The air seemed woven through with gold. A thousand lutes had sounded in the woods. Voiceless, she sat with flickering lids, amazed at the alchemy that had wrought ruth out of hate.

Fulviac had drawn back into the gloom of the gallery. He turned suddenly upon his heel, and his scabbard smote and rang against the rock.

"I take all the men I have," he said to her, "even the dotard Jaspar, for he knows the ways. Gregory and Adrian I leave on guard; they are tough gentlemen, and loyal. As for the lordling, he is well shackled."

Yeoland was still cowering in her chair with the mysterious passions of the moment.

"You will return?" she asked him.

"By nightfall, if we prosper; as we shall."

He moved two paces, stayed again in his stride, and flung a last message to her from the black throat of the passage.

"Remember, there is no recantation over this business. The man is my affair as well as yours. He is a power in the south, and would menace us. Remember, he must die."

He turned and left her without more palaver. She heard him go clanging down the gallery, heard the thunder of a heavy door, the braying of a horn. A long while she sat motionless, still as stone, her hands lying idle in her lap. When an hour had passed, the sun smote in, and found her kneeling at her prayer-desk, her breviary dewed with tears.

XII

Fulviac passed away that morning into the forest, a shaft of red amid the mournful glooms. Colour and steel streamed after him fantastically. The great cliff, silent and desolate, basked like a leviathan in the sun.

Of the daylight and its crown of gold, the girl Yeoland had no deep joy. When she had ended her passion over the blazoned pages of her breviary, and mopped her tears with a corner of her gown, she rose to realism, and turned her mood to the cheating of the dues of time.

The hours lagged with enough monotony to degenerate a saint; Yeoland was very much a woman. The night had left her a legacy of evil. She had shadows under her eyes, and a constant swirl of thoughts within her brain that made solitude a torture-house, full of prophetic pain. There was her lute, and she eschewed it, seeing that her fingers seemed as ice. As for her embroidery, the stitches wandered haphazard, wrought grotesque things, or lost all method in a stupor of sloth. She threw the banner aside in a fume at last, and let her broodings have their way.

The forenoon crawled, like a beggar on a dusty high-road in the welt of August. Time seemed to stand and mock her. Hour by hour, she was tortured by the vision of steel falling upon a strong young neck, of a white face lying in a pool of blood, of a dripping carcase and a sweating sword. Though the vision maddened her, what could her weak hands do? The man was shackled, and guarded by men with whom she dared not tamper. Moreover, she remembered the last look in Fulviac's keen eyes.

Towards evening she grew rabid with unrest, fled from the cave by the northern stair, and took sanctuary amid the tall shadows of the forest. The pine avenues were ever like a church to her, solemn, stately, sympathetic as night. There was nought to anger, nought to bring discord, where the croon of the branches soothed like a song.

It was as she played the nun in this forest cloister, that a strange thought challenged her consciousness under the trees. It was subtle, yet full of an incomprehensible bitterness, that made her heart hasten. Even as she considered it, as a girl gazes at a jewel lying in her palm, the charm flashed magic fire into her eyes. This victim for the sword lay shackled to the wall in the great guard-room. She would go and steal a last glance at him before Fulviac and death returned.

Stairway, bower, and gallery were behind her. She stood in Fulviac's parlour, where the lamp burnt dimly, and harness glimmered on the walls. The door of the room stood ajar. She stole to it, and peered through the crack left by the clumsy hingeing, into the lights and shadows of the room beyond.

At the lower end of a long table the two guards sat dicing, sprawling greedily over the board, the lust of hazard writ large in their looks. The dice kept up a continuous patter, punctuated by the intent growls of the gamesters. By the sloping wall of the cavern, palleted on a pile of dirty straw, lay the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, with his hands shackled to a staple in the rock. He lay stretched on his side, with his back turned towards the light, so that his face was invisible to the girl behind the door.

She watched the man awhile with a curious and dark-eyed earnestness. There was pathos in the prostrate figure, as though Hezekiah-like the man had turned to the bare rock and the callous comfort despair could give. Once she imagined that she saw a jerking of the shoulders, that hinted at something very womanish. The thought smote new pity into her, and sent her away from the cranny, trembling.

Yeoland withdrew into Fulviac's room, and thence into the murk of the gallery leading to her bower. A sudden sense of impotence had flooded into her heart; she even yearned for some shock of Fate that might break the very bonds that bound her to her vengeance, as to a corpse. On the threshold of her room, a sudden sound brought her to a halt like a hand thrust out of the dark to clutch her throat. She stood listening, like a miser for thieves, and heard much.

A curse came from the guard-room, the crash of an overturned bench, the tingling kiss of steel. She heard the scream as of one stabbed, a smothered uproar, an indiscriminate scuffling, then----silence. She stood a moment in the dark, listening. The silence was heavy and implacable as the rock above. Fear seized her, a lust to know the worst. She ran down the gallery into Fulviac's room. The door was still ajar; she thrust it open and entered the great cavern.

Her doubts elapsed in an instant. At the long table, a man sat with his head pillowed on his arms. A red rivulet curled away over the board, winding amid the drinking horns, isleting the dice in its course. On the floor lay the second guard, a smudge of crimson oozing from his grey doublet, his arms rigid, his hands clawing in the death-agony. At the end of the table stood the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, free.

Three cubits of steel had tangled the plot vastly in the passing of a minute. The climax was like a knot of silk thrust through with a sword. The two stood motionless a moment, staring at each other across the length of the table, like a couple of mutes over a grave. The man was the first to break the silence.

"Madame," he said, with a certain grand air, and a flippant gesture, "suffer me to condone with you over the lamentable tricks of Fortune. But for gross selfishness on my part, I should still be chastening myself for the unjust balancing of our feud. God wills it, seemingly, that I should continue to be your debtor."

Despite her woman's wit, the girl was wholly puzzled how to answer him. She was wickedly conscious in her heart of a subtle gratitude to Heaven for the sudden baulking of her malice. The man expected wrath from her, perhaps an outburst of passion. Taking duplicity to her soul, she stood forward on the dais and tilted her chin at him with dutiful defiance.

"Thank my irresolution, messire," she said, "for this reprieve of fortune."

He came two steps nearer, as though not unminded to talk with her in open field.

"At dawn I might have had you slain," she continued, with some hastening of her tongue; "I confess to having pitied you a little. You are young, a mere boy, weak and powerless. I gave you life for a day."

The man reddened slightly, glanced at the dead men, and screwed his mouth into a dry smile.

"Most harmless, as you see, madame," he said. "For your magnanimity, I thank you. _Deo gratias_, I will be as grateful as I may."

She stood considering him out of her dark, long-lashed eyes. The man was good to look upon, ruddy and clean of lip, with eyes that stared straight to the truth, and a pose of the head that prophesied spirit. The sunlight of youth played sanguine upon his face; yet there was also a certain shadow there, as of premature wisdom, born of pain. There were faint lines about the mouth and eyes. For all its sleek and ruddy comeliness, it was not the face of a boy.

"Messire," she said to him at last.

"Madame."

"He who lurks over long in the wolf's den may meet the dam at the door."

He smiled at her, a frank flash of sympathy that was not devoid of gratitude.

"Haste would be graceless," he said to her.

"How so?" she asked him.

"Ha, Madame Yeoland, have I not watched my arms at night before the high altar at Avalon? Have I not sworn to serve women, to keep troth, and to love God? You judge me hardly if you think of me as a butcher and a murderer. For the death of your kinsfolk I hold myself ashamed."

There was a fine light upon his face, a power of truth in his voice that was not hypocritic. The girl stared him over with a certain critical earnestness that boasted a gleam of approval.

"Fair words," she said to him; "you did not speak thus to me last eve."

"Ah!" he cried, beaming on her, "I was cold as a corpse; nor could I whine, for pride."

"And your shackles?"

He laughed and held up both hands; the wrists were chafed and bloody.

"It was ever a jest against me," he said, "that I had the hands of a woman, white and meagre, yet strong with the sword. Your fellows thrust a pair of wristlets on me fit for a Goliath, strong, but bulky. My hands have proved my salvation. I pulled them through while the guards diced, crept for a sword, gained it, and my freedom."

She nodded, and was not markedly dismal, though the wind had veered against her cause. The man with the grey eyes was a being one could not quarrel with with easy sincerity. Probably it did not strike her at the moment that this friendly argument with the man she had plotted to slay was a contradiction worthy of a woman.

The Lord of Avalon meanwhile had drawn still nearer to the girl upon the dais. His grey eyes had taken a warmer lustre into their depths, as though her beauty had kindled something akin to awe in his heart. He set the point of the sword on the floor, his hands on the hilt, and looked up at the white face medallioned in the black splendour of its hair.

"Madame," he said very gravely, "it is the way of the world to feel remorse when such an emotion is expedient, and to fling penitence into the bottomless pit when the peril is past. I shall prove to you that mine is no such April penitence. Here, on the cross of my sword, I swear to you a great oath. First, that I will build a chapel in Cambremont glade, and establish a priest there. Secondly, I will rebuild the tower, refit it royally, attach to it cottars and borderers from mine own lands. Lastly, mass shall be said and tapers burnt for your kinsfolk in every church in the south. I myself will do such penance as the Lord Bishop shall ordain for my soul."

The man was hotly in earnest over the vow--red as a ruby set in the sun. Yeoland looked down upon him with the glimmer of a smile upon her lips as he kissed the cross of the sword.

"You seem honest," she said to him.

"Madame, on this sword I swear it. It is hard to believe any good of an enemy. Behold me then before you as a friend. There is a feud betwixt us, not of my willing. By God's light I am eager to bridge the gulf and to be at peace."

She shook her head and looked at him with a sudden mysterious sadness. Such a pardon was beyond belief, the man's pure ardour, nothing but seed cast upon sand. Fulviac, a tower of steel, seemed to loom beyond him--an iron figure of Fate, grim and terrible.

"This can never be," she said.

His eyes were honestly sorrowful.

"Is madame so implacable?"

"Ah!" she said, "you do not understand me."

He stood a moment in thought, as though casting about in his heart for the reason of her sternness. Despite her wrongs, he was assured by some spirit voice that it was not death that stalked betwixt them like an angel of doom. As he stood and brooded, a gleam of the truth flashed in upon his brain. He went some steps back from her, as though destiny decreed it that they should sever unabsolved.

"Your pardon, madame," he said to her; "the riddle is plain to me. I no longer grope into the dark. This man, here, is your husband."

She went red as a rose blushing on her green throne at the coming of the dawn.

"Messire."

"Your pardon."

"Ah, I am no wife," she said to him. "God knows but for this man I should be friendless and without home. He has spread honour and chivalry before my feet like a snow-white cloak. Even in this, my godless vengeance, he has served me."

The man strode suddenly towards the dais, with his face turned up to hers. A strange light played upon it, half of passion, half of pity. His voice shook, for all its sanguine strength.

"Ah, madame, tell me one thing before I go."

"Messire."

"Have I your pardon?"

"If you love life, messire, leave me."

"Have I your pardon?"

"Go! ere it is too late."

Like a ghostly retort to her appeal came the sound of armed men thundering over the bridge. Their rough voices rose in the night's silence, smitten through with the clash and clangour of arms. Fulviac had caught John of Brissac's company in the woods by Gilderoy. There had been a bloody tussle and much slaughter. Triumphant, they were at the gate with Prosper the Preacher in their midst.

The pair in the cavern stared at each other with a mute appeal.

"Fulviac," said the girl in a whisper.

"The door!"

"It is barred."

They were silent and round-eyed, as children caught in the midst of mischief. Mailed fists and pike staves were beating upon the gate. A babel of impatience welled up without.

"Adrian, Gregory!"

"Lazy curs!"

"Unbar, unbar!"

Mocking silence leered in retort. Yeoland and the Lord of Avalon were still as mice. The din slackened and waned, as though Fulviac's men were listening for sound of life within. Then came more blows upon the gate; fingers fumbled at the closed grill. The man Gregory lay and stared at the rocky roof; Adrian sat with his face pooled by his own blood.

A fiercer voice sounded above the clamour. It was Fulviac's. The girl shivered as she stood.

"Ho, there, Gregory, Adrian; what's amiss with ye?"

Still silence, mocking and implacable. The lull held for the moment; then the storm gathered.

"Break down the gate," roared the voice; "by God, we will see the bottom of this damned silence."

The Lord Flavian of Avalon had stood listening with the look of a man cooped in a cavern, who hears the sea surging to his feet. He glanced at the dead guards, and went white. To save his soul from purgatory it behoved him to act, and to act quickly. A single lamp still burnt in the oratory of hope. He went near to the girl on the dais, and held up the crossed hilt of his sword.

"By the Holy Cross, mercy!"

She cast a frightened glance into his eyes, and continued mute a moment. The thunder grew against the gate, the crash of steel, a rending din that went echoing into all the pits and passage-ways of the place. Fulviac's men had dragged the trunk of a fallen pine up the causeway, and were charging the gate till the timber groaned.

The man, with his sword held like a crucifix, stood and pleaded with his eyes.

"Mercy!" he said; "you know this warren and can save me."

"Are you a craven?"

"Craven? before God, no, only desperate. What hope have I unharnessed, one sword against fifty?"

For yet another moment she appeared irresolute, dazed by the vision of Fulviac's powerful wrath. He was a stark man and a terrible, and she feared him. The timbers of the gate began to crack and gape. Flavian of Avalon lifted up his voice to her with a passionate outburst of despair.

"God, madame, I cannot die. I am young, look at me, life is at its dawn. By your woman's mercy, hide me. Give me not back to death."

His bitter agitation smote her to the core. She looked into his eyes; they were hungry as love, and very piteous. There could be no sinning against those eyes. Great fear flooded over her like a green billow, bearing her to the inevitable. In a moment she was as hot to save him as if he had been her lover.

"Come," she said, "quick, before the gate gives."

She led him like the wind through Fulviac's parlour, and down the gallery to her own bower. It was dark and lampless. She groped to the postern, fumbled at the latch and conquered it. Night streamed in. She pushed the man out and pointed to the steps.

"The forest," she said, "for your life; bear by the stars for the north."

A full moon had reared her silver buckler in the sky. The night was sinless and superb, drowned in a mist of phosphor glory. The man knelt at her feet a moment, and pressed his lips to the hem of her gown.

"The Virgin bless you!"

"Go----"

"I shall remember."

He descended and disappeared where the trees swept up with wizard glimmerings to touch the cliff. When he had fled, Yeoland passed back into the cavern, and met Fulviac before the splintered gate with a lie upon her lips.