Chapter IX: Part IV: XXXVII (1)

Fortune had not blessed the cause of the people with that torrential triumph toiled for by their captains. The flood of war had risen, had overwhelmed tall castles and goodly cities, yet there were heights that had baulked its frothy turmoil, mountains that had hurled it back upon the valleys. Victory was like a sphere of glass tossed amid the foam of two contending torrents.

In the west, Sir Simon of Imbrecour, that old leopard wise in war, had raised the royal banner at his castle of Avray. The nobles of the western marches had joined him to a spear; many a lusty company had ridden in, to toss sword and shield in faith to the King. From his castle of Avray Sir Simon had marched south with the flower of the western knighthood at his heels. He had caught Malgo on the march from Conan, even as his columns were defiling from the mountains. Sir Simon had leapt upon the wild hillsmen and rebel levies like the fierce and shaggy veteran that he was. A splendid audacity had given the day as by honour to the royal arms. Malgo's troops had been scattered to the winds, and he himself taken and beheaded on the field under the black banner of the house of Imbrecour.

In the east, Godamar the free-lance lay with his troops in Thorney Isle, closed in and leaguered by the warlike Abbot of Rocroy. The churchman had seized the dyke-ways of the fens, and had hemmed the rebels behind the wild morasses. As for the eastern folk, they were poor gizardless creatures; having faced about, they had declared for the King, and left Godamar to rot within the fens. The free-lance had enough ado to keep the abbot out. His marching to join Fulviac was an idle and strategetical dream.

Last of all, the barons of the north--fierce, rugged autocrats, had gathered their half-barbarous retainers, and were marching on Lauretia to uphold the King. They were grim folk, flint and iron, nurtured amid the mountains and the wild woods of the north. They marched south like Winter, black and pitiless, prophetic of storm-winds, sleet, and snow. Some forty thousand men had gathered round the banner of Sir Morolt of Gorm and Regis, and, like the Goths pouring into Italy, they rolled down upon the luxurious provinces of the south.

Fortune had decreed that about Lauretia, the city of the King, the vultures of war should wet their talons. It was a rich region, gemmed thick with sapphire meres set in deep emerald woods. Lauretia, like a golden courtesan, lay with her white limbs cushioned amid gorgeous flowers. Her bosom was full of odours and of music; her lap littered with the fragrant herbs of love. No perils, save those of moonlit passion, had ever threatened her. Thus it befell that when the storm-clouds gathered, she cowered trembling on her ivory couch, the purple wine of pleasure soaking her sinful feet.

In a broad valley, five leagues south of the city, Fulviac's rebels fought their first great fight with Richard of the Iron Hand. A warrior's battle, rank to rank and sword to sword, the fight had burnt to the embers before the cressets were red in the west. Fulviac had headed the last charge that had broken the royal line, and rolled the shattered host northwards under the cloak of night. Dawn had found Fulviac marching upon Lauretia, eager to let loose the lusts of war upon that rich city of sin. He was within three leagues of the place, when a jaded rider overtook him, to tell of Malgo's death and of the battle in the west. Yet another league towards the city his outriders came galloping back with the news that the northern barons had marched in and joined the King. Outnumbered, and threatened on the flank, Fulviac turned tail and held south again, trusting to meet Godamar marching from the fens.

He needed the shoulders of an Atlas those September days, for rumour burdened him with tidings that were ominous and heavy. Godamar lay impotent, hedged in the morasses; Malgo was dead, his mountaineers scattered. Sir Simon of Imbrecour was leading in the western lords to swell the following of the King. Vengeance gathered hotly on the rebel rear, as Fulviac retreated by forced marches towards the south.

It was at St. Gore, a red-roofed town packed on a hill, amid tall, dreaming woods, that Colgran, with the ten thousand who had leaguered Gambrevault, drew to the main host again. Fulviac had quartered a portion of his troops in the town, and had camped the rest in the meadows without the crumbling, lichen-grown walls. He had halted but for a night on the retreat from Lauretia, and had taken a brief breath in the moil and sweat of the march. His banner had been set up in the market-square before a rickety hostel of antique tone and temper. His guards lounged on the benches under the vines; his captains drank in the low-ceilinged rooms, swore and argued over the rough tables.

It was evening when Colgran's vanguard entered the town by the western gate. His men had tramped all day in the sun, and were parched and weary. None the less, they stiffened their loins, and footed it through the streets with a veteran swagger to show their mettle. Fulviac came out and stood in the wooden gallery of the inn, watching them defile into the market-square. They tossed their pikes to him as they poured by, and called on him by name--

"Fulviac, Fulviac!"

He was glad enough of their coming, for he needed men, and the rough forest levies were in Colgran's ranks. Ten thousand pikes and brown bills to bristle up against the King's squadrons! There was strength in the glitter and the rolling dust of the columns. Yet before all, the man's tawny eyes watched for a red banner, and a woman in armour upon a white horse, Yeoland, wife of Flavian of Gambrevault.

In due season he saw her, a pale, spiritless woman, wan and haggard, thin of neck and dark of eye. The bloom seemed to have fallen from her as from the crushed petals of a rose. The red banner, borne by a man upon a black horse, danced listlessly upon its staff. She rode with slack bridle, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, but into the vague distance as into the night of the past.

Around her tramped Colgran's pikemen in jerkins of leather and caps of steel. The woman moved with them as though they were so many substanceless ghosts, stalking like shadows down the highway of death. Her face was bloodless, bleached by grievous apathy and chill pride. The bronzed faces round her were dim and unreal, a mob of masks, void of life and meaning. Sorrow had robed her in silent snow. The present was no more propitious to her than a winter forest howling under the moon.

Before the hostelry the column came to a halt with grounded pikes. The woman on the white horse stirred from her stupor, looked up, and saw Fulviac. He was standing with slouched shoulders in the gallery above her, his hands gripping the wooden rail. Their eyes met in a sudden mesmeric stare that brought badges of red to the girl's white cheeks. There was the look upon his face that she had known of old, when perilous care weighed heavy upon his stubborn shoulders. His eyes bewildered her. They had a light in them that spoke neither of anger nor reproach, yet a look such as Arthur might have cast upon fallen Guinivere.

They took her from her horse, and led her mute and passive into the steel-thronged inn. Up a winding stair she was brought into a sombre room whose latticed casements looked towards the west. By an open window stood Fulviac, chin on chest, his huge hands clasped behind his back. Colgran, in dusky harness, was speaking to him in his rough, incisive jargon. The woman knew that the words concerned her heart. At a gesture from Fulviac, the free-lance cast a fierce glance at her, and retreated.

The man did not move from the window, but stood staring in morose silence at the reddening west. Hunched shoulders and bowed head gave a certain powerful pathos to the figure statuesque and silent against the crimson curtain of the sky. The very air of the room seemed burdened and saturated with the gloomy melancholy of the man's mood. War, with its thousand horrors, furrowed his brow and bowed his great shoulders beneath its bloody yoke. Her woman's instinct told her that he was lonely, for the soul that had ministered to him breathed for him no more.

He turned on her suddenly with a terse greeting that startled her thoughts like doves in a pine wood.

"Welcome to you, Lady of Gambrevault."

There was a bluff bitterness in his voice that forewarned her of his ample wisdom. Colgran had surrendered her, heart and tragedy in one, to Fulviac's mercy. A looming cloud of passion shadowed the man's face, making him seem gaunt and rough to her for the moment. She remembered him standing over Duessa's body in Sforza's palace at Gilderoy. Life had too little promise for her to engender fear of any man, even of Fulviac at his worst.

"I trust, Madame Yeoland, that you are merry?"

The taunt touched her, yet she answered him listlessly enough.

"Do what you will; scoff if it pleases you."

Fulviac shrugged his shoulders, and tossed his lion's mane from his broad forehead.

"It is a grim world this," he said; "when thrones burn, should we seek to quench them with our tears! Whose was the fault that God made you too much a woman? Red heart, heart of the rose, a traitorous comrade art thou, and an easy foe."

She had no answer on her lips, and he turned and paced the room before her, darting swift glances into her face.

"So they killed him?" he said, more quietly anon; "poor child, forget him, it was the fate of war. Even to the grave he took the love I might never wear."

She shuddered and hid her face.

"Fulviac, have pity!"

"Pity?"

"This is a judgment, God help my soul!"

"A judgment?"

"For serving my own heart before the Virgin's words."

The man stopped suddenly in his stride, and looked at her as though her words had touched him like a bolt betwixt the jointings of his harness. There was still the morose frown upon his face, the half closure of the lids over the tawny eyes. He gripped his chin with one of his bony hands, and turned his great beak of a nose upwards with a gesture of self-scorn.

"Since the damned chicanery of chance so wills it," he said, "I will confess to you, that my confession may ease your conscience. The Madonna in that forest chapel was framed of flesh and blood."

"Fulviac!"

"Of flesh and blood, my innocent, tricked out to work my holy will. We needed a Saint, we cleansers of Christendom; ha, noble justiciaries that we are. Well, well, the Virgin served us, and tripped back to a warm nest at Gilderoy, reincarnated by high heaven."

Yeoland stood motionless in the shadows of the room, like one striving to reason amid the rush of many thoughts. She showed no wrath at her betrayal; her pale soul was too white for scarlet passion. The significance of life had vanished in a void of gloom. She stood like Hero striving to catch her lover's voice above the moan of the sea.

Fulviac unbuckled his sword and threw it with a crash upon the table. He thrust his arms above his head, stretched his strong sinews, took deep breaths into his knotted throat.

"The truth is out," he said to her; "come, madame, confess to me in turn."

Yeoland faced him with quivering lips, and a tense straining of her fingers.

"What have I to tell?" she asked.

"Nothing?"

"Save that I loved the Lord Flavian, and that he is dead."

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

"Ah, you are avenged," she said, "you have crushed my heart; may the thought comfort you."

Her parched apathy seemed to elapse of a sudden, and she lost her calmness in an outburst of passion. She was athirst for solitude, to be cloistered from the rough cavil of the world. Colour glowed upon her sunken cheeks as she stretched out her arms to the man with a piteous vehemence.

"Fulviac----"

"Girl."

"Ah, for God's love, end now this mockery. Take this armour from me, for it burns my bosom. Let me go, that I may hide my wounds in peace."

"Peace!" he said, with a twinge of scorn.

"Fulviac, can you not pity me? I am broken and bruised, men stare and jeer. Oh, my God, only to be out of sight and alone!"

The man stood by the window looking out into the sky with lowering brows. The west burnt red above the house-tops; from the street came the noise of men marching.

"Do not kill yourself," he said with laconic brevity.

"Why do you say that?"

"There is truth in the suspicion."

"Ah, what is life to me!"

"We Christians still have need of you."

The man's seeming scorn scourged her anguish to a shrill despair. The hot blood swept more swiftly through her worn, white body.

"Cursed be your ambition," she said to him; "must you torture me before the world?"

"Perhaps."

"I renounce this lying part."

"As you will, madame; it will only make you look the greater fool."

"Ah, you are brutal."

He turned to her with the look of one enduring unuttered anguish in the spirit. His strong pride throttled passion, twisting his rough face into tragic ugliness.

"No, believe it not," he said; "I desire even for your heart's sake that you should make the best of an evil fortune. Learn to smile again; pretend to a zest in life. I have fathomed hell in my grim years, and my words are true. Time loves youth and recovers its sorrow. Know this and ponder it: 'tis better to play the hypocrite than to suffer the world to chuckle over one's tears."

XXXVIII

The royal host had massed about the walls of Lauretia, and marched southwards to surprise Fulviac at St. Gore. Half the chivalry of the land had gathered under the standard of the King. Sir Simon of Imbrecour had come in from the west with ten thousand spears and five thousand bowmen. The Northerners under Morolt boasted themselves twoscore thousand men, and there were the loyal levies of the midland provinces to march under "The Golden Sun" upon the south. Never had such panoply of war glittered through the listening woods. Their march was as the onrush of a rippling sea; the noise of their trumpets as the cry of a tempest over towering trees.

Chivalry, golden champion of beauty, had much to avenge, much to expurgate. The peasant folk had plunged the land into ruin and red war. Castles smoked under the summer sky; the noble dead lay unburied in the high places of pride. To the wolf cry of the people there could be no answer save the hiss of the sword. Before the high altar at Lauretia, the King had sworn on relics and the Scriptures, to deal such vengeance as should leave the land cowering for centuries in terror of his name.

Southwards from St. Gore there stretched for some fifteen leagues the province of La Belle Foret, a region of rich valleys and romantic woods, green and quiet under the tranquil sky. Its towns were mere gardens, smothered deep in flowers, full of cedars and fair cypresses. Its people were simple, happy, and devout. War had not set foot there for two generations, and the land overflowed with the good things of life. Its vineyards purpled the valleys; its pastures harboured much cattle. Its houses were filled with rich furniture and silks, chests laden with cloth of gold, caskets of gems, ambries packed with silver plate. The good folk of La Belle Foret had held aloof from the revolt. Peace-loving and content in their opulence, they had no fondness for anarchy and war.

It was into this fair province that Fulviac led his arms on the march south for Gilderoy and the great forest by the sea. Belle Foret, neutral and luxurious, was spoil for the spoiler, stuff for the sword. Plundering, marauding, burning, butchering, Fulviac's rebels poured through like a host of Huns. Strength promised licence; there was little asceticism in the cause, though the sacred banner flew in the van with an unction that was truly pharisaical. From that flood of war, the provincials fled as from a plague. It was Fulviac's policy to devastate the land, to hinder the march of the royal host. Desolation spread like winter over the fields; Fulviac's ravagers left ruin and despair and a great silence to mark their track.

The march became a bloody parable before three days had passed. Fulviac had taken burning faggots upon his back, and the iron collar of war weighed heavy on him that autumn season. It was a grim moral and a terrible. He had called up fiends from hell, and their antics mocked him. Storm as he would, even his strong wrath was like fire licking at granite. Death taunted him, and Murder rode as a witness at his side. The mob of mad humanity was like a ravenous sea, hungry, pitiless, and insatiate. Even his stout heart was shocked by the bestial passions war had roused. His men were mutinous to all restraint. Fight they would when he should marshal them; but for their lusts they claimed a wolf-like and delirious liberty.

Yeoland the Saint rode on her white horse through La Belle Foret, like a pale ghost dazed by the human miseries of war. A captive, she had surrendered herself to Fate; her heart was as a sea-bird wearied by long buffetings in the wind. There was no desire in her for life, no spark of passion, no hope save for the sounding of a convent bell. She imagined calmly the face of death. Her grave stretched green and quiet to her fancy, under some forest tree.

Even her hebetude of soul gave way at last before the horrors of that bloody march. She saw towns smouldering and flames licking the night sky, heard walls crack and roofs fall with a roar and an uprushing of fire. She saw the peasant folk crouching white and stupefied about their ruined homes. She heard the cry of the children, the wailing of women, the cracked voices of old men cursing Fulviac as he rode by. She saw the crops burnt in the fields; cattle slaughtered and their carcases left to rot in the sun.

The deeds of those grim days moved in her brain with a vividness that never abated. War with all its ruthlessness, its devilry, its riotous horror, burnt in upon her soul. The plash of blood, the ruin, the despair, appalled her till she yearned and hungered for the end. Life seemed to have become a hideous purgatory, flaming and shrieking under the stars.

She appealed to Fulviac with the vehemence of despair. The man was obdurate and moody, burdened by the knowledge that these horrors were beyond him. His very impotence was bitterness itself to his strong spirit. In the silent passion of his shame, he buckled a sullen scorn about his manhood, scoffed and mocked when the woman pleaded. He was like a Titan struggling in the toils of Fate, flinging forth scorn to mask his anguish. He had let war loose upon the land, and the riot mocked him like a turbulent sea.

One noon they rode together through a town that had closed its gates to them, and had been taken by assault. On the hills around stood the solemn woods watching in silence the scene beneath. Corpses stiffened in the gutters; children shrieked in burning attics. By the cross in the market-square soldiers were staving in wine casks, the split lees mingling with the blood upon the cobbles. Ruffians rioted in the streets. Lust and violence were loose like wolves.

Fulviac clattered through the place with Yeoland and his guards, a tower of steel amid the reeking ruins. He looked neither to the right hand nor the left, but rode with set jaw and sullen visage for the southern gate, and the green quiet of the fields. His tawny eyes smouldered under his casque; his mouth was as stone, stern yet sorrowful. He spoke never a word, as though his thoughts were too grim for the girl's ears.

Yeoland rode at his side in silence, shivering in thought at the scenes that had passed before her eyes. She was as a lily whose pure petals quailed before the sprinkling plash of blood. Her soul was of too delicate a texture for the rude blasts of war.

She turned on Fulviac anon, and taunted him out of the fulness of her scorn.

"This is your crusade for justice," she said to him; "ah, there is a curse upon us. You have let fiends loose."

He did not retort to her for the moment, but rode gazing into the gilded glories of the woods. Even earth's peace was bitter to him at that season, but bitterer far was the woman's scorn.

"War is war," he said to her at last; "we cannot leave the King fat larders."

"And all this butchery, this ruin?"

"Blame war for it."

"And brutal men."

"Mark you," he said to her, with some deepening of his voice, "I am no god; I cannot make angels of devils. The sea has risen, can I cork it in a bottle, or tie the storm wind up in a sack? Give me my due. I am human, not a demi-god."

She understood his mood, and pitied him in measure, for he had a burden on his soul sufficient for a Hercules. His men were half mutinous; they would fight for him, but he could not stem their lusts. He was as a stout ship borne upon the backs of riotous waves.

"Well would it have been," she said, "if you had never raised this storm."

"It is easy to be wise at the eleventh hour," he answered her.

"Can you not stay it even now?"

"Woman, can I stem the sea!"

"The blood of thousands dyes your hands."

He twisted in the saddle as though her words gored him to the quick. His face twitched, his eyes glittered.

"My God, keep silence!"

"Fulviac."

"Taunt me no longer. Have I not half hell boiling in my heart?"

Thus Fulviac and his rebels passed on spoiling towards Gilderoy and the sea, where Sforza lay camped with forces gathered from the south. The great forest beckoned them; they knew its trammels, and hoped for strategies therein. Like a vast web of gloom it proffered harbour to the wolves of war, for they feared the open, and the vengeful onrush of the royal chivalry.

Meanwhile, the armies of the King came down upon Belle Foret, a great horde of steel. From its black ashes the country welcomed them with the dumb lips of death. Ruin and slaughter appealed them on the march; the smoke of war ascended to their nostrils. Fierce was the cry for vengeance in the ranks, as the host poured on like a golden dawn treading on the dark heels of night.

XXXIX

In a cave whose narrow mouth cut a rough cameo from the snow and azure of the sky, a man lay sleeping upon a bed of heather. The surge of the sea rose from the bastions of the cliff, where foam glittered and swirled over the black rocks that thrust their dripping brows above the tide. Gulls were winging over the waves, whose green crests shone brilliant under the sun. On a distant headland, bleak and sombre, the towers of a castle broke the turquoise crescent of the heavens.

In one corner of the cave a feeble fire flickered, the smoke therefrom curling along the roof to vanish in a thin blue plume of vapour. Beside the bed lay a pile of armour, with a broken casque like a cleft skull to crown it. Dried herbs and a loaf of rye bread lay on a flat boulder near the fire. The figure on the heather was covered by a stained yet gorgeously blazoned surcoat, that seemed an incongruous quilt for such a couch. Near the cave's entry a great axe glittered on the floor, an axe whose notched edge had tested the metal of many a bassinet.

Down a rough path cut in the face of the cliff scrambled a gaunt, hollow-chested figure, doubleted in soiled scarlet, battered shoes on feet, a black beard bristling on the stubborn chin. A red cloth was bound about the man's head. He breathed hard as he clambered down the cliff, as though winded by fast running. Sweat stood on his forehead. Beneath him ran the sea, a pit of foam, swirling and muttering amid the rocks.

He reached the entry of the cave and dived therein like a fox into an "earth." Standing by the bed, he looked for a moment at the unconscious figure with the air of one unwilling to wake a weary comrade from his sleep. At last he went down on his knees by the heather, and touched the sleeping man's cheek with the gentle gesture of a woman. The figure stirred at the touch; two thin hands groped over the green and azure quilt. The kneeling man gripped them in his great brown paws, and held them fast.

"Modred."

The voice was toneless, husky, and without spirit.

"Sire."

"Ah, these waking moments. It had been better if you had let me rot in Gambrevault."

"Courage, sire, you wake to a better fortune."

"There is new life in your voice."

"The King has come at last."

The man on the heather raised himself upon one elbow. His face looked grey and starved in the half gloom of the cave. He lifted up one hand with a gesture of joy.

"The King!"

Modred of the black beard smiled at him like a father. His hands trembled as he put the man back gently on the heather, and smoothed the coverlet.

"Lie still, sire."

"Ah, this is life, once more."

"Patience, patience. Let us have no woman's moods, no raptures. Ha, I am a tyrannous dog. Did I drag you for dead out of Gambrevault to let you break your heart over Richard of Lauretia! Lie quiet, sire; you have no strength to gamble with as yet."

The man on the heather reached out again for Modred's hand.

"The rough dog should have been born a woman," he said to him.

Modred laughed.

"There is a great heart under that hairy chest of yours."

The moist mutterings of the sea came up to them from the rocky shore beneath. Clouds in white masses pressed athwart the arch of day. Modred, seated on a boulder beside the bed, eyed the prostrate figure thereon with a gaunt and tender pity. He was a stark man and strenuous, yet warm of heart for all his bull's strength and steely sinew. Youth lay at his feet, thin and impotent, a white willow wand quivering beside a black and knotty oak.

Modred rose up and stood by the opening of the cave, his broad shoulders well-nigh filling the entry as he looked out over the sea. Far over the amethystine waters, a hundred pearl-white sails glimmered beyond the cliffs of Gambrevault. The sun smote on gilded prow and blazoned bulwark, and upon a thousand streamers tonguing to the breeze.

Modred stretched out his great arms and smiled, a grim shimmer of joy over his ruffian's face. Standing at the mouth of the cave, he began to speak to the man couched in the inner gloom.

"Yonder, beyond Gambrevault," he said, "I see a hundred sails treading towards us over the sea. They are the King's ships: God cherish them; their bulwarks gleam in the sun."

Flavian twisted restlessly amid the heather.

"A grand sight, old friend."

Modred stood silent, fingering his chin. His voice broke forth again with a bluff exultation that seemed to echo the roar of the waves.

"St. Philip, that is well."

"More ships?"

"Nay, sire, they raise the royal banner on the keep of Gambrevault. I see spears shine. Listen to the shouting. The King's men hold the headland."

This time the voice from the cave was less eager, and tinged with pain.

"Modred, old friend, I lie here like a stone while the trumpets call to me."

"Sire, say not so."

"Ah, for an hour's youth again, one day in the sun, one moment under the moon."

"Sire, I would change with you if God would grant it me."

"Bless you, old friend; I would not grant it you if I were God."

A trumpet cried to them from the cliff, sudden, shrill, and imperious. Modred, leaning against the rock with his hand over his eyes, started from the cave, and began to climb the path. He muttered and swore into his beard as he ascended, queer oaths, spasmodic and fantastic. His black eyes were hazy for the moment. Contemptuous and fervid, he brushed the tears away with a great brown hand.

On the green downs above him rolling to the peerless sky, he saw armour gleam and banners blush. A fanfare of trumpets rolled over the sea. It was Richard the King.

Modred bent at the royal stirrup, and kissed the jewelled hand. Above him a keen, steely-eyed visage looked out from beneath a gold-crowned bassinet. It was the face of a soldier and a tyrant, handsome, haughty, yet opulently gracious. The red lips curled under the black tusks of the long moustache. The big, clean-shaven jaw was a promontory of marble thrust forth imperiously over the world.

"Well, man, what of our warden?"

Modred crossed himself, pointed to the cliff, muttered a few words into the King's ear.

"So," came the terse response, "that was an evil fortune. So splendid a youth, a bright beam of chivalry. Come, lead me to him."

The royal statue of steel dismounted and stalked down with knights and heralds towards the cliff. Leaning upon Modred's shoulder, Richard of the Iron Hand trod the rough path leading to the little cave. He bowed his golden crown at the entry, stooped like a suppliant, stood before the Lord Flavian's bed.

The gloom troubled him for a moment. Anon, he saw the recumbent figure on the heather, the pile of harness, the brown loaf, and the meagre fire. He throned himself on the boulder beside the bed, and laid a white hand on the sick man's shoulder.

"Lie still," he said, as Flavian turned to rise; "to-day, my lord, we can forego ceremony."

Courtesy is the golden crown of power, forged from a poet's song, and the wisdom of the gods. The royal favour donned its robe of red that day, proffered its gracious signet to the lips of praise, held forth the sceptre of a radiant pity. Even the iron of truth becomes as silver on the lips of kings. Justice herself flatters, when ranged in simple white before a royal throne.

"My Lord of Gambrevault," quoth Richard of the Iron Hand, "be it known to you that your stout walls have saved my kingdom. You held the barbican of loyalty till true friends rallied to the country's citadel. Bravely have you sounded your clarions in the gate of fame. My lord, I give to you the gratitude of a king."

Flattery strutted in the cave, gathering her robes with jewelled hand, gorgeous as an Eastern queen. Concerning the fate of a certain rebel Saint, the royal pardon waxed patriarchal in laconic phrases.

"Say no more, my lord; the boon is yours. Have I not a noble woman queening it beside me on my throne, flinging the beams of her bright eyes through all my life? This quest shall be heralded to the host; I will offer gold for the damsel's capture. Take this ring from me, no pledge as betwixt Jews, but as a talisman of good to come."

So spoke the royal gratitude. When the King had gone, Modred returned to carry his lord heavenwards to the meadows. He found him prone upon the heather, covering his eyes with his thin hands as the western sunlight streaked the gloom.

"Sire," said Modred, kneeling down beside the bed.

The effigy on the heather stirred itself and reached out a hand into Modred's bosom.

"Man, man, I am in great darkness of soul. Who shall comfort me!"

Modred bent to him, laid a great palm on the white forehead.

"Courage, sire, courage."

"Ah, the pity of it, to lie here like a log when swords ring and peril threatens her."

"Sire, we shall win her back again."

"My God, only to touch her hands once more, to feel the warmth of her pure bosom, and the thrill of her rich hair."

"We shall win her, sire. Doubt it not."

"All life is a doubt."

"Before God, I swear it!"

"Modred!"

"Before God, I swear it!"

He sprang up, thrust out his arms till the sinews cracked, filled his great chest with the breath of the sea. Suddenly he stopped, strained at a rock lying at the cave's mouth, lifted it, and hurled it from him, saw it smite foam from the water beneath.

"Fate, take my gauge," he cried, with a fierce glorying in his strength; "come, sire, put your hands about my neck. I will bear you to your castle of Gambrevault."

XL

Fulviac and his rebels had plunged into the great pine forest for refuge from the multitudinous glitter of the royal spears. The wilderness engulfed them, throwing wide its sable gates to take the war wolves in. The trees moaned like tall sibyls burdened with prophetic woe. The gold had long fallen from the gorse; the heather's purple hills were dim. Mystery abode there; a sound as of tragedy rose with the hoarse piping of the autumn wind.

From the north and from the west the royal "arms" had drawn as a glittering net towards the sea of pines. A myriad splendid warriors streaked the wilds, like rich rods flowering at some magic trumpet cry. The King's host swept the hills, their banners blazing towards the solemn woods. Gambrevault was theirs, and Avalon of the Mere. Morolt's northerners had marched upon Geraint, to find it a dead city, empty of life and of human sound. Only Gilderoy stood out for Fulviac. The King had failed to leaguer it as yet, for reasons cherished in his cunning brain.

Some twoscore thousand men had marched with Fulviac into the forest's sanctuary. Over the hills the royal horse had pressed them hard, cutting down stragglers, hanging on their rear. Fulviac's host was a horde of "foot"; he had not a thousand riders to hurl against the chivalry of the King. On the bold, bleak uplands of the north and west the royal horsemen would have whelmed him like a sea. Necessity turned strategist at that hour. Fulviac and his rebels poured with their stagnant columns into the wilds.

The thickets teemed with steel; the myriad pike points glittered like silver moths through the dense green gloom. Once more the great cliff echoed to the clangour of war and the sword. Fulviac had drawn thither and camped his men upon the heights, and under the shadow of its mighty walls. Watch-fires smoked on the hills. Every alley had its sentinel, a net of steel thrown forth to await the coming of the King. Fulviac had gathered his cubs into this lair, trusting to trammel the nobles in the labyrinths of the forest. It was a forlorn hope, the cunning purpose of despair. The spoilers of Belle Foret were wise in their generation; little mercy would they win from the Iron Hand of Richard of Lauretia.

Like a pale pearl set in ebony, Yeoland the Saint had been established again in her bower of stone. The room was even as she had left it that misty summer dawn. Prayer-desk, lute, and crucifix were there, mute relics of a passionate past. How much had befallen her in those packed weeks of peril; how great a guerdon of woe had been lavished on her heart! Love was as the last streak of gold in a fading west; only the stars recalled the unwavering lamps of heaven.

The cliff-room and its relics tortured her very soul. She would glance at the Sebastian of the casement, and remember with a shuddering rush of woe the man in whose arms she had slumbered as a wife. Death had deified him in her heart. She remembered his grey eyes, his splendid youth, his passion, his pure chivalry. He gazed down on her like a dream hero from a gloom of dusky gold. The bitter ecstasy of the past spoke to her only of the infinite beneficence of death. The grave yearned for her, and she had no hope to live.

Those drear days she saw little of Fulviac. The man seemed to shirk her pale, sad face and brooding eyes. Her grief stung him more fiercely than all the flames nurtured in the glowing pit of war. Moreover, he was cumbered with the imminent peril of his cause, and the facing of a stormy fortune. His one hope lay in some great battle in the woods, where the King's mailed chivalry would be cumbered by the trees. He made many a feint to tempt the nobles to this wild tussle. The cliff stood as adamant, a vast bulwark to uphold the rebels. Yet Nature threatened him with other arguments. His stores were meagre, his mouths many. Victory and starvation dangled upon the opposing beams of Fate.

If Fulviac feared procrastination, Richard of Lauretia favoured the same. Wise sluggard that he was, he curbed the vengeance of his clamorous soldiery, content to temporise with the inevitable trend of fortune. His light horse scoured the country, garnering food and forage from the fat lands north of Geraint. Time fought for him, and the starving wolves were trapped. Sufficient was it that he held his crescent of steel upon the hills, leaving unguarded the barren wilds that rolled on Gilderoy towards the east.

A week passed, dull and lustreless. The forest waved dark and solemn under the autumn sky; no torrents of steel gushed from its sable gates; no glittering squadrons plunged into its shadows. The King's men lay warm about their watch-fires on the hills, fattening on good food, tingling for the trumpet cry that should herald the advance. Richard of the Iron Hand smiled and passed the hours at chess in his great pavilion pitched on the slopes towards Geraint. Simon of Imbrecour held the southern marches; Morolt and his northerners guarded the west.

It was grey weather, sullen and storm-laden, eerie of voice. The Black Wild tossed like a sombre sea over hill and valley, its spires rocking under the scurrying sky, its myriad galleries shrill with the cry of the wind. There was no rest there, no breathless silence under the frail moon. The trees moaned like a vast choir wailing the downfall of a god. The wild seemed full of death, and of the dead, as though the souls of those slaughtered in the war screamed about Fulviac's lair. The sentinels, grey figures in a sombre atmosphere, watched white-faced in the thickets. The clarions of the storm might mask the onrush of the royal chivalry.

Yeoland the Saint lay full length upon a carved settle before a dying fire. She was listening to the wind as it roared over the cliff, amid the shrill clamour of the trees. It was such an eve as when Flavian had rattled at the postern to offer her love, and a throne at Avalon. She had spoken of war, and war had sundered them, given death to desire, and a tomb to hope. The glow of the fire played upon the girl's face and shone in her brooding eyes. Night was falling, and the gloom increased.

She heard footsteps in the gallery, the clangour of a scabbard against the rock. The door swung back, and Fulviac stood in the entry, clad in full harness save for his casque. There were deep furrows upon his forehead. His lids looked heavy from lack of sleep, and his eyes were bloodshot. The tinge of grey in his tawny hair had increased to a web of silver.

He came in without a word, set his hands on the back of the settle, and stared at the fire. Yeoland had started up; she sat huddled in the angle, looking in his face with a mute surmise. Fulviac's face was sorrowful, yet strong as steel; the lips were firm, the eyes sullen and sad. He was as a man who stared ruin betwixt the brows, nor quailed from the scrutiny though death stood ready on the threshold.

"Cloak yourself," he said to her at last; "be speedy; buckle this purse to your girdle."

She sprang up as the leather pouch rattled on the settle, and stood facing Fulviac with her back to the fire.

"Whither do we ride?"

"I send you under escort to Gilderoy."

"And you?"

He smiled, tightened his sword belt with a vicious gesture, and still stared at the hearth.

"My lot lies here," he said to her; "I meet my doom alone. What need to drag you deeper into the dark?"

She understood him on the instant, and the black thoughts moving in his mind. Disasters thickened about the cliff; perils were clamorous as the wind-rocked trees. Fulviac feared the worst; she knew that from his face.

"You send me to Gilderoy?" she said.

"I have so determined it."

"And why?"

"Need you doubt my discretion?"

The flames flashed and gleamed upon his breastplate, and deepened the shadows upon his face. His eyes were sorrowful, yet full of a strenuous fire.

"The sky darkens," he said to her, "and the King's hosts watch the forest. I had thought to draw them into the wilds, but the fox of Lauretia has smelt a snare. Our stores lessen; we are in the last trench."

She moved away into a dark corner of the room, raised the carved lid of a chest, and began to draw clothes therefrom, fingering them listlessly, as though her thoughts wavered. Fulviac leant with folded arms upon the settle, seemed even oblivious of her presence under the burden of his fate.

"Fulviac," she said at last, glancing at him over a drooping shoulder.

He turned his head and looked at her.

"Must I go then to Gilderoy?"

"The road is open," he answered, with no obvious kindling of his sympathy; "there will be bloody work here anon; you will be safer behind stone walls."

"And the King?" she asked him.

He straightened suddenly, like a man tossing some great burden from off his soul.

"Ha, girl! are you blind as to what shall follow? Richard of the Iron Hand waits for us with fivescore thousand men. We shall fight--by God, yes!--and make a bloody end; there will be much slaughter and work for the sword. The King will crush us as a falling rock crushes a scorpion. There will be no mercy. Death waits. Put on that cloak of thine."

She stood motionless a moment, listening to the moaning of the wind. The man's grim spirit troubled her. She remembered that he had bulwarked her in her homeless days, had dealt her much pity out of his rugged heart. He was alone now, and shadowed by death. Thus it befell that she cast the cloak aside upon the bed, and stood forward with quivering lips before the fire.

"Fulviac."

"Little sister."

"Ah! God pardon me; I have been a weak and graceless friend. You have been good to me, beyond my gratitude. The past has gone for ever; what is left to me now? Shall I not meet death at your side?"

He stood back from her, looking in her eyes, breathing hard, combating his own heart. He loved the girl in his fierce, staunch way; she was the one light left him in the gathering gloom. Now death offered him her soul. He tottered, stretched out his hands to her, snatched them back with a great burst of pride.

"No, this cannot be."

"Ah!"

"I have dared the storm; alone will I fall beneath its vengeance. You shall go this night to Gilderoy."

She thrust out her hands to him, but he turned away his face.

"Ah! little sister, this war was conceived for God, but the devil leavened it. I have gambled with fire, and the ashes return upon my head. I give you life; 'tis little I may give. Come now, obey me, these are my last words."

She turned from him very quietly in the shadow, hiding her face with her arm. Picking up her cloak, she drew it slowly about her shoulders, Fulviac watching her, a pillar of steel.

"They wait for you in the forest," he said; "go down the stair. Colgran rides with you to Gilderoy. He is to be trusted."

She drooped her head, staggered to the door, darted back again with a low cry and a gush of tears.

"Fulviac."

"Little woman."

"God keep you! Kiss me, this once."

He bent to her, touched her forehead with his lips, thrust her again towards the door.

"Go, my child."

And she went forth slowly from him, weeping, into the night.

XLI

The prophecies of the King proved the power of their pinions before fourteen suns had passed over the Black Wild's heart. Richard of Lauretia had plotted to starve Fulviac into giving him battle, or into a retreat from the forest upon Gilderoy. The royal prognostications were pitiless and unflinching as candescent steel. It was no mere battle-ground that he sought, but rather an amphitheatre where he might martyr the rebel host like a mob of revolted slaves.

Whatever tidings may have muttered on the breeze, riders came in hotly to the royal pavilion towards the noon of the fourteenth day. There was soon much stir on the hills hard by Geraint. Knights and nobles thronged the royal tent, captains clanged shoulders, gallopers rode south and west with fiery despatches to Morolt and Sir Simon of Imbrecour. Battle breathed in the wind. Before night came, the King's pavilion had vanished from the hills; his columns were winding round the northern hem of the forest, to strike the road that ran from Geraint to Gilderoy.

The royal scouts and rangers had not played their master false. A river of steel was curling through the black depths of the wild, threading the valleys towards the east. The King's scouts had caught the glimmer of armour sifting through the trees. They had slunk about the rebel host for days while they lay camped in their thousands about the cliff. Colgran and his small company had passed through unheeded, but they were up like hawks when the whole host moved.

That midnight Fulviac's columns rolled from the outstanding thickets of the wild, and held in serried masses for the road to Gilderoy. The King's procrastination had launched them on this last desperate venture. They would have starved in the forest as Fulviac had foreseen; their hopes lay in reaching Gilderoy, which was well victualled, throwing themselves therein, making what terms they could, or die fighting behind its walls. Thus under cover of night they slipped from the forest, trusting to leave the King's men guarding an empty lair.

The brisk forethought of Richard of Lauretia had out-gamed the rebels, however, in the hazardous moves of war. They were answering to his opening like wild duck paddling towards a decoy. Ten miles west of Gilderoy there stretched a valley, walled southwards by tall heights, banded through the centre by the river Tamar. At its eastern extremity a line of hills rolled down to touch the river. The road from Geraint ran through the valley, hugging the southern bank of the river after crossing it westwards by a fortified bridge. Fulviac and his host would follow that road, marching betwixt the river and the hills. It was in this valley that Richard of Lauretia had conceived the hurtling climax of the war.

Forewarned in season, Sir Simon of Imbrecour and his bristling squadrons were riding through the night on Gilderoy, shaping a crescent course towards the east. Morolt and the giants of the north were striding in his track, skirting the southern spires of the forest, to press level with the rebel march, screened by the hills. The King and his Lauretians came down from Geraint. They were to seize the bridge across the Tamar, pour over, and close the rebels on the rear.

It was near dawn when Fulviac's columns struck the highroad from Geraint, and entered the valley where the Tamar shimmered towards Gilderoy. Mist covered the world, shot through with the gold threads of the dawn. The river gleamed and murmured fitfully in the meadows; the southern heights glittered in the growing day; the purple slopes of the Black Wild had melted dimly into the west.

The mist stood dense in the flats where the Geraint road bridged the river. The northern slopes seemed steeped in vapoury desolation, the road winding into a waste of green. Fulviac and his men marched on, chuckling as they thought of the royal troops watching the empty alleys of the forest. Fulviac took no care to secure the bridge across the Tamar. With the line of hills before them breasted, they would see the spires of Gilderoy, glittering athwart the dawn.

The columns were well in the lap of the valley before two light horsemen came galloping in from the far van, calling on Fulviac, who rode under the red banner, that the road to Gilderoy had been seized. Fulviac and Sforza rode forward with a squadron of horse to reconnoitre. As they advanced at a canter, the mists cleared from the skirts of the encircling hills. Far to the east, on the green slopes that rolled towards the Tamar, they saw the sun smite upon a thousand points of steel. Pennons danced in the shimmering atmosphere, shields flickered, armour shone. A torrent of gems seemed poured from the dawn's lap upon the emerald bosoms of the hills. They were the glittering horsemen of Sir Simon of Imbrecour, who had ridden out of the night and seized on the road to Gilderoy.

Fulviac halted his company, and standing in the stirrups, scanned the hillside under his hand. He frowned, thrust forth his chin, turned on Sforza who rode at his side.

"Trapped," he said with a twist of the lip; "Dick of the Iron Hand has fooled us. 'Twas done cunningly, though it brings us to a parlous passage. They hold the road."

The Gonfaloniere tugged at his ragged beard, and looked white under the arch of his open salade.

"Better advance on them," he said; "I would give good gold to be safe in the streets of Gilderoy."

Fulviac sneered, and shook his head.

"There are ten thousand spears on yonder slopes, the lustiest blood in the land. Count their banners and their pennons, the stuff tells an honest tale. Pah, they would drive our rapscallions into the river. Send back and bid our banners halt."

They wheeled and cantered towards the long black columns plodding through the meadows. Far to the west over the green plain they saw spears flash against the sun, a glimmering tide spreading from the river. The Lauretians had crossed the bridge and were hurrying on the rebels' heels. Fulviac's trumpets sounded the halt. He thundered his orders to his captains, bade them mass their men in the meadows, and hedge their pikes for the crash of battle.

A shout reached him from his squadrons of horse who had marched on the southern wing. They were pointing to the heights with sword and spear. Fulviac reined round, rode forward to some rising ground, and looked southwards under his hand. The heights bounding the valley shone with steel. A myriad glistening stars shimmered under the sun. Morolt's northerners had shown their shields; the hills bristled with their bills and spears.

Fulviac shrugged his shoulders, lowered his beaver, and rode back towards his men. He saw Yeoland the Saint's red banner waving above the dusky squares. He remembered the girl's pale face and the hands that had toyed with the gilded silks in the dark chamber upon the cliff. Though the sun shone and the earth glistened, he knew in his heart that he should see that face no more.

Richard of Lauretia had forged his crescent of steel. South, east, and west the royal trumpets sounded; northwards ran the Tamar, closing the meadows. Fulviac and his men were trapped in the green valley. A golden girdle of chivalry hemmed the mob in the lap of the emerald meadows. All about them blazed the panoply of war.