Chapter XV: Book IV: Tintagel (2)

There are few men of such despicable fibre that they are wholly ruled by the egotism of the flesh. Your complete villain is no frequent prodigy, being more the denizen of the regions of romance than of the common, trafficking, trivial world. There are bad men enough, but few Neros. Give a human being passions, pride, and intense egotism, and his potential energy for evil is unbounded. Virtue is often a mere matter of habit or circumstance. Joseph might have ended otherwise if Potiphar's wife had had more wit; and as for Judas, he was unfortunate in being made banker to a God.

Gorlois of Cornwall was beholden to his own strenuous, north-winded nature for any trouble he might incur in his madness against Igraine. However much he braved it out to his own conscience, he knew well enough whether he was content or no. He was a strong man, and selfish, resentful, and very human. He was no Oriental monster, no mere Herod. What magnanimity he possessed towards his wife had been frozen into a wolfish scorn by the things that had passed in Garlotte's valley in Wales. Moreover, he had a bad woman at his elbow. Like many a vexed and restless man, he had turned to ambition, and the darker features of his character were being developed thereby. A king had wronged him; it was easy for a great noble to lay plots against a king. War and the clamour of war became like the prophetic sound of a storm from afar in his ears.

Little comment had followed upon the disappearance of the lad Jehan on the day when Gorlois and his knights had ridden hunting. No one cared for the lad; no one missed him materially. Casual gossip arose thereon in the guard-room. The lad had risked the halter or the branding-iron, and sundry threats were launched after him at random. Mark of the guard shrugged his shoulders and laughed.

"There's pluck in the lad," he said, "for all your bullying. By my faith, I guess he grew tired of kicks and leavings, and of being cursed by so many sons of the pot. Bastard or no bastard, the lad's no fool."

The guard-room scoffed complacently at the notion. Jehan do anything in the world but snivel! Not he! These gentlemen judged of a man's worth by the animal propensities of the creature. They weighed a man as they would weigh an ox--for flesh, and the breed in him. Mark, making a show of warming to his wine, enlightened his men further as to Jehan's disappearance.

"The lad and I went to bathe," he said; "there was a ship in the offing, and sailors had come ashore to get water by St. Isidore's spring. They wanted a lad for cabin service, so I took two gold pieces, and told them to kidnap Jehan."

A laugh hailed the confession, a laugh that changed to a cheer when Mark won accomplices by casting largesse for a scramble on the guard-room floor.

"I wish them luck of him," said the captain, pocketing silver; "devil of a spark could I ever knock out of the lad."

"May be you hit too hard."

"May be not. I'll lay my fist against a rope's-end for education."

"Mark takes his wine like a gentleman," quoth one.

"May he get drunk on pay day."

"And sell another Joseph into Egypt."

The woman Malmain came in to join them, corpulent and thirsty. Superabundant and colossal, she impressed a strenuous and didactic mood upon the company, grumbling like a volcano, emitting a smoke of mighty unfeminine gossip. Her black eyes wandered continually towards Mark of the guard. She watched him with a certain air of possession amid all her sweat and jabber, laughing when he laughed, making herself a coarse echo to his will.

Some one spoke of Gorlois's wife. So personal a subject moved Malmain to mystery on the instant. She tapped her forehead with her finger; shook her head with a significance that was sufficient for the occasion.

"Mad!" said the captain of the guard.

Malmain sucked her lips and yawned with her great chasm of a mouth.

"She was always that," she said with a hiccough.

"Paradise, eh?"

"And golden harps!"

"And, damme, no beer!"

There was a certain flavour in the last remark that made the men roar.

"I wonder where they'll bury her," said the captain.

"Throw her into the sea."

"Gorlois's little wench won't weep her eyes out."

Malmain smote a stupendous hip, and tumbled to the notion. The settle shook and creaked under her as though in protest.

"We'll all get married," she said; "Mark, my man, don't blush."

Babylon was compassed round! The same evening a soldier on the walls of Tintagel saw a dim throng of sails rise whitely out of the west. The streaks of canvas stood above the sea touched by the light of the setting sun. There was something ominous in these gleaming sails sweeping in a wide half-circle out of the unknown. A motley throng of castle folk gathered on the walls. Men spoke of the barbarians and of Ireland as they watched the ships rising solemn and silent from the west. Gorlois himself climbed up into a tower and gazed long at these sails whose haven was as yet unknown. He learnt little by the scrutiny. The ships had hardly risen above the purple twilight when night came and shrouded the whole in vague and impenetrable gloom.

Gorlois ordered the castle into a state of siege, and with the night an atmosphere of suspense gathered about Tintagel.

About midnight some dozen points of fire burst out redly on the hills. Sudden and sinister they shone like beacon fires, but by whom lit the castle folks could not tell. Men idled on the walls, shoulder to shoulder, talking in undertones, with now and again a bluff oath to invoke courage. The black infinite, above, around, seemed to hem the place as eternity hems the soul. War and death lurked in the dark, and on the rocks the sea kept up a perpetual moan.

Gorlois walked the walls with several of his knights. He was restless, and in no Christian temper, for the dark muzzled him. Not that he feared the unknown, or the perils that might lurk on hill or sea. He had the soul of a soldier, loved danger for its own sake, and took a hazard as he would take wine. Yet there are certain thoughts that haunt a man for all his hardihood, thoughts that may not weaken him though they may chafe his temper. Such to Gorlois was the memory of a starved face looking out at him scornfully from the gloom, the face of Igraine, his wife.

That night Gorlois's mind was prophetic in dual measure. Like a good captain he scanned the human horizon for snares and enmities, old feuds and the vengeances of men. The dark sky seemed to hold out two scrolls to him tersely illumined as to the near future. To Gorlois they read--

THE BARBARIANS,

OR

THE KING!

Forewarned thus in spirit, he kept to the walls till dawn. The sea sang for him stern epics of tumult and despair. Large projects were moving in his mind like waters that bubble up darkly in a well. He was in a mood for great deeds, alarms and plottings, lusts, gnashings, and the splendid agonies of war.

When the grey veil rose from the world many faces looked out east and west from Tintagel for sign of legions or of ships at sea. Strange truth! not a sail showed upon the ocean, not a spear or shield glimmered on the eastern hills. The threatenings of the night seemed to have cleared like the leaden cloudscape of a stormy sky.

Gorlois, scarred, brooding, sinister, appealed his knights as to the event.

"Not a ship, not a shield," he said, "yet I'll swear we saw watchfires on the hills. Were we scared for nothing?"

"Devil's beacons," quoth one.

"I have heard sailors tell of the phantom fleet of the Phœnicians."

"Have a care," said Sir Isumbras of the wrinkled face; "I remember me of the taking of Genorium; given the chance of an ambuscado, the good captain--"

Gorlois cut in upon his prosings.

"Scour the country, well and good," he said, "send out your riders; we will see whether there is a Saxon betwixt Tintagel and Glastonbury."

Gorlois had hardly delivered himself, and the company was passing from the battlements, when a trumpet-cry thrilled the solitary morning air. Gorlois and his knights halted at the head of the turret-stair, and looked out from the walls towards the east. A single figure on horseback was moving along the ridge leading to the headland. The rider was clad in black, and his horse-trappings were of sable. He carried neither spear nor shield, but only a herald's long trumpet balanced upon his thigh. He rode very much at his leisure, as though the whole world could abide his business.

Gorlois eyed him blackly under his hand.

"I was wrong, sirs," he said.

Old Isumbras's wrinkles deepened. He tapped the walls with the scabbard of his sword, and waxed oracular after an old man's fashion. Gorlois turned his broad back on him.

"There is trouble in yonder gentleman's wallet," he said.

They passed with clashing arms down the black well of the stairway to the court. Gates were rumbling on their hinges. The herald had ridden over the bridge, and the guards had given him passage. He was brought into the court where Gorlois stood in the centre of a half-circle of knights. The herald wore a cap of crimson velvet and a mask over his face. He walked with a certain stately swagger; it was palpable that he was no common fellow.

There was no parley on either part. Those who watched saw that this emissary carried a case of scarlet cloth and a naked poniard. He gave the case into Gorlois's hands, but threw the poniard on the stones at his feet. A fine insolence burnt in his stride and gesturing. Gorlois's scar seemed to show up duskily upon his cheek, and he looked as though tempted to tear the mask from the stranger's face. An incomprehensible dignity waved him back, and while he dallied with his wrath, the man turned his back on him and marched unconcernedly for the gate. The court bristled with steel, but none hindered or molested him. They heard the gate roll to, and the rattle of hoofs on the bridge. The sound died rapidly away, leaving Tintagel silent as a ruin.

Gorlois picked up the poniard, for none of his men stirred, and cut the woven band that held the lappets of the case. The white corner of a waxen tablet came to light. Gorlois drew the tablet out, held it at arm's length, and read the inscription thereon. His face grew hard and vigilant as he read, and he seemed to spell the thing over to himself several times before satisfied to the letter. He stood awhile in thought, and then leaving his knights to their conjectures, walked away to that quarter of the castle where Morgan la Blanche had her lodging.

He found the woman couched by the window that looked out towards the sea. Though dawn had but lately come, she was awake, and sat combing her hair, while a kitten slept on the blue coverlet covering her lap. Wine and fruit stood on the table near the bed, with scented water, a rouge-pot, and a bowl of flowers. Morgan was smothered in fine white linen, banded at neck and wrists with sky-blue silk. A kerchief of gold gossamer work covered her shoulders.

Gorlois touched her lips, and let her hair run through his fingers like water.

"Minion, you are awake early."

Morgan's face shone white, and her eyes looked tired and faded. She had heard rumours and had watched the night through, being tender-conscienced as to her own skin. Adversity, even in its meaner forms, was a thing insufferably insolent, a cloud in the absolute gold of a sensuous existence. Being quick to mark any shadowing of the horizon, she was undeceived by Gorlois's mere smile. She caught his hand and stared up at him.

"Well!"

"What troubles you?"

"Is it to be a siege?"

Gorlois stretched his strong neck, laughed, and eschewed subtlety. It interested him to see this worldling ruffled, Morgan, whose chief care was how the world might serve her.

"Read," he said, putting the tablet into her hands.

Morgan sat up in bed with her fair hair streaming over her shoulders. She traced out the words hurriedly with a white finger-tip. Her eyes seemed to grow large as she read; her hands trembled a very little. At the end thereof she dropped the tablet into her lap and looked at Gorlois with a certain petulant dread.

"How did the man hear of all this?"

"God knows!"

"Treachery!"

Gorlois jerked his belt and said nothing.

The woman Morgan sat and hugged her knees. She looked out to sea with a frown on her face, and the blue coverlet dragged in tight folds about her waist. The kitten woke up and began to play with Morgan's hair as it trailed down upon the bed. She cuffed the little beast aside, and looked at Gorlois. Her eyes now were steely and clear, and very blue under her white forehead.

"Obviously, he has learnt all," she said.

Gorlois nodded morosely.

"And this matter is to be between you alone?"

"I have his word."

"And he is a fool for truth."

Silence held them both awhile, and Morgan seemed to dally with her thoughts. Her lips worked loosely as though moving with her mind. The kitten clawed its way up the coverlet and rubbed its glossy flank against the woman's arm.

"What of an ambush?" she suggested mildly.

Gorlois darted a look at her and shook his head.

"No; it shall be fair between us."

"Honour!"--with a sneer.

"I am a soldier."

"By the prophet, that is the strange part of it all. You go out to kill a man, and yet trouble about the method."

"There honour enters."

"You kill him, all the same."

Morgan tossed the quilt aside, thrust a pair of glimmering feet out of the bed, and stood at Gorlois's elbow. She took the tablet of wax and held it over a lamp that was burning till the wax softened and suffered the lettering to be effaced. Gorlois's great sword hung from the carved bed-post. Morgan took it and buckled it to the man with her plump, worldly little hands.

"Let it not fail," she said.

Gorlois kissed her lips.

"There will be no King; and the heir--well, you are a great soldier, and men fear your name."

She kept him with her awhile and then bade him farewell. The sun was high in the heavens when Gorlois, in glittering harness, rode out alone from Tintagel, and passed away into the wilds.

VI

There was a preternatural brightness over sea and cliff that day. Headland and height stood limned with a luminous grandeur; the sea was a vast opal; mountainous clouds sailed solemn and stupendous over the world. Towards evening it grew still and sultry, and storms threatened. A vapoury leviathan lowered black out of the east, devouring the blue, with scudding mists spray-like about his belly. The sky changed to a sable cavern. In the west the sun still blazed through mighty crevices, candescent gold; the world seemed a chaos of glory and shadow. Sea-birds came screaming to the cliffs. The walls of Tintagel burnt athwart the west.

Presently out of the blue bosom of an unearthly twilight a vague wind rose. Gusts came, clamoured, and died into nothingness. The world seemed to shudder. The dry bracken and grass on the hillsides hissed as the wind came seldom and tumultuous. The roadway smoked. In the valleys the trees moaned, shivered, and stood still.

Mark of the guard stood in the garden leaning on his spear, watching the storm gathering above. It was his guard that night over the stairway leading to Igraine's room, and he stood under the shadow of the tower.

A red sword flashed sudden out of the east, and smote the hills. Thunder followed, growling over the world. Then rain came, and a whirlwind seemed to fly from the face of the storm. In the west a burning crater still poured gold upon a restless and afflicted sea.

It grew dark very rapidly, and a thundering canopy soon overarched Tintagel. Now and again flaming cracks of fire ran athwart the dome of the night, lighting battlements and sky with a weird momentary splendour. Rain rattled on the stones and drifted whirling against door and casement. Small torrents formed along the walks; every spout and gully gushed and gurgled. Like an underchant came the hoarse cry of the sea.

Mark had withdrawn under the arch of the tower's entry. A cresset flamed and spluttered higher up the stairway, throwing down an ineffectual gleam upon the man's armour as he stood and looked into the night. The storm fires lit his face, making it start out of the dark white and spiritual, with largely luminous eyes. He held motionless at his post like a Roman soldier watching the downfall of Pompeii.

Solitude possessed garden, court, and battlement, for no one stirred on such a night. The knights of the garrison were making merry in the great hall, and the men of the guard, unpestered by their superiors, had gathered a great company in the guard-room to emulate their officers. The scullion knaves and wenches had fled the kitchen; the sentinels had sneaked from the walls. There was no fear now of a leaguer. Had not Duke Gorlois declared as much before his sally?

Mark alone stood to his post, listening to the laughter that reached him between the stanzas of the storm. His face was like the face of a statue, yet alert and eager for all its calm. More than once he went out through the storm of rain to the great gate and stood there listening while the wind howled overhead. About midnight the noise of gaming and revelling seemed suddenly to cease, as when folk hear the tolling of a bell for prayer. Only the wind kept up its hooting over the walls.

Mark stood a long while by the guard-room door with his ear to the planking. Seldom a quavering cry came out to him, and the place grew empty of human sound. All Tintagel seemed asleep, though many casements still shone out yellow against the gloom. Mark slipped to the main gate. There was a postern in it for service after dark. He drew back the bolts and loosed the chain from the staple, and leaving the small door ajar, passed back to the tower's entry.

Thunder went rolling over the sea. Mark left his spear by the porch and went up the first few steps of the stairway. He took the cresset from its bracket, carried it down, and tossed it into the court, where the flames spluttered out in the rain. Darkness accomplished, he went up the stairway to the short gallery leading to Igraine's room. At the top he stood and listened. He heard the sound of breathing, and knew that it came from the woman Malmain who slept in the alcove before the door.

Mark smote the wall a ringing blow with the handle of his poniard. A bench creaked; some one yawned and began to grumble. It was so dark that the very walls were part of the prevailing gloom.

"Who's there?"

Mark stood aside.

"The cresset's out on the stairs."

Two arms came groping along the wall.

"You've been asleep, cherub."

"Mark!"

"You were forgetting our tryst."

A thick sensual laugh sounded from the stairhead. Something opaque moved in the dark; a pair of arms felt along the passage; a hand touched Mark's face. Malmain's arms wrapped the man's body; she lifted him to her with her great strength, and kissed his lips.

"Rogue!"

Once, twice, a streaking shadow rose and fell with the faintest glinting of steel. There was a staggering sound, a wet cough, a sharp-drawn breath, and then silence. Malmain fell against the wall with her hands to her side, held rigid a moment, and then slid into a heap. Mark bent over the woman and gripped her wrist.

In a short while he left the body lying there and moved to the door. Sliding his long fingers over the panels, he found the spring that marked the catch. Light streamed through into the gallery and fell upon Malmain as she lay huddled against the wall, her hair trailing along the floor like rills of blood.

A lamp burnt in the room, showering a thin silvery lustre from its pedestal, leaving the angles in dull brown shadow. The room was bare and bleak as a beggar's attic. The one window had been shuttered up against the rain, and the crazy lattice shook in the wind. The whole tower seemed to quake, pressed upon by the broad shoulders of the storm.

Gorlois's wife lay asleep on a rough bed in the centre of the room. Mark went forward and stood over her. The light fell upon Igraine's face and haloed it with a quiet radiance. Her hands were folded over her breast, and the man looking upon her face saw it drawn and haggard even in sleep. It had a kind of tragic fairness, a stained beauty like the wistful strangeness of an autumnal garden. It was pale, piteous, thin, and spiritual. The flesh shone like white wax; the short hair glimmered like a net of gold.

So changed, so ethereal, was the face of the sleeper, that the man stood and looked at her with gradual awe. Passed indeed was the blood-red rose of life, green summer with its ecstasy of song. Autumn's rich tapestries of bronze and gold were falling before the wind of winter and the shrill sword of death. The woman on the bed looked like some pale princess slumbering out her doom in some baleful tower.

Igraine's sleep was shallow and ineffectual, a restless stupor impressed upon a troubled mind. The storm seemed to figure in her dreams. A kind of splendid misery played upon her face, such misery as floods forth from some old legend, strange and sad. Her hands tossed to and fro over the coverlet like fallen flowers stirred by a wind. Her lids drooped over half-opened eyes.

A sudden gust broke the catch of the casement, and swung the frame into the room. All the boisterous laughter of the storm seemed to sweep in with the wind. With the racket Igraine woke and started up in bed upon her elbow. The lamp flame, draught-slanted over the rim, gave but a feeble light; the room was filled with wavering darkness.

Mark stood back from the bed. There was blood upon his tunic. For a moment he was speechless like a man caught in a theft.

In the dim light and to the half-awakened senses of the sleeper, the intruder stood for Gorlois, beard, face, and figure. A moment's hesitancy lost Mark the lead. The door stood wide. What ensued came crowded into the compass of a few seconds.

Igraine, quick to conceive, jerked the coverlet from the bed. Before Mark could prevent her, she had thrown it over the lamp and smothered the flame. The room sank into instant darkness and confusion. Mark's voice sounded above the storm. Then came the slamming of a door, and silence save for the blustering of the wind.

Igraine stood on the threshold in the dark, and drew her breath fast. She had shut the man in the room, and the door opened only from without by a spring catch. Mark of the guard was trapped.

And Malmain!

Igraine remembered the woman, and heeding nothing of the voice that called to her from the room, groped her way to the stairhead, expecting at every step to hear the woman's challenge start out of the gloom. At the end of the gallery she nearly tripped and fell over some inanimate thing. Reaching down out of curiosity she drew her hand back with a half cry, her fingers fouled with a thick warm ooze. An indefinite terror seized her in the dark. She went reeling down the stairway, clutching at the walls, grasping the air. A faint outcry still followed her from the room above.

In the garden rain still rattled, and scud blew from the pools. Igraine stood motionless under the shadow of a cypress, with her face turned to the sky. Her ragged gown blew about her bare ankles, and the wind whirled rain into her face. She drew deep breaths and stretched out her hands to the night, for there was the kiss of liberty in this cold, shrill shower.

Anon the old fear urged her on, companioned now by a reawakened courage. She was weak and starved, but what of that! The storm seemed to enter into her soul with its blustery vigour, crying to her with the multitudinous echoes of the night. What was the mere peril of the flesh to one who had faced spiritual torture more keen than death!

Creeping round under the shadow of the wall with quick glances darted into the dark she made her way round the court to the great gate. The gate-house was dark as the sky, and there was no tramping of sentinels from wall to wall. Igraine crept into the yawn of the archway, brushing along the stones. With each step she listened for the rattle of a spear, and looked for the armed figure that should clash out on her from the gloom. She won the gate and leant against it, breathless from mere suspense. Her fingers groped over the great beams, touched an outstanding edge, and tugged at it. The edge moved; a door came open and let in the wind.

Igraine stood a moment and pondered this mystery in her heart. She had chanced on nothing in the whole castle save one man and a corpse. Some strange doom might have fallen upon the place like the doom that smote the Assyrians in their sleep.

Plain before her stood the open gate and liberty. The hint was sufficient for the occasion. Igraine, leaving Tintagel to the unknown, gathered her rags round her and passed out into the night.

VII

A rolling country spread with moor, wood, and crag. A storm creeping black out of the east over the tops of a forest of pines. On the slope of a hill covered with a mauve mist of nodding scabei and bronzed tracts of bracken, two horsemen motionless in armour. Far away, the glimmer of a distant sea.

Uther the King wheeled his horse and pointed northwards towards the pine woods with his sword. The challenge came plainly in the gesture. There was no need for vapouring or for heroics; a quick stare--eye for eye--said everything a soldier could desire.

Uther, on his black horse, rode with loose bridle, looking straight ahead into the darkness of the woods. He carried his naked sword slanted over his shoulder. Frequent streams of sunlight flashed down upon his harness and made it burn under the boughs, leaving his face calm and solemn under the shadow of his helm. Gorlois held some paces away, stiff and arrogant, watching the man on his flank with restless, smouldering eyes. It was a silent pilgrimage for them both, a pilgrimage to a shrine whence, for one of them, there might be no return.

A shimmering curtain of sunlight spread itself suddenly before them among the pines. The two men rode out into an oval glade palisaded by the innumerable pillars of the wood, bowered in by rolling heights of dusky green. On all sides the spires made a jagged circle of the sky. A pool, black as obsidian, slept in the sun. Heather bloomed there, girdling the confines of wood and water with a blaze of purple.

Uther dismounted and tied his horse to a tree. His deliberation in no way pandered to Gorlois's self-esteem; there was to be no flurry or bombast in the event. No one was to witness this judgment of the sword; chivalry and malice alike were to be locked up in the heart of the forest. A smooth circle of grass lay on the northern side of the pool, promising well to the two who moved thither with nothing more eloquent than an exchange of gestures.

The heather swept away, a purple dirge to the black sounding of the pines, and a whorl of storm-laden clouds swam towards the sun. Uther, with a face strong as a god's, swung his sword from his shoulder and grounded the point in the sod. His destiny waxed great in him in that hour. There was something inevitable in the quiet of his eyes.

"You are ready," he said very simply.

Gorlois jerked a quick glance at him, and licked his lips. He, too, was in no mood for words or matters ethical. Temporal lusts ran strong in his blood.

"For a woman's honour!"

"As you will, sire," with a shrug.

"We have no need of courtesies."

"Over a harlot!"

"Guard, and God pardon you."

Both swords flickered up hotly in the sunlight. Gorlois, sinewy and full of fettle, gave a half-shout and sprang to engage. He had vast faith in himself, having come scatheless out of many such tussles; nor had he ever been humbled by man or beast. Vigorous as a March morning he launched the first blow, a grim cut laid in with both hands, a cut that rattled home half-parried on the other's shoulder. Uther, quick for all his calmness, gave the point in retort, a lunge that slid under the Cornishman's sword and made the muscles gape in Gorlois's neck. There was blood to both.

The swords began to leap and sing in the sunlight, and the forest echoed to the clangour of arms. Both men fought without shields, and for a season well within themselves, and there was much craft on either part. Cut and counter-cut rang through the pine alleys like the cry of axes whirled by woodmen's hands. As yet there was no bustle, no wild smiting. Every stroke came clean and true, lashed home with the weight of arms and body.

Hate overset mere swordsmanship anon, and reason grew less and less as the men waxed warm. Gorlois, running in with a swinging buffet, stumbled over a heather tuft and caught a counter full in the face. The smart of it and a split lip quickened him immeasurably. The blades began to whirl with more malice, less precision. Matters grew tumultuous as leaves in a whirlwind. For some minutes there seemed nothing but a tangle of swords in the sun, a staggering chaos of red and gold.

Such fighting burnt itself to a standstill in less than three minutes. Uther drew back like a boar pressed by hounds. There was no whit of weakening in his mood, only a reassertive reason that would trust nothing to the fortune of a moment. The muscles stood out in his strong throat, blood ran from his slashed tunic, and he was breathing hard; but his manhood burnt strong and true. Gorlois, with mouth awry, eyed him with sword half up, and drew back in turn. His face streamed. He spat blood upon the heather.

"God! what work."

It was Gorlois's testimony, wrung from him by the stress of sheer hard fighting. The storm-cloud crept across the sun and overcharged the world with gloom. The pool grew more black in its purple bed; the forest began to weave the twilight into its columned halls.

"You lack breath, sire."

"I wait for you," Uther said.

But the man of Tintagel was in a sinister mood for the moment. Genius moved his sweating brain. He dropped into philosophic brevities as he spat blood from his bruised lips.

"All for a woman," he said thickly.

"True."

"Are you much in love, sire?"

Uther answered him nothing, but waited with his sword over his shoulder.

"She made fuss enough."

Still silence.

"I never knew a woman so obstinate in making an end. And we buried her in the sand, where the waves roll at flood. Now, you and I lose our brains over a corpse."

Uther's sword shone again.

"Guard," he said quietly.

A sudden gust came clamouring through the wood. The darkening boughs tossed and jerked against the sky, breathing out a multitudinous moan, a hoarse cry as of a smitten host. The east piled thunder over the world. It was the same storm that swept the battlements of Tintagel.

By the pool swords rang; red and gold strove and staggered over the heather. It was the death tussle and a sharp one at that. Destiny or not, matters were going all against Gorlois; his blows were out of luck; he was rent time on end and gave little in return. Rabid, dazed, he began making blind rushes that boded ill for him. More than once he stumbled, and was mired to the knees in the pool.

The end came suddenly enough as the light failed. Both men smote together; both swords met with a sound that seemed to shake the woods, Gorlois's blade snapped at the hilt.

He stood still a moment, then plucked out his poniard and made a spring. A merciless down-cut beat him back. The fine courage, the strenuous self-trust, seemed to ebb from him on a sudden as though the blow had broken his soul. He fell on his knees and held his hands up with a thick, choking cry.

"Mercy! God's mercy!"

"Curse you! Had you pity on the woman?"

"Sire, sire!"

Thunder rolled overhead, and the girdles of the sky were loosed. A torrent of rain beat upon the man's streaming face; he tottered on his knees, and still held his hands to the heavens.

"I lied," he said. "God witness, I lied."

"Ah--!"

"The woman lives--is at Tintagel."

"Man--"

"Give me life, sire, give me life; you shall have her."

Uther looked at him and heaved up his sword. Gorlois saw the King's face, gave a great cry, and cowered behind his hands. It was all ended in a moment. The rain washed his gilded harness as he lay with his blood soaking into the heather.

VIII

As the world grew grey with waking light Uther the King came from the woods, and heard the noise of the sea in the hush that breathed in the dawn. The storm had passed over the ocean, and a vast quiet hung upon the lips of the day. In the east a green streak shone above the hills. The sky was still aglitter with sparse stars, and an immensity of gloom brooded over the sea.

Gaunt, wounded, triumphant, he rode up beneath the banners of the dawn, eager yet fearful, inspired and strong of purpose. Wood and hill slept in a haze of mist; the birds were only beginning in the thickets, like the souls of children yet unborn calling to eternity. Beyond, on the cliffs, Tintagel, wrapped round with night, stood silent and sombre athwart the west.

Uther climbed from the valley as the day came with splendour, a glow as of molten gold streaming from the east. Wood and hillside glimmered in a smoking mist, dew-brilliant, wonderful. As the sun rose the sea stretched sudden into the arch of the west--a great pavement of gold. A mysterious lustre hovered over the cliffs; waves of light beat like saffron spray upon Tintagel.

The dawn-light found an echo on Uther's face. He came that morning the ransomer, the champion, a King indeed; Spring bursting the thongs of Winter; Day thrusting back the Night. His manhood smote in him like the deep-throated cry of a great bell, voluminous and solemn. The towers on the cliff were haloed with magic hues. Life, glory, joy, lay locked in the grey stone walls. His heart sang in him, and his eyes were afire.

As he walked his horse with a hollow thunder of hoofs over the bridge, he took his horn and blew a blast thereon. There was a quiet, a lifelessness, about the place that smote his senses, bodying forth mystery. The walls were void against the sky. At the sound of the horn there came no stirring of armed men, no answering fanfare, no glimmering of faces at the casements. Only the gulls circled from the cliffs, and the sea made its moan along the strand.

Uther sat in the saddle and looked from tower to battlement, from battlement to gate. There was something tragic about the place, the silence of a sacked town, the ghostliness of a ship sailing the seas with a dead crew upon her deck. Uther's glance rested on the open postern, an empty streak in the great gate. His face darkened somewhat; his eyes lost their sanguine glow. There was something betwixt death and treachery in all this quiet.

He dismounted and left his horse on the bridge. The postern beckoned him. He went in like a man nerved for peril, with sword drawn and shield above his head, ready for blows in dark corners. Again he blew his horn. The blast rang and resounded under the arch of the gate. No man came to answer or avenge it.

The guard-room door stood ajar; Uther thrust it open with the point of his sword and looked in. A grey light filtered through the narrow windows. The place was like the cave of the Seven Sleepers. Men, women, guards, servants, were huddled on the benches and on the floor. Some lay fallen across the settles; others sat with their heads fallen forwards upon the table; a few had crawled towards the door. They were cast in every posture, every attitude, bleak, stiff, and motionless. Some had froth upon their lips, glistening eyes, clenched fingers. The shadow of death was over the whole.

The King's face was as grey as the faces of the dead. He had looked for human throes, perils, strong hands, and the vehemence of man. There was something here, a calm horror, a mystery that hurled back the warm courage of the heart. Prophecy lurked open-mouthed in the shadows. Uther shouldered his sword, passed out, and drew to the door.

In the great court he looked round him like a traveller who has stumbled upon a city wrapped in a magic sleep. Urged on by manifold forebodings, and knowing the place of old, he went first to the State quarters and hunted the rooms through and through. The same silence met him everywhere. In the great hall he came upon a ring of corpses round a table, a ring of men in armour, stiff and rigid as stone, with wine and fruit mocking their staring eyes. In the lodging of the women he found a lady laid on a couch by an open window. Her fair hair swept the pillow; her eyes were wide and glazed; an open casket lay on the bed, and strings of jewels were scattered on the coverlet. The woman's face was white as apple blossom; she had a half-eaten pomegranate in her hand.

Uther passed from the death-chamber of Morgan la Blanche to the garden. The shadows of the place, the staring faces, the stiff hands clawing at things inanimate, were like phantasms of the night. He took the sea air into his nostrils, and looked into the blue realism of the sky. All about him the garden glistened in the dawn, the cypresses shimmered with dew, the pool was like a steel buckler on cloth of green. Here was the placid life of flowers making very death the more apparent to his soul.

As he stood in deep thought, half dreading what he still half knew, a voice called to him, breaking suddenly the ponderous silence of the place. A face showed overhead at the upper window in the tower; a hand beckoned and pointed towards the tower's entry. Here at last was something quick and tangible in the flesh, something that could speak of the handicraft of death. Uther climbed the stairs and found Malmain's body by the well. When he had looked at the woman's face and seen blood he paid no more heed to her. She was only one among many.

Guided by a voice, Uther unlatched the door and passed in with sword drawn. A man met him on the threshold, a man with the face of a Dante, and shaven lip and chin. It was the face of Merlin.

IX

Without the gate of Tintagel stood Uther the King looking out towards the eastern hills clear against the calm of the sky. He stood bare-headed, like one in prayer; his face was strong, yet wistful and patient as a sick child's. At his elbow waited Merlin, silent and inscrutable. Much had passed between them in that upper room, that room more hallowed to Uther than the rock tomb of the Christ.

"Ever, ever night," he said, stretching out his hands as to an eternal void.

Merlin's eyes seemed to look leagues away over moor, hill, and valley. A strange tenderness played upon his lips, and there was a radiance upon his face impossible to describe. It was like the face of a lover, a dreamer of dreams.

"A man is a mystery to himself," he said.

"But to God?"

"I know no God, save the god my own soul. Let me live and die, nothing more. Why curse one's life with a 'to be'?"

Uther sighed heavily.

"It is a kind of fate to me," he said, "inevitable as the setting of the sun, natural as sleep. Not for myself do I fear it."

"Let Jehovah follow Jupiter into the chaos of fable. Sire, look yonder."

Merlin's eyes had caught life on the distant hillsides, life surging from the valleys, life, and the glory of it. Harness, helm, and shield shone in the sun. Gold, azure, silver, scarlet, were creeping from the bronzed green of the wilds. Silent and solemn the host rolled gradual into the full splendour of the day.

Uther's eyes beheld them through a mist of tears.

"King Nentres, King Urience, and the host," he said.

"Even so, sire."

"They were bidden to follow."

"Loyal to their king."

Uther watched them with a great pride stealing into his eyes; he smiled and held his head high.

"All these are mine," he said.

Merlin's face had kindled.

"Grapple the days to come," he said; "let Scripture and old ethics rot. You have a thousand knights; let them ride by stream and forest, moor and mere. Let them ride out and sunder like the wind."

"The quest of a King's heart!"

"Sire, like a golden dawn shall she rise out of the past. Blow thy horn. Let us not tarry."

X

Six days had passed. Once more the sun had tossed night from the sky, and kindled hope in the hymning east. The bleak wilderness barriered by sea and crag had mellowed into the golden silence of autumnal woods. The very trees seemed tongued with prophetic flame. The world like a young lover leapt radiant out of the dawn.

Through the reddened woods rode Uther the King with Merlin silent at his side. Gloom still reigned on the gaunt, strong face, and there was no lustre in the eyes that challenged ever the lurking shade of death. Six nights and six days had the quest been baffled. Near and far armour glimmered in the reddened sanctuaries of the woods. Not a trumpet brayed, though the host had scattered in search of a woman's face.

At the seventh dawn the trees drew back before the King, where the shimmering waters of a river streaked the meads. Peace dwelt there, and a calm eternal, as of the Spirit that heals the throes of men. Rare and golden lay the dawn-light on the valley. The song of birds came glad and multitudinous as in the burgeoning dawn of a glorious May.

Uther had halted under a great oak. His head was bare in the sun-steeped shadows; his face was as the face of one weary with long watching under the voiceless stars. Hope, like a dewless rose, drooped shaken and thirsty with desire. Great dread possessed him. He dared not question his own soul.

A horn sounded in the woods, wild, clamorous and exultant. It was as the voice of a prophet cleaving the despair of a godless world. Even the trees stood listening. Far below in the green shadows of the valley a horseman moved brilliant as a star that portents the conception of a king.

Uther's eyes were on the horseman in the valley.

"I am even as a child," he said.

Merlin's lips quivered.

"The dawn breaks, sire, the night is past. Tidings come to us. Let us ride on."

Uther seemed sunk in thought; he bowed his head, and looked long into the valley.

"Am I he who slew Gorlois?"

"Courage, sire."

"My blood is as water, my heart as wax. Death and destiny are over my head."

"Speak not of destiny, sire, and look not to the skies. In himself is man's power. Thou hast broken the crucifix. Now trust thine own soul. So long as thou didst serve a superstition, thou didst lose thy true heaven."

"And yet--"

"Thou hast played the god, sire, and the Father in heaven must love thee for thy strength. God loves the strong. He will let thee rule destiny, and so prosper."

"Strange words!"

"But true. Were I God, should I love the priest puling prayers in a den? Nay, that man should be mine who moved godlike in the world, and strangled fate with the grip of truth. Great deeds are better than prayers. See! it is young Tristan who comes."

The horseman in the valley had swept at a gallop through a sea of sun-bronzed fern. He was a young knight on a black horse, caparisoned in green and gold. A halo of glistening curls aureoled his boyish face; his eyes were full of a restless radiance, the eyes of a man whose heart was troubled. He sprang from the saddle, and leading his horse by the bridle, kissed the scabbard of Uther's sword.

"Tidings, sire."

"Tristan, I listen."

The knight looked for a moment into the King's face, but dared not abide the trial. There was such a stare of desperate calm in the dark eyes, that the lad's courage whimpered, and quailed from the truth. He hung his head, and stood mute.

"Tristan, I listen."

"Sire--"

"My God, man, speak out!"

"Sire--"

"The truth."

"She lives, sire!"

A great silence fell within the hearts of the three, an ecstasy of silence such as comes after the wail of a storm. Merlin stroked his lip, and smiled, the smile of one who dreams. The King's face was as the face of one who thrusts back hope out of his soul. He sat rigid on his horse, a scarlet image fronting Fate, grim-eyed and steadfast. There were tears in the eyes of Tristan the knight.

"What more?"

Tristan leant against his horse, his arm hooked over the brute's neck.

"In the valley, sire, is a sanctuary; you can see it yonder by the ford. Two holy women dwell therein. To them, sire, I commend you."

"You know more!"

"Sire, spare me. The words are for women's lips, not for mine."

"So be it."

The three rode on in silence; Merlin and Tristan together, looking mutely in each other's faces. Uther's chin was bowed on his breast. The reins lay loose on his horse's neck.

A grey cell of unfaced stone showed amid the green boughs beyond the water. At its door stood a woman in a black mantle. A cross hung from her neck, and a white kerchief bound her hair. She stood motionless, half in the shadow, watching the horsemen as they rode down to the rippling ford.

Autumn had touched the sanctuary garden, and the King's eyes beheld ruin as he climbed the slope. The woman had come from the cell, and now stood at the wicket-gate, with her hands folded as in prayer. Tristan took Uther's bridle. The King went on foot alone to speak with the anchoress.

"Sire," she said, kneeling at his feet, "God save and comfort you."

The man's brow was twisted into furrows. His right hand clasped his left wrist. He looked over the woman's head into the woods, and breathed fast through clenched teeth.

"Speak," he said.

"Sire, the woman lives."

"I can bear the truth."

The anchoress made the sign of the cross.

"She came to us, sire, here in this valley, a tall lady, with golden hair loose upon her neck. Her feet were bare and bleeding, her robe rent with thorns. And as she came, she sang wild snatches, such as tell of love. We took her, sire, and gave her meat and drink, bathed her torn feet, and gave her raiment. So, she abode with us, gentle and lovely, yet speaking like one who had suffered, even to death. And yet, even as we slept, she stole away from us last night, and now is gone."

The woman had never so much as lifted her eyes to the man's face. Her hands held her crucifix, and she was pale as new-hewn stone.

"And is this all?"

The man's voice trembled in his throat; his face shone in the sun.

"Not all, sire."

"Say on."

The anchoress had buried her face in her black mantle; her voice was husky as with tears.

"Sire, you seek one bereft of reason."

"Mad!"

"Alas!"

"My God, this then is the end!"

XI

An indefinite melancholy overshadowed the world. Autumn breathed in the wind; the year was rushing red-bosomed to its doom.

On the summit of a wood-crowned hill, rising like a pyramid above moor and forest, two men stood silent under the shadow of an oak. In the distance the sea glimmered; and by a rock upon the hillside, armed knights, a knot of spears, shone like spirit sentinels athwart the west. Mists were creeping up the valleys as the sun went down into the sea. A few stars, dim and comfortless, gleamed out like souls still tortured by the platitudes of Time. An inevitable pessimism seemed to challenge the universe, taking for its parable the weird afterglow in the west.

Deep in the woods a voice was singing, wild and solitary in the gathering gloom. Like the cry of a ghost, it seemed to set the silence quivering, the leaves quaking with a windless awe. The men who looked towards the sea heard it, a song that echoed in the heart like woe.

"Sire, there is yet hope."

"Life grows dim, and dreams elapse in fire."

Merlin pointed into the darkening woods. His eyes shone crystal bright, and there was a great radiance upon his face.

"Sire, trust thine own heart, and the god in thee. Through superstition thou hast been brought nigh unto death and to despair. Trust not in priestcraft, grapple God unto thy soul. The laws of men are carven upon stone, the laws of heaven upon the heart. Be strong. From henceforth scorn mere words. Trample custom in the dust. Trust thyself, and the god in thy heart."

The distant voice had sunk into silence. Uther listened for it with hand aloft.

"Yonder--heaven calls," he said.

"Go, sire."

"I must be near her--through the night."

"And lo!--the moon stands full upon the hills. You shall bless me yet."

Dim were the woods that autumn evening, dim and deep with an ecstasy of gloom. Stars flickered in the heavens; the moon came, and broidered the trees with silver flame. A primæval calm lay heavy upon the bosom of the night. The spectral branches of the trees were rigid and prayerful towards the sky.

Uther had left Merlin gazing out upon the shimmering sea. The voice called him from the woods with plaintive peals of song. The man followed, holding to a grass-grown track that curled purposeless into the gloom. Moonlight and shadow were alternate upon his armour. Hope and despair were mimicked upon his face. His soul leapt voiceless and inarticulate into the darkened shrine of prayer.

The voice came to him clearer in the forest calm. The gulf had narrowed; the words flew as over the waters of death. They were pure, yet reasonless, passionate, yet void, words barbed with an utter pathos that wounded desire.

For an hour the King followed in the woods, drawing ever nearer, waxing great with prayer. Anon the voice failed him by a little stream that quivered dimly through the grass. A stillness that was ghostly held the woods. The moonlight seemed to shudder on the trees. A stupendous stupor weighed upon the world.

A hollow glade opened sudden in the woods, a white gulf in the forest's gloom. Water shone there, a mere, rush-ringed, and full of mysterious shadows, girded by the bronzed foliage of stately beeches. Moss grew thick about the roots; dead leaves covered the grass.