Chapter IX: Book III: The War in Wales (1)

I

Aurelius Ambrosius the king was dead, taken off in Winchester by the hand of a poisoner. He had been found stark and cold in his great carved bed, with an empty wine-cup beside him, and a tress of black hair and a tress of yellow laid twined together upon his lips. The signet-ring had gone from his finger, and by the bed had been discovered a woman's embroidered shoe dropped under the folds of the purple quilt. The truth, sinister enough in its bare suggestions, was glossed over by the court folk out of honour to Aurelius, and of love to Uther the king's brother. It was told to the country how an Irish monk sent by Pascentius, dead Vortigern's son, had gained audience of the king, and treacherously poisoned him as he drank wine at supper. The tale went out to the world, and was believed of many with a sincere and honest faith. Yet a certain child-eyed woman, wandering on the shores of Wales for sight of Irish ships, could have spoken more of the truth had she so dared.

Uther Pendragon had been hailed king at York before the bristling spears of a victorious host. But a week before he had marched against the heathen on the Humber, and overthrown them with such slaughter as had not been seen in Britain since the days when Boadicea smote the Romans. At the head of his men he had marched south in a snowstorm to be thundered into Winchester as king and conqueror. Twelve maidens of noble blood, clad in ermine and minever, had run before him with boughs of mistletoe and bay. Five hundred knights had walked bareheaded, with swords drawn, behind his horse. The city had glistened in a white web of frosted samite, sparkled over by the clear visage of a winter sun.

There were many great labours ready to the king's hand. Britain lay bruised by the onslaughts of the barbarians; her monks had been slain, her churches desecrated. The pirate ships swept the seas, and poured torch and sword along the sunny shores of the south. Andredswold, dark, saturnine, mysterious, alone waved them back with the sepulchral threatening of its trees. Yet, for all the burden of the kingdom upon his broad shoulders, Uther gave his first care to the honouring of the dead. Aurelius Ambrosius was buried with great pomp of churchmen and nobles at Stonehenge, and a royal mound raised above the tomb. At Christmastide, with snow upon the ground, a great gathering was made at Sarum of all the petty kings, princes, and nobles of the land. Hither came Meliograunt, king of Cornwall, and Urience of the land of Gore. Fealty was sworn with solemn ordinance to Uther Pendragon the king, and common league bonded against the heathen and the whelps of the north.

There were other perils brewing for Britain over the sea. Pascentius, dead Vortigern's son, had been an outcast and a wanderer since the days when the sons of Constantine had sailed from Armorica to save the land from the blind lust and treason of his father. He had been a drifting fire beyond the seas, an intriguer, a sower of sedition, a man dangerous alike to friend and foe. Beaten like a vulture from the coasts of Britain, he had turned with treasonable hope to Ireland and its king, Gilomannius the Black, a strenuous potentate, boasting little love for Ambrosius the king. Here, in Ireland, a kennel of sedition had arisen. Pascentius, keen, hungry plotter, had toiled at the task of piling enmity against those who had destroyed his father amid the flames of Genorium. A great league arose, a banding of the barbarians with the Irish princes, a union of the Saxons who ravaged Kent with the wild tribesmen over the northern border. Month by month a great host gathered on the Irish coast. Many ships came from the east and from the south. Mid-winter was past before Gilomannius embarked, and, setting sail with a fair wind, turned the beaks of his galleys for the shores of Wales.

Noise of the gathering storm had been brought to Uther as he journed through the southern coasts, rebuilding the churches, recovering abbey and hermitage from their desolate ashes. His zeal was great for God, and his love of Britain well-nigh as noble. Warned thus in due season, he marched for the west, calling the land to arms, assigning for the gathering of the host Caerleon upon Usk, that fair city bosomed in the fulness of its woods and pastures. Many a knight had answered to his call; many a city had sent out her companies; the high-roads rang with the cry of steel in the crisp winter weather.

Duke Gorlois had come from Cornwall from his castle of Tintagel, bringing many knights and men-at-arms by sea, and the Lady Igraine his wife, in a great galley whose bulwarks glistened with shields. In Caerleon Gorlois had a house built of white stone, set upon a little hill in the centre of the city. To Caerleon he brought this golden falcon of a woman, this untamable thing that he had kept prisoned in the high towers of Tintagel. He mewed her up like a nun in his house of white stone, so that no man should see the fairness of her face. She was wild as an eyas from the woods, fierce and unapproachable, and sharp of claw. Robbed of her liberty, had she not sought to take her own life with a sword, and to throw herself from the battlements of Tintagel? Gorlois had won little love by Merlin's subtlety, and he feared the woman's beauty and the spell of her large eyes.

It was the month of February and clear crisp weather. The white bellies of the Irish sails had shown up against the grey blue stretch of the sea, a white multitude of canvas that had sent the herdsmen hurrying their flocks to the mountains. Horsemen had galloped for Caerleon, and the cry of war went up over wood and water. Flames licked the night sky. From Caerleon to St. Davids, from St. Davids to Eryri, the red blaze of beacon-fires told of the ships at sea.

The cry of the storm arose in Caerleon, and the tramp of armed men sounded all day in her streets. The great host lodged about the city broke camp and streamed westwards along the high-road into Wales. Bugles blew, banners flapped, masses of sullen steel rolled away into purple of the winter woods. Bristling spears and lines of skin-clad shields vanished into the west like the waves of a solemn sea. On the walls of Caerleon stood many women and children watching the host march for the west, watching Uther the king ride out with his great company of knights and nobles.

At the casement of an upper room in Gorlois's house stood a woman looking out over Caerleon towards the sea. She was clad in a mantle of furs, and in a tunic of purple linked up with cord of gold. A tippet of white fur clasped with a brooch of amethysts circled her throat. Her hair was bound up in a net of fine silk, and there was a girdle of blue silk about her loins, and an enamelled cross upon her bosom. She stood with her elbows resting on the stone sill, and her peevish face clasped between her hands. Her eyes looked very large and lustrous as she stared out wistfully over the city.

In the great court below horses champed the bit and struck fire from the ringing flags. Men in armour clanged to and fro; rough voices cried questions and counter-questions; bridles jingled; spear-shafts clattered on the stones. Now a clarion blared as a troop of horse thundered by up the street, their armour gleaming dully past the courtyard gate. The growl of war hung heavy over Caerleon, a grim sullen sound that seemed in keeping with the restless chiding of the wind.

Igraine's face was hard as stone as she watched the men moving in the courtyard below. She looked older than of yore, whiter, thinner in cheek and neck, her great eyes staunch though sad under her netted hair. Her face showed melancholy mingled with a constant scorn that had rarely found expression with her in the old days, save within the walls of Avangel. She looked like one who had endured much, suffered much, yet lost no whit of pride in the trial. Though she may have been blemished like a Greek vase smitten by some barbaric sword, she was her self still, brave, headstrong, resolute as ever. The shame of the things she had suffered had perhaps wiped out the gentler outlines of her character and left her more stern, more wary, less honest, more deep in her endeavours. There was no passive humility or patience about her soul, and she was the falcon still, though caged and guarded beyond her liberty.

As she stood at the casement with the prophetic murmur of war in her ears, it seemed to her as though life surged to her feet and mocked her bondage like laughing water. The desire of liberty abode ever with her even to the welcoming of stagnant death. She thirsted for her freedom, plotted for it, dreamt of it with a zeal that was almost ferocious. Her life seemed a speculation, a perpetual aspiration after a state that still eluded her. In the Avangel days she had been wild and petulant. Then Pelleas had come through the green gloom of early summer to soften her soul and inspire all the best breath of the woman in her. Again, thanks to Gorlois, she had fallen with the usual reaction of circumstance upon evil times; the change had discovered the peevish discontent of the girl hardened into the strong wilfulness of the woman.

She hated Gorlois with a fanatical immensity of soul. When the man was near her she felt full of the creeping nausea of a great loathing, and she waxed faint with hate at the veriest touch of his hands. His breath seemed to her more unsavoury than the miasma of a gutter, and it needed but the sound of his voice to bring all her baser passions braying and yelping against him. He had driven the religious instinct out of her heart, and she was in revolt against heaven and the marriage pact forged by the authority of the Church. She had often vowed in her heart that she could do no sin against Gorlois, her husband. He had no claim upon her conscience. The bondage had been of his making; let God judge her if she scorned his honour.

Standing by the window watching the knights saddling for their lord's sally, she heard heavy footsteps mounting up the stairs, and the ring of steel-tipped shoes along the gallery. The footsteps were deliberate, and none too fast, as though the man walked under a burden of thought. A shadow seemed to pass over Igraine's face. She slipped from the window, ran across the room, shot the bolt of the door, and stood listening. A hand tried the latch. She knew well enough whose fist it was that rattled on the oaken panels. Her face hardened to a kind of cold malevolence, and she laughed noiselessly in her sleeve.

A terse summons came to her from the gallery.

"Wife, we ride at once."

The man could not have made a worse beginning. There was a suggestion of tyranny in a particular word that was hardly temperate. Igraine leant against the door; she was still smiling to herself, and her hands fingered the embroidered tassel of the latch.

"We are late on the road; I can make no tarrying."

The door quivered a moment as though shaken by a gusty wind. Everything was quiet again, and Igraine could hear the man breathing. Putting her mouth to the crack between post and hinge-board she laughed stridently as though in scorn.

"Igraine!"

The voice was half-imperative, half-appealing.

"My very dear lord!"

"Are you abed?"

"No, dear lord."

"Open to me; I would kiss your lips before I sally."

"You have never kissed me these many days."

"True, wife; is it fault of mine?"

"Nor shall again, dear lord, if I have strength."

She heard the man muttering to himself a moment, but this time there was no smiting of the door, no fume and tempest. His mood seemed more temperate, less masterful, as though he were half heavy at heart.

"Igraine--"

"Why do you whimper like a dog?" she said; "go, get you to war. What are you to me?"

"When will you learn reason?"

"When you are dead, sire."

"Perhaps I deserve all this."

"Are you so much a penitent?"

Her mockery seemed to lift Gorlois to a higher range of passion, and there was great bitterness in his voice as he tossed back words to her with a quick kindling of desire.

"Woman, I have been hard in the winning of you, but, God knows, you are something to me."

"God knows, Gorlois, I hate you."

His hand shook the door.

"Let me in, Igraine."

"Break down the door; you shall come at me no other way."

"Woman, woman, I am a fool; my heart smarts at leaving you."

"You sound almost saintly."

"I have left Brastias in charge of you."

"Thanks, lord, for a jailer."

Igraine drew back from the door and stood at her full height with her hands crossed upon her bosom. She quivered as she stood with the intense effort of her hate. Gorlois still waited without the door, though she could not hear him moving. The silence seemed like the deep hush that falls between the blustering stanzas of a storm.

"Igraine!"

It was a hoarse cry, quick and querulous. Igraine had both her fists to her chin in an attitude of inward effort, as though she racked herself to give utterance to the implacable temper of her scorn. Her face had a queer parched look. When she spoke, her voice was shrill like a piping wind.

"Gorlois."

"Wife."

"Would you have my blessing?"

"Give it me, Igraine."

"Go then, and look not to me for comfort. When you are in battle, and the swords cry on your shield, I shall pray on my knees that you may get your death."

Gorlois gave never a sound as he stood by the barred door with his hand over the mezail of his helmet. It seemed dark and gloomy in the gallery, and the staunch oak fronted him like fate. His eyes were full of a dull light as he turned and went clanging down the stairway with slow, heavy tread. His sounding footsteps died down into the din of arms that came from the great court. Igraine ran to the window and watched him and his men ride out, smiling a bleak smile as the last mailed figure gleamed out by the gate.

II

When Gorlois and his knights had gone, Igraine unbarred the door, and passed down the narrow stair to the state chamber of the house, where a fire was burning. It was a solemn room, shadowed with many arches, with vaults inlaid with marble, its walls painted green and gold, its glimmering casements lozenged with fine glass. Furs were spread upon the mosaic floor; painted urns held flowers that bloomed in the mock summer of the room.

Igraine stood and warmed herself before the fire. From an altar-like pillar near she took storax and galbanum from brazen bowls, and scattered the resinous tears upon the flames. A pungent fragrance rose up into her nostrils. The flicker of the fire played upon her face, and set a lustre in her eyes. It was winter weather, and the warmth was welcome.

The refrain of her talk with Gorlois still ran at fever heat like a wild song through her brain. She was stirred to the deeps of her strong soul. For Gorlois she had no measure of pity. He was a rotten tree to her, a slab of granite, anything but quick flesh and blood capable of aspiration and desire. She hated him more for his pleading than for his tyranny, fearing to be pleased by one she dreaded. He was strenuous and obstinate. She knew that it would be great joy to her if she saw his face no more, and if his body crumbled in the rain on some bleak coast in Wales.

As she stood by the fire and looked into it with pondering eyes she heard a curtain drawn and the sound of a footstep on the threshold. Turning briskly, like one accustomed to suspicions, she saw the man Brastias in the doorway looking at her half-furtively, as though none too proud of the office thrust upon him. He had great grey eyes and a calm face. Bending stiffly to Igraine with his hand over his heart, he turned aside to a cabinet by the wall, took therefrom an illumined scroll of legendary tales, and sat down on a bench to read, as though he had no other business in the room.

Igraine's long lip curled. She knew the meaning of the man's presence there shrewdly enough. Going to a window she opened the casement frame and looked out on the winter scene. Usk winding silver to the sea, the purple roll of the bleak bare woods, the far sea itself dying a sullen streak into a sullen sky. It was dreary enough, and yet it suited her; she could have welcomed thunder and the rend of forked fire above the woods. Thought was fierce in her with the wind crying about the house like a wistful voice, the voice of days long dead.

To be free of Gorlois!

To cast off her present self like a rotten cloak!

To adventure liberty, though the peril were shrill as the wind through the swaying pines on the hillside!

To deal with Brastias!

Now Brastias was a grave-faced knight, neither young nor old, but a very boy in the matter of the mock wisdom of the world. He was possessed of one of those generous natures that looks kindly on humanity with a simple optimism born of a contented conscience. He was a devout man, a soldier, and a gentleman. Moreover, he owned a holy reverence for women, a reverence that led him into a somewhat extravagant belief in the sincerity of their truth and virtue. He was blessed too in being nothing of a cynic in his conceptions of honour.

Gorlois knew the man to the heart, and trusted him, a fact well proven by the faith imposed upon him in his wardenship of the Lady Igraine. Brastias hated the task as much as he hated the telling of a lie. There are some men whose whole instinct is towards truth. They are golden souls, often too easily deceived with a gross dross that makes an outward show of kindred colour.

Brastias was no stranger to Igraine, for he had served her as one of the knights of the guard in the great castle of Tintagel. He was a man who could look into a woman's eyes and make her feel instinctively the clear honour of his soul. There was nothing of the flesh about Brastias. And it was in this chivalrous faith of his that Igraine discovered a credulity that might make him prone to believe a certain profession of faith that was taking sudden and subtle form within her mind. Months ago, she would have hesitated before the man's grey eyes. But feeling herself sinned against, and stirred by the shame of the past, she found ample justification for herself in the lie Gorlois had practised for her undoing.

She left the window, and went and stood by the fire, with her back to the man.

"Brastias," she said, quite softly.

The man looked up from the scroll, and seemed ill at ease.

"I trust your duty is pleasant to you?"

Brastias's eyelids flickered nervously, and he cleared his throat.

"May the Virgin witness," he said, "I have no love of the task."

"My Lord Gorlois trusts you?"

"He has said so, madame."

"And am I not his wife?"

Brastias put the scroll aside with a constrained deliberation. He felt himself wholly in the wrong, as he always did before a woman, and his wit ran clumsily on such occasions. It had needed but the observation of a child to mark the gulf between Gorlois and his wife. Gorlois had spoken few words on the matter, had given commands and nothing more. Brastias was not the man to tamper officiously with the confidences of others. He thought much, said little, and bided quiet for Igraine to speak.

She stood half-turned towards the fire, with her face in profile, and her hands hanging limply at her side. Looking for all the world like a penitent, she spoke with a certain unconscious pathos, as though she touched on a matter that was heavy upon her heart.

"Brastias, I may call you a friend?"

"I trust so, madame."

"Then there is no reason for me to be backward in speaking of the truth?"

The man bowed and said nothing.

"Come then, Brastias, tell me honestly, have I seemed to you like a woman who loved her husband?"

The girl's blue eyes were staring hard into the man's grey ones. There was little chance of prevarication before so blunt a question, and Brastias's courtesy, like Balaam's ass, refused to deny the scrutiny of truth. Igraine could read the man's face like a piece of blazened parchment.

"Never fear to be frank," she said; "your belief hangs on your face like an alphabet, and that shows me how much you know of a woman's heart."

"Pardon me, madame."

"Never blush, man, you would have said that I had as little love for Gorlois as for the dirtiest beggar in Caerleon?"

Brastias frowned mildly and agreed with her, remembering as he did a certain wild scene on the battlements of Tintagel.

"And doubtless you would say that it pained me not a whit to see Gorlois my lord ride out from Caerleon into the wilds of Wales?"

There was such reproach in her voice that Brastias fell into confusion before her eyes, reddened, and began to excuse himself.

"Your ladyship's behaviour," he said, with an ingenuous look and an intense striving after propitiation,--"your ladyship's behaviour would hardly warrant me in believing that my Lord Gorlois was vastly dear to you. And, pardon me, a woman does not seek to run away from her husband."

"You insinuate--"

Brastias felt himself in the mire, and groaned in spirit.

"Madame, I would say--"

"Yes, yes, I understand you."

"Give me leave--"

"Not another word."

Igraine smiled softly to herself, turned her back on Brastias and stared long into the fire. The man stood by, watching her with a humbled look, his fingers twisting restlessly at the broidery of his black tunic. Igraine traced out the mosaic patterns on the floor with the point of her shoe.

"I think you men are all fools," she said.

Brastias's silence might have suggested contradiction.

"Have you ever loved a woman?"

The man shifted, and went red under his straight fair hair. His eyes took a dreamy look.

"Yes," he said, as though half-ashamed.

Igraine hung her head and sighed.

"Perhaps," she said, growing suddenly shy and out of countenance, "perhaps you may have learnt the lesson of the froward heart, the heart that comes by love when it is in peril of great loss."

Brastias drew a quick, deep breath.

"By the Virgin, that's true," he said.

Igraine turned to the fire and hid her face from the man. There was a pathetic droop about her shoulders, a listless curving of her neck, that made Brastias picture her as burdened with some immoderate sorrow. He was an impressionable man, not in any amorous sense, but in the matter of sympathy towards his fellows. He thought he heard a catch in the girl's breathing that boded tears. Her hair looked very soft and lustrous as it curved over her ears and neck.

"Madame Igraine."

No answer. Brastias went a step nearer.

"Listen to me."

A slight turning of the head in response.

"What ails you, madame?"

"Never trouble."

"I beseech you, tell me."

The man was quite afire; his face looked bright and eager, and his eyes shone.

"Gorlois has gone to the war."

The words were jerked out one by one.

"Madame!"

"War--and death."

"Courage, madame, courage. On my soul, you are not going to say--"

"Brastias, you understand."

"Then?"

"Man, man, don't drag it out of me; don't you see? are you blind?"

Brastias invoked a certain saint by the name of Christopher, and straightway emphasised his words by falling down on his knees beside Igraine. She had contrived to conjure up tears as she bent over the fire. Brastias found one of her hands and held it.

"This will be my lord's salvation."

"Think you so?"

"On my soul, my dear lady, I thank our Lord Jesu from my heart. For I know my Lord Gorlois, and the bitterness that weighed him down, though he spoke little to me on this matter, being staunch to you, and to his courtesy. And by our Lord's Passion, madame, I love peace in a house, and quiet looks, and words like laughing water, for there is never a home where temper rules."

"Brastias, you shame me."

"God forbid, dear lady, there's no gospel vanity in my heart. I speak but out."

The man's quaint outburst of gladness touched Igraine's honesty to the core, but she had no thought of recantation, for all the pricking of her conscience. She passed back to the open window and leant against the mullion, while Brastias rose from his knees and followed her.

"I am faint," she said, "and the fresh wind comforts me."

"Courage, madame; Duke Gorlois fights for Britain and the Cross; what better blessing on his shield?"

Igraine was looking out toward the sea and the grey curtain of the sky cut in places by dark woods and the sweep of dull green hills. There was a wistful droop about her figure that made Brastias molten with intent to comfort, and dumb with words of sympathy that died inarticulate in his throat. He stood there, a man muzzled by his own sincerity, bankrupt of a syllable, though he commanded his wit to be nimble with stentorian cry of conscience. He felt hot in his skin and vastly stupid. By the time he had lumbered up some passable fancy, Igraine had turned from the window with a quick intelligence kindling in her eyes.

"Brastias."

"Madame."

"Listen to me, I have come by a plan."

A sudden flood of sunlight streamed through a rent in the grey canopy of clouds. The landscape took a warmer tinge, the purple of the woods deepened. Brastias saw the sudden gleam of light strike on Igraine's hair. Her head was thrown back upon her splendid neck, and her eyes seemed large with love.

"I will show Gorlois how I love him," she said.

Brastias's face was still hazed in conjecture.

"I will wipe out the past."

"Ah!"

"We will follow Gorlois to the war, you and I, Brastias, together. What say you to that?"

The man looked at her with clear grey eyes, and with a transient immobility of feature that changed swiftly to a glow of understanding. The words had gone home to him like a trumpet-cry; their courage warmed him, and he was carried with the wind.

"A great hazard--and a noble," he said, with a flush of colour; "the peril is on my neck, and yet--I'll bear it."

Igraine's face blazed.

"Brastias, you will go with me?"

"By my sword, to the death."

"Come hither, man; I must kiss your forehead."

Brastias knelt to her again with crossed hands. She looked into his grey eyes and touched his forehead with her lips.

"Thus I salute honour," she said.

"My lord's lady!"

"You have trusted me."

"Else had I been ashamed."

The man went away to arm, warm at heart as any boy. Igraine stood a moment looking into the fire with an enigmatic calm upon her face. For Brastias she felt a throttled pity, an impossible admiration that only troubled her. Her lust for liberty bore her like a storm-wind, and her hate of Gorlois made her iron at heart. She could dare anything to fling off the moral bondage that cramped and bound her like a net.

While Brastias was away arming and ordering horses, she went to a little armoury on the stairs and filched away a short hauberk and a sheathed poniard. She wore these under a gown of black velvet bound with a silver girdle, and a cloak of sables hooded and lined with sky-blue cloth. She had a strange joy of the knife at her girdle as she passed down the stairway to the court.

A few silent servants gaped at her as she passed from the house. Brastias came out to her in armour. In the court she heard the cry of steel bridles, the sparking of hoofs on the stones. They were soon mounted and away under the great gate and free of Caerleon in the decline of the day. The west had no colour, and a wind pined in the trees as they swept into the twining shadows of the woods, and saw the boughs clutch each other against the sullen sky. Soon night came in a black cowl, and with a winter wind that roamed the woods like the moan of a prophecy. Igraine, riding with her bridle linked in that of Brastias, pressed on for the west with a mood that echoed the roar of the trees.

III

A man in black armour, a lady in a cloak of sables, a pine forest under a winter sky.

Myriad trunks interminably pillared, grey-black below, changing to red beneath the canopy of boughs; patches of grey-blue sky between; a floor overgrown with whortleberry and heather, and streaked seldom by the sun. Through the tree-tops the veriest sighing of a wind, a sound that crept up the curling galleries like the softly-taken breath of a sleeping world. Away on every hand oblivious vistas black under multitudinous green spires.

The woman's face seemed white under the sweep of her sable hood. Its expression was very purposeful, its mouth firm and resolute, its air indicative of a deliberate will. Her eyes stared into the wood over her horse's head with a constant care, dropping now and again a quick side-glance at the man in black armour riding on her flank. She spoke seldom to him, and then with a certain assumption of authority that seemed to trouble his equanimity but little. Often she would lean forward in the saddle as though to listen, her eyes fixed, her mouth decisive, her hand hollowed at her ear to concavitate some sound other than the wind-song of the trees. It was evident that she was under the spell of some strong emotion, for she would smile and frown by turns as though vexed by perpetual alternatives of feeling.

The man at her side watched with his grey eyes the path curling uphill between the trees. Having his own inward exposition of the woman's mood, he contented himself wisely with silence, keeping his reflections to himself. He was not a man who blurted commonplaces when lacking the means of inspiration. And he was satisfied with the fancy that he understood completely the things that were passing through the woman's mind. He believed her troubled by those extreme anxieties of the heart that come with war and the handiwork of the sword. Perhaps he was fortunate in being ignorant of the truth.

The interminable trees seemed to vex the woman's spirit as their trunks crowded the winding track and shut the pair in as with a never-ending barrier. But for an occasional patch of heathland or scrub, no lengthy vista opened up before them. Tree-boles stood everywhere to baulk their vision, silent and stiff like sullen sentinels. The horses plodded on. Igraine's impatience could be read upon her face, and discovered in her slighter gestures. It was the impatience of a mind at war within itself, a mind prone through the chafe of trouble to be vexed with trifles; sore, sensitive, and hasty. Brastias watched her, pretending to be intent the while on the path that wandered away into the mazes of the wood. He was a considerate creature, and he suffered her petulance with a placid good-humour, and a certain benevolence that was the outcome of pity.

Igraine jerked her bridle, and eyed the trees as though they were the members of a mob thrusting themselves between her and her purpose. She was inclined to be unreasonable, as only a woman can be on occasions. Brastias, calm-faced and debonair, contented himself with sympathy, and refrained from reason as from the handling of a whip.

"That peasant fellow was a liar," he said, by way of being companionable.

"Yes, the whelp."

"I'll swear we've ridden two leagues, not one."

"The fellow should have a stripe for every furlong."

"Rough justice, madame."

Igraine laughed.

"If justice were done to liars," she said, "the world would be hideless, scourged raw."

Brastias edged his horse past an intruding tree and chuckled amiably.

"It would be a pity to spoil so much beauty."

"Eh!"

"The women would come off worst."

Igraine flashed a look at him.

"Balaam's ass spoke the truth," she said.

They had not gone another furlong when Brastias reined in suddenly and stood listening. He held up a hand to Igraine, looking at her with prophetic face, his black armour lustreless under the trees.

"Hark!"

Igraine stared into his eyes. Neither moved a muscle for fully a minute.

"A trumpet-cry!"

Brastias lowered his hand.

"From the host. And the 'advance,' by the sound on't."

"Then we shall be out of the woods soon."

"Go warily, madame; it would be poor wisdom to stumble on an Irish legion."

"Brastias, I would not miss the day for a year in heaven."

As they pushed uphill through the solemn shadows of the forest, a sound like the raging of a wind through a wood came down to them faintly from afar. It was a sullen sound, deep and mysterious as the hoarse babel of the sea, smitten through with the shrill scream of trumpets like the cry of gulls above a storm. In the alleys of the pine forest it was still as death, and calm beneath the beniscus of the tall trees.

Igraine and Brastias looked meaningly at each other as they rode. The sound needed no words to christen it. The two under the trees knew that they heard the roar of host breaking upon host, the cataractine thunder of a distant battle.

Pushing on as fast as the forest suffered, the din became more definite, more human, more sinister in detail. It stirred the blood, challenged the courage, racked conjecture with the infinite chaos it portended. Victory and despair were trammelled up together in its sullen roar; life and death seemed to swell it with the wind-sound of their wings; it was stupendous, sonorous, chaotic, a tempest-cry of steel and many voices merged into the grand underchant of war.

Igraine's face kindled to the sound like the face of a girl who hears her lover's lute at night under her window. Blood fled to her brain with the wild strength of the strain humming like a wind through the trees. She was in the mood for war; the tragedy of it solemnised her spirit, and made her look for the innumerable flash of arms, the rolling march of a multitude. For the moment it was life, and the glorious strength of it; death and the dust were hid from sight.

Yet another furlong and the red trunks dwindled, and the sombre boughs fringed great tracts of blue, and to the north mountains rose up dim and purple under an umbrage of clouds. To the west the sea appeared solemn and foamless, set with pine-spired aisles, and a great company of ships at anchor. Nigh the shore the grey pile of a walled town stood out upon green meadows. Igraine and the man pushed past the outlying thickets, and drew rein upon a slope that ran gradually down from them like the great swell of a sea.

Tented by the dome of the sky lay a natural amphitheatre, shelving towards the sea, but rising in the east by rolling slopes to a ridge that joined the mountains with the forest. The valley was a medley of waste land, scrub, gorse, and thicket, traversed by the white streak of a road, and closed on the west by the grey walls of the town rising up above the green. It was a wild spot enough. However still and solitary it may have seemed in its native desertedness, however much the haunt of the wolf and the boar, it seethed now like a cauldron with the boiling stir of battle. Men swarmed through scrub and thicket; masses of steel moved hither and thither, met, mingled, broke, and rallied. Wave rushed on wave. Bodies of horsemen smoked over the open with flashing of many colours and the glittering pomp of mail, to roll with clanging trumpets into some vortex of death. The whole scene was one shifting mass of steel and strife, dust and disorder, galloping squadrons, rolling spears, rank on rank of shields a-flicker in the sun. And from this whirlpool of humanity rose the dull grinding roar of war, fierce, stupendous, clamorous, grand.

To the trained eye of the soldier the chaos took orderly and intelligent meaning, and Brastias stood in his stirrups and pointed out to Igraine the main ordering of the hosts. Uther Pendragon held the eastern ridge with his knights and levies; Gilomannius and Pascentius thrust up at him from the sea; while the valley between held the wreck of the countercharges of either host, and formed debatable ground where troop ran against troop, and man against man.

The masses of Uther's army swept away along the ridge, their arms glittering over the green slopes, their banners and surcoats colouring the height into a terraced garden of war, the whole, a solemn streak of gold against the blue bosoms of the hills. To the north stood Meliograunt with his levies from Wales, and next him Duke Eldol and King Nentres headed the men of Flavia Cæsariensis. South of all the great banner of Tintagel showed where Gorlois and the southern levies reared up their spears like a larch-wood in winter. Brastias pointed them all out to the girl in turn, keeping keen watch the while on the shifting mob of mail in the valley.

Igraine, stirred by the scene, urged on from the forest, and the knight following her, they crossed some open scrubland, wound through a thicket of pines, and stood at gaze under the boughs. Igraine's eyes were all the while turned on the banner of Tintagel, and from the common mob of mailed figures she could isolate a knight in gilded harness on a white horse, Gorlois, her husband. The mere sight of him set her hate blazing in her heart, and seemed to pageant out all the ills she had suffered at his hands. Her feud against the man was a veritable insanity, a species of melancholia that wrapped all existence in the morbid twilight of self-centred bitterness. As she looked down upon the host there was a kind of overmastering madness of malice on her face, an emotion whose very intensity paled her to the lips, and made her eyes hard and scintillant as crystal. She was discreet for all her violence of soul. Turning to Brastias, who was scanning the valley under his hand, she pointed to the banner with a restless eagerness of manner that might have hinted at her solicitude for Gorlois, her lord.

"See yonder," she said, "is not that the Lord Gorlois on the white horse by yonder standard?"

Brastias turned his glance thither, considered for a moment, and then agreed decisively.

"Love is quick of eye," he said with a smile.

"Let us ride down nearer."

"I care not for the hazard, madame."

"Who fears at such a season?"

"By my sword, madame, not your servant; I am but careful of your safety."

"Fear for me, Brastias, when I fear for myself."

"Methinks, madame, that would be never."

"Brastias, I believe you."

Igraine's courage had risen to too high an imperiousness for the moment to brook baffling or to endure restraint. She had been lifted out of herself, as it were, by the storm-cry of battle, and by the splendour of the scene spread out before her eyes. A furlong or more down the hillside a little hillock stood up amid a few wind-twisted thorns, proffering rare vantage for outlook over wood and dale. She was away like a flash, and several lengths ahead before Brastias had roused up, put spur to horse, and cantered after her. The man saw the glint of her horse's hinder hoofs spurning the sod, and though the wind whistled about his ears, he was left well in the rear for all his spurring. Igraine, with her hair agleam under her tossed-back hood, and her cheeks ruddied by the wind, headed for the rising ground at a gallop, gained it, and drew rein on the very verge of a small cliff that dropped sheer to the flat below. The hillock was like a natural pulpit, its front face a perpendicular some twenty feet high, while its hinder slope tailed off to merge into the hillside. Gorlois's mailed masses stood but a hundred paces away, and Igraine could see him clearly in his gilded harness under the banner of Tintagel.

Brastias galloped up to her with a mild bluster of expostulation.

"You court danger, madame."

"What if I do, Brastias, to be near my lord."

"Your sanctity lies upon my conscience."

"I take all such care from you."

"Madame, that is impossible; duty is duty both night and day, in battle and in peace; duty bids me fear for my lord's wife."

Igraine found certain logic invincible in the argument, and made good use of it; she meant to rule Brastias for her own ends.

"Fear," she said; "I forget fear when I am nigh Gorlois, my husband; and who can gainsay me the right of watching over him? I forget fear when I think of Britain, the king, and my lord, and had I a hundred lives I could cast them down to help to break the heathen, and serve my country."

"Amen," said Brastias, signing the cross upon his breast.

Sterner interests quashed any further polite bickerings that might have risen from Igraine's pride of purpose, for Brastias, with the instinct of a soldier, marked some large development in the struggle that had been passing in the valley below them. The scattered lines of horse and foot that had been thrown forward by Uther to try the strength and spirit of the Irish host, were falling back sullenly uphill before the masses of attack poured up from the flats by Gilomannius the king. The whole battle had shifted to the east. Bodies of horse were spurring uphill, driving in Uther's men, cutting down stragglers, harrowing the slopes for the solid march of the black columns of foot that were creeping up between the thickets, winding like giant dragons amid furze and scrub. It was a grand sight enough, the advance of a great host, a rocking sea of spears pouring up in the lull that had fallen over the valley as though the battle took breath and waited. Uther's men kept their ground upon the ridge, watching in silence the advance of Gilomannius's chivalry. Only a brief wild cry of trumpets betokened the gathering of the waves of war.

Even at this juncture Brastias racked his wit and courtesy to persuade Gorlois's lady to fall back and watch from the shelter of the woods. He pointed out her peril to Igraine, besought, argued, cajoled, threatened. All he gained was a blunt but half-smiling declaration from the woman that she would hold to her post on the hillock till the battle was over, or some mischance drove her from the place. Brastias caught her bridle, spurred round, and tried to drag her back by main force, but she was out of the saddle instanter, and obstinate as ever. In the end the man capitulated, and gave his concern to the fortunes of war.

The sudden uproar that sounded out along the hillside made mere individual need dull and impossible for the moment. The shock of the joining of the hosts had come like the fall of snow from a mountain--a sound sweeping down the valley, echoing among the silent fastnesses of the hills. Men had come pike to pike, shield to shield, upon the ridge. Mass rushed upon mass, billow upon billow. From the mountains to the forest the sweat and thunder of strife rolled up from the long line of leaping steel, from the living barrier, steady as a cliff. It was one of the many Marathons of the world where barbarism clawed at the antique fabric of the past.

Igraine's glance was stayed on Gorlois and the southern levies about the banner of Tintagel. Her hate surged up the green slope with the onrush of the Irish horde, and brandished on the charge in spirit towards the tall figure in the harness of gold. She saw Gorlois in the press smiting right and left with the long sweep of his sword. In her thirst for his destruction she grudged him strength, harness, sword, the very shield he bore. She was glad of his courage, for such would militate against him. Moment by moment her desire honoured him with death as she thought him doomed to fall beneath the surge of steel.

A sudden shout from Brastias brought her stare from this chaos of swords. The man was standing in his stirrups, and pointing to the west with his face dead white and his mouth agape.

"By God, look!"

Truth to tell, there was little need of the warning. A dull rumble of hoofs came up like thunder above the shriller din around. Igraine, looking to the west, saw a black mass of horsemen at the gallop, swaying, surging, rocking uphill full for Gorlois's flank. The sight numbed her reason for the moment. She was still as stone as the column swept past the very foot of the hillock--a flood of steel--and plunged headlong upon Gorlois's lines, hewing and trampling to the very banner of Tintagel. An oath from Brastias made her turn and look at him. He had his hand on his sword, and his face was twisted into a snarl of wrath and shame as he stood in his stirrups and watched the fight.

"My God!" he cried, "my God! they run."

It was palpable enough that the southern line was breaking and crumbling ominously before the rush of Gilomannius's knights. Little bunches of men were breaking away from the main mass like smoke, and falling back over the ridge. Igraine guessed at Brastias's pride and fury, saw her chance of liberty, and took it. She set up a shrill cry that stirred his courage like a trumpet-cry.

"My Lord, my Lord Gorlois, Brastias, what of him?"

The man's sword had flashed out.

"Send me to death, lady, only to strike a blow for Britain."

Igraine spread her hands to him like a Madonna, and made the sign of the cross in the air. Brastias lifted up his drawn sword, kissed it, and saluted her with the look of a hero. Then he wheeled his horse, plunged down from the hillock, and rode full gallop into the battle. Igraine soon lost sight of his black harness in the mêlée, and since he met his death there, she saw Brastias alive no more.

Despite the grim uproar of the overthrow, despite the taunts of a patriot pride, there was an under-current of gladness through her thought as she watched Gorlois's men giving ground upon the ridge. Her lord's shame was her gratification. To such a pitch of passion was she tuned that she could find laughter for the occasion, and a shrill cry of joy that startled even her own ears when the banner of Tintagel quivered and went down into the dust. Men were falling like leaves in autumn, and the southern wing of Uther's host seemed but a rabble--trampled, overridden, herded, and smitten over the ridge. Everywhere the swords and spears of Gilomannius's knights and gallowglasses spread rout and panic, while the wavering mass gave ground, rallied, gave again, and streamed away in flight over the hillside. She could see no sign of Gorlois, and with a whimper of hate the strong doubt of his escaping the slaughter took hold on her heart, and found ready welcome there. She was rid of Brastias--good fellow that he was--and though she honoured him, she loved liberty better. Liberty enough! Gorlois her lord had been slain. Such were her reflections for the moment.

Pendragon's host seemed threatened with overthrow. The southern wing had been driven off the field by a charge of horse; Gilomannius held the southern portion of the ridge, and pressed hard on Meliograunt, both flank and face. The imminent need of Britain was plain enough even to Igraine, yet a sense of calm and liberty had come upon her like the song of birds or the gush of green in springtide. Even her patriotism seemed dim and unreal for the moment before the treasonable gratitude that watched the overthrow of Gorlois's arms. She was alone at last, solitary among thousands, able after the bitterness of past months to pluck peace from the very carnage of battle. Trouble had so wrought upon her mind that it seemed a negation of all probable and natural sentiment, a contradiction of the ethical principles of sense.

The day was fast passing, and the grand fires of a winter sunset were rolling all the caverns of the west into a blaze of gold and scarlet. The pine forest, black and inscrutable as night, stood with its spines like ebony to the fringe of the west, while the slanting light lit the glimmering masses of steel on hill and valley with a web of gold. To the north the mountains towered in a mystery of purple, a gleam of amber transient on their peaks.

Sudden and shrill came a cry of trumpets from the hills, a sinister sound that seemed to issue in the climax of the last phase of a tragedy. Igraine's eyes were turned northwards to the green slopes of the higher ground where the great banner of the Golden Dragon had flapped over Uther the King. Here a great company of knights, the flower of the host, had stood inactive throughout the day. With a cry of trumpets this splendid company had moved down to charge the masses of Gilomannius's men, who now filled the shallow valley east of the ridge, and threatened King Meliograunt and the whole host with overthrow. Uther had ridden out to lead the charge with his own sword. It was one of those perilous hours when some great deed was needed to grapple victory from defeat.

The rest of the scene seemed blotted out as Igraine watched from her hillock the glittering mass rolling downhill with the evening sun striking flame from its thousand points of steel. On over the green slopes, past the pavilions of the camp, it gathered like a wave lifting its crest against a rock, on towards the swarm of men squandered in pursuit of Gorlois's broken line, on to where Gilomannius formed his knights for the charge. The green space dwindled and dwindled with the rush and roar of the nearing gallop. Igraine saw the rabble of Saxons, light-armed kerns and Irish gallowglasses, split and crack like a crumbling wall. For a short breath the black mass held, with Uther's storm of mail cleaving cracks and wedges in it--streaks of tawny colour like lava through the vineyards and gardens of a village. Then as by magic the whole mass seemed to deliquesce, to melt, to become as mist. All visible was a thunderstorm of horsemen tearing like wind through a film of rain with scattering fringes of cloud scudding swiftly to the west. The knights had passed the valley and were riding up the slope, hewing, trampling, crushing, as they came. Gilomannius's columns that had pushed Gorlois's men into rout had become a rabble in turn--wrecked, scattered to the wind, trodden down in blood and dust. They were streaming away in flight over the ridge, scampering for scrub and thicket, no lust in them save the lust of life. Igraine saw them racing past on every quarter, a blood-specked, dust-covered herd, their hairy faces panting for the west and the ships on the beach. Not a hundred paces away came the line of trampling hoofs and swinging swords, a demoniac whirlwind of iron wrath that hunted, slew, and gave no quarter.