PART III

XXII

Aurelius, physician of Gilderoy, flourished on the fatness of a fortunate reputation. He was a rubicund soul, clean and pleasant, with a neatly-trimmed beard, and a brow that seemed to dome a very various and abundant wisdom. He combined a sprightly humour and an enlivening presence with the reverent solemnity necessary to his profession.

As for the ladies of Gilderoy, they reverenced Master Aurelius with a loyalty that became perhaps less remarkable the more one considered the character of the worthy charlatan. Aurelius was an AEsculap in court clothing. He was ignorant, but as no one realised the fact, the soul of Hippocrates would have been wasted in his body. Discretion was his crowning virtue. He was so sage, so intelligent, so full of a simple understanding for the ways of women, that the frail creatures could not love him enough. The confidences granted to a priest were nothing compared to the truths that were unmasked to his tactful ken. The physician is the priest of the body, a privileged person, suffered to enter the bed-chamber before the solemn rites of the toilet have been performed. He sees many strange truths, beholds fine and wonderful transfigurations, presides over the confessional of the flesh. And Aurelius never whispered of these mysteries; never displayed astonishment; always discovered extraordinary justification for the quaintest inconsistencies, the most romantic failings. He carried a sweet and sympathetic air of propriety about with him, like a perfume that exhaled a most comfortable odour of religion. His salves were delectable to a degree, his unguents and cosmetics remarkable productions. Dames took his potions in lieu of Malmsey, his powders in place of sweetmeats. Never did a more pleasant, a more tactful old hypocrite pander to the failings of an unregenerate world.

Aurelius stood in his laboratory one June morning, balancing a money-bag in his chubby pink palm. He seemed tickled by some subtlety of thought, and wonderfully well pleased with his own good-humour. He smiled, locked the money-bag in a drawer that stood in a confidential cupboard, and, taking his cap and walking-staff, repaired to the street. Pacing the narrow pavement like a veritable potentate, pretentious as any peacock, yet mightily amiable from the superb self-satisfaction that roared in him like a furnace, he acknowledged the greetings of passers-by with the elevation of a hand, a solemn movement of the head. It was well to seem unutterably serious when under the eyes of the mob. Only educated folk can properly understand levity in a sage.

In the Erminois, a stately highway that ran northwards from the cathedral, he halted before a mansion whose windows were rich with scutcheons and proud blazonry. Aurelius prospered with the rich. The atmosphere of the mean quarters was like a miasma to him; he loved sunlight and high places where he might bask like a lizard. He passed by a great gateway into the inner court, and was admitted into the house with that ready deference that speaks of familiarity and respect.

Aurelius climbed the broad stairway, and sailed like a stately carrack into my lady's chamber. A dame in blue and silver greeted him from an oriel. The compounder of cosmetics bowed, disposed his staff and velvet cap upon a table, and appropriated the chair the lady had assigned to him.

"Superb weather, madame."

"Too sultry, though I am a warm-souled person."

"True, madame, true, Gilderoy would be fresher if there were no mean folk to stifle up the streets like weeds. The alleys send up such an unpleasant stench upon the breeze, that it makes the cultured sense revolt from poverty."

The Lady Duessa's lips curled approvingly,

"Poverty, poverty, my dear Aurelius, is like a carcase, fit only for quicklime. If I had the rule of the place, I would make poverty a crime, and cram all our human sweepings into lazar quarters."

The man of physic nodded for sympathy.

"Exactly so, madame, but one would have to deal with the inevitable religious instinct."

"That would be simple enough," she simpered. "I should confine religion to shadows and twinkling tapers, lights streaming in through enamelled casements upon solemn colours bowing before dreamy music; pardons and absolutions bought with a purse of gold. It is sad, Aurelius, but who doubts but that religion makes scavengers of us all? Away with your smug widows, your frouzy burgher saints, your yellow-skinned priest-hunters! I would rather have picturesque sin than vulgar piety."

The man of herbs sighed like an organ pipe.

"Everything can be pardoned before coarseness," he said; "give me a dirty heart before a dirty face, provided the sinner be pretty. I trust that madame was satisfied with my endeavours, that the perfumes were such as she desired, the oil of Arabia pleasant and fragrant?"

"Magical, my AEsculap. The oil makes the skin like velvet, and the drugs are paradisic and full of languors. Ah, woman, set the tray beside Master Aurelius' chair."

The man's eyes glistened over the salver and the cup. He bowed to his hostess, sniffed, and pursed his lips over the wine.

"Madame knows how to warm the heart."

"Truth to you. Who have you been renovating of late? What carcase have you been painting, you useful rogue?"

"Madame, my profession is discreet."

"I see your work everywhere. There is the little brown-faced thing who is to marry John of Brissac. Well, she needed art severely. Now the lady has a complexion like apple-blossom."

The old man's eyes twinkled.

"Madame is pleased to jest," he said, "and to think her fancies--realities. Were all ladies as fresh as Madame Duessa, what, think you, would become of my delectable art, my science of beauty? I should be a poor bankrupt old man, ruined by too much comeliness."

Aurelius always had the wit to say the pleasantest thing possible, and to press the uttermost drop of honey from the comb of flattery. A surly tongue will break a man, a glib intelligence ensure him a fortune. Aurelius earned many a fee by a pretty speech, or a tactful suggestion. Then of course he was never hindered by sincerity.

"Holy Dominic," laughed the lady, "I have proved a good patron to you in many ways."

"And I trust I shall always deserve madame's trust."

"A discreet tongue and a comfortable obedience are sweet things to a woman, Aurelius."

"Madame's voice recalls Delphi."

"Ah, the Greeks were poets; they knew how to fit their religion to their pleasures. 'Tis only we, poor fools, who measure sin by a priest's pardon. Give me a torch before an aspergill."

The man of physic sipped his wine, cogitating over it with Jovian wisdom.

"The chief aim in life, madame," he said, "should be the perfecting of one's own comfort. 'Tis my contention that a fat bishop is a finer Christian than a lean friar. The truism is obvious. Is not my soul the more mellifluous and benign if its shell is gilded and its vest of velvet?"

Duessa chuckled, and flipped her chin.

"Give me a warm bed," she laughed, "and I will pity creation. The world's saints are plump and comely; the true goddess has a supple knee. Am I the worse for being buxom!"

"Madame," said the sage with great unction, "only beggars denounce gold, and heaven is the dream of diseased souls. The cult of pleasure is the seal of health. Discontent is the seed of religion."

The door opened a few inches, and there was the sound of voices in muffled debate in the gallery. The Lady Duessa listened, rose from her chair, appeared restless. The man of physic comprehended the situation, and with that tact that characterised him, declared that he had patronage elsewhere to assuage. The lady did not detain him, but dismissed him with a smile--a smile that on such a face as hers often took the place of words. So Master Aurelius took his departure.

Five minutes later Sforza, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy, occupied the vacant chair in the oriel.

There are many ways to fame. By the broad, embattled gate where the Cerberus of War crouches; by the glistening stair of glass where all the beauty of the world gleams as in a thousand mirrors; by the cloaca of diplomacy and cunning, that tunnels under truth and honour. Sforza of Gilderoy was a man who never took his finger off a guinea till he had seen ten dropped into the other palm. He was a narrow-faced, long-whiskered rat, ever nibbling, ever poking his keen snout into prospective prosperity. He had no real reverence for anything under the sun. To speak metaphorically, he would as soon steal the sacrificial wafer from the altar as the cheese from a burgher's larder. When he lived in earnest, he lived in moral nebulosity, that is to say, he had no light save his own lantern. Publicly, he appeared a sleek, dignified person, quick with his figures, apt at oratory, a man who could quote scripture by the ell and swear by every saint in the calendar.

Sforza, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy, sat and faced Dame Duessa over a little table that held wine and a bowl of roses. His large hands rested on the carved arms of the chair. He had a debonair smirk on his face, a mask of complacency that suffered him to be vigilant in a polite and courteous fashion.

"Madame has considered my proposition?"

The woman leant back in her chair and worked her full lower lip against her teeth.

"I recognise your infallibility, Gonfaloniere."

"Only to the level of human foresight, madame."

"You have a longer nose than most men."

"I take the insinuation as a compliment."

He contemplated her awhile in silence.

"How am I to know that you are sincere?" he said.

"Need you disbelieve me?"

"It is my custom to disbelieve in everybody."

"Till they have satisfied you?"

"Exactly."

Duessa looked out of the window, and played with her chatelaine.

"You know women?"

"I would never lay claim to such an arrogance of cunning."

"Nevertheless you are no fool."

"I am no fool."

"And you imagine my protestations are not sincere, even after what I have suffered?"

He smiled at her most cunningly.

"You want proof?"

"I do not like unsigned documents."

She started forward in her chair with a strangely strenuous look on her face.

"Fanatic fools have often made some show of fortitude," she said, "by thrusting a hand into the fire, or the like. See now if I am a liar or a coward."

Before he could stay her she drew a small stiletto from her belt, spread her left hand on the table, and then smote the steel through the thick of the palm, and held it there without flinching as the blood flowed.

"My signature," she said, with her cheeks a shade paler.

"Madame, you have spirit."

"Do you believe in me?"

"I may say so."

"You will include me in your schemes?"

"I will."

"You remember our mutual bargain?"

"I remember it."

She withdrew the stiletto and wrapped her bleeding hand in her robe.

"You will initiate me--at once."

"To-morrow, madame, you shall go with me to the council."

XXIII

Castle Gambrevault stood out on a great cliff above the sea, like a huge white crown on the country's brow. It was as fine a mass of masonry as the south could show, perched on its great outjutting of the land, precipiced on every side, save on the north. Hoary, sullen, stupendously strong, it sentinelled the sea that rolled its blue to the black bastions of the cliffs. Landwards, green downs swept with long undulations to the valleys and the woods.

That Junetide Gambrevault rang with the clangour of arms. The Lord Flavian's riders had spurred north, east, and west to manor and hamlet, grange and lone moorland tower. There had been a great burnishing of arms, a bending of bows through all the broad demesne. Steel had trickled over the downs towards the tall towers of Gambrevault. Knights, with esquires, men-at-arms, and yeomen, had ridden in to keep feudal faith. The Lord Flavian had swept the country for a hundred miles for mercenary troops and free-lances. His coffers poured gold. He had pitched a camp in the Gambrevault meadows; some fifteen hundred horse and two thousand foot were gathered under his banner.

From the hills cattle were herded in, and heavy wains laden with flour creaked up to the castle. There was much victualling, much blaring of trumpets, much blowing of pennons, much martial stir in the meadows. It seemed as though the Lord Flavian had a strenuous campaign in view, and there was much conjecture on the wind. The strange part of it was, that none save Sir Modred had any knowledge for what or against whom they were to fight. It might be John of Brissac, Gambrevault's mortal enemy; it might develop into a demonstration against the magistracy of Gilderoy. Blood was to be spilt, so ran the current conviction. For the rest, Flavian's feudatories were loyal, and left the managing of the business to their lord.

The men had been camped a week, and yet there was no striking of tents, no plucking up of pennons. Sir Modred had ridden out to bring in a body of five hundred mercenaries from Geraint. The Lord Flavian himself, with a troop of twenty spears, was lodged for a few days in Gilderoy, in the great Benedictine monastery, where his uncle held rule as abbot. He was negotiating for arms, fifty bassinets, two hundred gisarmes, a hundred ranseurs, fifty glaives, and a number of two-handed swords. He had found the Armourer's Guild peculiarly insolent, and disinclined to serve him. He had little suspicion that Gilderoy was seething under the surface like so much lava.

Thus, while the Lord Flavian was preparing for his march into the great pine forest, Fulviac had completed his web of revolt. He had heard of the gathering at Gambrevault, and had hurried on his schemes in consequence. Five thousand men were ready at his back. He would gain ten thousand men from Gilderoy; seven thousand from Geraint. These outlaw levies, free-lances, and train-bands would give him the nucleus of the vast host that was to spring like corn from every quarter of the land. Malgo was to head the rising in the west, and to concentrate at Conan, a little town in the mountains. In the east, Godamar was to gather a great camp in Thorney Isle amid the morasses of the fens. Fulviac would himself overthrow the lords of the south. Then they were to converge and to gather strength for the march upon Lauretia, proud city of the King.

It would be a great war and a bitter, full of fanatical fierceness and revenge. Fulviac had given word to take, pillage, and burn all strong places. Destiny stood with wild hands to the heavens, a bosom of scarlet, and hair aghast. If the horde conquered, the seats of the mighty would reek amid flame; there would be death, and a great silence over proud cities.

XXIV

In an antechamber in the palace of Sforza of Gilderoy stood the Lady Duessa, watching the day die in the west over a black chaos of spires and gables. Before her, under the casement, lay the palace garden, a pool of perfume, banked with tall cypresses, red with the fire of a myriad roses. As night to the sunset, so seemed this antechamber to the garden, panelled with black oak, a dark square of gloom red-windowed to the west. The place had a sullen, iron-mouthed look, as though its walls had developed through the years a sour and world-wise silence.

The Lady Duessa was not a woman who could trail tamely in anterooms. A restless temper chafed her pride that evening, and kept her footing the polished floor like a love-lorn nun treading a cloister. The casements were open to the garden, and the multitudinous sounds of the city flooded in--the thunder of the tumbrils in the narrow streets, the distant blare of trumpets from the castle, the clangour of the cathedral bells. A solitary figure companioned the Lady Duessa in the anteroom, cloaked and masked as was the dame herself. It was Balthasar the Dominican, who followed her now in secular habit, having forsworn his black mantle and taken refuge in her service. From time to time the two spoke together in whispering undertones; more than once their lips touched.

The Lady Duessa turned and stood by a casement with her large white hands on the sill. She appeared to grow more restive as the minutes passed, as though the antique clock on the mantle clicked its tongue at her each gibing second.

"This is insolence," she said anon, "holding us idling here like ragged clients."

Balthasar joined her, soft-footed and debonair, his black eyes shining behind his mask.

"Peter kept Paul before the gate of heaven," quoth he, with a curl of the lip. "Sforza is a meddler in many matters, a god-busied Mercury. As for me, I am content."

Their hands touched, and intertwined with a quick straining of the fingers.

"Pah," said the woman with a shiver, "this room is like a funeral litter; it chills my marrow."

Balthasar sniggered.

"See, the sky burns," he said; "yon garden is packed with colour. We could play a love chase amid those dark hedges of yew."

She pressed her flank to his; her eyes glittered like amethysts; her breath hastened.

"My mouth, man."

She pouted out her full red lips to his; suffered his arms to possess her; they kissed often, and were out of breath. A door creaked. The two started asunder in the shadows with an impatient stare into each other's eyes.

Sforza the Gonfaloniere stood on the threshold, clad plainly in a suit of black velvet, with a sword buckled at his side. He bowed over Duessa's hand, kissed her finger tips, excusing himself the while for the delay. He was very suave, very facile, as was his wont. The Lady Duessa took his excuses with good grace, remembering their compact, and the common purpose of their ambitions.

"Gonfaloniere, we wait our initiation."

Sforza's eyes were fixed on Balthasar with a keen and ironical glitter.

"Very good, madame."

"Remember; Lord Flavian's head, that is to be my guerdon."

"Madame, we will remember it. And this gentleman?"

"Is the friend of whom I spoke."

"A most loyal friend, methinks?"

"True."

The Gonfaloniere coughed behind his fingers, and spoke in his half-husky tenor.

"You are ready to risk everything?"

Duessa reassured him.

"Expect no blood and thunder ceremonial," he said to them; "we are grim folk, but very simple. Your presence will incriminate you both. Be convinced of that."

He led them by a little closet into the state-room of the palace, a rich chamber lit by many tapers, its doorway held by a guard of armed men. Statues in the antique gleamed in the alcoves. The panelling shone with gem-brilliant colouring. Armoires and carved cabinets stood against the walls. The ceiling was of purple, with the signs of the Zodiac in gold thereon.

In the centre of the room, before a slightly raised dais, stood a round table inlaid with diverse-coloured stones. Scrolls, quills, and inkhorns covered it. Some twoscore men were gathered round the table, staring with masked faces at a map spread before them--a map showing all the provinces of the south, with towns and castles marked in vermilion ink thereon. A big man in a red cloak stood conning the parchment, pointing out with a long forefinger certain marches to the masked folk about him.

Sforza pointed Duessa and Balthasar to a carved bench by the wall.

"Have the patience to listen for an hour," he said, turning to join the men about the table.

A silver bell tinkled, and a priest came forward to patter a few prayers in Latin. At the end thereof, the masked Samson in the red cloak stood forward on the dais with uplifted fist. Instant silence held throughout the room. The man in red began to speak in deep, full-throated tones that seemed to vibrate from his sonorous chest.

His theme was the revolt, his arguments, the grim bleak facts that bulked large in the brain of a leader of men. He dealt with realism, with iron detail, and the strong suggestions of success. Revolt, in the flesh, bubbled like lava at a crater's brim, seething to overflow and scorch the land. It was plain that the speaker had great schemes, and a will of adamant. His ardour ran down like a cataract, smiting into foam the duller courage of the multitude.

When he had ended his heroic challenge to the world, he took by the hand a girl who stood unmasked at his side. She was clad all in white with a cross of gold over her bosom, and her face shone nigh as pallid as her mantle. The men around the table craned forward to get the better view of her. Nor was it her temporal beauty alone that set the fanatical chins straining towards her figure. There was a radiance as of other worlds upon her forehead, a glamour of sanctity as though some sacred lamp shed a divine lustre through all her flesh.

At the moment that the man in the red mask had drawn the girl forward beside him on the dais, Balthasar, with a stifled cry, had plucked the Lady Duessa by the sleeve. She had started, and stared in the friar's face as he spoke to her in a whisper, a scintillant malice gathering in her eyes. Balthasar held her close to him by the wrist. They were observed of none save by Fulviac, whose care it was to watch all men.

As Balthasar muttered to her, Duessa's frame seemed to straighten, to dilate, to stiffen. She did not glance at the friar, but sat staring at the girl in white upon the dais. The Madonna of the chapel of Avalon had risen before her as by magic; her dispossessor stood before her in the flesh. Balthasar's tongue bore witness to the truth. In the packed passion of a moment, Duessa remembered her shame, her dishonour, her hunger for revenge.

The girl upon the dais had been speaking to the men assembled round her with the simple calm of one whose soul is assured of faith. For all her fierce distraction each word had fallen into Duessa's brain like pebbles into a well. A mocking, riotous scorn chuckled and leapt in her like the laughter of some lewd faun. She heard not the zealous mutterings that eddied through the room. Her eyes were fixed on the man in the red cloak, as he bent to kiss the girl's slim hand.

She saw Fulviac turn and point to a roll of parchment on the table.

"We swim, sirs, or sink together," were his words; "there can be no traitors to the cause. In three days we hoist our banner. In three days Gilderoy shall rise. Sign, gentlemen, sign, in the name of God and of our Lady."

The leaders of Gilderoy crowded about the table where Prosper the Preacher waited with quill and testament, Sforza standing with drawn sword beside him. Fulviac had headed those who took the oath, and had drawn back from the press on to the dais. Meanwhile Duessa, with Balthasar muttering discretions in her ear, had skirted the black knot of conspirators and come close upon Fulviac. While Sforza and the rest were intent upon the scroll, she plucked the man in red by the sleeve, and spoke to him in an undertone.

"A word with you in an alcove."

Fulviac stared, but drew aside from the group none the less and followed her. She had moved to an oriel and sat down on the cushioned seat, her black robe sweeping the crimson cloth. Fulviac stood and faced her, thus closing her escape from the oriel. Midway between them and the table, Balthasar stood biting his nails in sullen vexation, ignorant of where the woman's headstrong passions might be bearing them.

Duessa soon had Fulviac at the tongue's point.

"You are the first man in this assemblage?" she had asked him.

"Madame, that is so."

"I have a truth to make known."

"Unmask to me."

She hesitated, then obeyed him.

"Possibly I am known to you," she said.

Fulviac stood back a step, and looked at her as a man might look at an old love. A knot of wrinkles showed on his forehead.

"Duessa of the Black Hair."

"Ah, in the old days."

"What would you now, madame?"

"Let me see your face."

"No."

"You hold me at a disadvantage."

"That is well. Tell me this tale of yours."

His voice was cold as a frost, and there was an inclement look about him that should have warned the woman had she been less blinded by her own malice. She had lost her cunning in her fuming passion, and denounced when she should have suggested, blurted the whole when a hint would have sufficed her.

"I was the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault's wife," she said.

"That man!"

"That devil!"

Fulviac drew a deep breath.

"Well?" he said.

"The fellow has divorced me; I will tell you why. You are the man they call Fulviac. It was you who took the Lord Flavian in an ambuscade, to kill him, for the sake of Yeoland of Cambremont, who stands yonder. The whole tale is mine. It was that girl who let the Lord Flavian escape out of your hands. A fine fool she is making of you, my friend. A saint, forsooth! Flavian of Avalon might sing you a strange song."

Duessa took breath. She had prophesied passion, a volcanic outburst. Fulviac leant against the wainscotting with folded arms, his masked face impenetrable, and calm as stone. He stirred never a muscle. Duessa had ventured forth into the deeps.

The man thrust a question at her suddenly.

"You can prove the truth of this?"

Duessa pointed him to Fra Balthasar.

"The priest can bear out my tale. I will beckon him."

"Wait."

"Ah!"

"Does Sforza know of this?"

"None know it, save I and yonder priest."

"Then I uncover to you."

He jerked his mask away, and stood half stooping towards her with a peculiar lustre in his eyes. Duessa stared at him as at one risen from the dead. Her face blanched and stiffened into a bleak, gaping terror, and she could not speak.

"Your tale dies with you."

He smote her suddenly in the bosom with his poniard, smote her so heavily that the blow dragged her to her knees. She screamed like a trapped hare, pressed her hands over her bosom, blood oozing over them. A last malevolence leapt into her eyes; she panted and strove to speak.

"Listen, sirs, hear me----"

Fulviac, standing over her like a Titan, smote her again to silence, and for ever. With arms thrust upwards, she fell forward along the floor, her white face hidden by her hood. A red ringlet curled away over the polished oak. Fulviac had sprung away with jaw clenched, his face as stone. He drew his sword, plucked Balthasar by the throat, hurled him back against the wainscotting.

"A spy, poniard him."

The great room rushed into uproar; the guards came running from the door. Fulviac had passed his sword through Balthasar's body. The friar rolled upon the floor, yelping, and clutching at the swords that stabbed him. It was soon over; not a moan, not a whimper. Sforza, white as a corpse, gripped Fulviac by the shoulder.

"Know you whom you have killed?"

"Well enough, Gonfaloniere."

"What means it?"

"That I am a brave man."

Sforza quailed from him and ran to the oriel, where several men had lifted the woman in their arms. Her lustrous hair fell down from under her hood; her hands, stained with her own blood, trailed limply on the floor. She was a pathetic figure with her pale, fair face and drooping lids. The men murmured as they held her, like some poor bird, still warm and plastic, with the life but half flown from her body.

Fulviac stood and looked down into her face. His sword still smoked with Balthasar's blood.

"Sirs," he said, and his strong voice shook, "hear me, I will tell you the truth. Once I loved that woman, but she was evil, evil to the core. To-night she came bringing discord and treachery amongst us. I have done murder before God for the sake of the cause. Cover her face; it was ever too fair to look upon. Heaven rest her soul!"

XXV

Two days had passed since the secret assembly in the house of Sforza, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy. They had buried Duessa and Balthasar by night in the rose garden, by the light of a single lantern, with the fallen petals for a pall. It was the evening before the day when the land should rise in arms to overthrow feudal injustice and oppression. On the morrow the great cliff would be desolate, its garrison marching through the black pine woods on Avalon and Geraint.

Towards eve, when the sky was clear as a single sapphire, Fulviac came from his parlour seeking Yeoland, to find her little chamber empty. A strange smile played upon his face as he looked round the room with crucifix, embroidery frame, and prayer-desk, with rosary hung thereon. He picked up her lute, thrummed the strings, and broke broodingly into the sway of some southern song:

"Ah, woman of love, With the stars in the night, I see thee above In a circlet of light. On the west's scarlet scutcheon I mark thy device; And the shade of the forest Makes gloom of thine eyes, God's twilight To me."

He ended the stanza, kissed the riband, and set the lute down with a certain quaint reverence. The postern stood open and admonished him. He passed out down the cliff stairway to the forest.

An indescribable peace pervaded the woods, a supreme silence such as the shepherd on the hills knows when the stars beckon to his soul. Fulviac walked slowly and thought the more. He felt the altitude of the forest stillness as of miles of luminous, windless aether; he felt the anguishing pathos of a woman's face; he felt the strangeness of the new philosophy that appealed to his heart. Nothing is more fascinating than watching a spiritual upheaval in one's own soul; watching some great power breaking up the crust of custom and habit; pondering the while on the eternal mysteries that baffle reason.

He found Yeoland amid the pines. She had been to the forest grave and was returning towards the cliff when the man met her. She seemed whiter than was her wont, her dark eyes looking solemn and shadowy under their sweeping lashes. She seemed marvellously fair, marvellously pure and fragile, as she came towards him under the trees.

Something in Fulviac's look startled her. Women are like the sea to the cloudy moods of men, in that they catch every sun-ray and shadow. An indefinite something in the man's manner made her restless and apprehensive. She went near to him with questioning eyes and laid her hand upon his arm.

"You have had bad news?"

"Nothing."

"Something has troubled you?"

"Perhaps."

She looked at him pensively, a suspicion of reproach, pity, and understanding in her eyes.

"Is it remorse, your conscience?"

"My conscience? Have I had one!"

"You have a strong conscience."

"_Deo gratias_. Then you have unearthed it, madame."

A vein of infinite bitterness and melancholy seemed to glimmer in his mood. It was a moment of self-speculation. The girl still looked up into his face.

"Why did you kill that woman?"

"Why?"

"Her dead face haunts me, I see it everywhere; there is some strange shadow over my soul. O that I could get her last cry from my ears!"

Fulviac, with a sudden burst of cynicism, broke into grim laughter, a sound like the rattling of dry bones in a closet. The girl shrank away with her lips twitching.

"Why cannot you trust me with the truth?"

"Truth is not always beneficent. It was a matter of policy, of diplomacy."

"Why?"

"Discords are bad at the eleventh hour. That woman could have half-wrecked our cause. It was policy to silence her and the man. I made sure of it by killing them."

Yeoland's face had a shadow of repugnance upon it; her eyes darkened. The man seemed in a callous, scoffing humour; it was mere glittering steel over the bitterness within.

"You will tell me her name?"

"What is it to you?"

"She haunts me."

"Forget her."

"I cannot."

"Have the truth if you will. She was the wife of the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault."

The girl stood motionless for a moment; then swayed away several steps from Fulviac under the trees. One hand was at her throat; her voice came in a whisper.

"What did she tell you?"

"Many things."

"Quick, do they touch me?"

Fulviac choked an oath, and played with his sword.

"Then there was some truth in her?" he said.

The girl grew imperious.

"I command you to tell me all."

"Madame, the woman declared you were a traitress, and that this lordling, this Flavian of Gambrevault, loved you."

"And you killed her----"

"For your sake and the cause. She might have cast our Saint out of heaven."

Yeoland went back from him and leant against a tree, with her hands over her eyes. Sunlight splashed down upon her dress; she shivered as in a cold wind, and could not speak. Fulviac's voice, level and passionless, questioned her as she stood and hid her face.

"You let the Lord Flavian escape?"

"I did."

"Have you seen him since?"

"I have."

"Thanks for the truth."

Her responses had come like chords smitten from the strings of a lute. She started away from the tree and began to walk up and down, wringing her hands. Her face was like the face of one in torture, and she seemed to struggle for breath.

"Fulviac, I could not kill the man."

The words came like a wail.

"He was young, and he besought me when your men were breaking down the gate. What could I do, what could I do? He was young, and I let him go by the postern and told you a lie. God help me, I told you a lie."

The man watched her with arms folded. There was a look of deep melancholy upon his face, as of one wounded by the truth. His voice was sad but resolute.

"And the rest?"

She rallied suddenly and came to him with truth in her eyes; they were wonderfully piteous and appealing.

"God knows I have been loyal to you. The man tempted me, but I withstood him; I kept my loyalty."

"And you told him----?"

"Nothing, nothing; he is as innocent as a child."

Fulviac looked down at her with a great light in his eyes. He spoke slowly and with a deeper intonation in his voice.

"I have dealt with many bad women," he said, "but I believe you are speaking the truth."

"It is the truth."

"I take it as such; you have been too much a woman."

"Ah, if you could only forgive."

He stepped forward suddenly, took her hands, and looked down at her with a vast tenderness.

"Little woman, if I told you I loved you, would you still swear that you have spoken the truth?"

"God judge me, Fulviac, I have been loyal."

A strange light played upon his face.

"And I, ye heavens, have I learnt my lesson in these later days? Girl, you are above me as the stars; I may but kiss your hands, no more. You are not for worldly ways, or for me. Battered, war-worn veteran, I have come again by the heart of a boy. Fear me not, little woman, there is no anger in a great love, only deep grieving and unalterable honour."

XXVI

It was dawn; mists covered the forest; not a wind stirred or sobbed amid the boughs. A vast grey canopy seemed to tent the world, a mysterious veil that tempered the sun and spread a spiritual gloom over rock and tree.

The noise of horns played through the misty aisles--horns many-tongued, faint, clamorous, like the trumpeting of forest elves. There was the dull, rhythmic onrush of many thousand feet, the hurrying, multitudinous tramp of men marching. Armour gleamed through the glooms; casque and bassinet, salade and cap of steel flowed on and on as phosphorescent ripples on a subterranean stream. Pike, glaive, gisarme shone like stubble over the forest slopes. The sullen tramp of men, the clashing clamour of arms, the blaring of a solitary clarion, such were songs of the great pine forest on that July morning.

Yeoland, rebel lady and saint, on a great white horse, rode at Fulviac's side in full armour, save for her helmet. Her horse was cased in steel--chamfron, crinet, gorget, poitrel, croupiere gleaming like burnished silver. She made a fine and martial figure enough, a glittering dawn star for a heroic cause. About her rode her guard, the pick of Fulviac's men, some fifty spears in all, masses of steel, each bearing a scarlet cross blazoned upon his white jupon. Nord of the Hammer bore the red banner worked by the girl's own hands. They were hardy men and big of bone, sworn to keep and guard her to the death.

Fulviac and Yeoland rode side by side like brothers in arms. All about them were rolling spears and rocking helmets moving among the myriad trees. The sound of arms surged round them like the ominous onrush of a sea. War followed like a thunder-cloud on their heels.

Fulviac was in great spirits, somewhat solemn and philosophic, but full of the exultation of a man who feels his ship surging on the foaming backs of giant billows. His eyes were proud enough when they scanned the girl at his side. His heart thundered an echo to the grim tramp of his men on the march.

"To-day," he said, making grandiose flourishes with his sword, "the future unrobes to us. We plunge like Ulysses into the unknown. This is life with a vengeance!"

She had a smile on her lips and a far-away look in her eyes.

"If you love me," she said, "be merciful."

"Ah, you are always a woman."

"There are many women such as I am; there are many hearts that may be wounded; there are many children."

He looked at her meditatively, as though her words were both bitter and sweet in his mouth.

"You must play the philosopher, little woman; remember that we work for great ends. I will have mercy when mercy is expedient. But we must strike, and strike terror, we must crush, we must kill."

"Yet be merciful."

"War is no pastime; men grip with gauntlets of iron, not with velvet gloves. Fanaticism, hate, revenge, patriotism, lust of plunder, and the rest, what powers are these to let loose upon a land! We have the oppression of centuries red in our bosoms. War is no mere subtle game of chess; the wolf comes from the wilderness; the vulture swings in the sky. Fire, death, blood, rapine, and despair, such are the elements of war."

"I know, I know."

"To purge a field, we burn the crop. To convert, we set swords leaping. To cleanse, we let in the sea. To move the fabrics of custom and the past, a man must play the Hercules. God crushes great nations to insure the inevitable evolution of His will. To move the world, one must play the god."

It was noon when the vanguard cleared the trees, and spread rank on rank over the edge of a moor. A zealous sun shone overhead, and the world was full of light and colour, the heather already a blaze of purple, the bracken still virgin, the dense dark pines richly green against the white and azure of the sky.

Fulviac, Yeoland, and her guards rode out to a hillock and took station under the banner of the Cross. The forest belched steel; rank on rank swept out with pikes glittering; shields shone, and colours juggled mosaics haphazard. Horse and foot rolled out into the sun, and gathered in masses about the scarlet banner and the girl in her silvery harness on the great white horse. The forest shadows were behind them, they had cast off its cloak; the world lay bare to their faces; they were hurling their challenge in the face of Fate. Every man in the mass might well have felt the future glowing upon his brain, might well conceive himself a hero and a patriot. It was a deep, sonorous shout that rolled up, when a thousand points of steel smote upwards to the heavens. Yeoland, amid her guards, had dim visions of the power vested in her slender sword. Where her banner flew, there brave men would toss their pikes with a cheer for the charge home. Where her sword pointed, a thousand blades would leap to do her bidding. Even as she pondered these things, the trumpets sounded and the men of the forest marched on.

Fulviac's plans had been matured but a week. His opening of the campaign was briefly as follows. He was bearing north-west towards Geraint, and Geraint was to rise that night, massacre the King's garrison, and come out to him. Avalon lay in Fulviac's path. He was to smite a blow at it on his march, surprise the place if possible, and then hold on for Geraint. The same night, Gilderoy would rise; the castellan, who was with the townsfolk, would open the gates of the castle and deliver up all arms and the siege train that was kept there. From Geraint, Fulviac trusted to ride on with a single troop to take command at Gilderoy, leaving Nord, Prosper, and the girl Yeoland in command at Geraint. With his numbers raised to some twenty thousand men, he would have his force divided into two bodies--ten thousand at Gilderoy, ten thousand at Geraint. These two bodies would sweep up by forced marches, converge on Gambrevault, crush the Lord Flavian's small armament, shut him up in his castle. Assault or leaguer would do the rest. Meanwhile the peasantry would rise and flock in to the standard of the people.

Free of the forest, Fulviac sent on a troop of horse towards Geraint to warn the townsfolk of his advance. With the main mass of the foot, he held northwards over hill and dale, and towards evening touched the hem of the oak woods that wrapped the manor of Avalon. The place was but feebly garrisoned, as the Lord Flavian had withdrawn most of his men to Gambrevault, dreaming little of the thunder-storm that was shadowing the land.

Fulviac had his plan matured. Fifty men-at-arms in red and green, the Gambrevault colours, were to advance with a forged pennon upon the place, as though sent as a reinforcement from Gambrevault. The main body would follow at a distance and lie ambushed in the woods. If the ruse answered, and it was an old trick enough, the barbican and gate could be held till Fulviac came up and made matters sure. Thus Avalon would fall, proto-martyr on the side of feudalism.

Nor were Fulviac's prognostications at fault. There were not sixty men in Avalon, and Fulviac's fifty gained footing in the place and held their ground till the rest came up. The affair was over, save for some desultory slaughter on the turrets, when Fulviac galloped forward over the meadows with Yeoland and her guard. The man kept the girl on the further side of the moat, and did not suffer her to stumble too suddenly on the realities of war. He feared wisely her woman's nature, and did not desire to overshock her senses. The butchery was over when they neared the walls. They heard certain promiscuous yelpings, and saw half a dozen men-at-arms, who had made a last stand on a tower, tumbled headlong over the battlements into the moat below. Fulviac did not suffer the girl to cross the bridge. What passed within was hidden by the impenetrable massiveness of the sullen walls.

Thus Avalon, fair castle of the woods and waters, sent out her wistful prophecy to the land. In her towers and galleries men lay dead, bleak and stiff, contorted into fantastic attitudes, with pike or sword sucking their vitals. Blood crept down the stairs; dead men cumbered the beds and jammed the doors. There had been much screaming among the women; even Fulviac's orders could not cool the passions of the mob; it was well indeed that he kept Yeoland innocent in the meadows.

Fanaticism, ignorance, lust were loose in Avalon like evil beasts. All its fairness was defamed in one short hour. Hangings were torn down, furniture wrecked and shattered, chests and cupboards spoiled of all their store. In the chapel, where refugees had fled to the altar, there had been slaughter, merciless and brutal. Bertrand, the old knight and seneschal, lay dead on the altar steps, with a broken sword and fifty rents in his carcase. Men were breaking the images, defacing the frescoes, strewing all the place with blood and riot. Nord of the Hammer stood over the cellar door with his great mace over his shoulder, and kept the men from the wine. Elsewhere the mob rooted like a herd of swine in the rich chambers, and worked to the uttermost its swinish will.

When the day was past, Fulviac and his men, as hounds that have tasted blood, marched on exultantly towards Geraint. Night and great silence settled down over Avalon. The woods watched like a host of plaintive mourners over the scene. The moon rose and shone on the glimmering mere and swooning lilies, and streamed in through shattered casements on men sleeping in their blood, on ruin, and the ghastly shape of death.

XXVII

Gilderoy had risen.

It was midnight. A great bell boomed and clashed over the city, with a roar of many voices floating on the wind, like the sullen thunder of a rising sea. Torches flashed and ebbed along the streets, with hundreds of scampering shadows, and a glinting of steel. Knots of armed men hurried towards the great piazza, where, by the City Cross, Sforza the Gonfaloniere and his senators had gathered about the red and white Gonfalon of the Commune. All the Guild companies were there with their banners and men-at-arms. "Fulviac," "Saint Yeoland," "Liberty and the Commune": such were the watchwords that filled the mouths of the mob.

Cressets had burst into flame on the castle's towers, lighting a lurid firmament; while from the steeps of the city, where stood the palaces of the nobles, smoke and flame began to rush ominously into the night. Waves of hoarse ululations seemed to sweep the city from north, south, east, and west. Trumpets were clanging in the castle, drums beating, fifes braying. Through the indescribable chaos the great bell smote on, throbbing through the minutes like the heart of a god.

It will be remembered that the Lord Flavian was in Gilderoy for the purchasing of arms. At midnight you would have found him in his state bed-chamber in the abbot's palace, tugging at his hose, fumbling at his points and doublet, buckling on his sword. He was hardly awake with the single taper winking in the gloom. The shrill ululations of the mob sounded through the house, with the clash of swords and the crash of hammers. The Lord Flavian craned from the window, saw what he could, heard much, and wondered if hell had broken loose.

"Fulviac and the Commune!"

"Saint Yeoland!"

"Down with the lords, down with the priests!"

The man at the window heard these cries, and puzzled them out in his peril. Certainly he was a lord; therefore unpopular. And Yeoland! Wherefore was that name sounding on the tongues of brothel-mongers and cooks! Was he still dreaming? Certes, these rallying-cries carried a certain blunt hint, advising him that he would have to care for his own skin.

Malise, his page, knelt at the door with his ear to the key-hole. The boy was in his shirt and breeches, and trembling like an aspen. Flavian stood over him. They heard a rending sound as of a gate giving, a roar as of water breaking through a dam, a yelp, a scream or two, a confused medley of many voices.

Flavian told Malise to open the door and look out into the gallery. He did so. A man, more zealous than the rest, sprang out of the dark and stabbed at the lad's throat. He fell with a whimper. Flavian plunged his sword home, dragged Malise within, barred the door again. Very tenderly he lifted the boy in his arms. Malise's hands clung about his lord's neck; he moaned a little, and was very white.

"Save yourself, messire!"

Flavian bore him towards a door that stood open in the panelling. He felt the lad's blood soaking through his doublet; entreaties were poured into his ears.

"I die, I die; oh, the smart, the burn of it! Leave me, messire; let me lie still!"

"Nonsense----"

"It is no use; I have it deep, the man's knife went home."

Flavian felt the lad's hands relax, saw his head droop on his shoulder. He turned and put him down on the bed, and knelt there, while Malise panted and strove to speak.

"Go--messire."

Flavian was trying to staunch the flow from the boy's neck with a corner of the sheeting. His own doublet was drenched with blood. In a minute he saw the futility of such unconscious heroism; the flickering taper by the bed told that Malise's life would ebb before its own light would be gutted. Blows were being dealt upon the door. Flavian kissed the lad, took the taper, and passed out by the panel in the wainscotting.

A stairway led him to a little gate that opened on the abbot's garden. He more than thought to find the passage disputed, but the place stretched quiet before him as he came out with sword drawn. The scent of the flowers and fragrant shrubs was heavy on the night air, and the shouts of the mob sounded over the black roofs, and rang in his ears with an inspiriting fury.

There was a gate at the far end of the garden, opening through a stone wall into a narrow alley, and Flavian, as he scoured the paths, could see pike points bobbing above the wall, and a flare of torches. Men were breaking in even here, and he was caught like a rat in a corner. In an angle of the wall he found a big marrow bed, and crawling under the leaves like a worm, he smeared dirt over his face and clothes and awaited developments. In another minute the garden gate fell away, and a tatterdemalion rout poured in, strenuous and frothy as any tavern pack. They spread over the garden towards the house, shouting and blaspheming like a herd of satyrs. Flavian saw his chance, plunged from his dark corner, and joined the mob of moving figures. Dirty face and dirtier clothes were in kindred keeping. He shouted as lustily as any, and by dint of gradual and discreet circumlocutions, edged to the gate and escaped into the now-deserted alley.

Running on, he skirted the abbey and came out into the square that flanked the abbey church, and the great gate. A hundred torches seemed moving behind the abbey windows. The square teemed and smoked with riot. Flavian went into the crowd with drawn sword, screeching out mob cries like any huckster, smiting men on the back, laughing and swearing as in excellent humour. His gusto saved him. As he passed through the mob he saw heads, gory and mangled, dancing upon pikes; he saw women drunk with beer and violence, waving a severed foot or hand, kissing men, hugging each other, mouthing unutterable obscenities in the mad delirium of the hour. He saw whelps of boys scrambling and struggling for some ghastly relic; scavengers and sweeps dressed up in the habits of the Benedictines they had slain. One man carried in his palm an eye that had been torn from its socket, which he held with a leer in the faces of his fellows. Further still, he saw half a dozen beggars dragging the dead body of a lady over the stones by cords fastened to the ankles, while dogs worried and tore at the flesh. He learnt afterwards that it was the body of his own cousin, a young girl who had been lately betrothed. Last of all, he saw a carcase dangling from a great iron lamp bracket in the centre of the square, and understood from the crowd that it was the body of the abbot, his uncle. Men and women were pelting it with offal.

And he, an aristocrat of aristocrats, dirty and dishevelled, rubbed shoulders with the scourings of the gutter, shouted their shouts, echoed their exultation. At first the grim humour of the thing smote him in grosser farcical fashion; but the mood was not for long. He remembered Malise, whimpering and quivering in his arms; he remembered the body dragged about the square and worried by dogs; he remembered the carcase swinging by the rope; he remembered the dripping heads and the fragments of flesh tossed about by the maddened and intoxicated mob. It was then that his eyes grew hot with shame and his blood ran like lava through his veins. It was then that the spirit of a vampire rushed into his heart, and that he swore great solemn oaths by all the bones and relics of the saints. God give him a hale body out of Gilderoy, and this city scum should be scourged with iron and roasted by fire.

He got across the square by dint of his noisy hypocrisy, and turned morosely into a dark alley that led towards the walls. Hot-hearted gentleman, the mere panic-stricken thirst for existence had cooled out of him, and he was in a fine, rendering passion to his finger-tips, a striding, blasphemous temper, that longed to take the whole city by the throat and beat a fist in its bloated face. He wondered what had become of his knights, esquires, and men-at-arms. It was told him in later days how they died fighting in the abbey refectory, died with the Benedictines at their side, and a rare barrier of corpses to tell of the swing of their swords.

Flavian dodged into a dark porch to consider his circumstances and the baffling influence of the same. He had caught enough from the mob to comprehend what had occurred, and what was to follow. Certainly for many months he had heard rumours, but, like other demigods, he had turned a deaf ear and smiled like a Saturn. The largeness of the upheaval stupefied him at first; now, as he pondered it, it gave a more heroic colour to his passions.

To be free of Gilderoy: that was the necessity. He guessed shrewdly enough that the gates would be well guarded. And the walls! He smote his thigh and remembered where the river coursed round the rocky foundations, and washed the walls. A big plunge, a swim, and he would have liberty enough and to spare.

He set off instanter down alleys and byways, through the most poverty-stricken quarter of the city. The place had a hundred stenches on a hot summer night. Naturally enough, such haunts were deserted, save for a few hags garrulous at the doorways, and a few fragments of dirt, called by courtesy, children. The rats had gone marauding, leaving their offal heaps empty.

Keen as a fox, he threaded on, and came before long to the walls, a black mass, rising above the hovels packed like pigsties to the very ramparts. Avoiding a tower, he held along a lane that skirted the wall, looking for one of the many stairways leading to the battlements. It was here, in the light of a tavern window, that he came plump upon two sweaty artisans, rendered somewhat more gross and insolent by the fumes of liquor. The men challenged Flavian with drunken arrogance; they had their password, to the devil. All the accumulated viciousness of an hour tingled in his sword arm. He fell upon the men like a Barak, kicked one carcase into the gutter, and ran on.

He was soon up a stairway, and on the walls, finding them absolutely deserted. The city stretched behind him, a black chaos, emitting a grim uproar, its dark slopes chequered here and there with angry flame. Before him swept the river, and he heard it swirling amid the reeds. Further still, meadows lay open to the stars, and in the distance stood solemn woods and heights, touched with the silver of the sky.

He moved on to where a loop of the river curled up to wash the walls. The water was in full flood at the place, and he heard it gurgling cheerily against the stones. Flavian took a last look at Gilderoy, its castle red with burning cressets, its multitudinous roofs, its uproar like the noise of a nest of hornets. He shook his fist over the city, climbed the battlements, jumped for it, plunged like a log, came up spluttering to strike out for the further bank.

In the meadows the townsfolk kept horses at graze. Flavian, aglow to the finger-tips, with water squelching from his shoes, caught a cob that was hobbled in a field hard by the river. He unhobbled the beast, hung on by the mane, mounted, and set off bare-back for the road to Gambrevault.

XXVIII

Dawn climbing red over pinewoods piled on the hills; dawn optimistic yet ominous, harbinger of war and such perils as set the heart leaping and the blood afire; dawn that cried unto the world, "Better one burst of heroism and then the grave, than a miserable monotony of nothingness, a domestic surfeiting of the senses with a wife and a fat larder."

Out of the east climbed the man on the stolen horse, riding out of the dawn with the lurid phantasms of the night still running riot in his brain. No sleep had smoothed the crumpled page, or touched the memory with unguent to assuage the smart. Maledictions, vengeances, prophecies of fire and sword rushed with the red dawn over the hills.

With forty miles behind him, he came on his jaded, sweaty beast towards his own castle of Gambrevault, forded his own stream, saw his mills gushing foam, heard the thunder of the weir. How eternally peaceful everything seemed in the dewy amber light of the dawn! Away rolled the downs, billows of glorious green, into the west. Gambrevault's towers rose against the blue; he saw the camp in the meadows; his own banner blowing to the breeze.

The meadows that morning were quiet as a graveyard, as the Lord Flavian rode through to the great gate of Gambrevault. Soldiers idling about, stiffened up, saluted, stared in astonishment at the grim, morose-faced man, who rode by on a foundered horse, looking neither to the right hand nor the left. He cut something of a figure, as though he had been in a tavern brawl, and had spent the night snoring in a cow-house. Yet there was an indescribable power and dignity in the tatterdemalion rider for all his tumbled look. The compressed lips, knotted brow, smouldering eyes spoke of phenomenal emotions, phenomenal passions. Not a man cheered, and the silence was yet more eloquent than clamour. He rode in by the great gate, and parrying the blank glances and interrogations of his knights, called for two esquires, and withdrew to his own state rooms.

His first trouble was to acknowledge such necessities as hunger and cleanliness. He contrived to compass both at once, eating ravenously even while he was in the bath. His next command was for his harness, and his esquires armed him, agog for news, even waxing inquisitive, to be snubbed for their pains.

"Assemble my knights and gentlemen in the great hall," ran his order, and after praying awhile in his own private oratory, he passed down to join the assemblage, solemn and soul-burdened as a young Jove.

There is a certain vain satisfaction in being the possessor of some phenomenal piece of news, wherewith to astonish a circle of friends. The dramatic person blurts it out like a stage duke; the real epicure lets it filter through his teeth in fragments, watching with a twinkling satisfaction its effect upon his hearers. The Lord Flavian's revelations that morning were deliberate and gradual, leisurely in the extreme. Many a man waxes flippant or cynical when his feelings are deep and sincere, and he is disinclined to bare his heart to the world. Flavian addressed his assembled knights with a certain stinted and pedantic courtliness; when they had warmed to his level, then he could indulge his sympathies to the full. The atmosphere about those who wait to hear our experiences or opinions is often like cold water, somewhat repellent till the first plunge has been tried.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I regret to inform you that the Abbot Porphyry, my uncle, is numbered with the saints."

So much for the first confession; it elicited a sympathetic murmur from those assembled, a very proper and respectable expression of feeling, but nothing passionate.

"I also have to inform you, with much Christian resignation, that Sir Jordan and Sir Kay, Malise, my page, and some twenty men-at-arms are in all human probability dead."

This time some glimmer of light pervaded the hall. There was still mystification, silence, and an exchanging of glances.

"Finally, gentlemen, I may confess to you that a great insurrection is afoot in the land; that Gilderoy has declared against the King and the nobility; that the scum of a populace has made a great massacre of the magnates; that I, gentlemen, by the grace of God, have escaped to preach to you of these things."

A chorus of grim ejaculations came from the knights and the captains assembled. Astonishment, and emotions more durable, showed on every face. Flavian gained heat, and let his tongue have liberty; at the end of ten minutes of fervid oratory, the men were as wise as their lord and every wit as vicious. Gilderoy had signalised her rising in blood; mob rule had been proclaimed; the peasantry and townsfolk had thrown down the glove to the nobles. These were bleak, plain facts, that touched to the quick the men who stood gathered in the great hall of Gambrevault. Not a sword was in its scabbard when Modred's deep voice gave the cry--

"God and St. Philip--for the King."

Then like a powder bag flung into a fire came the news of the storming and wrecking of Avalon. A single man-at-arms had escaped the slaughter, escaped by crawling down an offal shoot and hiding till the rebels evacuated the place and marched under cover of night for Geraint. The man had crept out and fled on foot from the stricken place for Gambrevault. It was a tramp of ten leagues, but he had stuck to it through the night like a Trojan, and, knowing the road well, had reached Gambrevault before the sun was at noon. They brought him before Flavian and the rest, fagged to the fifth toe, and hardly able to stand. He told the whole tale, as much as he knew of it, in a blunt yet dazed way. His senses appeared numbed by the deeds that had been done that night.

Flavian leant back in his escutcheoned chair, and gnawed at his lip. This last thrust had gone home more keenly than the rest. That castle of lilies, Avalon the fair, was but a friend of wood and stone, yet a friend having wondrous hold upon his heart. He had been born there, and under the shadows of its towers his mother had taken her last sacrament. Men can love a tree, a cottage, a stream; Flavian loved Avalon as being the temple of the unutterable memories of the past. Desolation and ruin! Bertrand, his old master at arms, slain! He sprang up like an Achilles with the ghost of Patroclus haunting his soul.

"Gentlemen, shall these things pass? Hear me, God and the world, hear my oath sworn in this my castle of Gambrevault. May I never rest till these things are reprieved in blood, till there are too few men to bury the dead. Though my walls fall, and my towers totter, though I win ruin and a grave, I swear by the Sacrament to do such deeds as shall ring and resound in history."

So they went all of them together, and swore by the body and blood of the Lord to take such vengeance as the sword alone can give to the hot passions of mankind.

That noon there was much stir and life in Gambrevault. The camp hummed like a wasp's nest when violence threatens; the men were ready to run to arms on the first sounding of the trumpet. Armourers and farriers were at work. Flavian had sent out two companies of light horse to reconnoitre towards Gilderoy and Geraint. They had orders not to draw rein till they had sure view of such rebel voices as were on the march; to hang on the horizon; to watch and follow; to send gallopers to Gambrevault; on no account to give battle. Companies were despatched to drive in the cattle from the hills, and to bring in fodder. The Gambrevault mills were emptied of flour, and burnt to the ground, in view of their being of use to the rebels in case of a siege. Certain cottages and outhouses under the castle walls were demolished to leave no cover for an attacking force. The cats, tribocs, catapults, and bombards upon the battlements were overhauled, and cleared for a siege.

Towards evening, human wreckage began to drift in from the country, bearing lamentable witness to the thoroughness of Fulviac's incendiarism. Gambrevault might have stood for heaven by the strange scattering of folk who came to seek its sanctuary. Fire and sword were abroad with a vengeance; cottars, borderers, and villains had risen in the night; treachery had drawn its poniard; even the hound had snapped at its master's hand.

Many pathetic figures passed under the great arch of Gambrevault gate that day. First a knight came in on horseback, a baby in his arms, and a woman clinging behind him, sole relics of a home. Margaret, the grey-haired countess of St. Anne's, was brought in on a litter by a few faithful men-at-arms; her husband and her two sons were dead. Young Prosper of Fountains came in on a pony; the lad wept like a girl when questioned, and told of a mother and a sire butchered, a home sacked and burnt. There were stern faces in Gambrevault that day, and looks more eloquent than words. "Verily," said Flavian to Modred the Strong, "we shall have need of our swords, and God grant that we use them to good purpose."

So night drew near, and still no riders had come from the companies that had ridden out to reconnoitre towards Gilderoy and Geraint. Flavian had had a hundred duties on his hands: exercising his courtesy to the refugees, condoling, reassuring; inspecting the defences and the siege train; superintending the victualling of the place. He had ordered his troops under arms in the meadows, and had spoken to them of what had passed at Gilderoy, and what might be looked for in the future. There seemed no lack of loyalty on their part. Flavian had ever been a magnanimous and a generous overlord, glad to be merciful, and no libertine at the expense of his underlings. His feudatories were bound to him by ties more strong than mere legalities. They cheered him loudly enough as he rode along the lines in full armour, with fifty knights following as his guard.

Night came. Outposts had been pushed forward to the woods, and a strong picket held the ford across the river. On the battlements guards went to and fro, and clarions parcelled out the night, and rang the changes. In the east there was a faint yellowish light in the sky, a distant glare as of a fire many miles away. In the camp men were ready to fly to arms at the first thunder of war over the hills.

Flavian held a council in the great hall, a council attended by all his knights and captains. They had a great map spread upon the table, a chart of the demesnes of Gambrevault and Avalon, and the surrounding country. Their conjectures turned on the possible intentions of the rebels, whether they would venture on a campaign in the open, or lie snug within walls and indulge in raids and forays. And then--as to the loyalty of their own troops? On this point Flavian was dogmatic, having a generous and over-boyish heart, not quick to credit others with treachery.

"I would take oath for my own men," he said; "their fathers have served my fathers; I have never played the tyrant; there is every reason to trust their loyalty."

An old knight, Sir Tristram, had taken a goodly share in the debate, a veteran from the barons' wars, and a man of honest experience, no mere pantaloon. His grey beard swept down upon his cuirass; his deep-set eyes were full of intelligence under his bushy brows; the hands that were laid upon the table were clawed and deformed by gout.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have not the fitness and youth of many of you, but I can lay claim to some wisdom in war. To my liege lord, whom, sirs, I honour as a man of soul, I would address two proverbs. First, despise not, sire, your enemies."

Modred laughed in his black beard.

"Reverence the scum of Gilderoy?"

"Ha, man, if we are well advised, these folk have been breathed upon by fanaticism. I tell you, I have seen a meanly-born crowd make a very stubborn day of it with some of the best troops that ever saw service. Secondly, sire, I would say to you, turn off your mercenaries if the sky looks black; never trust your neck to paid men when any great peril threatens."

Flavian, out of his good sense, agreed with Tristram.

"Your words are weighty," he said. "So long as we are campaigning, I will pay them well and keep them. If it comes to a siege, I will have no hired bravos in Gambrevault. And now, gentlemen, it is late; get what sleep you may, for who knows what may come with the morrow. Modred and Geoffrey, I leave to you the visiting of the outposts to-night. Order up my lutists and flute-players; I shall not sleep without a song."

He passed alone to the outer battlements, and let the night expand about his soul, the stars touch his meditations. From the minstrels' gallery in the hall came the wail of viols, the voices of flute, dulcimer and bassoon keeping a mellow under-chant. He heard the sea upon the rocks, saw it glimmering dimly to end in a fringe of foam.

So his thoughts soared to the face of one woman in the world, the golden Eve peering out of Paradise, whose soul seemed to ebb and flow like the moan of the distant music. He fell into deep forecastings of the future. He remembered her words to him, her mysterious warnings, her inexplicable inconsistencies, her appeal to war. Gilderoy had taught him much, and some measure of truth shone like a dawn spear in the east. A gulf of war and vengeance stretched from his feet. Yet he let his soul circle like a golden moth about the woman's beauty, while the wail of the viols stole out upon his ears.

XXIX

Little store of sleep had the Lord of Gambrevault that night. War with all its echoing prophecies played through his thought as a storm wind through the rotting casements of a ruin. He beheld the high hills red with beacons, the valleys filled with the surging steel of battle. Gilderoy and its terrors flamed through his brain. Above all, like the moon from a cloud shone the face of Yeoland, the Madonna of the Forest.

He was up and armed before dawn, and on the topmost battlements, eager for the day. The sun came with splendour out of the east, hurling a golden net over the woods piled upon the hills. Mists moved from off the sea, that shimmered opalescent towards the dawn. Brine laded the breeze. The waves were scalloped amber and purple, fringed with foam about the agate cliffs.

The hours were void to the man till riders should come in with tidings of how the revolt sped at Gilderoy and Geraint. The prophetic hints that had been tossed to him from the tongues of the mob had served to discover to him his own invidious fame. Gambrevault, on its rocky headland, stood, the strongest castle in the south, a black mass looming athwart the perilous path of war. The rebels would smite at it. Of that its lord was assured.

At noon he attended mass in the chapel, with all his knights, solacing his impatience with the purer aspirations of the soul. It was even as he left the chapel that Sir Modred met him, telling how a galloper had left the woods and was cantering over the meadows towards the headland. The man was soon under the arch of the great gate, his sweating horse smiting fire from the stones, dropping foam from his black muzzle. The rider was Godamar, Flavian's favourite esquire, a ruddy youth, with the heart of a Jonathan.

Modred brought him to the banqueting-hall, where Flavian awaited him in full harness, two trumpeters at his back.

"Sire, Geraint has risen."

"Ha!"

"They are marching on Gambrevault."

"Your news, on with it."

Godamar told how the troop had neared Geraint at eve and camped in the wood over night. At dawn they had reconnoitred the town, and seen, to their credit, black columns of "foot" pouring out by all the gates. The Gambrevault company had fallen back upon the woods unseen, and had watched the Gerainters massing in the city meadows about a red banner and one in armour upon a white horse. Godamar had lain low in a thicket and watched the rebels march by in the valley. They had passed between two hundred paces of him, and he swore by Roland the Paladin that it was a woman who rode the great white horse.

Flavian had listened to the man with a golden flux of fancy that had divined something of the esquire's meaning.

"Godamar," he said.

"Sire?"

"You rode with me that day when we tracked a certain lady from Cambremont glade towards the pine forest."

"Sire, you forestall me in thought."

"So?"

"I could even swear upon my sword that it is Yeoland of Cambremont who rides with the Gerainters."

Flavian coloured and commended him. Godamar ran on.

"I threaded the thicket, sire, made a detour, galloped hard and rejoined our company. The Gerainters were blind as bats; they had never a scout to serve them. We kept under cover and watched their march. They came due west in three columns, one following the other. Six miles from Geraint, Longsword gave me a spare horse and sent me spurring to bring you the news."

Flavian stroked his chin and brooded.

"Their numbers?" he asked anon.

"Ten thousand men, sire, we guessed it such."

Before Godamar had ended his despatch, a second galloper came in breathless from Gilderoy. He had left Fulviac's rebels massing in the meadows beyond the river, and had kept cover long enough to see the foremost column wheel westwards and take the road for Gambrevault. The scout numbered the Gilderoy force at anything between eight and twelve thousand pikes. Fulviac had been on the march three hours.

The Lord of Avalon stood forward in the oriel in the full light of the sun. Sea, hill, and woodland stretched before him under a peerless sky. There was the scent of brine in the breeze, the banner of youth was ablaze upon the hills. A red heart beat under his shimmering cuirass, red blood flushed his brain. It was a season of romance and of lusty daring, an hour when his manhood shone bright as his burnished sword.

Thoughts were tumbling, moving over his mind like water over a wheel. Geraint stood ten leagues from Gambrevault, Gilderoy thirteen. The Geraint forces had been on the march six hours or more, the men of Gilderoy only three. Hence, by all the craft of Araby, they of Geraint were three hours and three leagues to the fore. Bad generalship without doubt, but vastly prophetic to the man figuring in the oriel, his fingers drumming on the stone sill.

Strategy stirred in him, and waxed like a dragon created from some magic crystal into the might of deeds. The Lord of Gambrevault caught the strong smile of chivalry. A great venture burnt upon his sword. It was no uncertain voice that rang through the hall of Gambrevault.

"Gentlemen, to horse! Trumpets, blow the sally! Let every man who can ride, mount and follow me to-day. Blow, trumpets, blow!"

The brazen throats brayed from the walls, their shrill scream echoing and echoing amid the distant hills. Their message was like the plunging of a boulder into a pool, smiting to foam and clamour the camp in the meadows. Swords were girded on, spears plucked from the sods, horses saddled and bridled in grim haste. In one short, stirring hour Flavian rode out from Gambrevault with twelve hundred steel-clad riders at his back. Those on the walls watched this mass of fire and colour thundering over the meadows, splashing through the ford, smoking away to the east with trumpets clanging, banneroles adance. There was to be great work done that day. The sentinels on the walls gossiped together, and swore by their lord as he had been the King.

Gambrevault and its towers sank back against the skyline, its banner waving heavily above the keep. Flavian's mass of knights and men-at-arms held over the eastern downs that rolled greenly above the black cliffs and the blue mosaics of the sea. A brisk breeze laughed in their faces, setting plumes nodding, banneroles and pensils aslant. Their spears rose like the slim masts of many sloops in a harbour. The sun shone, the green woods beckoned to the glittering mass with its forest of rolling spears.

Flavian's pride whimpered as he rode in the van with Modred, Godamar, who bore the banner of Gambrevault, and Merlion d'Or, his herald. The man felt like a Zeus with a thunderbolt poised in his hand. A word, the flash of a sword, the cry of a trumpet, and all this splendid torrent of steel would leap and thunder to work his will. The star of chivalry shone bright in the heavens. As for this woman on the white horse, the Madonna of the Pine Forest, God and the saints, he would charge the whole world, hell and its legions, to win so rich a prize.

Turning northwards, with scouts scattered in the far van, they drew to wilder regions where the dark and saturnine outposts of the great pine forest stood solemn upon the hills. Dusky were the thickets against the sapphire sky, the cloud banners trailing in the breeze. The very valleys breathed of battle and sudden peril of the sword. Rounding a wood, they saw riders flash over the brow of a hill and come towards them at a gallop. The men drew rein before the great company of spears. Their leader saluted his lord, and glanced round grimly upon the sea of steel dwindling over the green slopes.

"Sire, we are well-fortuned."

"Say on."

"Ten thousand rebels from Geraint are on the march two miles away. Godamar has given you the news. We are on the crest of the wave."

Flavian tightened his baldric.

"Good ground to the east, Longsword?"

"Excellent for 'horse,' sire."

"To our advantage?"

"Half a mile further towards Geraint there lies a grass valley, a league long, four furlongs from wood to wood. The rebels will march through it, or I am a dotard. There stands your chance, sire. We can roll down on them like a torrent."

Flavian took time by the throat, and called on his man of the tabard.

"Make me this proclamation," quoth he: "'Gentlemen of Gambrevault, strike for King and chivalry. Let vengeance dye your swords. As for the lady riding upon the white horse, mark you, sirs, let her be as the Virgin out of heaven. We ride to take her and her banner. For the rest, no quarter and no prisoners. We will teach this mob the art of war.'"

The man of the tabard proclaimed it as he was bidden. The iron ranks thundered to him like billows foaming about a rock. Modred claimed silence with uplifted sword.

"Enough, gentlemen, enough. No bellowing. Muzzle your temper. We make our spring in silence, that we may claw the harder."

A line of hills lay before them, heights crowned with black pine woods, save for one bare ridge like a great scimitar carving the sky. Flavian advanced his companies up the slopes, halted them in a broad hollow under the brow of the hill. A last galloper had ridden in with hot tidings of the rebels. The Lord of Gambrevault, with Sir Modred and Longsword, cantered on to reconnoitre. They drew to a thicket of gnarled hollies on the hilltop, and looked down upon a long grass valley bounded north and south by woods.

Half a mile away came the rebel vanguard, a black mass of footmen plodding uphill, their pikes and bills shining in the sun. Pennons and gonfalons danced here and there, while in the thick of the column flew the red banner of the Forest, girt about by the spears of Yeoland's guard. She could be seen on her white horse in the midst of the press. The Gerainters were split into three columns, the second column half a mile behind the first, the third somewhat closer upon the second. They were marching without outriders, as though thoroughly assured of their own safety.

Modred chuckled grimly through his black beard, and smote his thigh.

"Fools, fools!"

"Devilish generalship," quoth Longsword under his beaver. "We can crush their van like a wheatfield before the rest can come up. What say you, sire, fewtre spears, and at them?"

Flavian had already turned his horse.

"No sounding of trumpets, sirs," he said; "we will deal only with their van. Call up our companies. God and St. Philip for Gambrevault!"

Over the bare ridge, with its barriers of sun-steeped trees, steel shivered and spears bristled, rank on rank, wave on wave. With a massed rhythm of hoofs, the flood crested the hill, plunged down at a gallop with fewtred spears. Knee to knee, flank to flank, a thousand streaks of steel deluged the hillside. Their trumpets throated now the charge; the iron ranks clashed and thundered, rocked on with a rush of glittering shields.

As dust rolling before a March wind, so the horsemen of Gambrevault poured down on the horde of wavering pikes. The storm had come sudden as thunder out of a summer sky. Before the hurtling impact of that bolt of war, the palsied ranks of foot crumbled like rotten timber. The Gerainters were too massed and too amazed to squander or give ground, to stem with bill and bow the rolling torrent of death. They were rent and trampled, trodden like straw under the stupendous avalanche of steel that crushed and pulverised with ponderous and invincible might.

"God and Gambrevault, kill, kill!"

Such was the death-cry thundered out over the rebel van. The column broke, burst into infinite chaos. Yeoland's guards alone stood firm, a tough core of oak amid rotten tinder. Over the trampled wreckage the fight swirled and eddied, circling about the knot of steel where the red banner flapped in the vortex of the storm.

Yeoland sat dazed on her white horse, as one in the grip of some terrific dream. Nord was at her side, snarling, snapping his jaw like a wolf, his great iron mace poised over his shoulder. The red banner flapped prophetic above their heads. Around them the fight gathered, a whirlwind of contorted figures and stabbing steel.

Yeoland's eyes were on one figure in the press, a man straddling a big bay horse, smiting double-handed with his sword, his red plume jerking in the hot rush of the fight. She saw horse and man go down before him; saw him buffet his way onward like a galley ploughing against wind and wave. His leaping sword and tossing plume came steady and strenuous through the girdle of death.

Fear, pride, a hundred battling passions played like the battle through the woman's mobile brain. She watched the man under the red plume with an intensity of feeling that made her blind to all else for the moment. Love seemed to struggle towards her in bright harness through the fight. She saw the last rank of the human rampart pierced. The man on the bay horse came out before her like some warrior out of an old epic.

None save Nord stood between them, shaggy and grim as a great Norse Thor. She watched the iron mace swing, saw it fall and smite wide. Flavian stood in the stirrups, both hands to the hilt, his horse's muzzle rammed against the opposing brute's chest. The blow fell, a great cut laid in with all the culminating courage of an hour. The sword slashed Nord's gorget, buried its blade in the bull-like neck. He clutched at his throat, toppled, slid out of the saddle and rolled under his horse's hoofs.

The man's hand snatched at the girl's bridle; he dragged her and her horse out of the press. She had a confused vision of carnage, of stabbing swords and trampling hoofs. She saw her banner-bearer fall forward on his horse's neck, thrust through with a sword, while Modred seized the banner staff from his impotent hand. The rebel column had deliquesced and vanished. In its stead she was girdled by grim and exultant horsemen whose swords flashed in the sun.

Trumpets blew the retreat. A thousand glittering riders swarmed about her and the knight with the red plume. She had his words confusedly in her ears, strong, passionate words, heroic, yet utterly tender. They rode uphill together amid the clangour of his men. In a minute they had won the ridge, and were swinging down the further slope with their faces towards Gambrevault.

XXX

Paris and Helen have been dead centuries, yet in that universal world of the mind they still live, young and glorious as when the Grecian galleys ploughed foam through the blue AEgean. The world loves a lover. Troilus stages our own emotions for us in godlier wise than we poor realists can hope to do. We owe an eternal gratitude to those who have stood for love in history. All men might well desire to play the Tristan to Iseult of the Irish eyes. We forget Gemma Donati, and follow with Dante's wistful idealism the gleaming figure of Beatrice in Paradise.

Now the Lord Flavian was one of those happy persons who seem to stumble into heaven either by prodigious instinct or remarkable good-fortune. God gives to many men gold; to others intellect; to some truth; to few, a human echo, a harmony in the spirit, the right woman in the world. Many of us are such unstable folk that we vibrate vastly to a beautiful face and hail heaven in a pair of violet eyes. The chance is that such a business turns out miserably. It is a wise rule to search the world through to find your Beatrice, or bide celibate to the end. Happy is the man whose instinctive choice is ratified by all the wisest poetry of heaven. Happy is he who finds a ruby as he rakes the ephemeral flower-gardens of life, a gem eternally bright and beautiful, durable, unchanging, flashing light ever into the soul. It is given to few to love wisely, to love utterly, to love till death.

That summer day Flavian saw life at its zenith, as he rode through the woods on the way to Gambrevault. The horse had dropped to a trot, and the man had taken off his helmet and hung it at his saddle-bow. He was still red from the melee; his eyes were bright and triumphant. The girl at his side looked at him half-timidly, a tremor upon her lip, her glances clouded. The terrific action of the last hour still seemed to weigh upon her senses, and she seemed fated to be the sport of contending sentiments. No sooner had she struggled to some level of saintliness than love rushed in with burning wings, and lo, all the tinsel of her religion fell away, and she was a mere Eve, a child of Nature.

Flavian watched her with the tenderness of a strong man, who is ready to give his life for the woman he serves. Love seemed to rise from her and play upon him like perfume from a bowl of violets; her eyes transfigured him, and he longed to touch her hair.

"At last."

"Lord?"

"Treat me as a man, I hate that epithet."

"You are a great signor."

"What are titles, testaments, etiquettes to us! I am only great so long as you trust and honour me."

"Your power might appear precarious."

"As you will."

"Yet war is loose!"

He looked round upon the sea of men that rolled on every hand.

"And war at its worst. I have seen enough in three days to make me loathe your partisans and their principles."

"Perhaps."

"It is a wicked and inhuman business."

"What are you going to do with me?" she said.

"Remove you from the hands of butchers and offal-mongers; put you like a pearl in a casket in my own castle of Gambrevault."

"You incur the greater peril."

"Have I not told you that no woman loves a coward?"

She was silent awhile, with her eyes wistful and melancholy, as though some spiritual conflict were passing in her mind. Bitterness escaped in the man's words for all his tenderness and chivalry. He needed an answer. Anon she capitulated and appeared to surrender herself absolutely to circumstance. She began to tell Flavian of her adoption by Fulviac, of her vision in the ruined chapel, of the part assigned to her as a woman ordained by heaven. He heard her in silence, finding quaint pleasure in listening to her voice, having never heard her talk at such length before. Her voice's modulations, its pathos, its many tones, were more subtle to him than any music, and seemed to steep in oblivion the grim realities of the last few days. He watched the play of thought upon her face, sun and shadow, calm and unrest. He began to comprehend the discords he had flung into her life; she was no longer a riddle to him; her confessions portrayed her soul in warm and delicate colouring--colouring pathetic and heroically pure. He had a glorious sense of joy in an instinctive conviction that this girl was worthy of all the highest chivalry a man's heart can conceive of.

Though he had a strong suspicion that he could humanise her Madonna for her, he refrained from argument, refrained from dilating on the iniquities her so-called crusades had already perpetrated. Moreover, the girl had opened her heart to him with a delicious and innocent ingenuousness. He felt that the hour had blessed him sufficiently; that personalities would be gross and impertinent in the light of that sympathy that seemed suddenly to have enveloped them like a golden cloud. The girl appeared to have surrendered herself spiritually into his keeping, not sorry in measure that a strong destiny had decided her doubts for her. They were to let political considerations and the ephemeral turmoils of the times sink under their feet. It was sufficient for them to be but a man and a woman, to forget the forbidden fruit, and the serpent and his lore. God walked the world; they were not ashamed to hear His voice.

So they came with their glittering horde of horsemen to Gambrevault, and rode over the green downs with towers beckoning from the blue. The Gilderoy forces were still miles away, and could not have threatened the retreat on Gambrevault had they been wise as to the event. Yeoland rode close at Flavian's side. He touched her hand, looked in her eyes, saw the colour stream to her cheeks, knew that she no longer was his enemy.

"Yonder stands Gambrevault," were his words; "its walls shall bulwark you against the world. Trust me and my eternal faith to you. I shall see God more clearly for looking in your eyes."

He lodged her in a chamber in the keep, a room that had been his mother's and still held the furniture, books, and music she had used. Its window looked out on the castle garden, and over the double line of walls to the meadows and woods beyond. Maud, the castellan's wife, was bidden to wait upon her. Flavian gave her the keys of his mother's chests, where silks, samites, sarcenets galore, lace and all manner of golden fripperies, were stored. The ewers of the room were of silver, its hangings of violet cloth, its bed inlaid with ivory and hung with purple velvet. It had a shelf full of beautifully illumined books, a prayer-desk and a small altar, a harp, a lute, an embroidery frame, and numberless curios. Thus by the might of the sword Yeoland was installed in the great castle of Gambrevault.

So Duessa and Balthasar were dead. The girl had told Flavian what had passed in Sforza's palace; the news shocked him more than he would have dreamed. The dead wound us with their unapproachableness and the mute pathos of their pale, imagined faces. They are like our own sins that stare at us from the night sky, irrevocable and beyond us for ever. Flavian ordered tapers to be burnt and masses said in the castle chapel for the souls of these two unfortunates. He himself spent more than an hour in silent prayer before he confessed, received penance and absolution.

That evening, at Flavian's prayer, Yeoland came down to meet him in the castle garden, with the castellan's two girls to serve her as maids of honour. She had put aside her armour, and was clad in a jacket of violet cloth, fitting close to the figure, and a skirt of light blue silk. In the old yew walk, stately and solemn, amid the bright parterres and stone urns gushing colour, the two children slipped away and left Yeoland and the man alone.

She seemed to have lost much of her restraint, much of her independence, of her reserve, in a few short hours. Her mood inclined towards silence and a certain delightful solemnity such as a lover loves. Her eyes met the man's with a rare trust; her hands went into his with all the ideal faith he had forecast in his dreams.

They stood together under the yews, full of youth and innocent joy of soul, timid, happily sad, content to be mere children. Flavian touched her hands as he would have touched a lily. She seemed too wonderful, too pure, too transcendent to be fingered. A supreme, a godly timidity possessed him; he had such love in his heart as only the strong and the pure can know, such love as makes a man a saint unto himself, a being wrapped round with the rarest chivalry of heaven.

Their words were very simple and infrequent.

"I have been thinking," said the girl.

"Yes?"

"How war seems ever in the world."

"How else should I have won you?"

She sighed and looked up over his shoulder at the sunlight glimmering gold through the yews.

"I have been thinking how I bring you infinite peril. They will not lose me easily. What if I bring you to ruin?"

"I take everything to myself."

"They believe me a saint."

"And I!"

"My conscience will reproach me, but now----"

"Well?"

"I am too happy to remember."

Their eyes met and flashed all the unutterable truths of the soul. Flavian kissed her hand.

"Forget it all," he said, "save the words I spoke to you over that forest grave. Whatever doom may come upon me, though death frown, I care not; all the sky is at sunset, all the world is full of song. I could meet God to-morrow with a smile, since you have shown me all your heart."

From a little stone pavilion hidden by laurels the voices of flutes and viols swirled out upon the air. The west grew faint, and twilight increased; night kissed and closed the azure eyes of the day. Under the yew boughs, Flavian and Yeoland walked hand in hand; the music spoke for them; the night made their faces pale and spiritual under the trees. They said little; a tremor of the fingers, a glance, a sigh were enough. When the west had faded, and the last primrose streak was gone, Flavian kissed the girl's lips and sent her back to the two children, who were curled on a bench by the laurels, listening sleepily to the music of flute and viol.

The man's soul was too scintillant and joyous to shun the stars. He passed up on to the battlements, and listened to the long surge of the summer sea.

And as he paced the battlements that night, he saw red, impish specks of flame start out against the black background of the night. They were the rebel watchfires burning on the hills, sinister eyes, red with the distant prophecy of war.

XXXI

It would be difficult to describe the thundercloud of thought that came down upon Fulviac's face when news was brought him of the capture of the girl Yeoland and the decimation of the vanguard from Geraint. There was something even Satanic upon his face for the moment. He was not a pleasant person when roused, and roused he was that day like any ogre. His tongue ran through the whole gamut of blasphemy before he recovered a finer dignity and relapsed into a grim reserve. His men spoke to him with great suavity. He had decreed that Nord of the Hammer should be hanged for negligence, but the decree was unnecessary, since Flavian's sword had already settled the matter.

The Gilderoy forces therefore turned northwards, with their great baggage and siege train, and in due course came upon the Gerainters bivouacking on the ridge where the battle had taken place. The green slopes were specked with dark motionless figures, dead horses, and the wreckage of war. Men were burying the dead upon the battlefield. Yeoland's guard had been slaughtered almost to a man; and the whole affair had damped very considerably the ardour of certain of the less trustworthy levies.

But Fulviac was not the man to sit and snivel over a defeat; he knew well enough that he had good men behind him, tough fighting stuff, fired by fanaticism and a long sense of wrong. He harangued his whole force, black-guarded with his lion's roar those concerned in the march from Geraint, treating them to such a scourging with words that they snarled and clamoured to be led on at once to prove their mettle. Their leaders had been at fault, nor did Fulviac keep their spirits cooling in the wind. The power of his own personality was great, and he had twenty thousand men at his back, who knew that to fail meant death and torture. They had received a check from the Lord of Gambrevault; it was absolutely essential to the cause that they should wipe out the defeat, recapture their Saint and sacred banner, crush Gambrevault once and for ever. To this strenuous tune they marched on towards the sea, and that night lit their fires on the hills that ringed Gambrevault on the north.

As the sun climbed up and spread a curtain of gold over down and upland, those on the walls of Gambrevault saw steel glinting on the hills, the pikes and casques of Fulviac's horde. Yeoland saw them from her casement, as she stood and combed her hair. Flavian, watching with certain knights on the keep, confronted the event with a merry smile. The shimmering line of silver on the hills had broadened to a darker band, splashed lavishly with steel. The rebel host was coming on in a half moon, with each horn to the sea. Its centre held towards the ford and the dismantled Gambrevault mills, positions strongly held on the southern bank by a redoubt and stockaded trenches.

The criticisms delivered by those watching from the keep were various and forcible.

"By Jeremy--a rare mob!"

"Let them grip at Gambrevault," said Modred, "and they shall clutch at a cactus. Look at that long baggage train in the rear. Damn them, I guess they have the siege train from Gilderoy."

"We shall sweat a trifle."

Quoth Tristram, "They have little time to spare for a leaguer, rotting in trenches, if they are to make the country rise. They'll not leaguer us."

Flavian watched the advance under his hand.

"Fortunately or unfortunately, gentlemen," he said, "we have taken their Saint, their oracle, and their sacred banner. I imagine they will do their best to dispossess us. It is time we made for the meadows; I reckon we shall have hot work to-day."

When leaving the keep, Flavian crossed the castle garden, and caught under the tunnel of yews the flutter of a woman's gown. Sunlight glimmered through and wove a shimmering network in the air. Green and violet swept the stones; a white face shone in the shadows.

He went to her and kissed her hands. His eyes were brave and joyous as she looked into them, and there was no shadow of fear upon his face. Trumpets were blowing in the meadows, piercing the confused hum of men running to arms.

"War, ever war!"

"You are sad?"

"Fulviac has the whole kingdom at his back."

"If he led the world, I should not waver."

"With me it is different; I am a woman and you know my heart."

"So well that I seek to know nothing else in the world, I desire no greater wisdom than my love. You are with me, and my heart sings. No harm can come to you whatever doom may fall on Gambrevault."

"Think you my thoughts are all of my own safety?"

"Ah, golden one, never fear for me. What is life? a little joy, a little pain, and then eternity. I would rather have an hour's glory in the sun than fifty years of grey monotony. It is something to fight, and even to die, for the love of a woman. There is no shadow over my soul."

There was a great heroism in his voice, and her eyes caught the light from his. She touched his cuirass with her slim white fingers.

"God keep you!"

"Ha, I do not smell of earth to-day, nor dream of requiems."

"No, you will come back to me."

"Give me your scarf."

She took the green silk and knotted it about his arm; a rich colour shone in her cheeks, her eyes were warm and wonderfully luminous.

"God keep you!"

So he kissed her lips and left her.

The rebel horde had rolled down in their thousands from the hills. Flavian saw their black masses moving from the woods, as he rode down from the great gate. It was evident to him that Fulviac would try and force the ford and win his way to the open meadows beyond. The river ran fast with a deep but narrow channel, and there was only one other ford some nine miles upstream. His own men were under arms in the meadows. With his knights round him, Flavian rode down to the redoubt and trenches by the river-bank, packed as they already were with archers and men-at-arms. He was loudly cheered as he reined in and scanned the rebel columns moving over the downs.

Fulviac had ridden forward with a company of spears to reconnoitre. He saw the captured banner of The Maid hoisted derisively on Gambrevault keep; he saw the redoubt and the stockades covering the ford; the foot massed in the meadows; Flavian's mounted men-at-arms drawn up under the castle walls. Sforza and several captains of note were with Fulviac. The man was in a grim mood, a slashing Titanic humour. The passage of the river was to be forced, Flavian's men engaged in the meadows. He would drive them into Gambrevault before nightfall. Then they would cast their leaguer, bring up the siege train taken from Gilderoy, and batter at Gambrevault till they could storm the place.

Early in the day Fulviac detached a body of two thousand men under Colgran, a noted free-lance, to march upstream, cross by the upper ford, and threaten Flavian on the flank. The fighting began at ten of the clock, when Fulviac's bowmen scattered along the river and opened fire upon the stockades. Flavian's archers and arbalisters responded. A body of five thousand rebels advanced with great mantlets upon wheels to the northern bank and entrenched themselves there. A second body, with waggons laden with timber and several flat-bottomed boats, poured down to the river a mile higher up, and began to throw a rough, raft-like bridge across the stream. At half-past ten masses of men-at-arms splashed through the water at the ford, under cover of a hot fire from the archers lining the bank, and began an assault upon the redoubt and the stockades.

By twelve o'clock the bridge higher up the stream had been completed, and a glittering line of pikes poured across, to be met on the southern bank by Geoffrey Longsword and a body of men-at-arms. It was hand to hand, and hot and strenuous as could be. Men grappled, stabbed, hacked, bellowed like a herd of bulls. Flavian had reinforced the defenders of the ford, who still held Fulviac at bay, despite a heavy archery fire and the almost continuous assaults poured against the stockades. Yet by one o'clock Fulviac's levies had forced the passage of the bridge and gained footing on the southern bank. Longsword's men, outnumbered and repulsed, were falling back before the black masses of foot that now poured into the meadows.

The situation was critical enough, as Flavian had long seen, as he galloped hotly from point to point. Fulviac's rebels had shown more valour than he had ever prophesied. Flavian packed all his remaining foot into the trenches, and putting himself at the head of his knights and mounted men-at-arms, rode down to charge the troops who had crossed by the pontoons. Here chivalry availed him to the full. By a succession of tremendous rushes, he drove the rebels back into the river, did much merciless slaughter, cut the ropes that held the bridge to the southern bank, so that the whole structure veered downstream. The peril seemed past, when he was startled by the cry that the redoubt had been carried, and that Fulviac held the ford.

Looking south, he saw the truth with his own eyes. His troops were falling back in disorder upon Gambrevault, followed by an ever-growing mass, that swarmed exultantly into the meadows. The last and successful assault had been led by Fulviac in person. Flavian had to grip the truth. The rebels outnumbered him by more than five to one; and he had underrated their discipline and fighting spirit. He was wiser before the sun went down.

"Come, gentlemen, we shall beat them yet."

"Shall we charge them, sire?"

"Blow bugles, follow me, sirs; I am in no mood for defeat."

That afternoon there was grim work in the Gambrevault meadows. Five times Flavian charged Fulviac's columns, hurling them back towards the river, only to be repulsed in turn by the fresh masses that poured over by the ford. He made much slaughter, lost many good men in the mad, whirling melees. Desperate heroism inspired on either hand. Once he stood in great peril of his own life, having been unhorsed and surrounded by a mob of rebel pikes. He was saved by the devotion and heroism of Modred and his household knights. With the chivalry of a Galahad, he did all that a man could to keep the field. Colgran's flanking column appeared over the downs, and Fulviac had his whole host on the southern bank of the river. The masses advanced like one man, pennons flying, trumpets clanging. Flavian would have charged again, but for the vehement dissuasion of certain of his elder knights. He contented himself with covering the retreat of his foot, while the great gate of Gambrevault opened its black maw to take them in. Many of his mercenaries had deserted to the rebels. So stubborn and bloody had been the day, that he had lost close upon half his force by death and desertion; no quarter had been given on either side. He heard the surging shouts of exultation from the meadows, as he rode sullen and wearied into Gambrevault. The great gates thundered to, the portcullises rattled down. Fulviac had his man shut up in Gambrevault.

XXXII

The leaguer was drawn that night about the towers of Gambrevault, and the castle stood clasped betwixt the watch-fires and the sea. Fulviac's rebels, toiling from evening until dawn, banked and staked a rampart to close the headland. From the north alone could Gambrevault be approached, precipices plunging south, east, and west to front the sea. Athwart the grassy isthmus Fulviac drew his works, running from cliff to cliff, brown earth-banks bristling with timber. Mortars, bombards, basilics, and great catapults had been brought from Gilderoy to batter the walls. Redoubts, covered by strong mantlets, were established in the meadows. Several small war galleys guarded the castle on the side of the sea.

Nor was this labour permitted to pass unrebuked before the leaguered folk upon the headland. There were sallies, assaults, bloody tussles in the trenches, skirmishes upon the causeway. Yet these fiercenesses brought no flattering boon to the besieged. The knights and men-at-arms were masterful enough with an open field to serve them, but behind their barricades Fulviac's rebels held the advantage. The command went forth from Modred the seneschal that there were to be no more sorties delivered against the trenches.

On the second day of the leaguer the cannonade began. Bombard and mortar belched flame and smoke; the huge catapults strove with their gigantic arms; arbalisters wound their windlasses behind the ramparts. Shot screamed and hurtled, crashed and thundered against the walls, bringing down mortar and masonry in rattling showers. The battlements of Gambrevault spouted flame; archers plied their bows in bartisan and turret. A shroud of dust and smoke swirled about the place, the chaotic clamour of the siege sending the gulls wheeling and wailing from the cliffs.

On the very second day Flavian was brought low by a shot hurling a fragment of masonry upon his thigh and bruising it to the bone. Stiff and faint, he was laid abed in his own state room, unable to stir for the twinging tendons, loth enough to lie idle. Modred, bluff, lusty smiter, took the command from him, and walked the walls. Hourly he came in to his lord's chamber to tell of the cannonade and the state of the castle. Even Flavian from his cushions could see that the man's black face looked grim and sinister.

"How do they vex us?" was his question, as the thunder came to them from the meadows.

Modred clinked his heels against the wainscotting of the window seat, and strove to sweeten his looks. He was not a man given to blandishing the truth.

"Their damned bombards are too heavy for us. We are dumb."

"Impossible!"

"Sire, we shall have to hold Gambrevault by the sword."

The man on the bed started up on his elbow, only to fall back again with a spasmodic twitching of the forehead.

"And our bombards?" he asked.

"Are toppled off their trunnions."

"Ha!"

"For the rest, sire, I have ordered our men to keep cover. The bowmen shoot passably. The outer battlements are swept."

"And the walls?"

Modred grimaced and stroked his beard.

"There are cracks in the gate-house," quoth he, "that I could lay my fist in."

What goodlier fortune for a man than to lie bruised when Love bears to him the bowl of dreams! What softer balm than the touch of a woman's hand! What more subtle music than her voice! The girl Yeoland had betrayed a new wilfulness to the world, in that she now claimed as her guerdon the care of the man's heart. She was in and about his room, a shadow moving in the sunlight, a shaft of youth, supple and very tender. Her eyes had a rarer lustre, her face more of the dawn tint of the rose. Love stirred within her soul like the sound of angels psaltering on the golden battlements of heaven.

As she sat often beside him, Flavian won the whole romance from her, gradual as glistening threads of silk drawn from a scarlet purse. She waxed very solemn over her tale, was timid at times, and exceeding sorrowful for all her passion. Some shadowy fear seemed to companion her beside the couch, some wraith prophetic of a tragic end. She loved the man, yet feared her love, even as it had been a sword shimmering above his head. Peril compassed them like an angry sea; she heard the bombards thundering in the meadows.

"Ah, sire," she said to him one morning, as she thrust the flowers she had gathered in the garden into a brazen bowl, "I am heavy at heart. Who shall pity me?"

He turned towards her on his cushions with a smile that was not prophetic of the tomb.

"Do I weary you?"

"Ah no, not that."

"Why then are you sad?"

She held up a white hand in the gloom of the room, her hair falling like a black cloud upon her bosom.

"Listen," she said to him.

"I am not deaf."

"The thunder of war."

"Well, well, my heart, should I fear it?"

"It is I who fear."

"Ah," he said, taking her hand into his bosom, "put such fears far from you. We shall not end this year in dust."

A week passed and the man was on the walls again, bold and ruddy as a youthful Jove. Seven days had gone, swelling with their hours the great concourse in the meadows. Pikes had sprouted on the hills like glistening corn, to roll and merge into the girding barrier of steel. The disloyal south had gathered to Fulviac before Gambrevault like dust in a dry corner in the month of March. A great host teemed betwixt the river and the cliffs. Through all, the rack and thunder of the siege went on, drowning the sea's voice, flinging a storm-cloud over the stubborn walls. In Gambrevault men looked grim, and muttered of succour and the armies of the King.

Yet Flavian was content. He had taken a transcendent spirit into his soul; he lived to music; drank love and chivalry like nectar from the gods. The woman's nearness made each hour a chalice of gold. He possessed her red heart, looked deep into her eyes, put her slim hands into his bosom. Her voice haunted him like music out of heaven. He was a dreamer, a Lotos-eater, whose brain seemed laden with all the perfumes of the East. Ready was he to drain the purple wine of life even to the dregs, and to find death in the cup if the Fates so willed it.

And Fulviac?

War had held a poniard at his throat, turning him to the truth with the threat of steel. Grim and implacable, he stalked the meadows, bending his brows upon the towers of Gambrevault. This girl of the woods was no more a dream to him, but supple love, ardent flesh, blood-red reality. Lean, leering thoughts taunted the lascivious fears within his brain. His moods were silent yet tempestuous. Gambrevault mocked him. Vengeance burnt in his palm like a globe of molten iron.

His dogged temper roused his captains to strenuous debate. Fifty thousand men were idle before the place, and the siege dragged like a homily. Their insinuations were strong and strident. The countryside was emptying its broad larder; Malgo and Godamar of the Fens were marching from east and west. Ten thousand men could leaguer Gambrevault. It behoved Fulviac to pluck up his spears and march on Lauretia, proud city of the King.

For a season Fulviac was stubborn as Gambrevault itself. His yellow eyes glittered, and he tossed back his lion's mane from off his forehead.

"Till the place is ours," so ran his dogma, "I stir never a foot. See to it, sirs, we will put these skulkers to the sword."

His captains were strenuous in retort.

"You mar the cause," said Sforza over the council-board, thin-lipped and subtle.

"Give me ten thousand men," quoth Colgran the free-lance, "by my bones I will take the place and bring the Maid out scatheless."

Prosper the Priest put in his plea.

"You are our torch," he said, "our beacon. Malgo is on the march; Godamar has massed behind the creeks of Thorney Isle. The country waits for you. Leave Gambrevault to Colgran."

And again the free-lance made his oath.

"Give me ten thousand men," quoth he, "by Peter's blood the place shall tumble in a month."

That same evening, as a last justification of his stubborn will, Fulviac sent forward a trumpeter under a white flag to parley with the besieged. The herald's company drew to the walls as the sun sank over the sea, setting the black towers in a splendour as of fire. Fulviac's troops were under arms in the meadows, their pikes glittering with sinister meaning into the purple of the coming night. The Lord of Gambrevault, in full harness, met the white flag, his knights round him, a crescent of steel.

Fulviac's trumpeter proclaimed his terms. They were insolently simple, surrender absolute with the mere blessings of life and limb, a dungeon for the lords, a proffer of traitorous service to the men. Yeoland the Saint was to be sent forth scatheless. The castle was to be garrisoned and held by the rebels.

Flavian laughed at the bluff insolence of the demand.

"Ha, sirs," he said, "we are the King's men here. Get you gone before my gate. Say to yonder traitor in the meadows, 'We quail not before scullions and at the frowns of cooks.'"

Thus, under the red canopy of the warring west, ended the parley at the gate of Gambrevault. The white flag tripped back behind the trenches; the castle trumpets blew a fanfare to grace its flight. Yeoland the Saint heard it, and her lamp of hope burnt dim.

That night Fulviac paced the meadows, his eyes scanning the black mass upon the cliffs. Dark as was his humour, reason ruled him at the climax, powerful to extort the truth. Primaeval instincts were strong in him, yet he put them back that hour out of his heart. Robust and vigorous, he trampled passion under foot. At dawn his orders went forth to the captains and the council.

"Colgran shall command. Ten thousand men shall serve him. Let him storm the place, grant no terms, spare Yeoland the Maid alone. Let him butcher the garrison, and let the ruin rot. When all have been put to the sword, let him march and join me before the city of Lauretia."

XXXIII

So Fulviac with his host passed northwards from Gambrevault, leaving Colgran and his ten thousand to guard the trenches. Flavian saw the black columns curl away over the green slopes, their pikes glittering against the blue fringe of the horizon, their banners blowing to the breeze. The red pavilion stood no longer in the meadows; the man on the black horse rode no more behind the barricades. Ominous was the marching of the host over the hills, a prophecy of many battles before the King's men could succour Gambrevault.

The gate-house stood in ruins, a shattered pile of masonry barriering the causeway from the meadows. The outer curtain wall on the north had been pierced between two towers; the stone-work crumbled fast, opening a gradual breach to the rebel sea dammed behind the trenches. The battlements were rent and ruinous; many a turret gaped and tottered. Still the bombards thundered, hurling their salvos of shot against the place, belching flame even through the night, while the arms of the great slings toiled like giant hands in the dark.

As for the girl Yeoland, her joy was dim and flickering, mocked with constant prophecies of woe. The sounds of the siege haunted her perpetually. Shafts wailed and whistled, bombards roared, the walls reeked and cracked. A corner in the garden under the yew walk was the single nook left her open to the blue hope of heaven. The clamour of the leaguer woke a hundred echoes in her heart. Above all shone the man's strong face and passionate eyes; above the moon, the stars, the blue vault of day, death spread his sable wings, a cloud of gloom.

On the sixteenth day of the siege, Colgran made an assault in force upon the ruins of the gate-house. Despite its chaotic state, Flavian clung to the ruin, and held the stormers at bay. Thrice Colgran's rebels advanced to the attack, and came hand-to-hand with the defenders over the crumbling piles of stone; thrice they were beaten back and driven to retreat upon their trenches. Colgran renounced the gate-house as impregnable; the slings and bombards were turned upon the outer wall to widen the breach already made therein.

It was plain enough even to Yeoland that the siege was bearing slowly yet surely against Gambrevault. More than half a month had passed, and still no succouring spears shone upon the hills, no sail upon the sea. Poor food and summer heat, the crowding of the garrison had opened a gate to fever and disease. She saw the stern and moody faces of the soldiery, their loyalty that took fresh and hectic fire from the courage of their lord. She saw the broken walls and ruined battlements, and heard the rebels shouting in their trenches.

As the man's peril grew more real and significant, a fear more vehement entered into her heart. Sleep left her; she began to look white and weary, with dark shadows under her eyes. The man's warm youth accused her like a tree that should soon be smitten by the axe. His fine heroism was a veritable scourge, making the future full of discords, a charnel-house glimmering with bleached bones. She began to know how closely their lives were mingled, even as wine in a cup of gold. He was lord and husband to her in the spirit. Her red heart quaked for him like the shivering petals of an autumn rose.

On the day of the assault upon the gate-house, he came back to her wounded in the arm and shoulder. He was faint, but brave and even merry. She would suffer none to come in to him, as he sat in a carved chair in her room that opened on the garden. The sight of blood when harness and gamboison were taken from the caked wounds quickened her fears into a fever of self-torture. She bathed the wounds and dressed them with fragrant oil and linen. Twilight filled the room, and it was not till her tears fell upon his hand that the man found that she was weeping.

He drew her towards him with sudden great tenderness, as she knelt and looked into his face. Her eyes swam with tears, her lips quivered.

"My life, why do you weep?"

She started away from him with sudden strength, and stood by the window, trembling.

"Give me my armour and my banner," she said; "let me ride to the trenches and barter terms by my surrender. Sire, let me go, let me go."

He looked at her sadly under his brows, with forehead wrinkled.

"You would leave me?"

"Ah yes, to save you from the sword. Is it easy for me to ask you this?"

"You crave more than I can give."

"No, no."

"I cannot surrender you."

"And for love, you would doom all Gambrevault!"

"Ah!" he cried, "I am wounded, and you would wound me the more."

She gave a whimper of pain, ran to him, and crept into his arms. As her sobs shook her, he bent many times and kissed her hair.

"Weep not for me," he said; "even when the end comes no harm can touch you. I cannot parley with these wolves; there are women and children under my roof; should I open my gates to a savage mob?"

"This is your doom," she said to him.

"I take it, child, from heaven."

She wept no more, for a richer heroism took fire within her heart. She knelt to the man while he held her face betwixt his hands, bent over her, and kissed her forehead.

"Courage, courage, what is death!"

"My God, to lose you."

"There, am I not flesh and blood? God knows, I would rather have death than give you to these vultures."

She knelt before him with her face transfigured.

"And death, death can touch me also."

XXXIV

August came in with storm and rain, and a dreary wind blew from the south-west, huddling masses of cloud over a spiritless sky. Southwards, the sea tumbled, a grey expanse edged with foam, its great breakers booming dismally upon the cliffs. The wind swept over Gambrevault, moaning and wailing over battlement and tower, driving the rain in drifting sheets. The bombards still belched and smoked under their penthouses, and the arms of the catapults rose and fell against the sullen sky.

The eighteenth night of the siege came out of the east like a thunder bank, and the grey shivering ghost of the day fled over the western hills. When darkness had fallen, the walls of Gambrevault were invisible from the trenches. Here and there a light shone out like a spark in tinder; the sky above was black as a cavern, unbroken by the crack or cranny of a star.

Flavian, fully armed, kept watch upon the breach with a strong company of men-at-arms. He had taken the ugly measure of the night to heart, and had prepared accordingly. Under the shelter of the wall men slept, wrapped in their cloaks, with their weapons lying by them. The sentinels had been doubled on the battlements, though little could be seen in the blank murk, and even the keep had to be looked for before its mass disjointed itself from the background of the night.

It was treacherous weather, and just the season for an adventurous enemy to creep from the trenches and attempt to rush the breach. Flavian leant upon his long sword, and brooded. The black ends of the broken wall stood up hugely on either hand; rubble and fallen masonry paved the breach, and a rough rampart of debris had been piled along the summit. Around him shone the dull armour of his men, as they stood on guard in the rain.

The storm deadened soul and body, yet kept Flavian vigilant with its boisterous laughter, a sound that might stifle the tramp of stormers pouring to the breach. He was not lonely, for a lover can do without the confidences of others, when he has a woman to speak with in his heart. In fancy he can lavish the infinite tenderness of the soul, caress, quarrel, kiss, comfort, with all the idealisms of the imagination. The spirit lips we touch are sweeter and more red than those in the flesh. To the true man love is the grandest asceticism the world can produce.

Flavian's figure straightened suddenly as it leant bowed in thought upon the sword. He was alert and vigilant, staring into darkness that baffled vision and hid the unknown. A dull, characterless sound was in the air. Whether it was the wind, the sea, or something more sinister, he could not tell. Calling one of his knights to his side, they stood together listening on the wreckage of the wall.

A vague clink, clink, came in discord to the wind, a sound that suggested the cautious moving of armed men. A hoarse voice was growling warily in the distance, as though giving orders. The shrilling noise of steel grew more obvious each moment; the black void below appeared to grow full of movement, to swirl and eddy like a lagoon, whose muddy waters are disturbed by some huge reptile at night. The sudden hoarse cries of sentinels rose from the walls. Feet stumbled on the debris at the base of the breach; stormers were on the threshold of Gambrevault.

A trumpet blared in the entry; the guard closed up on the rampart; sleeping men started from the shadows of the wall, seized sword and shield as the trumpets' bray rang in their ears. Colgran's stormers, discovered in their purpose, cast caution to the winds, and sent up a shout that should have wakened all Gambrevault.

In the darkness and the driving rain, neither party could see much of the other. The stormers came climbing blindly up the pile of wreckage in serried masses. Flavian and his knights, who held the rampart, big men and large-hearted, smote at the black tide of bodies that rolled to their swords. It was grim work in the dark. It was no sleepy, disorderly rabble that held the breach, but a tense line of steel, that stemmed the assault like a wall. The stormers pushed up and up, to break and deliquesce before those terrible swords. Modred's deep voice sounded through the din, as he smote with his great axe, blows that would have shaken an oak. There was little shouting; it was breathless work, done in earnest. Colgran's men showed pluck, fought well, left a rampart of dead to their credit, a squirming, oozing barrier, but came no nearer forcing the breach.

They had lost the propitious moment, and the whole garrison was under arms, ready to repulse the attacks made at other points. Scaling ladders had been jerked forward and reared against the walls; men swarmed up, but the rebels gained no lasting foothold on the battlements. They were beaten back, their ladders hurled down, masonry toppled upon the mass below. Many a man lay with neck or back broken in the confused tangle of humanity at the foot of the castle.

Colgran ordered up fresh troops. It was his policy to wear out the garrison by sheer importunity and the stress of numbers. He could afford to lose some hundred men; every score were precious now to Flavian. It was a system of counter barter in blood, till the weaker vessel ran dry. The Lord of Gambrevault understood this rough philosophy well enough, and husbanded his resources. He could not gamble with death, and so changed his men when the opportunity offered, to give breathing space to all. Conscious of the strong stimulus of personal heroism, he kept to the breach himself, and fought on through every assault with Modred's great axe swinging at his side. He owed his life more than once to those gorilla-like arms and that crescent of steel.

In the outer court, certain of the women folk with Yeoland dealt out wine and food, and tended the wounded. In the chapel, tapers glimmered, lighting the frescoes and the saints, the priest chanting at the altar, the women and children who knelt in the shadowy aisles praying for those who fought upon the walls. Panic hovered over the pale faces, the fear, the shivering, weeping, pleading figures. There was little heroism in Gambrevault chapel, save the heroism of supplication. While swords tossed and men groped for each other in the wind and rain, old Peter the cellarer lay drunk in a wine bin, and lame Joan, who tended the linen, was snivelling in the chapel and fingering the gold angels sewn up in her tunic.

Five times did Colgran's men assault the breach that night, each repulse leaving its husks on the bloody wreckage, its red libations to the swords of Gambrevault. The last and toughest tussle came during the grey prologue before dawn. The place was so packed with the dead and stricken, that it was well-nigh impassable. For some minutes the struggle hung precariously on the summit of the pass, but with the dawn the peril dwindled and elapsed. The stormers revolted from the shambles; they had fought their fill; had done enough for honour; were sick and weary. No taunt, command, or imprecation could keep them longer in that gate of death. Colgran's rebels retreated on their trenches.

And with the dawn Flavian looked round upon the breach, and saw all the horror of the place in one brief moment. Cloven faces, hacked bodies, distortions, tortures, blood everywhere. He looked round over his own men; saw their meagre ranks, their weariness, their wounds, their exultation that lapsed silently into a kind of desperate awe. Some tried to cheer him, and at the sound he felt an unutterable melancholy descend upon his soul. The men were like so many sickly ghosts, a wan and battered flock, a ragged remnant. He saw the whole truth in a moment, as a man sees life, death, and eternity pass before him in the flashing wisdom of a single thought.

And this was war, this cataclysm of insatiate wrath! His men were too few, too bustled, to hold the breach against such another storm. His trumpets blared the retreat, a grim and tragic fanfare. They dragged out their wounded, abandoned the pile of rubbish for which they had fought, and withdrew sullenly within the inner walls. Colgran, though repulsed, had taken the outer ward of Gambrevault.

As one stumbling from a dream, Flavian found himself in the castle garden. The place was full of the freshness that follows rain; and it was not till the scent of flowers met him like an odour of peace, that he marked that the sky was blue and the dawn like saffron. The storm-clouds had gone, and the wind was a mere breeze, a moist breath from the west, bearing a curious contrast to the furious temper of the night.

Flavian, looking like a white-faced debauchee, limped through the court, and climbed the stairway of the keep to the banqueting hall and his own state chambers. Several of his knights followed him at a distance and in silence. He felt sick as a dog, and burdened with unutterable care, that weighed upon him like a prophecy. He had held the breach against heavy odds, and he was brooding over the cost. There was honour in the sheer physical heroism of the deed; but he had lost old friends and tried servants, had sacrificed his outer walls; there was little cause for exultation in the main.

He stumbled into the banqueting hall like a man into a tavern.

"Wine, wine, for the love of God."

A slim figure in green came out from the oriel, and a pair of dark eyes quivered over the man's grey face and blood-stained armour. The girl's hands went out to him, and she seemed like a child roused in the night from the influence of some evil dream.

"You are wounded."

She took him by the arm and shoulder, and was able to force him into a chair, so limp, so impotent, was he for the moment. His face had the uncanny pallor of one who was about to faint; his eyes stared at her in a dazed and wistful way.

"My God, you are not going to die!"

He shook his head, smiled weakly, and groped for her hand. She broke away, brought wine, and began to trickle it between his lips. Several of his knights came in, and looked on awkwardly from the doorway at the girl leaning over the man's chair, with her arm under his head. Yeoland caught sight of them, coloured and called them forward.

The man's faintness had passed. He saw Modred and beckoned him to his chair.

"Take her away," in a whisper.

Yeoland heard the words, started round, and clung to his hand. There was a strange look upon her face. Flavian spoke slowly to her.

"Girl, I am not a savoury object, fresh from the carnage of a breach. Leave me to my surgeon. I would only save you pain. As for dying, I feel like an Adam. Go to your room, child; I will be with you before long."

She held both his hands, looked in his eyes a moment, then turned away with Modred and left him. She was very pale, and there was a tremor about her lips.

Irrelevant harness soon surrendered to skilled fingers. No great evil had been done, thanks to the fine temper of Flavian's armour; the few gashes, washed, oiled, and dressed, left him not seriously the worse for the night's tussle. Wine and food recovered his manhood. He was barbered, perfumed, dressed, and turned out by his servants, a very handsome fellow, with a fine pallor and a pathetic limp.

His first care was to see his own men attended to, the wounded properly bestowed, a good supply of food and wine dealt out. He had a brave word and a smile for all. As he passed, he found Father Julian the priest administering the Host to those whose dim eyes were closing upon earth and sky.

Modred, that iron man, who never seemed weary, was stalking the battlements, and getting the place prepared for the next storm that should break. Flavian renounced responsibilities for the moment, and crossed the garden to Yeoland's room. He entered quietly, looked about him, saw a figure prostrate on the cushions of the window seat.

He crossed the room very quickly, knelt down and touched the girl's hair. Her face was hidden in the cushions. She turned slowly on her side, and looked at him with a wan, pitiful stare; her eyes were timid, but empty of tears.

"Ah, girl, what troubles you?"

She did not look at him, though he held her hands.

"Are you angry with me?"

"No, no."

"What is it, then?"

She spoke very slowly, in a suppressed and toneless voice.

"Will you tell me the truth?"

He watched her as though she were a saint.

"I have had a horrible thought in my heart, and it has wounded me to death."

"Tell it me, tell it me."

"That you had repented all----"

"Repented!"

"Of all the ruin I am bringing upon you; that you were beginning to think----"

He gave a deep cry.

"You believed that!"

She lay back on the cushions with a great sigh. Flavian had his arms about her, as he bent over her till their lips nearly touched.

"How could you fear!"

"I am so much a woman."

"Yes----"

"And something is all the world to me, even though----"

"Well?"

"I would die happy."

He understood her whole heart, and kissed her lips.

"Little woman, I had come here to this room to ask you one thing more. You can guess it."

"Ah----"

"Father Julian."

She drew his head down upon her shoulder, and he knelt a long while in silence, with her bosom rising and falling under his cheek.

"I am happy," he said at last; "child-wife, child-husband, let us go hand in hand into heaven."

XXXV

So with Colgran and his rebels beating at the inner gate, Flavian of Gambrevault took Yeoland to wife, and was married that same eve by Father Julian in the castle chapel. There was pathetic cynicism in the service, celebrating as it did the temporal blending of two bodies who bade fair by their destinies to return speedily to dust. The chant might have served as a requiem, or a dirge for the fall of the mighty. It was a tragic scene, a solemn ceremony, attended by grim-faced men in plated steel, by frightened women and sickly children. Famine, disease, and death headed the procession, jigged with the torches, danced like skeletons about a bier. Trumpets and cannon gave an epithalamium; bones might have been scattered in lieu of flowers, and wounds espoused in place of favours. For a marriage pageant war pointed to the grinning corpses in the breach and the clotted ruins. It was such a ceremony that might have appealed to a Stoic, or to a Marius brooding amid the ruins of Carthage.

Peril chastens the brave, and death is as wine to the heart of the saint. Even as the sky seems of purer crystal before a storm, so the soul pinions to a more luminous heroism when the mortal tragedy of life nears the "explicit." As the martyrs exulted in their spiritual triumph, or as Pico of Mirandola beheld transcendent visions on his bed of death, when the Golden Lilies of France waved into luckless Florence, so Flavian and Yeoland his wife took to their hearts a true bridal beauty.

When the door was closed on them that night, a mysterious cavern, a spiritual shrine of gold, came down as from heaven to cover their souls. They had no need of the subtleties of earth, of music and of colour, of flowers, or scent, or song. They were the world, the sky, the sea, the infinite. Imperishable atoms from the alembic of God, they fused soul with soul, became as one fair gem that wakes a thousand lustres in its sapphire unity. To such a festival bring no fauns and dryads, no lewd and supple goddess, no Orphean flute. Rather, let Christ hold forth His wounded hands, and let the wings of angels glimmer like snow over the alchemy of souls.

Flavian knelt beside the bed and prayed. He had the girl's hand in his, and her dark hair swept in masses over the pillow, framing her spiritual face as a dark cloud holds the moon. Her bed-gown was of the whitest lace and linen, like foam bounding the violet coverlet that swept to her bosom. The light from the single lamp burnt steadily in her great dark eyes.

Flavian lifted up his face from the coverlet and looked long at her.

"Dear heart, have no fear of me," he said.

She smiled wonderfully, and read all the fine philosophy of his soul.

"God be thanked, you are a good man."

"Ah, child, you are so wonderful that I dare not touch you; I have such grand awe in my heart that even your breath upon my face makes me bow down as though an angel touched my forehead."

"All good and great love is of heaven."

"Pure as the lilies in the courts of God. Every fragment of you is like to me as a pearl from the lips of angels; your flesh is of silver, your bosom as snow from Lebanon, girded with the gold of truth. Oh, second Adam, thanks be to thee for thy philosophy."

She put out her hands and touched his hair; their eyes were like sea and sky in summer, tranquil, tender, and unshadowed.

"I love you for this purity, ah, more and more than I can tell."

"True love is ever pure."

"And for me, such love as yours. Never to see the wolfish stare, the flushed forehead, and the loosened lip; never to feel the burning breath. God indeed be thanked for this."

"Have no fear of me."

"Ah, like a white gull into a blue sky, like water into a crystal bowl, I give myself into your arms."

XXXVI

A week had passed, and the Gambrevault trumpets blew the last rally; her drums rumbled on the battlements of the keep where the women and children had been gathered, a dumb, panic-ridden flock, huddled together like sheep in a pen. The great banner flapped above their heads with a solemn and sinuous benediction. The sun was spreading on the sea a golden track towards the west, and the shouts of the besiegers rose from the courts.

On the stairs and in the banqueting hall the last remnant of the garrison had gathered, half-starved men, silent and grim as death, game to the last finger. They handled their swords and waited, moving restlessly to and fro like caged leopards. They knew what was to come, and hungered to have it over and done with. It was the waiting that made them curse in undertones. A few were at prayer on the stone steps. Father Julian stood with his crucifix at the top of the stairway, and began to chant the "Miserere"; some few voices followed him.

In the inner court Colgran's men surged in their hundreds like an impatient sea. They had trampled down the garden, overthrown the urns and statues, pulped the flowers under their feet. On the outer walls archers marked every window of the keep. In the inner court cannoneers were training the gaping muzzle of a bombard against the gate. A sullen and perpetual clamour sounded round the grey walls, like the roar of breakers about a headland.

Flavian stood on the dais of the banqueting hall and listened to the voices of the mob without. Yeoland, in the harness Fulviac had given her, held at his side. The man's beaver was up, and he looked pale, but calm and resolute as a Greek god. That morning his own armour, blazoned with the Gambrevault arms, had disappeared from his bed-side, a suit of plain black harness left in its stead. No amount of interrogation, no command, had been able to wring a word from his knights or esquires. So he wore the black armour now perforce, and prepared to fight his last fight like a gentleman and a Christian.

Yeoland's hand rested in his, and they stood side by side like two children, looking into each other's eyes. There was no fear on the girl's face, nothing but a calm resolve to be worthy of the hour and of her love, that buoyed her like a martyr. The man's glances were very sad, and she knew well what was in his heart when he looked at her. They had taken their vows, vows that bound them not to survive each other.

"Are you afraid, little wife?"

"No, I am content."

"Strange that we should come to this. My heart grieves for you."

"Never grieve for me; I do not fear the unknown."

"We shall go out hand in hand."

"To the shore of that eternal sea; and I feel no wind, and hear no moaning of the bar."

"The stars are above us."

"Eternity."

"No mere glittering void."

"But the face of God."

A cannon thundered; a sudden, sullen roar followed, a din of clashing swords, the noise of men struggling in the toils.

"They have broken in."

Flavian's grasp tightened on her wrist; his face was rigid, his eyes stern.

"Be strong," he said.

"I am not afraid."

"The Virgin bless you."

The uproar increased below. The rebels were storming the stairway; they came up and up like a rising tide in the mazes of a cavern. A wave of struggling figures surged into the hall: men, cursing, stabbing, hewing, writhing on the floor, a tangle of humanity. Flavian's knights in the hall ranged themselves to hold the door.

It was then that Flavian saw his own state armour doing duty in the press, its blazonings marking out the wearer to the swords of Colgran's men. It was Godamar, Flavian's esquire, who had stolen his lord's harness, and now fought in it to decoy death, and perhaps save his master. The mute heroism of the deed drew Flavian from the dais.

"I would speak with Godamar," he said.

"Do not leave me."

"Ah! dear heart; when the last wave gathers I shall be at your side."

Yeoland, with her poniard bare in her hand, stood and watched the tragic despair of that last fight, the struggling press of figures at the door--the few holding for a while a mob at bay. Her eyes followed the man in the black harness; she saw him before the tossing thicket of pikes and partisans; she saw his sword dealing out death in that Gehenna of blasphemy and blood.

A crash of shattered glass came unheard in the uproar. Men had planted ladders against the wall, and broken in by the oriel; one after another they sprang down into the hall. The first crept round by the wainscotting, climbed the dais, seized Yeoland from behind, and held her fast.

As by instinct the poniard had been pointed at her own throat; the thing was twisted out of her hand, and tossed away along the floor. She struggled with the man in a kind of frenzy, but his brute strength was too stiff and stark for her. Even above the moil and din Flavian heard her cry to him, turned, sprang back, to be met by the men who had entered by the oriel. They hemmed him round and hewed at him, as he charged like a boar at bay. One, two were down. Swords rang on his harness. A fellow dodged in from behind and stabbed at him under the arm. Yeoland saw the black figure reel, recover itself, reel again, as a partisan crashed through his vizor. His sword clattered to the floor. So Colgran's men cut the Lord Flavian down in the sight of his young wife.

The scene appeared to transfer itself to an infinite distance; a mist came before the girl's eyes; the uproar seemed far, faint, and unreal. She tried to cry out, but no voice came; she strove to move, but her limbs seemed as stone. A sound like the surging of a sea sobbed in her ears, and she had a confused vision of men being hunted down and stabbed in the corners of the hall. A mob of wolf-like beings moved before her, cursing, cheering, brandishing smoking steel. She felt herself lifted from her feet, and carried breast-high in a man's arms. Then oblivion swept over her brain.