PART IV

XXXVII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fulviac, Fulviac!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Welcome to you, Lady of Gambrevault."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She shuddered and hid her face.

"Fulviac, have pity!"

"Pity?"

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

"A judgment?"

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

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

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

"Fulviac!"

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

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

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

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

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

"What have I to tell?" she asked.

"Nothing?"

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

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

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

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

"Fulviac----"

"Girl."

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

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

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

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

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

"Why do you say that?"

"There is truth in the suspicion."

"Ah, what is life to me!"

"We Christians still have need of you."

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

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

"Perhaps."

"I renounce this lying part."

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

"Ah, you are brutal."

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

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

XXXVIII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And all this butchery, this ruin?"

"Blame war for it."

"And brutal men."

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

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

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

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

"Can you not stay it even now?"

"Woman, can I stem the sea!"

"The blood of thousands dyes your hands."

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

"My God, keep silence!"

"Fulviac."

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

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

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

XXXIX

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

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

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

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

"Modred."

The voice was toneless, husky, and without spirit.

"Sire."

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

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

"There is new life in your voice."

"The King has come at last."

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

"The King!"

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

"Lie still, sire."

"Ah, this is life, once more."

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

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

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

Modred laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

Flavian twisted restlessly amid the heather.

"A grand sight, old friend."

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

"St. Philip, that is well."

"More ships?"

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

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

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

"Sire, say not so."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, man, what of our warden?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Courage, sire, courage."

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

"Sire, we shall win her back again."

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

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

"All life is a doubt."

"Before God, I swear it!"

"Modred!"

"Before God, I swear it!"

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

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

XL

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Whither do we ride?"

"I send you under escort to Gilderoy."

"And you?"

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

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

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

"You send me to Gilderoy?" she said.

"I have so determined it."

"And why?"

"Need you doubt my discretion?"

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

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

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

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

He turned his head and looked at her.

"Must I go then to Gilderoy?"

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

"And the King?" she asked him.

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

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

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

"Fulviac."

"Little sister."

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

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

"No, this cannot be."

"Ah!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fulviac."

"Little woman."

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

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

"Go, my child."

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

XLI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fulviac sneered, and shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

Fulviac, pessimist that he was, took to his heart that hour the lofty tranquillity of a Scandinavian hero. His courage was of that stout, sea-buffeting fibre that stiffened its beams against the tide of defeat. He set forth his shield, tossed up his sword, rode through the ranks with the spirit of a Roland. Life leapt the stronger in him at the challenge of the Black Raven of death. His captains could have sworn that he looked for victory in the moil, so bluff and strenuous was his mood that day.

Sforza came cringing to him, glib-lipped and haggard, to speak of a parley. Fulviac shook his shield in the man's white face, set his ruffians to dig trenches in the meadows, and to range the waggons as a barricade.

"Parley, forsooth," quoth he; "talk no more to me of parleys when I have twoscore thousand smiters at my back. Let Dick of the Iron Hand come down to us with the sword. Ha, sirs, are we stuffed with hay! We will rattle the royal bones and make them dance a fandango to the devil."

His spirit diffused itself through the ranks of the rough soldiery. They cheered wheresoever he went, kindling their courage like a torch, and tossed their pikes to him with strenuous insolence.

"My children," he would roar to them as he passed, "the day has come, we have drawn these skulkers to a tussle. See to it, sirs, let us maul these velvet gentlemen, these squires of the cushion. By the Lord, we will feast anon in Gilderoy, and rifle the King's baggage."

As for Richard of the Iron Hand, he was content to claim the arduous blessings of the day. He held his men in leash upon the hills, resting them and their horses after the marchings of the night. Wine was served out; clarions and sackbuts sounded through the ranks; the King made his nobles a rich feast in his pavilion pitched by Sir Morolt's banner. As the day drew on, he thrust strong outposts towards the meadows, ordered his troops to sleep through the long night under arms. Their watch-fires gemmed a lurid bow under the sky, with Tamar stringing it, a chord of silver. In the meadows the rebel masses lay a black pool of gloom under the stars.

Fulviac sat alone in his tent at midnight, his drawn sword across his knees. His captains had left him, some to watch, others to sleep on the grass in their armour, Sforza the Gonfaloniere to sneak in the dark to the King's lines. Silence covered the valley, save for the voices of the sentinels and the sound of the royal trumpets blowing the changes on the hills. Their watch-fires hung athwart the sky like a chain of flashing rubies.

Fulviac sat motionless as a statue, staring out into the night. Death, like a grey wraith, stood beside his chair; the unknown, a black and unsailed sea, stretched calm and imageless beneath his feet. Life and the ambition thereof tottered and crumbled like a quaking ruin. Love quenched her torch of gold. The man saw the stars above him, heard in the silence of thought a thousand worlds surging through the infinitudes of the heavens. What then was this mortal pillar of clay, that it should grudge its dust to the womb of the world?

And ambition? He thought of Yeoland and her wounded heart; of Gambrevault and Avalon; of La Belle Foret smoking amid its ruins. He had torched fame through the land, and painted his prowess in symbols of fire. Now that death challenged him on the strand of the unknown, should he, Fulviac, fear the unsailed sea!

His heart glowed in him with a transcendent insolence. Lifting his sword, he pressed the cold steel to his lips, brandished it in the faces of the stars. Then, with a laugh, he lay down upon a pile of straw and slept.

XLII

Dawn rolled out of the east, red and riotous, its crimson spears streaming towards the zenith. Over the far towers of Gilderoy swept a roseate and golden mist, over the pine-strewn heights, over Tamar silvering the valley. A wind piped hoarsely through the thickets, like a shrill prelude to the organ-throated roar of war.

The landscape shimmered in the broadening light, green tapestries arabesqued with gold. To the east, Sir Simon's multitudinous squadrons ran like rare terraces of flowers, dusted with the scintillant dew of steel. Westwards dwindled the long ranks of the Lauretians. On the heights, Morolt's shields flickered in the sun. About a hillock in the valley, the rebel host stood massed in a great circle, a whorl of helmets, bills, and pikes; Fulviac's red pavilion starred the centre like the red roof of a church rising above a town.

On the southern heights, Richard of Lauretia had watched the dawn rise behind the towers of Gilderoy. He was on horseback, in full panoply of war, his gorgeous harness and trappings dazzling the sun. Knights, nobles, trumpeters were round him, a splendid pool of chivalry, while east and west stretched the ranks of the grim and gigantic soldiery of the north.

Hard by the royal standard with its Sun of Gold, a corpse dangled from the branch of a great fir. It swayed slightly in the wind, black and sinister against the gilded curtain of the dawn. It was the body of Sforza the adventurer from the south, Gonfaloniere of Gilderoy, whom the King had hanged to grace his double treachery.

As the light increased, sweeping along the glittering frieze of war, Morolt of Gorm and Regis stood forward before the King. He was a lean man, tall and vigorous as a bow of steel, his black eyes darting fire under his thatch of close-cropped hair. The nobles had put him forward that morning as a man born to claim a boon upon the brink of battle. Fierce and virile, he bared his sword to the sun, and pointed with mailed hand to the rebel host in the valley.

"Sire, a boon for your loyal servants."

The King's face was as a mask of steel heated to white heat, ardent and pitiless. He had the spoilers of his kingdom under his heel, and was not the man to flinch at vengeance.

"Say on, Morolt, what would ye?"

"We are men, sire, and these wolves have slaughtered our kinsfolk."

"Am I held to be a lamb, sirs!"

A rough laugh eddied up. Morolt shook his sword.

"Give them into our hand, sire," he said; "there shall be no need of ropes and dungeons."

The iron men cheered him. Richard the King lifted up his baton; his strong voice swept far in the hush of the dawn.

"Sirs," he said to them, "take the Black Leopard of Imbrecour for your pattern, rend and slay, let none escape you. Every man of my host wears a white cross on his sword arm. Let that badge only stay your vengeance. As for these whelps of treason, they have butchered our children, shamed our women, clawed and torn at their King's throne. To-day who thinks of mercy! Go down, sirs, to the slaughter."

A roar of joy rose from those rough warriors; they tossed their swords, gripped hands and embraced, called on the saints to serve them. Strong passions were loose, steaming like the incense of sacked cities into heaven. There was much to avenge, much to expurgate. That day their swords were to drink blood; that day they were to crush and kill.

In the valley, Fulviac's huge coil of humanity lay sullen and silent, watching the spears upon the hills. Their russets and sables contrasted with the gorgeous colouring of the feudalists. The one shone like a garden; the other resembled a field lying fallow. The romance and pomp of war gathered to pour down upon the squalid realism of mob tyranny. Beauty and the beast, knight and scullion faced each other on the stage that morning.

Gallopers were riding east and west bearing the King's commands to Sire Julian, Duke of Layonne, who headed the Lauretians, and to Simon of Imbrecour upon the hills. The King would not tempt the moil that day, but left the sweat and thunder of it to his captains, content to play the Caesar on the southern heights. His commands had gone forth to the host. The first assault was to be made by twenty thousand northmen under Morolt, and a like force under Julian of Layonne. The whole crescent of steel was to contract upon the meadows, and consolidate its iron wall about Fulviac and his rebels. Simon of Imbrecour was to leash his chivalry from the first rush of the fight. His knights should ride in when the rebel ranks were broken.

An hour before noon, the royal trumpets blew the advance, and a great shout surged through the shimmering ranks.

"Advance, Black Leopard of Imbrecour."

"Advance, Golden Sun of Lauretia."

"Advance, Grey Wolf of the North."

With clarions and fifes playing, drums beating, banners blowing, the whole host closed its semilune of steel upon the dusky mass in the meadows. The northerners were chanting an old Norse ballad, a grim, ice-bound song of the sea and the shriek of the sword. Sir Simon's spears were rolling over the green slopes, their trumpets and bugles blowing merrily. From the west, the Lauretians were coming up with their pikes dancing in the sun. The thunder of the advance seemed to shake the hills.

Fulviac watched the feudalists from beneath his banner in the meadows. His captains were round him, grim men and silent, girding their spirits for the prick of battle.

"By St. Peter," said the man under the red flag, "these fireflies come on passably. A fair host and a splendid. If their courage suits their panoply, we shall have hot work to-day."

"Faith," quoth Colgran, who had returned from Gilderoy, "I would rather sweep a flower-garden than a muck-heap. We are good for twice their number, massed as we are like rocks upon a sea-shore."

"To your posts, sirs," were Fulviac's last words to them; "whether we fall or conquer, what matters it if we die like men!"

Billows of red, green, and blue, dusted with silver, Morolt and his Berserkers rolled to the charge. They had cast aside their pikes, and taken to shield and axe, such axes as had warred in the far past for the faith of Odin. Fulviac's rebels had massed their spears into a hedge of steel, and though Morolt's men came down at a run, the spear points stemmed the onrush like a wall.

Despite this avalanche of iron, the rebel ring stove off the tide of war. They were stout churls and hardy, these peasant plunderers; death admonished them; despair tightened their sinews and propped up their shields. The shimmering flood swirled on their spear points like tawny billows tossing round a rock. It lapped and eddied, rushed up in spray, seeking an inlet, yet finding none. The Lauretian feudatories had swarmed to the charge. Fulviac withstood them, and held their panoply at bay.

Richard the King watched the battle from the southern heights. He saw Morolt's men roll down, saw the fight seethe and glitter, swirl in a wild vortex round the rebel spears. The war wolves gathered, the tempest waxed, and still the black ring held. Like steel upon a granite rock the onslaughts sparked on it, but clove no breach. Under the late noon sun the valley reeked with dust and din. The royal host was as a dragon of gold, gnashing and writhing about an iron tower.

It was then that the King smote his thigh, plucked off his signet, sent it by Bertrand his herald to Sir Simon and his knights.

"Go down at the gallop," ran the royal bidding, "cleave me this rock, and splinter it to dust. Spare neither man nor horse. Cleave in or perish."

The black banner of Imbrecour flapped forth; the trumpets clamoured. Sir Simon's knights might well have graced Boiardo's page, and girded Albracca with their stalwart spears. They tightened girths, set shields for the charge, and rode down nobly to avenge or fall.

As a great ship sails to break a harbour boom, so did the squadrons of the King crash down with fewtred spears on Fulviac's host. They rode with the wind, leaping and thundering like an iron flood. No slackening was there, no wavering of this ponderous bolt. It rushed like a huge rock down a mountain's flank, smoking and hurtling on the wall of spears.

The corn was scythed and trodden under foot. Ranks rocked and broke like earth before a storm-scourged sea. The spears of Imbrecour flashed on, smote and sucked vengeance, cleaving a breach into the core of war. The knights slew, took scarlet for their colour, and made the moment murderous with steel. Into the breach the King's wolves followed them; Morolt's grim axemen stumbled in, rending and hurling the black mass to shreds. Battle became butchery. The day was won.

What boots it to chronicle the scene that travelled as a forest fire in the track of Sir Simon's chivalry? The iron hand of the King closed upon the wrecked victims in the valley. Knight and noble trampled the peasantry; rapine and lust were put to the sword. The Blatant Beast was slain by the spear of Romance. The boor and the demagogue were trodden as straw before the threshing-floor of vengeance. The fields were a shroud of scarlet; Tamar ran like wine; thorn and bramble were fruited red with blood. On the heights the tall pines waved over the splendid masque of death.

It was late in the day when Morolt and his hillsmen, with certain of Sir Simon's knights, forced their way through the wreckage of the fight, to the hillock where stood the banner of the Saint. South, east, and west the rout bubbled into the twilight, a riot of slaughter seething to the distant woods. About Yeoland's banner had gathered the last of the Forest brotherhood, grey wolves red to the throat with battle. Sullen and indomitable, they had gathered in a dusky knot of steel as the day sped into the kindling west. Even Morolt's fierce followers stood still, like hounds that had brought the boar to bay. Simon of Imbrecour spurred out before the spears, lifted a shattered sword, and called on Fulviac by name.

"Traitor, we challenge ye."

A burly figure in harness of a reddish hue towered up beneath the fringe of the banner of the Saint. He carried an axe slanted over his shoulder, as he stood half a head above the tallest of his men. As Sir Simon challenged him, he lifted his salade, and bared his face to the war dogs who hemmed him in.

"Black Leopard of the West, we meet again."

The Lord of Imbrecour peered at him keenly from under his vizor.

"Come, sirs, and end it," quoth the man in red, "buffet for buffet, and sword to sword. I fling ye a gauge to death and the devil. Come, sirs, let us end it; I bide my time."

Morolt sprang forward with sword aloft.

"Traitor and rebel, I have seen your face before."

Fulviac laughed, a brave burst of scorn. He tossed his axe to them, and spread his arms.

"Ha, Morolt, I have foined with ye of old. Saints and martyrs, have I avenged myself upon the lap-dogs of the court! Here will we fight our last battle. Bury me, sirs, as Fulk of Argentin, the King's brother, whom men thought dead these seven years."

A sudden silence hovered above that remnant of a beaten host. The red banner drooped, hung down about its staff. Morolt, uttering a strange cry, smote his bosom with his iron hand. Old Simon crossed himself, turned back and rode thence slowly from the field.

Morolt's voice, gruff and husky, sounded the charge. When he and his war dogs had made an end, they took Fulviac's head and bore it wrapped in Yeoland's banner to the King.

XLIII

Under the starry pall of night, the last cry of the clarion of tragedy sounded over wood and meadow. Gilderoy, proud city of the south, had closed her gates against the royal host, wise at the eleventh hour as to the measure of the King's mercy. The wreckage from the battle in the valley had washed on Tamar's bosom past the walls, corpses jostling each other in the stream of death. Vultures had hovered in the azure sky. There was no doom for Gilderoy save the doom of the sword.

The moon rose red amid a whorl of dusky clouds, veiled as with scarlet for the last orgies of war. Gilderoy had been carried by assault. Morolt's barbarians were pouring through the streets; the gates yawned towards the night; bells boomed and clashed. The townsfolk were scurrying like rats for the great square where the remnant of the garrison had barricaded the entries, gathering for a death-struggle under the umbrage of the cathedral towers.

Richard the King had ridden into Gilderoy by the northern gate with Sir Simon of Imbrecour and a strong guard of knights and men-at-arms. Fulviac's head danced on a spear beside the Golden Banner of Lauretia. The citadel had opened its gates to Sire Julian of Layonne. In the square before the ruined abbey of the Benedictines the King and his nobles gathered to await the judgment of the hour.

A great bell boomed through the night, a deep panting sound in the warm gloom. Torrents of steel clashed through the narrow streets, gleaming under the torch flare, bubbling towards the last rampart of revolt. From the cathedral square arose a wild, whimpering outcry, the wailing of women mingling with the hoarse clamour of the last assault.

Word was brought to the King by one of Morolt's esquires, that the townsfolk were holding the great square behind their barricades, and pouring a hot fire from the houses upon his troops. Morolt desired the King's ring and his commands before taking to the resource of the sword. Richard of the Iron Hand was in no mood for mercy. His decree went forth from before the gate of the ruined abbey.

"Consider no church as a sanctuary. Fire the houses about the square. Gilderoy shall burn."

The city's doom was sealed by those iron words. The torch took up the handiwork of the sword. A gradual glow began to rise above the house-tops; smoke billowed up, black and voluminous, dusted with a myriad ruddy stars. Flames rose from casement and from gable, from chimney, spirelet, roof, and tower. The houses were faced with wood, dry as tinder, crisp for the torch as a summer-bleached prairie. The flames ran like a red flood from roof to roof, with a roar as from huge reptiles battling in a burning pit. The great square, with the glittering pinnacles of its cathedral, was girded in with fire and sword.

Men were stabbing and hewing upon the barricades where Morolt's feudatories had stormed up from the gloom of the streets. Beneath the light of the burning houses, swords were tossed, the dead forgotten and trodden under foot. It was not long before the barriers were carried by assault and the avengers of Belle Foret poured pitiless into the great square.

The citizens of Gilderoy had packed their women and children into the sanctuary of the cathedral choir. They were penned there amid the gorgeous gildings of the place, a shivering flock swarming in the frescoed chapels, huddled beneath the painted figures of the saints. The glow of the burning city beat in through the jewelled glass, building the huge aisles in a glittering cavern windowed with living gems. Darkness and dawn struggled and fought under the thundering vaults. From without came the wild babel, the hoarse death-moan of a people.

In the great square the fight went on, a ruthless melee, strong and terrible. Gilderoy had slaughtered her noblesse. She made expiation for the deed that night with the heart's blood of her children. Vengeance and despair grappled and swayed in that great pit of death. The blazing streets walled in a red inferno, where passions ran like Satanic wine. Gilderoy, proud city of the south, quivered and expired beneath the iron gauntlet of the King.

Modred of Gambrevault moved through the press with Morolt of the North fighting at his side. They had a common quest that night, a common watchword, chastening the vengeance of their men.

"Seek the Saint. Save Yeoland of Gambrevault."

It was as a hoarse shout, feeble and futile amid the bluster of a storm. What hope was there for this pale-faced Madonna amid the burning wreck of Gilderoy? She was as a lily in a flaming forest. Modred sought for her with voice and sword, thinking of Flavian and the vow upon the cliff. Though the city lightened, black Modred's heart was steeped in gloom. Death and despair seemed armed against his hope.

On the eastern quarter a little court stood back from the great square. A fountain played in the centre, the water-jet, thrown from a mermaid's bosom, sparkling like a plume of gems. The walls of the court were streaked with flame, its casements tawny with yellow light. The breath of the place was as the breath of a furnace; a quaking crowd filled it, driven to bay by the swords shining in the square.

Modred was a tall man, a pine standing amid hollies. Staring into the murk of the court wreathed round with a garland of fire, he saw, above the heads of the crowd, a woman standing on the steps of the fountain, leaning against the brim of the basin. Her hair blew loose from under her open bassinet; her white face like a flower was turned mutely to the night. A cuirass glimmered under her cloud of hair. Modred, when he saw her, sent up a shout like that of a wrecked mariner sighting a sail over tumbling waves. He tossed his sword, charged forward into the court, began to buffet his way towards the figure by the fountain.

A knot of soldiery, taking his shout as a rallying cry, stormed after him into the court. There was a great crush in the entry, men tumbling in, and using their swords as poniards. The townsfolk were scattered like blown leaves towards the burning houses. In the hot turmoil of the moment the girl was swept from the fountain steps, and carried by a struggling bunch of figures towards a corner of the court. Modred lost sight of her for the moment, as he ploughed forward through the press.

Flames were rushing from casement and from roof; the breath of the place was as the breath of a burning desert. The Gilderoy rebels pent in the court were being put to the sword. Through the swirl of the struggle Yeoland's bassinet shone out again. Modred saw her standing alone, shading her face with her hands like some wild, desperate thing, knowing not whither to escape. He pushed on, calling her by name. Before he could reach her the gabled front of a house undermined by the fire lurched forward, tottered, and came down with a roar.

A blazing brand struck Modred on the helmet. He staggered, beheld a shower of sparks, felt a scorching wind upon his face. The stones were littered with crackling woodwork, glowing timber, reeking tiles. He was stunned for a moment as by the blow of a mace. Flames were leaping heavenwards from the houses, wiping out the mild faces of the stars with their ruthless hands.

With a great cry Modred had started forward like a charging bull. He dragged aside the smouldering wreckage of gable and roof, tore the rafters aside, nor heeded the heat, for his harness helped him. His great body quivered as he drew the girl out and lifted her from the stones. Her green kirtle was alight, and with the strong instinct of the moment he ran with her to the fountain and plunged her bodily in the broad basin.

Panting, he bore her across the great square in his arms. Yeoland was making a little moaning whimper, but for all else lay quiet as a half-dead bird. Modred dared not look into her face; the scent of her scorched hair beat up into his nostrils. He ground his teeth and cursed Fate as he ran. Was it for this that they had bulwarked Gambrevault?

XLIV

Autumn had cast her scarlet girdle about Avalon; the woods were aflame with the splendours of the dying year. The oaks stood pavilions of green and gold; the beeches domes of burnished bronze; from their silver stems, birches fountained forth showers of amber. It was a season of crystal skies, of cloud galleons, bulwarked with gold, sailing the wine-red west. Wild Autumn wandered in the ruined woods, her long hair streaking the gilded gloom, her voice elfin under the stars. Even as she passed, the crisp leaves swirled and fell, a pall for the dying year.

Avalon slumbered amid her lilies and the painted woods, gorgeous as rare tapestries, curtaining her meadows. Her mere laughed and glimmered amid the flags and lily leaves, and lapped at the lichened bases of her towers. Avalon had arisen from her desolation. No longer were her chambers void, her gates broken, her courts the haunt of death. The bat and the screech-owl had fled from her towers. She had lifted up her face to the dawn, like a mourner who turns from the grave to gaze again upon the golden face of joy.

Time with his scythe of silver rested on the hills. The black dragon of war had crawled sated to the labyrinths of the past; the red throne of ambition had been consumed by fire. Peace came forth with her white-faced choir, swinging their golden censers, shedding a purple perfume of hope over the blackened land. The death wolves had slunk to the wilds, the vultures had soared from the fields. A splendid calm had descended upon the land, a silence as of heaven after the hideous masque of war. The cloud-wrack and thunder had passed from the sky. Men heard again the voice of God.

Six weeks had gone since the sacking of Gilderoy, and dead Duessa's bower in Avalon had been garnished for a second mistress. A white rose lurked in a whorl of green. The oriel, with its re-jewelled glass, looked out upon the transient splendours of the woods. Tapestry clothed the walls, showing knights and maidens wandering through flowering meads. Rare furniture had been taken from the wrecked palaces of Gilderoy and given to the Lord Flavian by the King.

That autumntide Modred played seneschal in Avalon. He had cleansed and regarnished the castle by his lord's command, and garrisoned it with men taken from the King's own guard. Moreover, in Gilderoy he had found an old man groping miserlike amid the ruins, filthy and querulous. The pantaloon when challenged had confessed to the name of Aurelius, and the profession of Medicine by royal patent in that city. The townsfolk had spared his pompous neck for the sake of the benefits of his craft. From the fat, proud, prosperous worthy he had cringed into a wrinkled, flap-cheeked beggar. Him Modred had caught like a veritable pearl from the gutter, and brought with other household perquisites into Avalon.

In this rich refuge Aurelius awoke as from an unsavoury and penurious dream. He regained some of his plump, sage swagger, his rotund phraseology, his autocratic dogmatism in matters AEsculapian. The atmosphere of Avalon agreed with his gullet. Above all things, he was held to be a man of tact.

In dead Duessa's bower there still hung her mirror of steel, whose sheeny surface had often answered to her languorous eyes and moon-white face. Duessa's hair had glimmered before this good friend's flattery. Gems, necklet, broideries, and tiars had sunk deep into its magic memory. The mirror could have told truths and expounded philosophies, had there been some Merlin to conjure with the past.

Aurelius of Gilderoy played the necromancer under more rational auspices. He was a benignant soul, subtle, sympathetic to the brink of dotage. His professional hint was that dead Duessa's mirror should be exiled from the bower of Avalon. The oracle spoke with much beneficence as to the delusions of the sick, and the demoniac influence of melancholy upon the brain. Yet his wisdom was withstood in the very quarter where he had trusted to find obedience and understanding. Dead Duessa's mirror still hung in the Lady Yeoland's bower.

One calm evening, when the west stood a great arch of ruddy gold, a slim girl knelt in the oriel with her face buried in her hands. She was clad in a gown of peacock blue, fitting close to her slight figure, and girded about the hips with a girdle of green leather. Her black hair poured upon her shoulders, clouding her face, yet leaving bare the base of her white neck where it curved from her pearly shoulders. She drooped her head as she knelt before the casement, where the light entered to her, azure and green, vermilion and purple, silver and rose.

Anon she rose softly, turned towards the mirror hanging on the wall, gazed into its depths with a species of bewitched fear. One glance given, she turned away with a shudder, hid her face in her hands, walked the room in a mute frenzy of self-horror. Presently she knelt again before the window-seat, struggled in prayer, turning her face piteously to an open casement where the golden woods stood under the red wand of the west. The light waned a little. She rose up again from her knees, shook her hair forward so that it bathed her face, trod slowly towards the mirror, stared at herself therein.

The crystal bowl was broken, the ivory throne dishonoured! The blush of the rose had faded, the gleam of the opal fallen to dust. Youth and its sapphire shield had passed into the gloom of dreams. The stars and the moon were magical no more.

She wavered away from the window to a dark corner, hid her face in the arras. The same wild cry rang like a piteous requiem through her brain. The man lived and loved her, and she had come to this! Burning Gilderoy had stolen her beauty, made her a mockery of her very self. God, that Fate should compel her to lift her scars to the eyes of love!

In the gathering dusk, she went again to the mirror, peered therein, with strained eyes and a tremor of the lip. The twilight softened somewhat the bitterness of truth. She shook her hair forward, saw her eyes gleam, fingered her white throat, and smiled a little. Presently she lit a taper, held it with wavering hand, peered at the steel panel once again. She cried out, jerked away, and crushed the frail light under her foot.

Darkness increased, seeming to clothe her misery. She wandered through the room, twisting her black hair about her wrist, moaning and darting piteous glances into the gloom. Once she took a poniard from a table, fingered the point, pressed her hand over her heart, threw the knife away with a gesture of despair. On the morrow the man would come to her. What would she see in those grey eyes of his? Horror and loathing, ah God, not that!

Anon she grew calmer and less distressed, prayed awhile, lit a lamp, delved in an ambry built in the wall. That night her hands worked zealously, while the moon shimmered on the mere, setting silver wrinkles on its agate face. The woods were still and solemn as death, deep with the voiceless sympathy of the hour. Black lace hung upon Yeoland's hands; the sable thread ran through and through; her white fingers quivered in the light of the lamp.

Her few hours of sleep that night were wild and feverish, smitten through with piteous dreams. On the morrow she bound a black fillet about her brows, and let the dusky mask of lace fall over face and bosom. She prayed a long while before her crucifix, but she did not gaze again into dead Duessa's mirror.

That same evening Modred the seneschal blasphemed Aurelius in the garden of Avalon. The man of the sword was in no easy humour; his convictions emerged from his hairy mouth with a vigour that was not considerate.

"Dotard, you have no more wit than a pelican."

"My lord, I embrace truth."

"Damn truth; what eyes have you for a goodly close!"

Aurelius spread his hands with the air of a martyr.

"The physician, my lord," he said, "should ever deserve the confidence of his patron."

For retort, Modred shouldered him into the thick of a rose bush.

"Pedant," quoth he, "crab-apple, say a word on this matter, and I will drown you in the moat."

Aurelius gathered his robes and still ruffled it like an autocrat.

"Barbarity, sir, is the argument of fools."

"Bag of bones, rot in your wrinkled hide, keep your froth for sick children."

"Sir!"

"You have as much soul as a rat in a sewer. Come, list to me, breathe a word of this, and I'll starve you in our topmost turret. Leave truth alone, gaffer, with your rheumy, broken-kneed wisdom. You have no wit in these matters, no, not a crust. Blurt a word, and I pack you off to grovel in Gilderoy."

The man of physic shrugged his shoulders, seemed grieved and incredulous, prepared to wash his hands of the whole business.

"Have your way, my lord; you are too hot-blooded for me; I will meddle no further."

"Ha, Master Gallipot, you shall acknowledge anon that I have a soul."

XLV

Trumpets were blowing in Avalon of the Twelve Towers, echoing through the valley where the sun shone upon the woods, the sere leaves glittering like golden byzants as they fell. The sky was a clear canopy, drawn as blue silk from height to height, tenting the green meadows. Avalon's towers rose black and strong above the sheen of her quiet waters.

From Gambrevault came the Lord Flavian to claim his wife once more. Through the brief days of autumn Aurelius of Gilderoy had decreed him an exile from the Isle of Orchards, pleading for the girl's frail breath and her lily soul that might fade if set too soon in the noon of love. In Gambrevault the Lord Flavian had moped like a prisoned falcon, listening to the far cry of the war, hungry for the touch of a woman's hand. Modred had snatched the Madonna of the Pine Forest from burning Gilderoy. She had been throned at last above the tides of violence and wrong.

That day the Lord Flavian rode in state for Avalon, even as an Arthurian, prince coming with splendour from some high-souled quest. The woods had blazoned their banners for his march. Trumpets hailed him from the towers and battlements. The sun, like a great patriarch, smoothed his gold beard and beamed upon the world.

Over the bridge and beneath the gate, Modred led his master's horse. The garrison had gathered in the central court; they tossed their swords, and cheered for Gambrevault. Trumpets set the wild woods wailing. Bombards thundered from the towers.

In the court, amid the panoply of arms, Flavian dismounted, took Modred's hand, leant upon the great man's shoulder.

"Old friend, is she well?"

"Ah, sire, youth turns to youth."

"Let my minstrels play below the stair some old song of Tristan and Iseult. And now I go to her. Lead on."

In dead Duessa's bower a drooping figure knelt before a crucifix in prayer. Foreshadowings of misery and woe were stirring in the woman's heart. She had heard the bray of trumpets on the towers, the thunder of cannon, the shouts of strong men cheering in the court. She heard lute, viol, and flute strike up from afar a mournful melody sweet with an antique woe.

Time seemed to crawl like a wounded snake in the grass. The figures on the arras gestured and grimaced; the jewelled glass in the oriel burnt in through the dark lattice of her veil. She heard footsteps on the stairs; Modred's deep voice, joyous and strangely tender. A hand fumbled at the latch. Starting up, she ran towards the shadows, and hid her face in the folds of the arras.

The door had closed and all was silent.

"Yeoland."

The cry smote through her like joy barbed with bitterness. She shuddered and caught her breath, swayed as she stood with the arras hiding her face.

"Wife, wife."

With sudden strength, compelling herself, she peered round, and saw a figure standing in the shadow, a man with white face turned towards the light, his hands stretched out like a little child's. She stood motionless, breathing fast with short, convulsive breaths, her lips quivering beneath her veil.

"I am here," she said to him, husky, tremulous, and faint.

"Yeoland."

"Ah!"

"I hear your voice; come near to me."

She wavered forward three steps into the room, stood staring strangely at the figure by the door.

"Yeoland, are you near?"

"My God!"

"I give myself to you, a broken man. Ah, where are your hands?"

Sudden comprehension seized her; she went very near to him, gazing in his face.

"Speak."

"Wife, I shall never see the sky again, nor watch the stars at night, nor the moon, nor the sea. I shall never look on Avalon, her green woods and her lilies, and her sleeping mere. I shall never behold your face again. I am blind, I am blind."

She gave a great cry, tore the veil from her face, and cast it far from her.

"Husband, I come to you."

His hands were groping in the dark, groping like souls that sought the light. She went near him, weeping, caught his fingers, kissed them with her lips. The man's arms circled her; she hung therein, and buried her head in his bosom.

"My love, my own."

"I am blind; your hair bathes my face."

"Ah, you are blind, mine eyes are yours, and I your wife will be your sun. No more pain shall compass you; there shall be no more grieving, no more tears."

"Yeoland."

"Husband."

"God in heaven, I give Thee thanks for this."