Love Among the Ruins Part 28

A gauntlet of steel was dashed often into the white face. Hands clawed his collar, clutched his body. Dragged, jerked onwards, buffeted, beaten to his knees, he sank down before the Lord Flavian's chair, blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils, specking his white habit, drabbling the floor. Then only did the flashing, growling circle recede like waves from a fallen rock.

Modred, a black man, burly, a bigot to honour, stood out a giant before his fellows. His great sword quivered to the roof; his deep voice shook the rafters.

"Blood, sire, blood."

The man in the white habit quailed, and held up his hands.

"Let me smite him as he kneels."

"Sirs, give me the courtesy of silence."

Flavian started from his chair and looked at the man, who knelt, huddled into himself, at his feet. It was a scene replete with the grim cynicism of life. Here was a man of mind and genius, cowering, quivering before the strong wrath of a dozen muscular illiterates. Here was the promulgator of bold truths, an utter dastard when the physical part of him was threatened with dissolution. Not that this event was any proof against the moral power of pagan self-reliance. Not that there was any cause for the bleating of sanctimonious plat.i.tudes, or the pointing of a proverb. A true churchman might have carved a fine moral fable out of the reality. It would have been a fallacy. Fra Balthasar was a coward. He had none of the splendid mental anatomy of a Socrates.

He would have played the coward even under the eye of Christ.

Silence had fallen. Far away, choked by the long throats of gallery and stair, rose the wild, pa.s.sionate screaming of a woman. It had the rebellious, blasphemous agony of one flung into eternal fire. Without modulation, abatement, or increase, malevolent, impotent, ferocious, piteous, it pealed out in long, tempestuous bursts that swept into the ears like some unutterable discord out of h.e.l.l.

The kneeling man heard it, and seemed to contract, to shrink into himself. His white habit was rent to the middle; his ashy face splashed over with blood. He tottered and shook, his hands clasped over the nape of his neck, for fear of the sword. His tongue clave to his palate; his eyes were furtively fixed on the upreared yard of steel.

Torches and cressets flared. Servants stared and shouldered and gaped in the screens; all the castle underlings seemed to have smelt out the business like the rats they were. Modred's knights put them out with rough words and the flat of the sword. The doors were barred. Only Flavian, the priest, and Modred and his men took part in that tribunal in the hall of Avalon.

Flavian stood and gazed on Balthasar, the man of tones and colours. The Lord of Gambrevault was calm, unhurried, and dispa.s.sionate, yet not unpleased. The man's infinite abas.e.m.e.nt and terror seemed to arrest him like some superb precept from the lips of a philosopher. He had the air of a man who calculates, the look of a diplomat whose scheme has worked out well. From Balthasar he looked to Modred the Strong, the torchlight lurid on his armour, his great sword quivering like a falcon to leap down upon its prey. The distant screaming, somewhat fainter and less resolute, still throbbed in his ears. He thought of Dante, and the _bolgias_ of that superhuman singer.

Going close to the Dominican, he spoke to him in strong, yet not unpitying tones. Balthasar dared not look above the Lord Flavian's knees.

"Ha, my friend, where is all your fine philosophy?"

The man cringed like a beggar.

"Where are all your sonorous phrases, your pert blasphemies, your subtleties, your fine tinsel of intellect and vanity?"

Balthasar had no word.

"Where is your G.o.dliness, my friend, where your glowing and superhuman soul? Have we found you out, O Satanas; have we shocked your pagan heroism? Be a man. Stand up and face us. You could hold forth roundly on occasions. Even that Saul of Tarsus was not afraid of a sword."

Balthasar cowered, and hid his face behind his hands. He began to whimper, to rock to and fro, to sob. The grim men round him laughed, deep-chested, iron, scoffing laughter. Modred p.r.i.c.ked the priest's neck with the point of his sword. It was then that Balthasar fell forward upon his face, senseless from sheer terror.

Flavian abandoned philosophic irony, and addressed himself to Modred and his knights.

"Put up your swords, sirs; this man shall go free."

"Sire, sire!" came the ma.s.sed cry.

"Trust my discretion. The fellow has done me the greatest service of my life."

"Sire!"

"He has given me liberty. He has gnawed the shackles from my soul. You are all my witnesses in this, and may count upon my grat.i.tude. But this man here, he has danced to my whim like a doll plucked by a string. For my liberty has he sinned; out of Avalon shall he go scatheless."

The men still murmured. Modred shot home his sword into its scabbard with a vicious snap. Flavian read their humour.

"Do not imagine, gentlemen," he said, "that your vigilance and your loyalty to my honour can go unrewarded. Modred, your lands are heavily mortgaged, I free you at a word, with this my signet. To you, Bertrand, I give the Manor of Riesole to keep and hold for you and yours. To all you, good friends, I give a hundred golden angels, man and man. And now, sirs, as to madame, my wife."

They gathered round him in curious conclave, Balthasar lying in their midst.

"Sir Modred, you will order out my state litter, set the Lady Duessa therein, and have her borne with all courtesy to Gilderoy, to her father's house. Then you will take these gentlemen who are my true friends and witnesses, and you will ride to Lauretia, to make solemn declaration before Bishop Hilary. He has already received my earlier emba.s.sage. After this affair, we have no need of ethical subtleties and clerical conveniences. You will obtain a dispensation at his hands.

_Ex vinculo matrimonii_. Nothing less than that."

They bowed to him and his commands, like the loyal gentlemen they were.

Modred pointed to the prostrate Balthasar, who was already squirming back to consciousness, with his fingers feeling at his throat, as though to discover whether it was still sound or no.

"And this fellow, sire?"

"Pick him up."

Balthasar had found his tongue at last. He was jerked to his feet, and held up by force, with the handle of a poniard rammed into his mouth to stem his garrulity.

Flavian read him an extemporary lecture. There was something like a smile hovering about his lips.

"Go back to your missal, man, and forswear women. They are like strong wine, too much for your flimsy brain. I have more pity for you than censure. Say to yourself, when you patter your prayers, 'Flavian of Gambrevault saved me from the devil once.' And yet, my good saint, I have a shrewd notion that you will be just as great a fool two months hence."

The man gave a scream of delight, and attempted to throw himself at Flavian's feet. His superlative joy was almost ludicrous. Half a dozen hands dragged him back.

"Take him away--who cares for such grat.i.tude!"

As they marched him off, he broke like an imbecile into hysterical laughter. Tears streamed from his eyes. He mopped his face with the corner of his habit, laughed and snivelled, and sang s.n.a.t.c.hes of tavern ditties. So, with many a grim jest, they cuffed Fra Balthasar out of Avalon.

At the end of the drama, Flavian called for tapers, and marched in state to the chapel. He knelt before the altar and prayed to the Madonna, whose face was the face of the girl Yeoland.

XX

"Fulviac, I cannot fasten all these buckles."

The man waited at the door of her room, and looked at her with a half-roguish smile in his eyes.

She stood by the window in Gothic armour of a grandly simple type, no Maximilian flutings, no Damascening, the simple Gothic at its grandest, nothing more. Her breast-plate, with salient ridge, was blazoned over with golden fleur-de-lis. The pauldrons were slightly ridged; vam-brace and rere-brace were beautifully jointed with most quaint elbow-pieces.

She wore a great brayette, a short skirt of mail, but no ta.s.sets. In place of cuishes, jambs, and solerets, she had a kirtle of white cloth, and laced leather shoes. It was light work and superbly wrought; Fulviac had paid many crowns for it from an armourer at Geraint.

Her beauty, mailed and cased in steel, seemed to shine upon the man with a new glory. When he had played the armourer, she stood and looked at him with a most conscious modesty, a warm colour in her cheeks, eyes full of tremulous light, her ma.s.ses of dark hair rolling down over her blazoned cuira.s.s. A hand and a half sword in a gilded scabbard, a rich baldric, and a light ba.s.sinet lay on the oak table. Fulviac took the sword, and belted it to her, and slung the baldric over her shoulder.

His hands moved through her dark hair. For a moment, her eyes trembled up at him under their long lashes. He gave the helmet into her hands, but she did not wear it.

A sudden gust of youth seized the man, an old strain of chivalry woke in his heart. Grizzled and gaunt, he went on his knees in front of her and held up his hands as in prayer. There was a warm light in his eyes.

"The Mother Virgin keep you, little woman. May all peril be far from your heart, all trouble far from your soul. May my arm ever ward you, my sword guard your womanhood. All the saints watch over you; may the Spirit of G.o.d abide with you in my heart."

It was a true prayer, though Fulviac stumbled up from his knees, looking much like an awkward boy. He was blushing under his tanned skin, blushing, scarred and battered worldling that he was, for his heart still showed gold to the knife of Time. Yeoland thought more of him that moment than she had done these four months. A shadow pa.s.sed over her face, and she touched her forehead with her hand.