Love Among the Ruins Part 36

XXVI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ah, you are always a woman."

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

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

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

"Yet be merciful."

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

"I know, I know."

"To purge a field, we burn the crop. To convert, we set swords leaping.

To cleanse, we let in the sea. To move the fabrics of custom and the past, a man must play the Hercules. G.o.d crushes great nations to insure the inevitable evolution of His will. To move the world, one must play the G.o.d."

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

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

Fulviac's plans had been matured but a week. His opening of the campaign was briefly as follows. He was bearing north-west towards Geraint, and Geraint was to rise that night, ma.s.sacre the King's garrison, and come out to him. Avalon lay in Fulviac's path. He was to smite a blow at it on his march, surprise the place if possible, and then hold on for Geraint. The same night, Gilderoy would rise; the castellan, who was with the townsfolk, would open the gates of the castle and deliver up all arms and the siege train that was kept there.

From Geraint, Fulviac trusted to ride on with a single troop to take command at Gilderoy, leaving Nord, Prosper, and the girl Yeoland in command at Geraint. With his numbers raised to some twenty thousand men, he would have his force divided into two bodies--ten thousand at Gilderoy, ten thousand at Geraint. These two bodies would sweep up by forced marches, converge on Gambrevault, crush the Lord Flavian's small armament, shut him up in his castle. a.s.sault or leaguer would do the rest. Meanwhile the peasantry would rise and flock in to the standard of the people.

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

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

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

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

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

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

XXVII

Gilderoy had risen.

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

Cressets had burst into flame on the castle's towers, lighting a lurid firmament; while from the steeps of the city, where stood the palaces of the n.o.bles, smoke and flame began to rush ominously into the night.

Waves of hoa.r.s.e ululations seemed to sweep the city from north, south, east, and west. Trumpets were clanging in the castle, drums beating, fifes braying. Through the indescribable chaos the great bell smote on, throbbing through the minutes like the heart of a G.o.d.

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

"Fulviac and the Commune!"

"Saint Yeoland!"

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

The man at the window heard these cries, and puzzled them out in his peril. Certainly he was a lord; therefore unpopular. And Yeoland!

Wherefore was that name sounding on the tongues of brothel-mongers and cooks! Was he still dreaming? Certes, these rallying-cries carried a certain blunt hint, advising him that he would have to care for his own skin.

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

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

"Save yourself, messire!"

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

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

"Nonsense----"

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

Flavian felt the lad's hands relax, saw his head droop on his shoulder.

He turned and put him down on the bed, and knelt there, while Malise panted and strove to speak.