Love Among the Ruins Part 41

"You are sad?"

"Fulviac has the whole kingdom at his back."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"G.o.d keep you!"

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

"No, you will come back to me."

"Give me your scarf."

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

"G.o.d keep you!"

So he kissed her lips and left her.

The rebel horde had rolled down in their thousands from the hills.

Flavian saw their black ma.s.ses moving from the woods, as he rode down from the great gate. It was evident to him that Fulviac would try and force the ford and win his way to the open meadows beyond. The river ran fast with a deep but narrow channel, and there was only one other ford some nine miles upstream. His own men were under arms in the meadows.

With his knights round him, Flavian rode down to the redoubt and trenches by the river-bank, packed as they already were with archers and men-at-arms. He was loudly cheered as he reined in and scanned the rebel columns moving over the downs.

Fulviac had ridden forward with a company of spears to reconnoitre. He saw the captured banner of The Maid hoisted derisively on Gambrevault keep; he saw the redoubt and the stockades covering the ford; the foot ma.s.sed in the meadows; Flavian's mounted men-at-arms drawn up under the castle walls. Sforza and several captains of note were with Fulviac.

The man was in a grim mood, a slashing t.i.tanic humour. The pa.s.sage of the river was to be forced, Flavian's men engaged in the meadows. He would drive them into Gambrevault before nightfall. Then they would cast their leaguer, bring up the siege train taken from Gilderoy, and batter at Gambrevault till they could storm the place.

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

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

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

The peril seemed past, when he was startled by the cry that the redoubt had been carried, and that Fulviac held the ford.

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

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

"Shall we charge them, sire?"

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

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

x.x.xII

The leaguer was drawn that night about the towers of Gambrevault, and the castle stood clasped betwixt the watch-fires and the sea. Fulviac's rebels, toiling from evening until dawn, banked and staked a rampart to close the headland. From the north alone could Gambrevault be approached, precipices plunging south, east, and west to front the sea.

Athwart the gra.s.sy isthmus Fulviac drew his works, running from cliff to cliff, brown earth-banks bristling with timber. Mortars, bombards, basilics, and great catapults had been brought from Gilderoy to batter the walls. Redoubts, covered by strong mantlets, were established in the meadows. Several small war galleys guarded the castle on the side of the sea.

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

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

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

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

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

"Their d.a.m.ned bombards are too heavy for us. We are dumb."

"Impossible!"

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

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

"And our bombards?" he asked.

"Are toppled off their trunnions."

"Ha!"

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

"And the walls?"

Modred grimaced and stroked his beard.

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

What goodlier fortune for a man than to lie bruised when Love bears to him the bowl of dreams! What softer balm than the touch of a woman's hand! What more subtle music than her voice! The girl Yeoland had betrayed a new wilfulness to the world, in that she now claimed as her guerdon the care of the man's heart. She was in and about his room, a shadow moving in the sunlight, a shaft of youth, supple and very tender.

Her eyes had a rarer l.u.s.tre, her face more of the dawn tint of the rose.

Love stirred within her soul like the sound of angels psaltering on the golden battlements of heaven.

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