Love Among the Ruins Part 45

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

"True love is ever pure."

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

"Have no fear of me."

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

x.x.xVI

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

On the stairs and in the banqueting hall the last remnant of the garrison had gathered, half-starved men, silent and grim as death, game to the last finger. They handled their swords and waited, moving restlessly to and fro like caged leopards. They knew what was to come, and hungered to have it over and done with. It was the waiting that made them curse in undertones. A few were at prayer on the stone steps.

Father Julian stood with his crucifix at the top of the stairway, and began to chant the "Miserere"; some few voices followed him.

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

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

Yeoland's hand rested in his, and they stood side by side like two children, looking into each other's eyes. There was no fear on the girl's face, nothing but a calm resolve to be worthy of the hour and of her love, that buoyed her like a martyr. The man's glances were very sad, and she knew well what was in his heart when he looked at her.

They had taken their vows, vows that bound them not to survive each other.

"Are you afraid, little wife?"

"No, I am content."

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

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

"We shall go out hand in hand."

"To the sh.o.r.e of that eternal sea; and I feel no wind, and hear no moaning of the bar."

"The stars are above us."

"Eternity."

"No mere glittering void."

"But the face of G.o.d."

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

"They have broken in."

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

"Be strong," he said.

"I am not afraid."

"The Virgin bless you."

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

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

"I would speak with G.o.damar," he said.

"Do not leave me."

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

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

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

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

So Colgran's men cut the Lord Flavian down in the sight of his young wife.

The scene appeared to transfer itself to an infinite distance; a mist came before the girl's eyes; the uproar seemed far, faint, and unreal.

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

PART IV

x.x.xVII

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 gla.s.s 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 n.o.bles of the western marches had joined him to a spear; many a l.u.s.ty 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 s.h.a.ggy 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, G.o.damar 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 d.y.k.e-ways of the fens, and had hemmed the rebels behind the wild mora.s.ses. As for the eastern folk, they were poor gizardless creatures; having faced about, they had declared for the King, and left G.o.damar 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.