Love Among the Ruins Part 49

The gloom troubled him for a moment. Anon, he saw the rec.u.mbent 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 G.o.ds. 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 grat.i.tude 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 n.o.ble 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 grat.i.tude. When the King had gone, Modred returned to carry his lord heavenwards to the meadows. He found him p.r.o.ne 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, I swear it!"

"Modred!"

"Before G.o.d, 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 mult.i.tudinous 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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 n.o.bles 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 pa.s.sionate 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 cas.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 c.u.mbered 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 c.u.mbered by the trees. He made many a feint to tempt the n.o.bles 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 pa.s.sed, dull and l.u.s.treless. 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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d.

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.