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Uther and Igraine
by
Warwick Deeping
TO MAUDE MERRILL
WITH THE AUTHOR'S HOMAGE
[Arthuriana and The Camelot Project cooperated in the production of the text.]
[In the text, numbers in parentheses indicate the pagination of the 1906 Macmillan's Standard Library edition.]
BOOK I
THE WAY TO WINCHESTER
I
(3) BENEATH the dark cornices of a thicket of wind-stunted pines stood a small company of women looking out into the hastening night. The half light of evening lay over the scene, rolling wood and valley into a misty mass, while the horizon stood curbed by a belt of imminent clouds. In the western vault, a vast rent in the wall of grey gave out a blaze of transient gold that slanted like a spear-shaft to a sullen sea.
A wind cried restlessly amid the trees, gusty at intervals, but tuning its mood to a desolate and constant moan. There was an expression of despair on the face of the west. The woods were full of a vague woe, and of troubled breathing. The trees seemed to sway to one another, to fling strange words with a tossing of hair, and outstretched hands. The furze in the valley--swept and harrowed--undulated like a green lagoon.
The women upon the hill were garbed after the fashion of grey nuns. Their gowns stood out blankly against the ascetic trunks of the pines. They were huddled together in a group, like sheep under a thorn hedge when storms threaten. The dark ovals of their hoods were turned towards the south, where the white patch of a sail showed vaguely through the gathering grey.
Between the hill and the cliffs lay a valley, threaded by a meagre stream, that quavered through pastures. A mist hung there despite the wind. Folded by a circle of oaks rose the grey walls of an ecclesiastical building of no inconsiderable size, while the mournful clangour of a bell came up upon the wind, with a vague sound as of voices chanting. (4) Valley, stream, and abbey were rapidly melting into the indefinite background of the night.
Suddenly a snarling murmur seemed to swell the plaining of the bell. A dark mass that was moving through the meadows beneath like a herd of kine broke into a fringe of hurrying specks that dissolved into the shadows of the circle of oaks. The bell still continued to toll, while the women beneath the pines shivered and drew closer together as though for warmth and comfort. There was not one among them who had not grasped the full significance of the sinister sound that had come to them from the valley. A novice, taller than her sisters, stood forward from the group, as though eager to catch the first evidence of the deed that was to be done on that drear evening. She held up a hand to those behind her, in mute appeal to them to listen. The bell had ceased pulsing. In its stead sounded a faint eerie whimper, an occasional shrill cry that seemed to leap out of silence like a bubble from a pool where death has been.
The women were shaken from their strained vigilance as by a wind. The utter grey of the hour seemed to stifle them. Some were on their knees, praying and weeping; one had fainted, and lay huddled against the trunk of a pine. It was such a tragedy as was often played in those days of disruption and despair, for Rome--the decrepit Saturn of history--had fallen from empire to a tottering dotage. Her colonies--those Titans of the past--still quivered beneath the doom piled upon them by the Teuton. In Britain, the cry of a nation had gone out blindly into the night. Vortigern had perished in the flames of Genorium. Reculbuum, Rhutupiae, and Durovernum had fallen. The fair fields of Kent were open to the pirate; while, Aurelius, stout soldier-king, gathered spear and shield to remedy the need of Britain.
The women upon the hill were but the creatures of destiny. Realism had touched them with cynical finger. The barbarians had come shorewards that day in their ships, (5) and at the first breathing of the news the abbey dependants had fled, leaving nun and novice to the mercies of the moment. It had become a matter of flight or martyrdom. Certain fervent women had chosen to remain beside their abbess in the abbey chapel, to await with vesper chant and bell the coming of sword and saexe. Those more frail of spirit had fled with the novices from the valley, and now knelt numb with a tense terror on the brow of that wind-swept hill, watching fearfully for the abbey's doom. They could imagine what was passing in the shadowy chapel where they had so often worshipped. The face of the Madonna would be gazing placidly on death--and on more than death. It was all very swift--very terrible. Thenceforward cloister and garden were theirs no more.
A red gleam started suddenly from the black mass in the valley. The nuns gripped hands and watched, while the gleam became a glare that poured steadily above the dark outline of the oaks. A long flame leapt up like a red finger above the trees. The belfry of the chapel rose blackly from a circlet of fire, and gilded smoke rolled away nebulously into the night. The barbarians had set torch to the place. The abbey of Avangel went up in flame.
The tall novice who had been kneeling in advance of the main company rose to her feet, and turned to those who still watched and prayed under the pines. The girl's hood had fallen back; the hair that should have been primly coifed rolled down in billowy bronze upon her shoulders. There was infinite pride on the wistful face--a certain scorn for the frailer folk who wept and found sustenance in prayer. The girl's eyes shone largely even in the meagre light under the trees, and there was a straight courage about her, lips. She approached and spoke to the women who knelt and watched the burning abbey in a cataleptic stupor.
"Will you kneel all night? " she said.
The words were scourges in their purpose. Several of the nuns looked up from the flames in the valley.
"Shame on you, worldling!" said one of thin and thankless (6) visage; " down on your knees, brat, and pray for the dead."
The novice gave a curt, low laugh. The reproofs of a year rankled in her like bitter herbs.
"Let the dead bury their dead," quoth she. "I am for life and the living."
"Shame, shame!" came the ready response. "May the Mother of Mercy melt your proud heart, and punish you for your sins. You are bad to the core."
"Shame or no shame," said the girl, "my heart can grieve for death as well as thine, Sister Claudia; and now the abbey's burnt, you may couch here and scold till dawn if you will. You may scold the heathen when they come to butcher you all. I warrant they will give such a beauty short shrift."
The lean nun ventured no answer. She had been worsted before by this rebellious tongue, and had discovered expediency in silence. Several of the women had risen, and were thronging round the novice Igraine, querulous and fearful. Implicit faith, though pious and admirable in the extreme, neither pointed a path nor provided a lantern. Southwards lay the sea and the barbarians; the purlieus of Andredswold came down to touch the ocean. There was night in the sky; no refuge within miles, and wild folk enough in the world to make travelling sufficiently perilous. Moreover, the day's deed had harried the women's emotions into a condition of vibrating panic. The unknown seemed to hem them in, to smother as with a cloak. They were like children who fear to stir in the dark, and shrink from impalpable nothingness as though a strange hand waited to grip them to some spiritual torture. As it was, they were fluttering among the pines like birds who fear the falcon.
"It grows dark," said one.
"Let Claudia pray for us."
"Igraine, you are wiser in the world than we!"
"Truth," said the girl, "you may bide and snivel with Claudia if you will. I am for Anderida through the woods." (7)
"But the woods," said a child with wide, dark eyes, "the woods are fearful at night."
"They are kinder than the heathen," said Igraine, taking the girl's hand. "Come with me; I will mother you."
Even as she spoke the novice saw a point of fire disjoint itself from the dark circle of the oaks below. Another and another followed it, and began to jerk hither and thither in the meadows. The dashes of flame gradually took a northern trend, as though the torch-bearers were for ascending the long slope that idled up to the ragged thicket of pines. She turned without further vigil, and made the most of her tidings in an appeal to the women under the trees.
"Look yonder," she said, pointing into the valley. "Let Sister Claudia say whether she will wait till those torches come over the hill."
There was instant hubbub among the nuns. Cooped as they bad been within the mothering arms of the Church, peril found them utterly impotent when self-reliance and natural instinct were needed to shepherd them from danger. The night seemed to sweep like a wheel with the burning pyre in the meadows for axle. The torches were moving hither and thither in fantastic fashion, as though the men who bore them were doubling right and left in the dark, like hounds casting about for a scent. The sight was sinister, and stirred the women to renewed panic.
"Igraine, help us," came the cry.
Even tyranny is welcome in times of peril. Witless, resourceless, they gathered about her in a dumb stupor. Even Claudia lost her greed for martyrdom and became human. They were all eager enough for the forest now, and hungry for a leader. Igraine stood up among them like a tall figure of hope. Her eyes were on the cast, where a weird glow above the tree tops told her that the moon was rising.
"See," she said, "we shall have light upon our way. There is a bridle-path through the wold here that goes (8) north, and touches the road from Durovernum. I am going by that path, follow who will."
"We will follow Igraine," came the answer.
North, east, and west lay Andredswold, sinister as a sea at night. The hill, tangled with gorse and bracken, and sapped by burrows, dipped to it gradually like an outjutting of the land. To the east they could see a wide tangle of pines latticing the light of the moon. It was dark, and the ground more than dubious to the feet. The women, nine in all, herded close on Igraine, who walked like an Eastern shepherdess with the sheep following in her track. First came Claudia, who had held sway over the linen, with Malt, the stout cellaress, next Elaine and Lily, twin sisters, two nuns, and two novices. There was much stumbling, much clutching at one another in the dark; but, thanks to holy terror, their progress was in measure ungracefully speedy.
The girl Igraine led with a keen gleam in her eyes and a queer cheerfulness upon her face, as she stepped out blithely for the dark mass where the wold began. Her sojourn in the abbey had been brief and stormy, a curt attempt at discipline that had failed most nobly. One might as well have sought to hem in spring with winter as to curb desire that leapt towards greenness and the dawn like joy. She had ever thought more of a net for her hair than of her rosary. The little pool in the pleasaunce had served her as her mirror, casting back a full face set with amber shadowed eyes, and a bosom more attuned to passion than to dreams of quiet sanctity. She had been the wayward child of the abbey flock, flooded with homilies, surrendered to eternal penances, yet holding her own in a fair worldly fashion that left the good women of the place wholly to leeward.
Thrust out into the world again she took to the wild like a fox to the woodland, while her more tractable comrades were like caged doves baffled by unaccustomed freedom. Matins, complines, vespers were no more. Cold (9) stone arched no more to tomb her fancies. Above stretched the free dome of the sky; around, the wilderness free and untainted; in lieu of psalms she heard the gathering cry of the wind, and the great voice of the forest at night.
In due course they came to where a dark mass betokened the rampart thickets of the wold, rising like a wall across the sky. Igraine hoped for the track, and found it running like a white fillet about the brow of a wood. They followed till it thrust into the trees, a thin thread in the shadows. As they went, great oaks overreached them with sinuous limbs. The vault was fretted innumerably with the faint overdome of the sky. Now and again a solitary star glimmered through. To the women that place seemed like an interminable cavern, where grotto on grotto dwindled away into oblivious gloom. But for the track's narrow comfort, Igraine and her company would have been impotent indeed.
The prospect was sad for these folk who had lived for peace, and had tuned their lives to placid chants and the balm of prayer. In Britain Christ was worshipped and the Cross adored, yet abbeys were burnt, and children martyred, and strong towns given over to sack and fire. Truth seemed to taunt them with the apparent impotence of their creed. The abbess Gratia had often said that Britain, for its sloth and sin, deserved to meet the scourge of war, and here were her words exampled by her own stark death. The nuns talked of the state of the land, as they plodded on through the night. There was no soul among them that had not been grossly stirred by the fate that had overtaken Avangel, Gratia, and her more zealous nuns. It was but natural that a cry for vengeance should have gained voice in the hearts of these outcast women, and that a certain querulous bitterness should have found tongue against those in power.
Igraine, walking in the van, listened to their words, and laughed with some scorn in her heart.
"You are very wise, all of you," she said presently over (10) her shoulder. "You speak of war and disruption as though the whole kingdom were in the dust. True, Kent is lost, the heathen have burnt defenceless places on the coast, and have stormed a few towns. The abbey of Avangel is not all Britain. Have we not Aurelius and the great Uther? Our folk will gather head anon, and push these whelps into the sea."
"God grant it," said Claudia, with a smirk heavenward.
"We need a man," quoth Igraine.
"Perhaps you will find him, pert one."
"Peril will," said the girl; "there is no hero when there is no dragon or giant in need of the sword. Britain will find her knight ere long."
"Lud," said Malt, the cellaress, "I wish I could find my supper."
Thereat they all laughed, Igraine as heartily as any.
"Perhaps Claudia will pray for manna dew," she said.
"Scoffer!"
"It will be cranberries, and bread and water, till better seasons come. I have heard that there are wild grapes in the wold."
"Bread!" quoth Malt; "did some kind soul say bread?"
"I have a small loaf here under my habit."
"Ah, Igraine, girl, I would chant twenty psalms for a morsel of that loaf."
"Chant away, sister. Begin on the 'Attendite, popule.' I believe it is one of the longest."
" Don't trifle with a hungry wretch."
"The psalms, Malt, or not a crust."
"Keep it yourself, greedy hussy; I can go without."
"We will share it, all of us, presently," said the girl, "unless Malt wants to eat the whole."
They held on under the ban of night, following the track like Theseus did his thread. At times the path struck out into a patch of open ground, covered with scrub and bracken, or bristling thick with furze. Igraine had never seen such timid folk as these nuns from Avangel. If a stick cracked (11) they would start, huddle together, and vow they heard footsteps. They mistook an owl's hoot for a heathen cry, and a night-jar's creaking note made them swear they caught the chafe of steel. Once they suffered a most shrewd fright. They drove a herd of red deer from cover, and the rush and tumultuous sound of their galloping created a most holy panic among the women. It was some time before Igraine could get them on the march again.
As the night wore on they began to lag from sheer weariness. Two or three were feeble as sickly children, and the abbey life had done little for the body, though it had done much to deform the mind. Igraine had to turn tyrant in very earnest. She knew the women looked to her for courage and guidance, and that they would be hopeless without her stronger mind to lead them. She put this knowledge to effect, and held it like a lash over their weakly spirits.
Igraine found abundant scope for her ingenuity. When they voted a halt for rest, she vowed she would hold on alone and leave them. The threat made the whole company trail after her like sheep. When they grumbled, she told tales of the savagery and lust of the heathen, and made their fears ache more lustily than did their feet. By such devices she kept them to it for the greater portion of the night, knowing that the shrewdest kindness lay in seeming harshness, and that to humour them was but mistaken pity.
At last--heathen or no heathen--they would go no further. It was some hours before dawn. The trees had thinned, and through more open colonnades they looked out on what appeared to be a grass-grown valley sleeping peacefully under the moon. A great cedar grew near, a pyramid of gloom. Malt, the cellaress, grumbling and groaning, crept under its shadows, and commended Igraine to purgatorial fire. The rest, limp and spiritless, vowed they would rather die than take another step. Huddling together under the branches, they were soon half of them asleep in an ecstasy of weariness. Igraine, seeing further (12) effort useless, surrendered to the inevitable, and lay down herself to sleep under the tree.
II
DAY came with an essential stealth. The great trees stood without a rustling leaf, in a stupor of silence. A vast hush held as though the wold knelt at orisons. Soon ripple on ripple of light surged from the hymning east, and, the night was not.
The sleep of the women from Avangel had proved but brief and fitful, couched as they had been under so strange a roof. They were all awake under the cedar. Igraine, standing under its green ledges, listened to their monotonous talk as they rehearsed their plight dismally under the shade. The nun Claudia's voice was still raised weakly in pious fashion; she had learnt to ape saintliness all her life, and it was a mere habit with her. The cellaress's red face was in no measure placid; hunger had dissipated her patience like an ague, and she found comfort in grumbling. The younger women were less voluble, as age and custom behoved them to be. Unnaturally bred, they were like images of wax, capable only of receiving the impress of the minds about them. Such a woman as Malt owed her individuality solely to the superlative cravings of the flesh.
About them rose the slopes of a valley, set tier on tier with trees, nebulous, silent in the now hurrying light. Grassland, moist and spangled, lay dew-heavy in the lap of the valley, with the track curling drearily into a further tunnel of green.
Igraine, scanning the trees and the stretch of grassland, found on a sudden something to hold her gaze. On the southern side of the valley the walls of a building showed vaguely through the trees. It was so well screened that a transient glance would have passed over the line of foliage (13) without discovering the white glimmer of stone. She pointed it out to her companions, who were quickly up from under the cedar at the thought of the meal and the material comforts such a forest habitation might provide. They were soon deep in the tall grass, their habits wet to the knee with dew, as they held across the valley for the manor amid the trees.
The place gathered distinctness as they approached. Two horns of woodland jutted out--enclosing and holding it jealously from the track through the valley. There were outhouses packed away under the trees. A garden held it on the north. The building itself was modelled somewhat after the fashion of a Roman villa, with a porch--whitely pillared--leading from a terrace fringed with flowers.
The silence of the place impressed itself upon Igraine and the women as they drew near from the meadowlands. The manor seemed lifeless as the woods that circled it. There were no cattle--no servants to be seen, not even a hound to bay warning on the threshold. Passing over a small stone bridge, they went up an avenue of cypresses that led primly to the garden and the terrace. They halted at the steps leading to the portico. The garden, broken in places, and somewhat unkempt, glistened with colour in the early sun; terrace and portico were void and silent; the whole manor seemed utterly asleep.
The women halted by the stairway, and looked dubiously into one another's faces. There was something sinister about the place--a prophetic hush that seemed to stand with finger on lip and bid the curious forbear. After their march over the meadows, and considering the hungry plight they were in, it seemed more than unreasonable to turn away without a word. None the less, they all hesitated, beckoning each to her fellow to set foot first in this house of silence. Igraine, seeing their indecision, took the initiative as usual, and began to climb the steps that led to the portico. Claudia and the rest followed her in a body. (14)
Within the portico the carved doors were wide. The sun streamed down through a latticed roof into a peristylum, where flowers grew, and a pool shown silverly. There were statues at the angles; one had been thrown down, and lay half buried in a mass of flowers. The place looked wholly deserted, though, by the orderly mood of court and garden, it could not have been long since human hands had tended it.
The women gathered together about the little font in the centre of the peristylum, and debated together in low tones. They were still but half at ease with the place, and quite ready to suspect some sudden development. The house had a scent of tragedy about it that was far from comforting.
Said Malt, "I should judge, sisters, that the folk have fled, and that we are to be sustained by the hand of grace. Come and search."
Claudia demurred a moment.
"Is it lawful," quoth she, " to possess one's self of food and raiment in a strange and empty house?
"Nonsense," said the cellaress with a sniff.
"But, Malt, I never stole a crust in my life."
"Better learn the craft, then. King David stole the shewbread."
"It was given him of the priests."
"Tut, sister, then are we wiser than David; we can thieve with our own hands. I say this house is God-sent for our need. May I stifle if I err."
"Malt is right," said Igraine, laughing; "let us deprive the barbarians of a pie or a crucifix."
"Aye," chimed Malt, "want makes thieving honest. Jubilate Deo. I'm for the pantry."
A colonnade enclosed the peristylum on every quarter. Beneath the shadows cast by the architrave and roof, showed the portals of the various chambers. Igraine led the way. The first room that they essayed appeared to have been a sleeping apartment, for there were beds in it, the bedding (15) lying disordered and fallen upon the floor as though there had been a struggle, or a sudden wild flight. It was a woman's chamber, judging by its mirror of steel, and the articles that were scattered on floor and table. The next room proved to be a species of parlour or living-room. A meal had been spread upon the table, and left untouched. Platter and drinking cups were there, a dish of cakes, a joint on a great charger, bread, olives, fruit, and wine. Armour hung on the walls, with mirrors of steel, and paintings upon panels of wood.
The women made themselves speedily welcome after the trials of the night. Each was enticed by some special object, and character leaked out queerly in the choosing. Malt ran for a beaker of wine; the cakes were pilfered by the younger folk; Claudia--whispering of Saxon desecration--possessed herself with an obeisance of a little silver cross that hung upon the wall. Igraine took down a bow, a quiver of arrows, and a sheathed hunting knife; she slung the quiver over her shoulder, and strapped the knife to her girdle. The clear kiss of morning had sharpened the hunger of a night, and the meal spread in that woodland manor proved very comforting to the fugitives from Avangel.
Satisfied, they passed out to explore the rooms as yet unvisited. A fine curiosity led them, for they were like children who probe the dark places of a ruin. The eastern chambers gave no greater revealings than did those upon the west. The kitchen quarters were empty and soundless, though there was a joint upon the spit that hung over the ashes of a spent fire. It seemed more than likely that the inmates had fled in fear of the barbarians, leaving the house in the early hours of some previous dawn.
As yet they had not visited a room whose door opened upon the southern quarter of the peristyle. Judging by its portal, it promised to be a greater chamber than any of the preceding, probably the banqueting or guest room. The door stood ajar, giving view of a frescoed wall within. (16)
Malt, who had waxed jovial since her communion with the tankard, pushed the door open, and went frankly into the half light of a great chamber. She came to an abrupt halt on the threshold, with a fat hand quavering the symbol of a cross in the air. The women crowded the doorway, and looked in over the cellaress's stout shoulders.
In a gilded chair in the centre of the room sat the figure of a man. His hands were clenched upon the lion-headed arms of the siege, and his chin bowed down upon his breast. He was clad in purple; there were rings upon his fingers, and his brow was bound with a band of gold. At his feet crouched a great wolf-hound, motionless, dead.
The women in the doorway stared on the scene in silence. The man in the chair might have been thought asleep save for a certain stark look--a bleak immobility that contradicted the possibility of life. Here they had stumbled on tragedy with a vengeance. The mute face of death lurked in the shadows, and the vast mystery of life seemed about them like a cold vapour. It was a sudden change from sunlight into shade.
Igraine pushed past Malt, and ventured close to the crouching hound. Bending down, she looked into the dead man's face. It was pinched and grey, but young, none the less, and bearing even in death a certain sensuous haughtiness and dissolute beauty. The man had been dark, with hair turbulent and lustrous. In his bosom glinted the silver pommel of a knife, and there were stains upon cloak and tessellated pavement. Clasped in one hand was a small cross of gold that looked as though it had been plucked from a chain or necklet, and held gripped in the death agony. The wolf-hound had been thrust through the body with a sword.
"Hum," said Malt,with a sniff,--"Christian work here. And a comely fellow, too--more's the pity. Look at the rings on his fingers; I wonder whether I might take one for prayer money? It would buy candles." (17)
Igraine was still looking at the dead man with strange awe in her heart.
"Keep off," she said, thrusting off Malt; "the man has been stabbed."
"Well, haven't I eyes too, hussy? "
Claudia came in, white and quavering, with her crucifix up.
"Poor wretch!" said she; "can't we bury him?"
" Bury him!" cried Malt.
" Yes, sister."
Thanks, no. It would spoil my dinner."
Claudia gave a sudden scream, and jumped back, holding her skirts up.
"There's blood on the floor! Holy mother! did the dog move?"
"Move!" quoth Malt, giving the brute a kick; "what a mouse you are, Claudia."
"Are you sure the man's dead?"
"Dead, and cold," said Igraine, touching his check, and drawing away with a shiver. "Come away, the place makes my flesh creep. Shut the door, Malt. Let us leave him so."
The women from Avangel had seen enough of the manor in the forest. Certainly, it held nothing more perilous than a corpse, perched stiffly in a gilded chair; but the dead man seemed to exert a sinister influence upon the spirits of the company, and to stifle any desire for a further sojourn in the place. Folk with murder fresh upon their hands might still be within the purlieus of the valley. The women thought of the glooms of the forest, and of the strong walls of Anderida, and discovered a very lively desire to be free of Andredswold, and the threats of the unknown.
They left the man sitting in his chair, with the hound at his feet, and went to gather food for the day's journey. Bread they took, and meat, and bound them in a sheet, while Malt filled a flask with wine, and bestowed it at her girdle. Igraine still had her bow, shafts, and hunting knife. Before sallying, they remembered the dead. It was Igraine's (18) thought. They went and stood before the door of the great chamber, sang a hymn, and said a prayer. Then they left the place, and held on into the forest.
Nothing befell them on their way that morning. It was noon before they struck the road from Durovernum to Anderida, a straight and serious highway that went whitely amid wastes of scrub, thickets, and dark knolls of trees. The women were glad of its honest comfort, and blessed the Romans who had wrought the road of old. Later in the day they neared the sea again. Between masses of trees, and over the slopes, they caught glimpses of the blue plain that touched the sky. From a little hill that gave broader view, they saw the white sails of ships that were ploughing westward with a temperate wind. They took them for the galleys of the Saxons, and the thought hurried them on their way the more.
Presently they came to a mild declivity, with a broken toll-house standing by the roadside, and two horsemen on the watch there, as the distant galleys swept over the sea towards the west. The men belonged to the royal forces in Anderida. They were reticent in measure, and in no optimistic mood. They told how the heathen had swept the coast, how their ships had ventured even to Vectis, to burn, slay, and martyr. The women learnt that Andred's town was some ten miles distant. There was little likelihood, so the men said, of their getting within the walls that night, for the place was in dread of siege, and was shut up like a rock after dusk.
Igraine and the nuns elected, none the less, to hold upon their way. Despite their weariness, the women preferred to push on and gain ground, rather than to lag and lose courage. For all they knew, the Saxons might be soon ashore, ready to raid and slay in their very path. They left the soldiers at the toll-house, and went downhill into a long valley.
Possibly they had gone a mile or more when they heard the sound of galloping coming in their wake. On the slope of the hill they had left, they could see a distant wave of (19) dust curling down the road like smoke. The two men from Andred's town were coming on at a gallop. They were very soon within bowshot, but gave no hint of halting. Thundering on, they drew level with the women, shouted as they went by, and held on fast,--dust and spume flying.
"God's curse upon the cravens," said Malt, the cellaress.
Cravens they were in sense; yet the men had reason on their side, and the women were left staring at the diminishing fringe of dust. There was much frankness in the phenomenon, a curt hint that carried emphasis, and advised action. "To the woods," it said; "to the woods, good souls, and that quickly."
The road ran through the flats at that place, with marsh and meadowland on either hand. Further westward, the wold thrust forth a finger from the north to touch the highway. Southward, scrub and grassland swept away to the sea. It was when looking southwards that the nuns from Avangel discovered the stark truth of the soldier's warning. Against the skyline could be seen a number of jerking specks, moving fast over the open land, and holding north-west as though to touch the road. They were the figures of men riding.
The outjutting of woodland that rolled down to edge the highway was a quarter of a mile from where the women stood. A bleak line of roadway parted them from the mazy refuge of the wold. They started away at a run; Igraine and another novice dragging the nun Claudia between them. The display was neither Olympic nor graceful; it would have been ridiculous but for the stern need that inspired it. Igraine and her fellows made the best of the highway. In the west, the wold seemed to stretch an arm to them like a mother.
The heathen raiders were coming fast over the marshes. Igraine, dragging the panting Claudia by the hand, looked back and took measure of the chase. There were some score at the gallop three furlongs or more away, with others on foot, holding on to stirrups, running and leaping like (20) madmen. The girl caught their wild, burly look at that distance. They were hallooing one to another, tossing axe and spear--making a race of it, like huntsmen at full pelt. Possibly there was sport in hounding a company of women, with the chance of spoil and something more brutish to entice.
Igraine and her flock were struggling on for very life. Their feet seemed weighted with the shackles of an impotent fear, while every yard of the white road appeared three to them as they ran. How they anguished and prayed for the shadows of the wood. A frail nun, winded and lagging, began to scream like a hare when the hounds are hard on her haunches. Another minute, and the trees seemed to stride down to them with green-bosomed kindness. A wild scramble through a shallow dyke brought them to bracken and a tangled barrier about the hem of the wood. Then they were amid the sleek, solemn trunks of a beech wood, scurrying up a shadowed aisle with the dull thudding of the nearing gallop in their ears.
It was borne in upon Igraine's reason as she ran that the trees would barely save them from the purpose of pursuit. The women--limp, witless, dazed by danger--could hardly hold on fast enough to gain the deeper mazes of the place, and the sanctuary the wold could give. Unless the pursuit could be broken for a season, the whole company would fall to the net of the heathen, and only the Virgin knew what might befall them in that solitary place. Sacrifice flashed into the girl's vision--a sudden ecstasy of courage, like hot flame. These abbey folk had been none too gentle with her. None the less she would essay to save them.
She cast Claudia's hand aside, and turned away abruptly from the rest. They wavered, looking at her as though for guidance, too flurried for sane measures. Igraine waved them on, with a certain pride in her that seemed to chant the triumph song of death.
"What will you do, girl? Are you mad?" (21)
"Go!" was all she said. "Perhaps you will pray for me as for Gratia the abbess."
"They will kill you!"
"Better one than all."
They wavered, unwilling to be wholly selfish despite their fear and the sounding of pursuit. There shone a fine light on the girl's face as they beheld her--tyrannical even in heroism. Her look awed them and made them ashamed; yet they obeyed her, and like so many winging birds they fled away into the green shadows.
Igraine watched them a moment, saw the grey flicker of their gowns go amid the trees, and then turned to front her fortune. Pursing her lips into a queer smile, she took post behind a tree bole, and waited with an arrow fitted to her string. She heard a sluthering babel as the men reined in, with much shouting, on the forest's margin. They were very near now. Even as she peered round her tree trunk a figure on foot flashed into the grass ride, and came onat the trot. The bow snapped, the arrow streaked theshadows, and hummed cheerily into the man's thigh.Igraine had not hunted for nothing. A second fellow edged into view, and took the point in his shoulder. Igraine darted back some forty paces and waited for more.
In this fashion--slipping from tree to tree, and edging north-west--she held them for a furlong or more. The end came soon with an empty quiver. The wood seemed full of armed men; they were too speedy for her, too near to her for flight. She threw the empty quiver at her feet, with the bow athwart it, put a hand in the breast of her habit, and waited. It was not for long. A man ran out from behind a tree and came to a curt halt fronting her.
He was young, burly, with a great tangle of hair, and a yellow beard that bristled like a hound's collar. A naked sword was in his hand, a buckler strapped between his shoulders. He laughed when he saw the girl--the coarse laugh of a Teuton--and came some paces nearer to her, staring in her face. She was very rich and comely in a way (22) foreign to the fellow's fancy. There was that in his eyes that said as much. He laughed again, with a guttural oath, and stretched out a hand to grip the girl's shoulder.
An instant shimmer of steel, and Igraine had smitten him above the golden torque that ringed his throat. Life rushed out in a red fountain. He went back from her with a stagger, clutching at the place, and cursing. As the blood ebbed he dropped to his knees, and thence fell slantwise against a tree. He had found death in that stroke.
A hand closed on the girl's wrist. The knife that had been turned towards her own heart was smitten away and spurned to a distance. There were men all about her--ogrish folk, moustachioed, jerkined in skins, bare armed, bare legged. Igraine stood like a statue--impotent--frozen into a species of apathy. The bearded faces thronged her, gaped at her with a gross solemnity. She had no glance for them, but thought only of the man twitching in the death trance. The wood seemed full of gruff voices, of grotesque words mouthed through hair.
Then the barbaric circle rippled and parted. A rugged-faced old man with white hair and beard came forward slowly. There was a tense silence over the throng as the old man stood and looked at the figure at his feet. There were shadows on the earl's face, and his hands shook, for the smitten man was his son.
Out of silence grew clamour. Hands were raised, fingers pointed, a sword was poised tentatively above the girl's head. The wood seemed full of bearded and grotesque wrath, and the hollow aisles rang with the clash of sword on buckler. But age was not for sudden violence, though the blood of youth ebbed on the grass. The old man pointed to a tree, spoke briefly, quietly, and the rough warriors obeyed him.
They stripped Igraine, cast her clothes at her feet, and bound her to the trunk of the tree with their girdles. Then they took up the body of the dead man, and so departed into the forest. (23)
III
IT was well towards evening when the men disappeared into the wood, leaving the girl bound naked to the tree. The day was calm and tranquil, with the mood of June on the wind, and a benign sky above. Igraine's hair had fallen from its band, and now hung in bronze masses well-nigh to her knees, covering her as with a cloak. Her habit, shift, and sandals lay close beside her on the grass. The barbarians had robbed her of nothing, according to their old earl's wishes. She was simply bound there, and left unscathed.
When the men were gone, and she began to realise what had passed, she felt a flush spread from face to ankle, a glow of shame that was keen as fire. Her whole body seemed rosily flaked with blushes. The very trees had eyes, and the wind seemed to whisper mischief. There were none to see, none to wonder, and yet she felt like Eve in Eden when knowledge had smitten the pure flesh with gradual shame. Though the place was solitary as a dry planet, her aspen fancy peopled it with life. She could still see the heavy-jowled barbaric faces staring at her like the malign masks of a dream.
The west was already prophetic of night. There was the golden glow of the decline through the billowy foliage of the trees, and the shadows were very still and reverent, for the day was passing. A beam of gold slanted down upon Igraine's breast, and slowly died there amid her hair. The west flamed and faded, the cast grew blind. Soon the day was not.
Igraine watched the light faint above the trees, wondering in her heart what might befall her before another sun could set. She had tried her bonds, and had found them lacking sympathy in that they were staunch as strength could make them. She was cramped, too, and began to long for the hated habit that had trailed the galleries of Avangel, and had brought such scorn into her discontented heart. There (24) was no hope for it. She was pilloried there, bound body, wrist, and ankle. Philosophy alone remained to her, a poor enough cloak to the soul, still worse for things tangible.
Her plight gave her ample time for meditation. There were many chances open to her, and even in mere possibilities fate had her at a vantage. In the first place, she might starve, or other unsavoury folk find her, and her second state be worse than her first. Then there were wolves in the wold; or country people might find and release her, or even Claudia and the women might return and see how she had fared. There was little comfort in this last thought. She shrewdly guessed that the abbey folk would not stop till they happened on a stone wall, or the heathen took them. Lastly, the road was at no very great distance, and she might hear perchance if any one passed that way.
Presently the moon rose upon Andredswold with a stupendous splendour. The veil of night seemed dusted with silver as it swept from her tiar of stars. Innumerable glimmering eyes starred the foliage of the beeches. Vague lights streamed down and netted the shadows with mysterious magic. Here and there a tree trunk stood like a ghost, splashed with a phosphor tunic.
The wilderness was soundless, the billowy bastions of the trees unruffled by a breath. The hush seemed vast, irrefutable, supreme. Not a leaf sighed, not a wind wandered in its sleep. The great trees stood in a silver stupor, and dreamt of the moon. The solemn aisles were still as Thebes at midnight; the smooth boles of the beeches like ebony beneath canopies of jet.
The scene held Igraine in wonder. There was a mystery about a moonlit forest that never lessened for her. The vasty void of the night, untainted by a sound, seemed like eternity unfolded above her ken. She forgot her plight for the time, and took to dreaming, such dreams as the warm fancy of the young heart loves to remember. Perhaps beneath such a benediction she thought of a pavilion set amid water lilies, and a boy who had looked at her with boyish (25) eyes. Yet these were childish things. They lost substance before the chafing of the cords that bound her to the tree.
Presently she began to sing softly to herself for the cheating of monotony. She was growing cold and hungry, too, despite all the magic of the place, and the hours seemed to drag like a homily. Then with a gradual stealthiness the creeping fear of death and the unknown began to steal in and cramp even her buoyant courage. It was vain for her to put the peril from her, and to trust to day and the succour that she vowed in her heart must come. Dread smote into her more cynically than did the night air. What might be her end? To hang there parched, starved, delirious till life left her; to hang there still, a loathsome, livid thing, rotting like a cloak. To be torn and fed upon by birds. She knew the region was as solitary as death, and that the heathen had emptied it of the living. The picture grew upon her distraught imagination till she feared to look on it lest it should be the lurid truth.
It was about midnight, and she was beginning to quake with cold, when a sound stumbled suddenly out of silence, and set her listening. It dwindled and grew again, came nearer, became rhythmic, and ringing in the keen air. Igraine soon had no doubts as to its nature. It was the steady smite of hoofs on the high-road, the rhythm of a horse walking.
Now was her chance if she dared risk the character of the rider. Doubts flashed before her a moment, hovered, and then merged into decision. Better to risk the unknown, she thought, than tempt starvation tied to the tree. She made her choice and acted.
"Help, there! Help!"
The words went like silver through the woods. Igraine, listening hungrily, strained forward at her bonds to catch the answer that might come to her. The sound of hoofs ceased, and gave place to silence. Possibly the rider was in doubt as to the testimony of his own hearing. Igraine called again, and again waited. (26)
Stillness held. Then there was a stir, and a crackling as of trampled brushwood, followed by the snort of a horse and the thrill of steel. The sounds came nearer, with the deadened tramp of hoofs for an underchant. Igraine, full of hope and fear, of doubt and gratitude, kept calling for his guidance. Presently a cry came back to her in turn.
"By the holy cross, who are you that calls?"
"A woman," she cried in turn, "bound here by the heathen."
"Where?"
"Here, in a grass ride, tied to a tree."
The words that had come to her were very welcome, heralding, as they did, a friend, at least in race, and there was a manly depth in the voice, too, that gave her comfort. She saw a glimmer of steel in the shadows of the wood as man and horse drew into being from the darkness. Moon-light played fitfully upon them, weaving silver gleams amid a smoke of gloom, making a white mist about the man's great horse. A single ray burnt and blazed like a halo about the rider's casque, and his spear-point flickered like a star beneath the vaultings of the trees. He had halted, a solitary figure wrapped round with night, and rendered grand and wizard by the misty web of the moon.
The sight was pathetic enough, yet infinitely fair. Light streamed through, and fell full upon the tree where Igraine stood. The girl's limbs were white and luminous against the dark bosom of the beech, and her rich hair fell about her like mist. As for the strange rider, he could at least claim the inspiration accorded to a Christian. The servant of the Galilean has, like Constantine, a symbol in the sky, prophetic in all need, generous of all guidance. The Cross is a perpetual Delphi oracular on trivial matters as on the destinies of kingdoms. The man dismounted, knelt for a moment with sword held before him, and then rose and strode to the tree with shield held before his face.
Igraine was looking at the figure in armour, kindly, (27) redly, from amid the masses of her hair. The small noblenesses of his bearing towards her had won her trust with a flush of gratitude. The man saw only the white feet like marble amid the moss as he cut the thongs where they circled the tree. The bands fell, he saw the white feet flicker, a trail of hair waving under his shield. Then he turned on his heel without a word, and went to tether his horse.
The interlude was as considerate as courtesy had intended. Igraine darted for her habit with a rapturous sigh. When the man turned leisurely again, a tall girl met him, cloaked in grey, with her hair still hanging about her, and sandals on her feet.
"Mother Virgin, a nun!"
The words seemed sudden as an echo. Igraine bent her head to hide the half-abashed, half-smiling look upon her face. It had been thus at Avangel. Nun and novice had worn like habits, and there had been nothing to distinguish them save the final solemn vow. The man's notions were plainly celibate, and, with a sudden twinkling inspiration, she fancied they should bide so. It would make matters smoother for them both, she thought.
"My prayers are yours, daily, for this service," she said.
The man bent his head to her.
"I am thankful, madame," he answered, "that I should have been so good fortuned as to be able to befriend you. How came you by such evil hazard?"
"I was of Avangel," she said.
"You speak as of the past," quoth he, with a keen look.
"Avangel was burnt and sacked but yesterday," she said. "Many of the nuns were martyred; some few escaped. I was made captive here, and bound to this tree by the heathen."
Igraine could see the man's face darken even in the moonlight, as though pain and wrath held mute confederacy there. He crossed himself, and then stood (28) with both hands on the pommel of his sword, stately and statuesque.
"And the Lady Gratia?" he said.
"Dead, I fear."
A half-heard groan seemed to come from the man's helmet. He bent his head into the shadows and stood stiff and silent as though smitten into thought. Presently he seemed to remember himself, Igraine, and the occasion.
"And yourself, madame ? " he said, with a twinge of tenderness in his voice.
The girl blushed, and nearly stammered.
"I am unscathed," she hastened to say, "thanks to heaven. I am safe and whole as if I had spent the day in a convent cell. My name is Igraine, if you would know it. I fear I have told you heavy tidings."
The man turned his face to the sky like one who looks into other worlds.
"It is nothing," he said, gazing into the night; "nothing but what we must look for in these stark days. Our altars smoke, our blood is spilt, and yet we still pray. Yet may I be cursed, and cursed again, if I do not dye my sword for this."
There was a sudden bleak fierceness in his voice that betrayed his fibre and the strong thoughts that were stirring in his heart that moment. His face looked almost fanatical in the cold gloom, gaunt, heavy-jawed, lion-like. Igraine watched this thunder-cloud of thought and passion in silence, thinking she would meet the man in the wrack of life rather as friend than as foe. The brief mood seemed to pass, or at least to lose expression. Again, there was that in the kindness of his face that made the girl feel beneath the eye of a brother.
"You will ride with me?" he asked.
Igraine hesitated a moment.
"I was for Anderida," she said, "and it is only three leagues distant. Now that I am free I can go through the wold alone, for I am no child."
"An insult to my manhood," said the stranger.
"But the heathen are everywhere, and I should but cumber you."
"Madame, you talk like a fool."
There was a sheer sincerity about the speech that pleased Igraine. His spirit seemed to overtop hers, and to silence argument. Proud heart! yet without thought of debate she gave way in the most placid manner, and was content to be shepherded.
"I might walk at your stirrup," she said meekly.
The man seemed to ponder. He merely looked at her with dark, solemn eyes, showing a quiet disregard for her humility.
"Listen to me," he said, "you, a woman, must not attempt Anderida alone. The town will be beleaguered, or I am no prophet. To Anderida I cannot go, for I have folk at Winchester who wait my coming. If you can put trust in me, and will ride with me to Winchester, you will find harbour there."
She considered a moment.
"Winchester," she said, "yes, and most certainly I trust you.
The man stretched out a hand to her with a smile.
"God willing," he said, "I will bear you safe to the place. As for your frocks and vows, they must follow necessity, and pocket their pride. It will not damn you to ride before a man."
"I trow not," she said, with a little laugh that seemed to make the leaves quiver. So they took horse together, and rode out from the beech wood into the moonlight.
IV
WHEN they were clear of the solemn beeches, and saw the road white as white before them, Igraine began to tell the man of the doom of Avangel, and the great end made by (30) Gratia the abbess. The knight had folded his red cloak and spread it for her comfort. Her tale seemed very welcome to him despite its grievous humour, and he questioned her much concerning Gratia, her goodness and her charity. Now it had been well known in Avangel that Gratia had come of noble and excellent descent, and seeing that this stranger had been familiar with her in the past, Igraine guessed shrewdly that he himself was of some ancient and goodly stock. To tell the truth, she was very curious concerning him, and it was not long before she found a speech ready to her tongue likely to draw some confession from his lips.
"I have promised to pray for you," she said, "and pray for you I will, seeing that you have done me so great a blessing to-night. When I bow to the Virgin and the Saints, what name may I remember?"
The man did not look at her, for her face was in the shadow of her hood and his clear and white in the light of the moon.
"To some I am known as Sir Pelleas," he said.
"And to me?"
"As Sir Pelleas, if it please you, madame."
Igraine understood that she was to be pleased with the name, whether she liked it or not.
"Then for Sir Pelleas I will pray," she said, "and may my gratitude avail him."
There was silence for a space, broken by the rhythmic play of hoofs upon the road, and the dull jar of steel. Igraine was meditating further catechism, adapting her questions for the knowledge she wished for.
"You ride errant," she said presently.
"I ride alone, madame."
"The wold is a rude region set thick with perils."
"Very true," quoth the man.
"Perhaps you are a venturesome spirit."
"I believe that I am often as careful as death."
Igraine made her culminating suggestion. (31)
"Some high deed must have been in your heart," she said, "or probably you would not have risked so much."
The man Pelleas did not even look at her. She felt the bridle-arm that half held her tighten unconsciously, as though he were steeling himself against her curiosity.
"Madame," he said very gravely, "every man's business should be for his own heart, and I do not know that I have any need to share the right or wrong of mine with others. It is a grand thing to be able to keep one's own counsel. It is enough for you to know my name."
Igraine none the less was not a bit abashed.
"There is one thing I would hear," she said, "and that is how you came to know of the abbess Gratia."
For the moment the man looked black, and his lips were stern--
"You may know if you wish," he said.
"Well?"
"Madame, the Lady Gratia was my mother."
Igraine felt a flood of sudden shame burst redly into her heart. Gratia was the man's mother, and she had been plying him with questions, cruelly curious. She caught a short, shallow breath, and hung her head, shrinking like a prodigal.
"Set me down," she said. "I am not worthy to ride with you."
"Pardon me," quoth the man; "you did not think, not knowing I was in pain."
"Set me down," was all she said; "set me down--set me down."
The man Pelleas changed his tone.
"Madame," he said, with a sudden gentleness that made her desire to weep, "I have forgiven you. What, then, does it matter ?"
Igraine hung her head.
"I am altogether ashamed," she said.
She drew her hood well over her face, and took her (32) reproof to heart like a veritable penitent. Even religious solemnities make little change in the notorious weaknesses of woman. Igraine was angry, not only for having blundered clumsily against the man's sorrow, but also because of the somewhat graceless part she seemed to have played after the deliverance he had vouchsafed her. As yet her character seemed to have lost honour fast by mere brief contrast with the man's.
Pelleas meanwhile rode with eyes watching the wan stretch of road to the west. On either hand the woods rose up like nebulous hills bowelled by tunnelled mysteries of gloom. He had turned his horse to the grass beside the roadway, so that the tramp of hoofs should fall muffled on the air. Igraine, close against his steeled breast, with his bridle-arm about her, looked into his face from the shadows of her hood, and found much to initiate her liking.
If she loved strength, it was there. If she desired the grand reserve of silent vigour, it was there also. The deeply caverned eyes watching through the night seemed dark with a quiet destiny. The large, finely moulded face, gaunt and white in its meditative repose, seemed fit to front the ruins of a stricken land. It was the face of a man who had watched and striven, who had followed truth like a shadow, and had found the light of life in the heavens. There was bitterness there, pain, and the ghost of a sad desire that had pleaded with death. The face would have seemed morose, but for a certain something that made its shadows kind.
Instinctively, as she watched the mask of thought beneath the dark arch of his open casque, she felt that he had memories in his heart at that moment. His thoughts were not for her, however much she pitied him or longed to tell him of her shame and sympathy. Nothing could come into that sad session of remembrances, save the soul of the man and the memories of his mother. That he was grieving deeply Igraine knew well. His was a strong nature that brooded in silence, and felt the more; it must (33) be a terrible thing, she thought, to have the martyrdom of a mother haunting the heart like a fell dream at night.
Slipping from such a reverie, the turmoil and weariness of the past days returned to take their tribute. Despite the strangeness of the night, Igraine began to feel sleepy as a tired child. The magnetic calm of the man beside her seemed to lull to slumber, while the motion of the ride cradled her the more. The noise of hoofs, the dull clink of scabbard against spur or harness, grew faint and faint. The woods seemed to swim into a mist of silver. She saw, as in a dream, the strong face above her staring calmly into the night, the long spear poised heavenwards. Her head was on the man's shoulder. With scarcely a thought she was asleep.
It was then that Pelleas discovered the girl heavy in his arms, and looked down to find her sleeping, with hood fallen and a white face turned peacefully to his. Strangely enough, the sorrow that had taken him seemed to make his senses vibrate strongly to the more human things of life. The supple warmth of the girl's slim body crept up the sinews of his arm like a subtle flame. From her half-parted lips the sigh of her breathing came into his bosom. Over his harness clouded her hair, and her two hands bad fastened themselves upon his sword-belt with a restful trust.
The man bent his head and watched her in some awe. Her lips were like autumn fruit fed wistfully on moonlight. To Pelleas, woman was still wonderful, a creature to be touched with reverence and soft delight. The drab, the scold, and the harlot had failed to debase the ideals of a staunch spirit, and the fair flesh at his breast was as full of mystery as a woman could be.
He took his fill of gazing, feeling half ashamed of the deed, and half dreading lest Igraine should wake suddenly and look deeply into his eyes. He felt his flesh creep with magic when she stirred or sighed, or when the hands upon his belt twitched in their slumber. Pelleas had seen stark things of late, burnt hamlets, priests slaughtered and churches (34) in flames, children dead in the trampled places of the slain. He had ridden where smoke ebbed heavenwards, and blood clotted the green grass. Now this ride beneath the quiet eyes of night, with the bosomed silence of the woods around, and this lily plucked from death in his arms, seemed like a passage of calm after a page of tempest. Little wonder that he looked long into the girl's face, and thrilled to the soft sway of her bosom. He thanked God in his heart that he had plucked her blemishless from gradual death. It was even thus, he thought, that a good soldier should ride into Paradise bearing the soul of the woman he loved.
Igraine stirred little in her sleep. "Poor child," thought Pelleas, "she has suffered much, has feared death, and is weary. Let her sleep the night through if she can." So he drew the cloak gently about her, said his prayers in his heart and, holding as much as possible under the shadows of the trees, kept watch patiently on the track before him.
All that night Pelleas rode, thinking of his mother, with the girl sleeping in his arms. He saw the moon go down in the west, while the grey mist of the hour before dawn made the forest gaunt like an abode of the dead. He heard the birds wake in brake and thicket. He saw the red deer scamper, frightened into the glooms, and the rabbits scurrying amid the bracken. When the east mellowed he found himself in fair meadowlands lying locked in the depths of the wold, where flowers were thick as on some rich tapestry, and where the scent of dawn was as the incense of many temples. With a calm sorrow for the dead he rode on, threading the meadowland, till the girl woke and looked up into his face with a little sigh. Then he smiled at her half sadly, and wished her good-morning.
Igraine, wide-eyed, looked round in a daze.
"Day?" she said, "and meadows? It was moonlight when I fell asleep."
"It has dawned an hour or more."
"Then I have slept the night through? You must be tired to death, and stiff with holding me." (35)
"Not so," said Pelleas.
"I am sorry that I have been selfish," she said. "I was asleep before I could think. Have you ridden all night?"
"Of course," quoth he, with a smile, "and not a soul have I seen. I have been watching your face and the moon."
Igraine coloured slightly, and looked sideways at him from under her long lashes. Her sleep had chastened her, and she felt blithe as a bird, and ready to sing. Putting the man's scarlet cloak from her, she shook her hair from her shoulders, and sprang lightly from her seat to the grass.
"I will run at your side awhile," she said, "and so rest you. Perhaps you will halt presently, and sleep an hour or two under a tree. I can watch and keep guard with your sword."
Pelleas smiled down at her like the sun from behind a cloud.
"Not yet," he said; "a soldier needs no sleep for a week, and I feel lusty as Christopher. We will go awhile before breakfast, if it please you. There is a stream near where I can water my horse, and we can make a meal from such stuff as I have. When you are tired, tell me, and I will mount you here again."
She nodded at him gravely. Grass and flowers were well-nigh to her waist. Her gown shook showers of dew from the feathery hay. Foxgloves rose like purple rods amid the snow webs of the wild daisy. Tangled domes of dogrose and honeysuckle lined the white track, and there were countless harebells lying like a deep blue haze under the green shadows of the grass.
Presently they came to where red poppies grew thickly in the golden meads. Igraine ran in among them, and began to make a great posy, while Pelleas watched her as her grey gown went amid the green and red. In due course she came back to him holding her flowers in her bosom.
"Scarlet is your colour," she said, "and these are the flowers of sleep and of dreams for those that grieve. Hold them in the hollow of your shield for me." (36)
Pelleas obeyed her mutely. She began to sing a soft slumberous dirge while she walked beside the great black horse and plaited the flowers into its mane. The man watched her with a kind of wondering pain. The song seemed to wake echoes in him, like sea surges wake in the caverns of a cliff. He understood Igraine's grace to him, and was grateful in his heart.
"How long were you mewed in Avangel?" he said, presently.
"Long enough," quoth she, betwixt her singing, "to learn to love life."
"So I should judge," said Pelleas, curtly.
His tone disenchanted her. She threw the rest of the flowers aside, and walked quietly beside him, looking up with a frank seriousness into his face.
"I was placed there by my parents," she said, by way of explanation, "and against my will, for I had no hope in me to be a nun. But the times were wild, and my father--a solemn soul--thought for the best."
"But your novitiate. You had your choice."
"I had my choice," she answered vaguely. "Did ever a woman choose for the best? Avangel was no place for me."
Pelleas eyed her somewhat sadly from his higher vantage. "The nun's is a sorry life," he said, "when her thoughts fly over the convent walls."
A level kindness in the words seemed to loose her tongue like magic. Twelve long months had her sympathies been outraged, and her young desires crushed by the heel of a so-called godliness. Never had so kind a chance for the outpouring of her discontent come to her. Women love an honest grumble. In a moment all her bitterness found ready flight into the man's ears.
"I hated it!" she said, "I hated it! Avangel had no hold on me. What were vigils, penitences, and long prayers to a girl? They made us kneel on stone, and sleep on boards. The chapel bell seemed to ring every minute of the day; we had vile food, and no liberty. It was Saint This, Saint (37) That, from morning till night. We saw no men. We might never dress our hair; and, believe me, there were no mirrors. I had to go to a little pool in the garden to see my face."
"And they were so dull,--so dismal. No one ever laughed; no one ever told romances; all our legends were of pious things in petticoats. And what was the use of it all? Was any one ever a jot the better? I used to get into my cell and stamp. I felt like a corpse in a charnel-house, and the whole world seemed dead."
Pelleas scanned her half smilingly, half sadly.
"I am sorry for your heart," he said.
"Sorry! You needs must be when you are a soldier, with life in your ears like a clarion cry."
"Life is a sorry ballad, Sister Igraine, unless we remember the Cross."
"Ah, yes, I have all the saints in mind--dear souls; but then, Sir Pelleas, one cannot live on one's knees. I was made to laugh and twinkle, and if such is sin, then a sorry nun am I."
"You misunderstand me," said the man. "I would that a Christian held his course over the world, with a great cross set in the west to lead him. He can laugh and joy as he goes, sleep like the good, and take the fruits of life in his time. Yet ever above him should be the glory of the cross, to chasten, purge, and purify. There is no sin in living merrily if we live well, but to plot for pleasure is to lose it. Look at the sun; there is no need for us to be ever on our knees to him, yet we know well it would be a sorry world without his comfort."
"Ah," she said, with a little gesture. "I see you are too devout for me, despite my habit. Take me up again, Sir Pelleas, and I will ride with you, though I may not argue."
Pelleas halted his horse, and she was soon in the saddle before him, somewhat subdued and pensive in contrast to her former vivacity. The man believed her a nun, and she had a character to play. Well, when she wearied of it, (38) which would probably be soon, she could tell him and so end the matter. It was not long before they came to the ford across the stream Pelleas had spoken of. It was a green spot shut in by thorn trees, and here they made a halt as the knight had purposed.
Before the meal Pelleas knelt by the stream and prayed. Igraine, seeing him so devout, did likewise, though her eyes were more on the man than on heaven. Her thoughts never got above the clouds. When they were at their meal of meat and bread, with a horn of water from the stream, she talked yet further of her life at Avangel and the meagre blessing it had been to her. It was while she talked thus that she saw something about the man's person that fired her memory, and set her thinking of the journey of yesterday.
Pelleas was wearing, a gold chain that bore a cross hanging above the left breast, but with no cross over the right. Looking more keenly, Igraine saw a broken link still hanging from the right portion of the chain. Instinctively her thoughts fled back to the silent manor in the wood, and the dead man seated stiffly in the great carved chair.
Without duly weighing the possible gravity of her words, she began to tell Pelleas of the incident.
"Yesterday," she said, "I saw a strange thing as we fled through the wold. We came to a villa, and, seeking food there, found it deserted, save for a dead man seated in a chair, and stricken in the breast. The dead man had a small gold cross clutched in his fingers, and there was a dead hound at his feet."
The man gave her a keen look from the depths of his dark eyes, and then glanced at the broken chain.
"You see that I have lost a cross," he said.
Igraine nodded.
"Your reason can read the rest."
She nodded again.
"There is nothing like the truth."
Igraine stared at the man in some astonishment. He was cold as a frost, and there was no shadow of discomfort (39) on his strong face. Knowledge had come to her so sharply that she had no answer for him at the moment. Yet there stood a sublime certainty in her heart that this violent deed was deserving of absolute approval, so soon had her faith in him become like steel.
"The man deserved death," she said presently, with a curt and ingenuous confidence.
Pelleas eyed her curiously.
"How should you know?" he asked.
"I have faith in you," was all she said.
Pelleas smiled, despite the subject.
"No man deserved death better."
"And so you slew him."
He nodded without looking at her, and she could see still the embers of wrath in his eyes.
"I slew him in his own manor, finding him alone, and ready to justify himself with lies. Honour does not love such deeds; but what would you?--Britain is free of a viper."
"And you have blood on your hand."
He winced slightly, and glanced at his fingers as though she had not spoken in metaphor.
"All is blood in these days," he said.
"And what think you of such laws?" she ventured, with a supreme reaching after the requirements of her Order. "What of the Cross?"
"There was blood upon it."
"But the blood of self-sacrifice."
Her words moved him more than she had purposed. His dark face flushed, and light kindled in his eyes as though the basal tenets of his life had been called in question. He glowed like a man whose very creed is threatened. Igraine watched the fire rising in him with a secret pleasure,--the love of a woman for the hot courage of a man.
"Listen to me," he said strongly; "which think you is the worthier life: to dream in a stone cell mewed from the world like a weak weed in a cellar, or to go forth with a (40) red heart and a mellow honour; to strive and smite for the weak and the wounded; to right the wrong; to avenge the fatherless? Choose and declare."
"Choose," she said, with a shrill laugh and a kindling colour, "truth, and I will. Away with the rosary; give me the sword."
Like a wild echo to her human choice came the distant cry of a horn borne hollowly over the sleeping meadows. Both heard it and started. The great war-horse, grazing near by, tossed his head, snorted, and stood listening with ears twitching and head to the east. Pelleas rose up and scanned the road from under his hand, with the girl Igraine beside him.
"A Saxon horn," he said laconically; "the heathen are in the woods."
V
As they watched, looking down betwixt two thorn trees, a faint puff of dust rose on the road far to the east, and hung like a diminutive cloud over the meadows. This danger signal counselled the pair. Pelleas caught his horse and sprang to selle; Igraine clambered by his stirrup, and was lifted to her seat before him. Pelleas slung his shield forward, and loosened his sword.
"If it comes to battle," he said, "I will set you down, and you must hide in the meadows or woods, while I fight. You would but cumber me, and be in great peril here. Rest assured, though, that I shall not desert you while I live."
With that he turned his horse to the road, and halted, gazing down amid the placid fields to where the little cloud of dust had hinted at life. It was there still, only larger, and sounded on by the distant triple canter of horses at the gallop. Pelleas and Igraine could see three mounted figures coming up the road amid a white haze, moving fast, as (41) though pressed by some as yet unseen enemy. It was soon evident to Pelleas and the girl that one of the fugitives was a woman.
"We will abide them," said the man, "and learn their peril. We shall be stronger too, for company, and may succour one another if it comes to smiting. Look! yonder comes the heathen pack."
A second and larger cloud of dust had appeared, a mile or less beyond the first. Pelleas watched it awhile, and then turned and began riding at a trot towards the west, so that the three fugitives should overtake him. He bade Igraine keep watch over his shoulder while he scanned the meadows before them for sign of peril or of friendly harbour.
"Have no fear, child," he said; "I could vow, by these fields, that there is a manor near. I trust confidently that we shall find refuge."
Igraine smiled at him.
"I am no coward," she said.
"That is well spoken."
"I would, though, that you would give me your dagger, so that, if things come to an evil pass, I shall know how to quit myself."
"My dagger! " he said, with a sudden stare. "I left it in the man's heart in Andredswold."
"Ah!" said Igraine; "then I must do without."
The dull thunder of the nearing gallop came up to them--a stirring sound, full of terse life and eager hazard. Pelleas spurred to a canter, while Igraine's hair blew about his face and helmet as they began to meet the kiss of the wind. She clung fast to him with both hands, and told what was passing on the road in their rear.
"How they ride," she said; "a tangle of dust and whirling hoofs. There is a lady in blue on a white horse, with an armed man on either flank. They are very near now. I can see the heathen far away over the meadows. They are galloping, too, in a smoke of dust. Our folk will be with us soon." (42)
In a minute the lady and her men were hurtling close in Pelleas's wake. He spurred to a gallop in turn, and bade Igraine wave them on to his side. The three were soon with them, stride for stride. The girl on the white horse drew up on Pelleas's right flank. She was habited in blue and silver--a flaxen-haired damosel, with the round face of a child. Seemingly she was possessed of little hardihood, for her mouth was a red streak in a waste of white, and her blue eyes so full of fear that Igraine pitied her. She cried shrilly to Pelleas, her voice rising above the din like the cry of a frightened bird.
"The heathen!" she cried.
"Many?" shouted the man.
"Two score or more. There is a strong manor near. If we gain it we may live."
"How far?"
"Not a mile over the meadows."
"Lead on," said Pelleas; "we will follow as we may."
The damosel on the white horse turned from the road, and headed southwards over the meadows, with her men galloping beside her. The long grass swayed, water-like before them, its summer seed flying like a mist of dew. Wood and pasture slid back on either hand. The ground seemed to rise and fall before them as a sea, while rocks here and there thrust up bluff noses in the grass like great lizards stirred by the hurtling thunder of the gallop.
On they went, with white spume on breast and bridle; leaping, swerving where rough ground showed. To Igraine the ride was life indeed, bringing back many a whistling gallop from the past. She felt her heart in her leaping to the horse's stride. Now and again she took a sly look at Pelleas's face, finding it calm and vigilant--the face of a man whose thought ran a silent course unruffled by the breeze of peril. She felt his bridle-arm staunchly about her like a girdle of steel. Although she could see the dust gathering thickly on the distant road, she felt blithe as a (43) new bride in the man's company, and there was no fear at all in her thought.
The grassland began to slope gradually towards the south. A quavering screech of joy came back to them from the woman riding in the van. Pelleas spoke his first word during the gallop.
"Courage," he said. "Southwards lies our refuge."
Igraine looked over his shoulder, and saw how their flight tended down the flank of a gentle hill into the lap of a fair valley. The grass stretch was broken by great trees--oaks, beeches, and huge, corniced cedars. Down in the green hollow below them a mere shone with the soul of the sky steeped in its quiet waters. It was ringed with trailing willows, and an island held its centre, piled with green shadows and the grey shape of a fair manor. The place looked as peaceful as sleep in the eye of the morning.
The woman on the white horse bade one of her men take his bugle-horn and blow a summons thereon to rouse the folk upon the island. Twice the summons sounded down over the water, but there was no answering stir to be marked about the house or garden. The place was smokeless, lifeless, silent. Like many another home, its hearths were cold for fear of the barbarian sword.
As they held downhill, Igraine wove the matter through her thought like swift silk through a shuttle.
"Should there be no boat," she said, giving voice to her misgivings, "what can you do for us?"
"We must swim for it," said Pelleas, keenly.
"It is a broad, fair water, and the horse cannot bear us both."
"He shall, if needs be."
She felt that the brute would, after Pelleas had spoken so. She patted the arched black neck, and smiled at the sky as they came down to the mere's edge at a canter. The water was lapping softly at the sedges amid a blaze of marsh marigolds and purple flags, the surface gleaming (44) like glass in the sun. Half a score water-hens went winging from the reeds, and skimming low and fast towards the island. A heron rose from the shallows, and laboured heavenwards with legs trailing.
Riding round the margin, they found to their joy a barge grounded in a little bay, with sweeps ready upon the thwarts, and a horse-board fitted at the prow. A purple cloak hung over one bulwark, trailing in the water; a small crucifix and a few trinkets were scattered on the poop, as though those who had used the ferry last had fled in fear, forgetful of everything save flight.
Then came the embarkation. The barge would but hold three horses at one voyage, so Pelleas ordered Igraine and the rest into the boat, and bade the men row over and return. Igraine demurred a moment.
"Leave your horse," she said; "they may come before the boat can take you."
Pelleas refused her with a smile, running his fingers through the brute's black mane.
"I have a truer heart than that," he said.
The men launched away, and pulled at the sweeps with a will, Igraine helping, and doing her devoir for the man Pelleas's sake. The barge slid away, with ripples playing from the prow, and a gush of foam leaping from each smile of the blades. It was a hundred yards or more to the island, and the craft, was ponderous enough to make the crossing slow.
Pelleas sat still and watched the meadows. Suddenly--bleakly--a figure on horseback topped the low hill on the north, and held motionless on the summit, scanning the valley. A second joined the first. Pelleas caught a shout, muffled by the wind, as the two plunged down at full gallop for the mere, sleeping in its bed of green. Here were two gentlemen who had outstripped their fellows, and were as keen as could be to catch Pelleas before the barge could recross, and set the mere betwixt them. Pelleas saw his hazard in a moment. Even if the barge came before the (45) heathen, there would be some peril of its capture in the shallows.
He would have to fight for it unless he cared to swim the mere. Provided be could deal with these two outriders before the main company came up, well and good, the raiders would find clear water between the quarry and their swords. He thought of Avangel, and grew iron of heart. Then there was the nun, Igraine, with the wonderful eyes, and hair warm as the dun woods in autumn. He was her sworn knight as far as Winchester. God helping him, he thought, he would yet see her face again. So he rode out grimly to get fair field for horsecraft, and waited for the two who swept the meadows.
Igraine, standing on the wooden stage at the water's edge, saw Pelleas taking ground and preparing for a tussle. The barge had put off again and had already half spanned the water. She was alone with the woman of the white horse who stood beside her still quaking like a reed, and almost voiceless from the fulsome terror of an unshrived death. Igraine had no heed for her at the moment. Her whole thought lurked with the red shield and the black horse in the meadows. Worldly heart! her desire burnt redly in her own bosom, and found no flutter for the powers above.
She saw Pelleas gathering for the course, while the heathen slackened so as not to override their mark. A crescent of steel flashed as the foremost man launched his axe at the knight's head. The red shield caught and turned it. In a trice Pelleas's spear had picked the rogue from the saddle, despite his crouching low and seeking to shun it. The second fellow came in like a whirlwind. His horse caught the black destrier cross counter and rolled him down like a rammed wall. Pelleas avoided, and was up with bleak sword. Smiting low, he caught the man's thigh, and broke the bone like a lath. The Saxon lost his seat, and came down with a snarling yell. The rest was easy as beating down a maimed wolf. (46)
The main company had just topped the hill. Pelleas, with the skirmish ended to his credit, shook his sword at them, and led his horse into the shallows. The barge swept in, took its burden from the bank, and held back for the island, where Igraine stood watching on the stage, ready with her welcome. She was glad of Pelleas in her heart, as though the comradeship of half a day had given her the right to share his honour, and to chime her joy with his. The woman in her swamped the assumed sanctity of the nun. As the water stretch lessened between them, Pelleas, silent and dark-browed as was his wont, found himself beneath the beck of eyes that gazed like the half-born wonder of the sky at dawn. It was neither joy nor great light in them, but a kind of quiet musing, as though there were strange new music in her soul.
"Are you hurt?" she asked, as he sprang from the barge and stood beside her, with head thrown back and his great shoulders squared.
"Not a graze."
"Two to one, and a fair field," quoth she, with a quaver of triumph; "my heart sang when those men went down. That was a great spear thrust."
"Less and less of the rosary!"
She caught his deep smile, and laughed.
"I am a greater heathen than either," she said. "God rest their souls."
Meanwhile the lady in the blue tunic had somewhat recovered her squandered wits and courage. She came forward with a simpering dignity, walking daintily, with her gown gathered in her right hand, and her left laid over her heart. Her eyes were very big and blue, their brightness giving her an eager, sanguine look that was upheld the more by an assumed simpleness of manner. Her childish bearing, winsomely studied, exercised its subtleties with a lavish embellishment of smiles and blushes. Looked at more closely, and in repose, her face belied in measure the perspicuous personality she had adopted. A sensual bold-(47)ness lurked in mouth and nostrils, and there was more carnal wisdom there than a pretended child should possess.
"Courtesy fails me, sir," she said, letting her shoulders fall into a graceful stoop, and turning her large eyes to Pelleas's face; "courtesy fails me when I would most praise you for your knightly deed in yonder meadows. I am so frightened that I cannot speak as I would. My heart is quite tired with its fear and flutter. Think you--you can save us from these wolves?"
Pelleas had neither the desire nor the leisure to stand juggling courtesies with the woman.
"Madame," he said, "we shall fight. Leave the rest to Providence. I can give you no better comfort."
"No," she said, "no"--as in a daze.
Pelleas, reading her misery, repented somewhat of his abrupt truthfulness.
"Come," he said, with a kind strength and a hand on her shoulder; "go to the house and rest there with Sister Igraine. I see you are too much shaken. Go in and pray if you can, while we hold the island."
The girl looked at him unreservedly for a moment. Then she gave a little laugh that was half a sob, and, bending to him, kissed his hand before he could prevent her. Giving him yet another glance from her tumbled hair, she stepped aside to Igraine, and they turned together towards the manor, and the trees and gardens that ringed it. The girl had set her hand in Igraine's with a little gesture that was intended to be indicative of confidence in the supposed nun's greater intelligence.
"Let us go and sit under that yew tree," she suggested. "I cannot stifle within walls now. You are named Igraine. I am called Morgan--Morgan la Blanche,--and I am a lord's daughter. I almost envy you your frock now, for death cannot frighten you as it frightens me. Of course you are very good, and the Saints guard and watch over you. As for me, I have always been very thoughtless." (48)
"Not more than I," said Igraine, with a smile. "I have often hummed romances when I should have praised Paul or Peter."
"But doesn't the fear of death blight you like a frost?"
"I never think of death."
"It seems so near us now that I can hardly breathe. Do you think we are tortured in the other world, if there be one?"
"How should I know, simple one?"
"I wish the mere were a league broad. I should feel further from the pit."
"Is your conscience so unkind?"
"Conscience, sister? It is self-love, not conscience. I only want to live. Look!--the heathen are coming down to the mere. How their axes shine. Holy Mother!--I wish I could pray."
Igraine, catching the girl's pinched face, with lips drawn and twitching, pitied her from her very heart.
"Come then, I will pray with you," she said.
"No, no, my prayers would blacken heaven. I cannot, I cannot."
The wild company had swept down between the great trees in disorderly array. Their weapons shone in the sunlight, their round bucklers blickered. They were soon at the place where Pelleas had slain his men in fair and open field. Dismounting, they gathered about their dead fellows, and sent up, after their custom, a vicious, dismal ululation, a sound like the howling of wolves, drear enough to make the flesh tingle under the stoutest steel. Lining the bank among the willows, they shook buckler and axe, gesticulating, threatening, their long hair blowing wild, their skin-clad bodies giving them a wolfin look not pleasant to behold. Round the margin they paddled--searching--casting about for a boat. They seemed like beasts behind the gates of some Roman amphitheatre--caged from the slaughter. The girl Morgan looked at them, screamed, and hid her face in her tunic. (49) Igraine found the girl's quaking hand, and held it fast in hers.
"Courage, courage," she said; "there is no boat, and, even if they swim, Sir Pelleas is a great knight."
"What can he do against fifty?" whined the girl, withher face still covered.
"Fifty? There are but a score. I have numbered them myself."
"I would give all the jewels in the world to be in Winchester."
"Ah! girl, I have no jewels to give; but this, I promise you, is better than a convent."
The barbarians had gathered in a group beneath a great willow. Plainly they were in debate as to what should be done. Some, by their gestures, their tossing weapons, and their bombast, were for swimming the mere. Their councils were palpably divided. Possibly the sager folk among them did not think the venture worth the loss to them it might entail, seeing that one of those cooped upon the island had already given proof of no mean prowess. They could see the three armed men waiting grimly by the water's edge, ready to strike down the swimmer who should crawl half-naked from the water weeds and mire. Gradually, but surely, the elder tongues held the argument, and the balance went down solemnly for those upon the island.
Pelleas and the two men, watching keenly for any movement, saw the circle of figures break and melt towards the horses. They saw them pick up the bodies of their two dead fellows, and lay them across the saddle. In a minute the whole troop turned, and held away southwards at a trot, flinging back a last wild cry over the water. The meadows rolled away behind them; the gradual trees hid them from moment to moment. Pelleas and the two servants stood and watched till the black line had gone southwards into the thickening woods.
Under the yew tree Morgan la Blanche had uncased her white face, and was smiling feebly. (50)
"I am glad I did not pray," she said; "it would have been so weak. Look! I have torn my tunic, and my belt's awry. Bind my hair for me, sister, quickly,--before Sir Pelleas comes."
VI
WITH the heathen lost in the distant woods, Pelleas and the women essayed the house, leaving the two servants to sentinel the island.
The great gates of the porch were ajar. Pushing in, they crossed into the atrium, and found it sleepy as solitude. The water in the impluvium gleamed with the gold flanks of the fish that moved through its shadows. Lilies were there, white and wonderful, swooning to their own images in the pool. The tiled floor was rich with colour. Venturing further, they found the triclinium untouched, rich couches and flaming curtains everywhere, gilded chairs, and deep-lustred mirrors, urns, and flowers. In the chapel candles were guttered on the altar; dim lights came down upon a wealth of solemn beauty--saints, censers, crosses, frescoed walls all green and azure, gold and scarlet. The viridarium, set betwixt chapel and tablinum, held them dazed with a glowing paradise of flowers. Here were dreamy palms, orange trees like mounts of gold, roses that slept in a deep delight of green. Over all was silence, untainted even by the silken purr of a bird's wing.
Gynæcium and bower were void of them in turn. Everywhere they found the relics of a swift desertion. The manor folk had gone, as if to the ferry of death, taking no worldly store or sumptuous baggage with them. Not a living thing did they discover, save the fish darting in the water. The cubicula were empty, their couches tumbled; the culina fireless, and its hearth cold.
Pelleas and the women marvelled much at the beauty of the place; its solitude seemed but a ghostly charm to them. (51) As for the girl Morgan, she had taken Pelleas into her immediate and especial favour, holding at his side everywhere, a-bubble with delight. The luxury of the place pleased her at every glance; her vanity ran riot like a bee among flowers. She eyed herself furtively in mirrors, and put a rose daintily in her hair while Pelleas was not looking. She had already rifled a cabinet, strung a chain of amethysts about her neck and poked her fingers into numberless rings. Then she would try the couches, queen it for a moment in some stately chair, or smother her face sensuously in the flowers growing from the urns. All these pretty vapourings were carried through with a most mischievous grace. Igraine, who had seen the girl white and whimpering an hour before and in deadly horror of the pit, wondered at her, and hated her liberally in her heart.
Nor was Pelleas glad of the change her presence had wrought; for her childish subtleties had no hold on him, and even her thieving seemed insipid. With solemn and shadowy thoughts in his heart, her frivolous worldliness came like some tinkling discord. Igraine seemed to have dimmed her eyes from him beneath the shadow of her hood. Her face was set like the face of a statue, and there was no play of thought upon it. She walked proudly behind the pair--not with them--like one elbowed out of companionship by a vapouring rival.
In the women's bower Morgan found a lute, and pounced upon it.
"One's whole desire seems here," she chattered. "This bower suits my fancy like a dream, and I could lodge here a month for love of it. What think you, Knight Pelleas? I never set foot in a fairer manor. I warrant you there are meat and wine in the cellars. We will feast and have music anon."
Pelleas's face looked more suited to a burial. Igraine pitied him, for his eyes looked tired and sad. Morgan ran on like a jay. In the chapel she found Igraine a share. (52)
"Here is your portion, holy Sister," she said; "mine the bower, yours the altar. So you see we are all well suited. Come, though, is it not very horrible having to look solemn all day, and to wear a grey gown ? I should fade in a week inside such a hood; besides, it makes you look such a colour."
Igraine could certainly boast a colour at that moment that might have warned the woman of her rising fume. Pelleas broke in and took up the argument.
"Men do not consider dress," he said; "everything is fair to the comely. I look into a woman's face and into her eyes, and take the measure of her heart. Such is my catechism."
"But you like to see rich silks and a smile, and to hear a laugh at times. What is a girl if she is not gay? No discourtesy to you, sister; but you seem so far set from Sir Pelleas and myself."
Igraine, lacking patience, flared up like a torch. "Ha! mark you," she said, "my habit makes me no coward, nor do I thieve. No discourtesy to you, my dear lady."
Morgan set up a thrill of laughter.
"How true a woman is a nun," quoth she; "but you are too severe, too careful. Thieving, too; why, I may as well have a trinket or so before the place is rifled, even if I take a single ring. And what is more, I have been turned from my own house with hardly a bracelet or a bodkin. Come, Sir Pelleas, let us be going; the Sister would be at prayers. I see we but hinder her."
Pelleas had lost both pity and patience in the last minute. Partisanship is inevitable even in the most trivial differences, and Pelleas's frown was strongly for Morgan la Blanche.
"Perhaps it would be well, madame," said he, "if we all went on our knees for the day's deliverance. I cannot see that there is any shame in gratitude."
"Gratitude!" chirped the girl. "Gratitude to whom?"
"To the Lord Saviour, madame, and the Mother Virgin."
She half laughed in his face, but his eyes sobered her. (53) For a moment she fronted him with an incredulous smirk, then her glance wavered, and lowered to his breast. It held there with a tense stare, while her whole face hardened. Pelleas saw her pupils darken, her cheeks flush and pale in a moment. He thought nothing of it, or ascribed her distraught and strange look to some sudden shame or shock of penitence. In a trice the smile was back again, and she seemed pert and pleased as ever.
"I see you are too devout for me," she said with a glib laugh, "and that I am too wicked a thing for the moment. I will leave you to Sister Igraine till you both have prayed your fill." Here she laughed again, a laugh that made Igraine's cheeks burn. "Remember me to St. Anthony if you may. If I recollect rightly he was a nice old gentleman, who cured 'the fire' for a miracle, and nearly fell in love with a devil. Till you have done, I will go and gather flowers."
Pelleas and Igraine looked at one another.
"A devout child," said the man.
"And not bred in a nunnery."
"The world's convent, I should say."
For the moment Igraine was almost for telling him of her own hypocrisy, but the thought found her more troubled on that score than she could have guessed. She had acted a lie to the man, and feared his true eyes despite her courage. "Another day I will tell him," she thought; "it is not so great a sin after all." So they turned and knelt at their devotions.
Morgan la Blanche went away like the wind. She ran through atrium and porch with hate free in her eyes, and her child's face twisted into a scowl of temper. In the garden she idled up and down awhile in a restless fume, like one whose thoughts bubble bodingly. Sometimes she would smite a lily peevishly with her open hand, or pluck a flower and trample it under her feet as though it had wronged her. Then she would take something from her bosom and stare at it while her lips worked, or while she bit her fingers as (54) though galled by some inward barb. Presently she found her way by a laurel walk to the orchard, and thence by a wicket-gate to the island's rim, where one of her men kept watch on the further meadows.
She stood under an apple tree, called to him, and beckoned. He came to her--a short, burly fellow with the look of a bull, and brute writ large on his visage. Morgan drew him under the swooping dome of the tree, plucked something that shone from her bosom, and dangled it before his eyes.
"The cross," she said, almost in a whisper. "Galerius, the cross."
The man stared at her stupidly. Morgan lifted a finger, ran this way and that peering into the green glooms and listening. Then she came back to the man soft-footed, glib as a cat, with the cross of gold gripped in her fingers She smiled at him, a smile that was almost a leer.
"Galerius," she said, "the knight in the house yonder wears a chain with one cross missing, and the fellow cross matches this. Moreover, his poniard sheath is empty. I marked all this as I stood by him a moment ago. This is the man who slew my lord."
The servant's heavy face showed that he understood her well enough now.
"To-night," she said, almost skipping under the trees with the intensity of her malice, "it shall be with his own poniard. I have it here. Galerius, you have always been a good fellow.
The man grinned.
"Keep silence and leave all to me. I shall need your hand and no more."
"Nor shall he," said Galerius curtly.
Morgan grew suddenly bleak and quiet, with the thought of murder harboured in her heart.
"Look for yourself, Galerius," she said; "see that my eyes have not deceived me. The man must have come upon Lord Madan when he was alone, after our hirelings (55) had deserted the house. He slew him in the winter room--this whelp sent by Aurelius the king. You and I, Galerius, found the cross in my lord's dead hand, and the poniard in his bosom. I warrant you we will level this deed before we hold again for Winchester."
"Trust my hand, Madame Morgan," quoth the man; "if you can have the fellow sleeping, so much the better, one need not strike in a hurry."
"Leave it to me," she said; "I will give you your knife and your chance to-night."
With that she sent the fellow back to his watching, and threaded the orchard to the manor garden. Pelleas and Igraine had long ended their prayers in the chapel. Morgan found them in the atrium, watching the fish in the water and their own reflections in the pool. The girl had quite smothered the bleak look that had held her features in the orchard. She was the same ingenuous, self-pleased little woman whose blue eyes seemed as clear and honest as a sleeping sea in summer. Before, she had flown in Pelleas's face for vanity's sake; now she seemed no less his woman--ready with smiles and childish flattery, and all the pleasantness she could gather. She was at his side again--quick with her eyes and tongue. Probably she guessed that the man despised her, but then that was of no moment now, seeing that it made the secret in her heart more bitter.
At noon they dined in the triclinium, with man Galerius to serve. He had ransacked kitchen and pantry, and from the ample store discovered, had spread a sufficient meal. His eyes were ever on Pelleas as he waited. There was no doubt about cross or poniard sheath; and Galerius found pleasure in scanning the knight's armour and looking for the place where he might strike.
The afternoon proved sultry, and Pelleas took his turn in keeping watch by the bank. Cool and placid lay the water in the sun, while vapoury heat hung over the meadows and the distant woods. There was still fear lest the heathen might return, thinking to catch the islanders (56) napping. The very abruptness of their retreat had been, in itself suspicious; and Pelleas was all for caution. Igraine's face seemed to make him more careful of peril. He thought much of her as he paced the green bank for three hours or more, before leaving the duty to Galerius and his fellow.
Returning to the manor he found Igraine cushioned on the tiled floor beside the impluvium, fingering the lute that Morgan la Blanche had found. The latter lady was still in the tablinum, so Igraine said, pilfering and admiring at her leisure, with fruit and a cup of spiced wine ready at her hand. Pelleas took post on the opposite side of the pool to Igraine, unarmed himself at his leisure, and began to clean his harness. No task could have pleased Igraine better. She put the lute away, took his helmet on her lap, and burnished it with the corner of her grown. Pelleas had sword, breast-plate, greaves and shoulder pieces beside him. Their eyes often met over the pool as they sat with the scent of lilies in the air, and talked little--but thought the more.
Igraine felt queerly happy. There seemed a warm fire in her bosom, a stealthy, happy heat that crept through every atom of her frame like the sap into the fibres of some rich rose. Her heart seemed to unfold itself like a flower in the sun. She looked often at Pelleas, and her eyes were very soft and bright.
"A fair place, this," she said presently, as the man furbished his sword.
"Fair indeed," said he; "a rich manor."
"It is strange to me after Avangel."
"Perhaps more beautiful."
"Ah," she said, with a sudden kindling; "I think my whole soul was made for beauty, my whole desire born for fair and lovely things. You will smile at me for a dreamer, but often my thoughts seem to fly through forests--marvellous green glooms all drowned in moonlight. I love to hear the wind, to watch the great oaks battling, to see (57) the sea one laugh of gold. Every sunset harrows me into a moan of woe. I can sing to the stars at night--songs such as the woods weave from the voice of a gentle wind, dew-ladened, green and lovely. Sometimes I feel faint for sheer love of this fair earth."
Pelleas's eyes were on her with a strange deep look. His dark face was aglow with a new wonder, as though his soul had flashed to hers. The great sword lay naked and idle in his hands.
"Often have I felt thus," he said, "but my lips couldnever say it. Thoughts are given to some without words."
"But the joy is there," she answered, with a quietsmile.
"Joy in beauty?"
"Yes."
"Ah, girl, a beautiful face, or a blaze of gold and scarletover the western hills, are like strange wine to my heart."
"Yes, yes, it is grand to live," said Igraine.
Pelleas's head went down over his sword as though inthought.
"It would seem," he said presently, "that beauty is aclosed book, save to the few. It is good to find a heartthat understands."
"Ah, that know I well," she chimed; "in Avangel they had souls like clay; they saw nothing, understood nothing. I think I would rather die than be soul blind."
"So many folk," said the man, " seem to live as though they were ever scanning the bottom of a pot. They never get beyond reflections on appetite."
As they talked, Morgan la Blanche came in from behind the looped curtains, with silks, samites, siclatons, and sarcanets in her arms. She had found some rich chest in the bower accomplice to her fingers, and had revelled gloriously. She sat herself down near Pelleas, and began to laugh and chatter like a pleased child. The dainty stuffs (58) were tossed this way and that, gathered into scarves or frills, spread over her lap and eyed critically as to colour, before being bound in a bale for her journey. Vain and vapid as her behaviour seemed, there was more in this little woman's heart than either Pelleas or Igraine could have guessed. Her whole mood was false. Foolish as she seemed on the surface, she was more keen, more subtle by far than Igraine, whose whole soul spelt fire and courage.
As the day drew towards evening, Morgan became more stiff and silent. Her eyes were bright as the jewels round her neck; they would flash and waver, or fall at times into long, sidelong stares. More than once Igraine caught the girl's face in hard thought, the pert lips straight and cruel, the eyes hungry and very shallow. It reminded her of Morgan's look in the morning, when she was in such stark fear of the heathen and of death. Yet while she watched her, smiles and glib vivacity would sweep back again as though there had been but a transient cloud of thought over the girl's face.
With the shadows lengthening, they turned, all three of them, into the garden, and found ease on a grass bank beneath the black boughs of a great cedar. The arch of the dark foliage cut the sky into a semicircle of azure. All about them the grass seemed dusted with dim flowers--blue, white, and violet. A rich company of tiger lilies bowed to the west. Dense banks of laurels and cypresses stood like screens of blackest marble, for the sun was sinking. As they lay under the tree, they could look down upon the water, sheeny and glorious in the evening peace. Further still, the willows slept like a mist of green, with the fields Elysian and full of sweet stupors, the woods beyond standing solemn and still at the beck of night.
Morgan, who had brought the lute with her, began to touch the strings, and to sing softly in a thin, elfin voice--
My heart is open at the hour of night
When lilies swoon
And roses kiss in bed. (59)
When all the dreams of sad-lipped passion rise
From sleep's blue bowers
To die in lover's eyes.
Come flame,
Come fire,
A woman's bosom
Is but life's desire.
So, all my treasures are but held for love
In scarlet silks
And tapestries of snow.
I long, white-bosomed like the stars that sigh
A bed in heaven
For love's ecstasy.
Come flame,
Come fire,
A woman's bosom
Is all man's desire.
The birds were nestling and gossiping in the laurel bushes, taking lodging for the night. From the topmost pinnacle of the cedar, a thrush, a feathered muezzin, had called the world to prayer. From the mere came the cries of water-fowl; the eerie wail of the lapwing rose in the meadows. Presently, all was still and breathless; a vast hush seemed to hold the world. The west was fast dying.
Under the cedar the light lurked dim and magic. Morgan's fingers were still hovering on the strings, and she was singing to herself in a whisper, as though she had care for nothing, save for that which was in her heart. Pelleas and Igraine were quite near each other in the shadow. They had looked into each other's eyes--one long, deep look. Each had turned away troubled, yet with a sudden glory of quick anguish in their hearts. The night seemed very subtle to them, and the whole world sweet.
VII
IGRAINE'S thoughts were to music when she went to bed that night. Pelleas's eyes stayed with her, darkly, sadly; (60) his tragic face seemed to look out of the night, like the face of one dead. And he more than liked her. She felt sure of that, even if she did not dream of kinder things sprung from long looks and quiet sighings. She sat on her bed, and smiled the whole strange day over to herself again. She had the man before her in all his looks and poses; how he sat his horse, the habit he had of looking deeply into nothingness, his strength and quiet knightliness, and above all his devout soul. He seemed to please her at every point in a way that set her thrilling within herself with a delicious wonder. Last, she thought of the weird twilight under the grand old tree--rare climax to a day of deeds and memories. She felt her heart leap as she remembered the great wistful look that had shone out on her from Pelleas's eyes.
The manor house seemed still as the night itself. Morgan la Blanche had taken herself to a couch in the triclinium, choosing it rather than one of the cubicles leading from the atrium. Galerius was on guard, pacing the mere's bank, while his comrade slept in the kitchen. Pelleas, armed, with sword and shield beside him, had quartered himself on cushions in the great porch, with the doors open.
It was about ten o'clock. Igraine, full of sweet broodings, crept into bed, and settled herself for sleep. The night was wonderfully peaceful. The window of the room was overgrown with a tangle of roses, the flowers seeming to mellow the air as it came softly in, and there was a faint shimmer into the shadows that hinted at moonlight. Igraine lay long awake, with her eyes on the few stars that peeped through between the jambs. There was too much in her heart to let sleep in for the while, and her thoughts were a' dance within her brain like wild, fleet-footed things. As she lay in a happy fever of thought, her face grew hot upon the pillow, and her tumbled hair was like a lustrous lava flow over the bed. In course, despite her tossing, she fell into a shallow, fitful sleep that verged between wakefulness and dreams.
It was well past midnight when she started, wide awake, (61) with the half-dreamt memory of some eerie sound in her ears. She sat up in bed, and listened, shivering. There were footfalls, swift and light, on the pavement of the atrium. From somewhere came a gruff voice, speaking tersely and speaking in bated tones. Next, there was something that sounded like a groan and then silence.
Igraine crept out of bed, hurried on her habit, opened the door gently, and looked out. Moonlight streamed in through the square aperture in the roof of the hall, but all else lay in darkness. The porch gates were ajar, with a band of light slanting through upon the tiles. Eager, tremulous, she fancied as she stood that she heard the beat of oars. Then the low, groaning cough that she had heard before thrilled her into action like a trumpet cry.
She was across the court in a second, and into the darkened porch. The doors swung back to her hands, and the night streamed in. Clear before her, lit with a silver emphasis, lay the water and on it she saw the dark outline of the barge moving with foaming oars towards the further bank. For the moment her heart seemed to halt within her.
"Pelleas!" she cried. "Pelleas!"
A stifled sound answered her from a dark corner of the porch. With a sudden frost in her bosom she saw a black rill trickling over the tiles in the moonlight, even touching her feet. Great fear came upon her, but left her power to think. In the triclinium she had seen a lamp, with tinder, steel, and flint in a tray beside it, and in her fear she ran thither, tore her fingers in her haste with stone, but had the lamp lit with such speed as she had never learnt at Avangel. Then she went back trembling into the porch.
The knight Pelleas lay in the corner, half propped against the wall. His head was bowed down upon his chest, and he had both hands clasped upon the neck-band of his tunic. Blood was trickling from his mouth, and he seemed to behardly breathing, while under the left arm-pit shone the (62) silver hilt of the knife that had been thrust there by Galerius's hand. To the thought of the girl it seemed as if the man were in his death agony.
The utter realism of the moment drove all fear from her. She set the lamp on the tiles, and kneeling by Pelleas, pulled the knife slowly from his side. A gush of blood followed. She strove to staunch it with a corner of her gown. The man was quite unconscious, and never heeded her, though he was still breathing jerkily and feebly, with a rattling stridor in his throat. She lifted his head and rested it upon her shoulder, while she knelt and pressed her hand over the wound, dreading to see him die each moment.
For an hour she knelt, cold and almost bare-kneed, on the stone floor, holding the man to her, watching his breathing with a tense fear, pressing upon the wound as though ethereal life would ebb and mock her fingers. Little by little she felt the warm flow cease, felt her fingers stiffened at their task, while the minutes dragged like aeons, and the lamp flickered low in the night. At last she knew that the issue was stayed, and that Pelleas bled no more. Gradually, fearfully, lest life should fall away like a poised wand, she laid the man down, and again watched with her hand over the stricken side. He was breathing more noticeably now, with less of the look of death about him. Encouraged thus, she dared to meditate leaving him to find wine, and sheets to cover him there. When she essayed to move she found her habit clotted to the wound where she had held it. It took her minutes to cut the cloth through with the knife that had stabbed Pelleas, for she was palsied lest the wound should break again and lose her her love's labour.
Free at last, she fled into her room, tore the clothes in which she had lain from the bed, and carried them trailing into the porch. Then, lamp in hand, she spoiled the triclinium of rugs and cushions, and found there the chalice of wine that Morgan had sipped from. Ladened, she struggled back across the hall, fearing all the while to find the man (63) parted. No such foul fortune, however. He was breathing better and better.
Then she set to to make a bed. She spread cushions and rugs; and then, so slowly, so gently, that she seemed hardly to move, she had the man laid upon the couch, with two cushions under his head. Next she covered him with the clothes taken from her own bed. Thus much completed without mishap, she washed his lips and face with water taken from the pool, trickled some wine down his throat, and set the doors wide to watch for dawn.
So pressed had she been by the man's peril, that even the right of thought had been denied her. Now, seated by the lamp, she began to sift matters as well as her meagre knowledge would suffer, keeping constant watch on wounded Pelleas the while. She knew that Morgan and her men were gone in the barge, but as to who gave Pelleas his wound, she could come to no clear understanding in her heart. There must have been some deep feud for such a stroke, though she could find no reason for the deed. Still, she could believe anything of that chit Morgan la Blanche, and there the riddle rested for a season.
Before long she saw the summer dawn stealing silently and mysteriously into the east. The face of the sky grew grey with waking light, and the hold of the moon and night relaxed on wood and meadow. Then the birds began in the garden, till she thought their shrill piping must wake Pelleas from his swoon, so blithe and lusty were they. The east was forging day fast in its furnace of gold. The glare touched the clouds and rolled them into wreaths of amber fire.
A sigh from the couch brought her to her feet like magic. She went and knelt by the bed in quite a tumult of expectation. Pelleas's hands were groping feebly over the coverlet like weak, blind things. Igraine caught them in hers, thrilled as they closed upon her fingers, and, bending low, she waited with her lips almost on the man's, her hair on his forehead, her eyes fixed on his closed lids. All her (64) soul seemed to droop above him like a lily over a grave. Presently he sighed again, stirred and opened his eyes full on Igraine's, as she knelt and mingled her breath with his.
"Pelleas," she whispered. "Pelleas."
He looked at her for a moment with a dazed stare that dawned into a smile that made her