"Yes. Bring him in to me," she said.
Fulviac left her, to return with a slim youth sidling in behind him like a shadow. The lad had a nut-brown skin and ruddy cheeks, a pair of twinkling eyes, a thatch of black hair over his forehead. Bred amid the hills of Carlyath, where the women were scarlet Eves, and the land a paradise, he had served in Gilderoy as apprentice to an armourer.
Carlyath"s wilds and the city"s roguery had mingled in him fantastic strains of extravagant sentiment and cunning. Half urchin, half elf, he stood with bent knees and slouched shoulders, his black eyes alert on Fulviac, his lord.
The man thrust him forward by the collar, with an eloquent gesture.
"The whole tale. Try your wit."
The Carlyath lad advanced one foot, and with an impudent southern smirk, remarked--
"This, madame, is an infatuated world."
Thus, sententiously delivered, he plunged into a declamation with a picturesque and fanciful extravagance that he had imbibed from the strolling romancers of his own land.
"In the city of Gilderoy," he said, speaking very volubly and with many gestures, "there lives a lady of surpa.s.sing comeliness. Her eyes are as the sky, her cheeks as June roses, her hair a web of gold. She is a right fair lady, and daily she sits at her broad cas.e.m.e.nt, singing, and plaiting her hair into shackles of gold. She has bound the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault in a net starred with poppies, scarlet poppies of the field, so that he ever dreams dreams of scarlet, and sees visions of lips warm as wine. Daily the Lord Flavian scours the country between Avalon and the fair city of Gilderoy, till the very dust complains of his fury, and the green gra.s.s curses his horse"s heels. But the lady with the hair of gold compa.s.ses him like the sunset; she has stolen the eyes of heaven, and the stars are blind."
Fulviac smiled over the extreme subtlety of the rendering. It was a delicate matter, delicately handled. The Carlyath lad had wit, and a most seraphic tongue.
"What more?"
"There is yet another lady at Avalon."
"Well?"
"A lady whose name is Duessa, a lady with black hair and a blacker temper. Lord Flavian has a huge horror of her tongue. Therefore he rides like a thief, without trumpets, to Gilderoy."
"Yet more."
The lad spread his hands with an inimitable gesture, shrugged, and heaved a most Christian sigh.
"The Lady Duessa is the Lord Flavian"s wife," he said.
"Surely."
"Therefore, sire, he is a coward."
The lad drew back with a bow and a sc.r.a.pe of the foot, keeping his eyes on the floor with the discretion of a veteran lackey. At a sign from Fulviac, he slipped away, and left Yeoland and the man alone.
The girl"s hands were idle in her lap; the great scarlet banner trailed in rich folds about her feet. There was a white mask of thought upon her face, and her eyes searched the distance with an oblivious stare.
All the strong discords of the past rushed clamorous to her brain; her consecrated dreams were as so many angels startled by the a.s.saults of h.e.l.l.
She rose from her chair, cast the cas.e.m.e.nt wide, and stood gazing over the forest. Youth seemed in the breeze, and the clear voice of the Spring. The green woods surged with liberty; the strong zest of life breathed in their bosoms. In the distance the pines seemed to beckon to her, to wave their caps in windy exultation.
Fulviac had stood watching her with the calm scrutiny of one wise in the pa.s.sionate workings of the soul. He suffered her to possess her thoughts in silence for a season, to come by a steady comprehension of the past. Presently he gathered the red banner, and hung it on the frame, went softly to her and touched her sleeve.
"Shall they kill him on the road?" he asked.
She pondered a moment, and did not answer him.
"It is easy," he said, "and a matter of sheer justice."
The words seemed to steel her decision.
"No," she said, "let them bring him here--to me."
"So be it," he answered her.
Fulviac found her cold and taciturn, desirous of solitude. He humoured the mood, and she was still staring from the window when he left her.
The woodland had melted before her into an oblivious mist. In its stead she saw a tower flaming amid naked trees, a white face staring heavenwards with the marble tranquillity of death.
X
Down through the woods of Avalon rode the Lord Flavian of Gambrevault, down towards the forest track in the grey face of the dawn. In the meadows and beyond the orchards, water shone, and towers stood mistily.
The voice of Spring pulsed in the air, songs of green woods, the wild wine of violets, pavements of primrose gold. Birds piped l.u.s.tily in wood and thicket, and the ascending sun lavished his glittering archery from the chariots of the clouds.
The Lord Flavian was inordinately cheerful that morning, as he rode in green and red through the prophetic woods. Heart and weather were in kindred keeping, and his youth sang like a brook after April rains. The woods danced in dew. Far on its rocky hill the towers of Gilderoy would soon beckon him above the trees. Beneath the shadow of the cathedral tower stood a gabled house with gilded vanes and roofs of generous red.
There in Gilderoy, in a room hung with cloth of purple and gold, white arms waited, and the bosom of a golden Helen held love like a red rose in a pool of milky spikenard.
Picture a slim but muscular man with the virile figure of a young David, a keen, smooth face, a halo of brown hair, eyes eloquent as a woman"s.
Picture a good grey horse trapped in red and green, full of fettle as a colt, burly as a bull. Picture the ermined borderings, the jewelled clasps, brigantine of quilted velvet, fur-lined ba.s.sinet bright as a star. Youth, clean, adventurous, aglow to the last finger-tip, impetuous to the tune of thirty breaths a minute. Youth with all its splendid waywardness, its generosities, its immense self-intoxications.
Youth with the voice of a Golden Summer in its heart, and for its plume the gorgeous fires of eve.
Wealth often breeds apathy and parsimonious instincts. It is the beggar whose purse bursts with joy, whose soul blazes generous red upon the clouds. As for Flavian of Gambrevault and Avalon, he was rich but no miser, proud yet not haughty, sanguine but not vicious. Like many a man inspired by an instinctive idealism, his heart ran before his reason: they not having come cheek by jowl as in later years. He was very devout, yet very worldly; very ardent, yet over hasty. Mark him then, a lovable fool in the eyes of philosophy; a cup of mingled wine, both white and red. He was a great lord; yet his serfs loved him.
The Lady Duessa"s parents, good folk, had been blessed with aspirations.
Gambrevault and Avalon had bulked very gloriously under the steel-blue vault of pride. Moreover, their daughter was a sensuous being, who panted for poetic surroundings, and lived to music. A boy of twenty; a pa.s.sionate, dark-eyed, big-bosomed houri of twenty and five; bell, book, and ring--such had been the bridal bargain consummated on church principles five years ago or more. A youth of twenty is not supremely wise concerning the world, or his own heart. The Lord Flavian"s marriage had not proved a magic blessing to him. Parentally sealed marriage deeds are the edicts of the devil.
Quickly are the mighty fallen, and the chalices of love broken. It was no mere chance ambuscade that waited open-mouthed for Flavian, Lord of Gambrevault and Avalon, Warden of the Southern Marches, Knight of the Order of the Rose, as he rode that morning to Gilderoy, a disciple of Venus. In a certain perilous place, the road ran betwixt walls of rock, and under the umbrage of overhanging trees. Twenty men with pike and gisarme swarming out of the woods; a short scuffle and a stabbed horse; a gag in the mouth, a bandage over the eyes, a mule"s back, half a dozen thongs of stout leather. That same evening the Lord Flavian was brought like a bale of merchandise into Fulviac"s guard-room, and tumbled on a heap of straw in a corner.
They were grim men, these forest rangers, not given to pity, or the light handling of a feud. A poniard point was their pet oath, a whip of the sword the best word with an enemy. They bit their thumb nails at creation, and were not gentle in the quest of a creed. Fulviac heard their news, and commended them. They were like the ogres of the old fables; the red blood of a l.u.s.ty aristocrat smelt fresh for the sword"s supper.
The girl Yeoland was at her prayer-desk with a blazoned breviary under her fingers, when Fulviac came to her with tidings of the day"s capture.
She knelt with her hands crossed upon her bosom, as Fulviac stood in the darkened doorway. To the man she appeared as the Madonna in some picture of the Annunciation, the yellow light from the lamp streaming down upon her with a l.u.s.tre of sanct.i.ty.
"They have brought the boar home."
"Dead?"
"Nay; but his corpse candle walks the cavern."
For the girl it was a descent from spiritual themes to the stark realism of life. She left her prayer-desk with a little sigh. Her hands trembled as she drew a scarlet cloak about her, and fastened it with a girdle of green leather. Her eyes dwelt on Fulviac"s face with a species of dusky pain.
"Come," he said to her.