Fortune had decreed that about Lauretia, the city of the King, the vultures of war should wet their talons. It was a rich region, gemmed thick with sapphire meres set in deep emerald woods. Lauretia, like a golden courtesan, lay with her white limbs cushioned amid gorgeous flowers. Her bosom was full of odours and of music; her lap littered with the fragrant herbs of love. No perils, save those of moonlit pa.s.sion, had ever threatened her. Thus it befell that when the storm-clouds gathered, she cowered trembling on her ivory couch, the purple wine of pleasure soaking her sinful feet.
In a broad valley, five leagues south of the city, Fulviac"s rebels fought their first great fight with Richard of the Iron Hand. A warrior"s battle, rank to rank and sword to sword, the fight had burnt to the embers before the cressets were red in the west. Fulviac had headed the last charge that had broken the royal line, and rolled the shattered host northwards under the cloak of night. Dawn had found Fulviac marching upon Lauretia, eager to let loose the l.u.s.ts of war upon that rich city of sin. He was within three leagues of the place, when a jaded rider overtook him, to tell of Malgo"s death and of the battle in the west. Yet another league towards the city his outriders came galloping back with the news that the northern barons had marched in and joined the King. Outnumbered, and threatened on the flank, Fulviac turned tail and held south again, trusting to meet G.o.damar marching from the fens.
He needed the shoulders of an Atlas those September days, for rumour burdened him with tidings that were ominous and heavy. G.o.damar lay impotent, hedged in the mora.s.ses; Malgo was dead, his mountaineers scattered. Sir Simon of Imbrecour was leading in the western lords to swell the following of the King. Vengeance gathered hotly on the rebel rear, as Fulviac retreated by forced marches towards the south.
It was at St. Gore, a red-roofed town packed on a hill, amid tall, dreaming woods, that Colgran, with the ten thousand who had leaguered Gambrevault, drew to the main host again. Fulviac had quartered a portion of his troops in the town, and had camped the rest in the meadows without the crumbling, lichen-grown walls. He had halted but for a night on the retreat from Lauretia, and had taken a brief breath in the moil and sweat of the march. His banner had been set up in the market-square before a rickety hostel of antique tone and temper. His guards lounged on the benches under the vines; his captains drank in the low-ceilinged rooms, swore and argued over the rough tables.
It was evening when Colgran"s vanguard entered the town by the western gate. His men had tramped all day in the sun, and were parched and weary. None the less, they stiffened their loins, and footed it through the streets with a veteran swagger to show their mettle. Fulviac came out and stood in the wooden gallery of the inn, watching them defile into the market-square. They tossed their pikes to him as they poured by, and called on him by name--
"Fulviac, Fulviac!"
He was glad enough of their coming, for he needed men, and the rough forest levies were in Colgran"s ranks. Ten thousand pikes and brown bills to bristle up against the King"s squadrons! There was strength in the glitter and the rolling dust of the columns. Yet before all, the man"s tawny eyes watched for a red banner, and a woman in armour upon a white horse, Yeoland, wife of Flavian of Gambrevault.
In due season he saw her, a pale, spiritless woman, wan and haggard, thin of neck and dark of eye. The bloom seemed to have fallen from her as from the crushed petals of a rose. The red banner, borne by a man upon a black horse, danced listlessly upon its staff. She rode with slack bridle, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, but into the vague distance as into the night of the past.
Around her tramped Colgran"s pikemen in jerkins of leather and caps of steel. The woman moved with them as though they were so many substanceless ghosts, stalking like shadows down the highway of death.
Her face was bloodless, bleached by grievous apathy and chill pride.
The bronzed faces round her were dim and unreal, a mob of masks, void of life and meaning. Sorrow had robed her in silent snow. The present was no more propitious to her than a winter forest howling under the moon.
Before the hostelry the column came to a halt with grounded pikes. The woman on the white horse stirred from her stupor, looked up, and saw Fulviac. He was standing with slouched shoulders in the gallery above her, his hands gripping the wooden rail. Their eyes met in a sudden mesmeric stare that brought badges of red to the girl"s white cheeks.
There was the look upon his face that she had known of old, when perilous care weighed heavy upon his stubborn shoulders. His eyes bewildered her. They had a light in them that spoke neither of anger nor reproach, yet a look such as Arthur might have cast upon fallen Guinivere.
They took her from her horse, and led her mute and pa.s.sive into the steel-thronged inn. Up a winding stair she was brought into a sombre room whose latticed cas.e.m.e.nts looked towards the west. By an open window stood Fulviac, chin on chest, his huge hands clasped behind his back. Colgran, in dusky harness, was speaking to him in his rough, incisive jargon. The woman knew that the words concerned her heart. At a gesture from Fulviac, the free-lance cast a fierce glance at her, and retreated.
The man did not move from the window, but stood staring in morose silence at the reddening west. Hunched shoulders and bowed head gave a certain powerful pathos to the figure statuesque and silent against the crimson curtain of the sky. The very air of the room seemed burdened and saturated with the gloomy melancholy of the man"s mood. War, with its thousand horrors, furrowed his brow and bowed his great shoulders beneath its b.l.o.o.d.y yoke. Her woman"s instinct told her that he was lonely, for the soul that had ministered to him breathed for him no more.
He turned on her suddenly with a terse greeting that startled her thoughts like doves in a pine wood.
"Welcome to you, Lady of Gambrevault."
There was a bluff bitterness in his voice that forewarned her of his ample wisdom. Colgran had surrendered her, heart and tragedy in one, to Fulviac"s mercy. A looming cloud of pa.s.sion shadowed the man"s face, making him seem gaunt and rough to her for the moment. She remembered him standing over Duessa"s body in Sforza"s palace at Gilderoy. Life had too little promise for her to engender fear of any man, even of Fulviac at his worst.
"I trust, Madame Yeoland, that you are merry?"
The taunt touched her, yet she answered him listlessly enough.
"Do what you will; scoff if it pleases you."
Fulviac shrugged his shoulders, and tossed his lion"s mane from his broad forehead.
"It is a grim world this," he said; "when thrones burn, should we seek to quench them with our tears! Whose was the fault that G.o.d made you too much a woman? Red heart, heart of the rose, a traitorous comrade art thou, and an easy foe."
She had no answer on her lips, and he turned and paced the room before her, darting swift glances into her face.
"So they killed him?" he said, more quietly anon; "poor child, forget him, it was the fate of war. Even to the grave he took the love I might never wear."
She shuddered and hid her face.
"Fulviac, have pity!"
"Pity?"
"This is a judgment, G.o.d help my soul!"
"A judgment?"
"For serving my own heart before the Virgin"s words."
The man stopped suddenly in his stride, and looked at her as though her words had touched him like a bolt betwixt the jointings of his harness.
There was still the morose frown upon his face, the half closure of the lids over the tawny eyes. He gripped his chin with one of his bony hands, and turned his great beak of a nose upwards with a gesture of self-scorn.
"Since the d.a.m.ned chicanery of chance so wills it," he said, "I will confess to you, that my confession may ease your conscience. The Madonna in that forest chapel was framed of flesh and blood."
"Fulviac!"
"Of flesh and blood, my innocent, tricked out to work my holy will. We needed a Saint, we cleansers of Christendom; ha, n.o.ble justiciaries that we are. Well, well, the Virgin served us, and tripped back to a warm nest at Gilderoy, reincarnated by high heaven."
Yeoland stood motionless in the shadows of the room, like one striving to reason amid the rush of many thoughts. She showed no wrath at her betrayal; her pale soul was too white for scarlet pa.s.sion. The significance of life had vanished in a void of gloom. She stood like Hero striving to catch her lover"s voice above the moan of the sea.
Fulviac unbuckled his sword and threw it with a crash upon the table.
He thrust his arms above his head, stretched his strong sinews, took deep breaths into his knotted throat.
"The truth is out," he said to her; "come, madame, confess to me in turn."
Yeoland faced him with quivering lips, and a tense straining of her fingers.
"What have I to tell?" she asked.
"Nothing?"
"Save that I loved the Lord Flavian, and that he is dead."
"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
"Ah, you are avenged," she said, "you have crushed my heart; may the thought comfort you."
Her parched apathy seemed to elapse of a sudden, and she lost her calmness in an outburst of pa.s.sion. She was athirst for solitude, to be cloistered from the rough cavil of the world. Colour glowed upon her sunken cheeks as she stretched out her arms to the man with a piteous vehemence.
"Fulviac----"
"Girl."
"Ah, for G.o.d"s love, end now this mockery. Take this armour from me, for it burns my bosom. Let me go, that I may hide my wounds in peace."
"Peace!" he said, with a twinge of scorn.
"Fulviac, can you not pity me? I am broken and bruised, men stare and jeer. Oh, my G.o.d, only to be out of sight and alone!"
The man stood by the window looking out into the sky with lowering brows. The west burnt red above the house-tops; from the street came the noise of men marching.