"Give me my armour and my banner," she said; "let me ride to the trenches and barter terms by my surrender. Sire, let me go, let me go."
He looked at her sadly under his brows, with forehead wrinkled.
"You would leave me?"
"Ah yes, to save you from the sword. Is it easy for me to ask you this?"
"You crave more than I can give."
"No, no."
"I cannot surrender you."
"And for love, you would doom all Gambrevault!"
"Ah!" he cried, "I am wounded, and you would wound me the more."
She gave a whimper of pain, ran to him, and crept into his arms. As her sobs shook her, he bent many times and kissed her hair.
"Weep not for me," he said; "even when the end comes no harm can touch you. I cannot parley with these wolves; there are women and children under my roof; should I open my gates to a savage mob?"
"This is your doom," she said to him.
"I take it, child, from heaven."
She wept no more, for a richer heroism took fire within her heart. She knelt to the man while he held her face betwixt his hands, bent over her, and kissed her forehead.
"Courage, courage, what is death!"
"My G.o.d, to lose you."
"There, am I not flesh and blood? G.o.d knows, I would rather have death than give you to these vultures."
She knelt before him with her face transfigured.
"And death, death can touch me also."
x.x.xIV
August came in with storm and rain, and a dreary wind blew from the south-west, huddling ma.s.ses of cloud over a spiritless sky. Southwards, the sea tumbled, a grey expanse edged with foam, its great breakers booming dismally upon the cliffs. The wind swept over Gambrevault, moaning and wailing over battlement and tower, driving the rain in drifting sheets. The bombards still belched and smoked under their penthouses, and the arms of the catapults rose and fell against the sullen sky.
The eighteenth night of the siege came out of the east like a thunder bank, and the grey shivering ghost of the day fled over the western hills. When darkness had fallen, the walls of Gambrevault were invisible from the trenches. Here and there a light shone out like a spark in tinder; the sky above was black as a cavern, unbroken by the crack or cranny of a star.
Flavian, fully armed, kept watch upon the breach with a strong company of men-at-arms. He had taken the ugly measure of the night to heart, and had prepared accordingly. Under the shelter of the wall men slept, wrapped in their cloaks, with their weapons lying by them. The sentinels had been doubled on the battlements, though little could be seen in the blank murk, and even the keep had to be looked for before its ma.s.s disjointed itself from the background of the night.
It was treacherous weather, and just the season for an adventurous enemy to creep from the trenches and attempt to rush the breach. Flavian leant upon his long sword, and brooded. The black ends of the broken wall stood up hugely on either hand; rubble and fallen masonry paved the breach, and a rough rampart of debris had been piled along the summit.
Around him shone the dull armour of his men, as they stood on guard in the rain.
The storm deadened soul and body, yet kept Flavian vigilant with its boisterous laughter, a sound that might stifle the tramp of stormers pouring to the breach. He was not lonely, for a lover can do without the confidences of others, when he has a woman to speak with in his heart. In fancy he can lavish the infinite tenderness of the soul, caress, quarrel, kiss, comfort, with all the idealisms of the imagination. The spirit lips we touch are sweeter and more red than those in the flesh. To the true man love is the grandest asceticism the world can produce.
Flavian"s figure straightened suddenly as it leant bowed in thought upon the sword. He was alert and vigilant, staring into darkness that baffled vision and hid the unknown. A dull, characterless sound was in the air. Whether it was the wind, the sea, or something more sinister, he could not tell. Calling one of his knights to his side, they stood together listening on the wreckage of the wall.
A vague clink, clink, came in discord to the wind, a sound that suggested the cautious moving of armed men. A hoa.r.s.e voice was growling warily in the distance, as though giving orders. The shrilling noise of steel grew more obvious each moment; the black void below appeared to grow full of movement, to swirl and eddy like a lagoon, whose muddy waters are disturbed by some huge reptile at night. The sudden hoa.r.s.e cries of sentinels rose from the walls. Feet stumbled on the debris at the base of the breach; stormers were on the threshold of Gambrevault.
A trumpet blared in the entry; the guard closed up on the rampart; sleeping men started from the shadows of the wall, seized sword and shield as the trumpets" bray rang in their ears. Colgran"s stormers, discovered in their purpose, cast caution to the winds, and sent up a shout that should have wakened all Gambrevault.
In the darkness and the driving rain, neither party could see much of the other. The stormers came climbing blindly up the pile of wreckage in serried ma.s.ses. Flavian and his knights, who held the rampart, big men and large-hearted, smote at the black tide of bodies that rolled to their swords. It was grim work in the dark. It was no sleepy, disorderly rabble that held the breach, but a tense line of steel, that stemmed the a.s.sault like a wall. The stormers pushed up and up, to break and deliquesce before those terrible swords. Modred"s deep voice sounded through the din, as he smote with his great axe, blows that would have shaken an oak. There was little shouting; it was breathless work, done in earnest. Colgran"s men showed pluck, fought well, left a rampart of dead to their credit, a squirming, oozing barrier, but came no nearer forcing the breach.
They had lost the propitious moment, and the whole garrison was under arms, ready to repulse the attacks made at other points. Scaling ladders had been jerked forward and reared against the walls; men swarmed up, but the rebels gained no lasting foothold on the battlements. They were beaten back, their ladders hurled down, masonry toppled upon the ma.s.s below. Many a man lay with neck or back broken in the confused tangle of humanity at the foot of the castle.
Colgran ordered up fresh troops. It was his policy to wear out the garrison by sheer importunity and the stress of numbers. He could afford to lose some hundred men; every score were precious now to Flavian. It was a system of counter barter in blood, till the weaker vessel ran dry. The Lord of Gambrevault understood this rough philosophy well enough, and husbanded his resources. He could not gamble with death, and so changed his men when the opportunity offered, to give breathing s.p.a.ce to all. Conscious of the strong stimulus of personal heroism, he kept to the breach himself, and fought on through every a.s.sault with Modred"s great axe swinging at his side. He owed his life more than once to those gorilla-like arms and that crescent of steel.
In the outer court, certain of the women folk with Yeoland dealt out wine and food, and tended the wounded. In the chapel, tapers glimmered, lighting the frescoes and the saints, the priest chanting at the altar, the women and children who knelt in the shadowy aisles praying for those who fought upon the walls. Panic hovered over the pale faces, the fear, the shivering, weeping, pleading figures. There was little heroism in Gambrevault chapel, save the heroism of supplication. While swords tossed and men groped for each other in the wind and rain, old Peter the cellarer lay drunk in a wine bin, and lame Joan, who tended the linen, was snivelling in the chapel and fingering the gold angels sewn up in her tunic.
Five times did Colgran"s men a.s.sault the breach that night, each repulse leaving its husks on the b.l.o.o.d.y wreckage, its red libations to the swords of Gambrevault. The last and toughest tussle came during the grey prologue before dawn. The place was so packed with the dead and stricken, that it was well-nigh impa.s.sable. For some minutes the struggle hung precariously on the summit of the pa.s.s, but with the dawn the peril dwindled and elapsed. The stormers revolted from the shambles; they had fought their fill; had done enough for honour; were sick and weary. No taunt, command, or imprecation could keep them longer in that gate of death. Colgran"s rebels retreated on their trenches.
And with the dawn Flavian looked round upon the breach, and saw all the horror of the place in one brief moment. Cloven faces, hacked bodies, distortions, tortures, blood everywhere. He looked round over his own men; saw their meagre ranks, their weariness, their wounds, their exultation that lapsed silently into a kind of desperate awe. Some tried to cheer him, and at the sound he felt an unutterable melancholy descend upon his soul. The men were like so many sickly ghosts, a wan and battered flock, a ragged remnant. He saw the whole truth in a moment, as a man sees life, death, and eternity pa.s.s before him in the flashing wisdom of a single thought.
And this was war, this cataclysm of insatiate wrath! His men were too few, too bustled, to hold the breach against such another storm. His trumpets blared the retreat, a grim and tragic fanfare. They dragged out their wounded, abandoned the pile of rubbish for which they had fought, and withdrew sullenly within the inner walls. Colgran, though repulsed, had taken the outer ward of Gambrevault.
As one stumbling from a dream, Flavian found himself in the castle garden. The place was full of the freshness that follows rain; and it was not till the scent of flowers met him like an odour of peace, that he marked that the sky was blue and the dawn like saffron. The storm-clouds had gone, and the wind was a mere breeze, a moist breath from the west, bearing a curious contrast to the furious temper of the night.
Flavian, looking like a white-faced debauchee, limped through the court, and climbed the stairway of the keep to the banqueting hall and his own state chambers. Several of his knights followed him at a distance and in silence. He felt sick as a dog, and burdened with unutterable care, that weighed upon him like a prophecy. He had held the breach against heavy odds, and he was brooding over the cost. There was honour in the sheer physical heroism of the deed; but he had lost old friends and tried servants, had sacrificed his outer walls; there was little cause for exultation in the main.
He stumbled into the banqueting hall like a man into a tavern.
"Wine, wine, for the love of G.o.d."
A slim figure in green came out from the oriel, and a pair of dark eyes quivered over the man"s grey face and blood-stained armour. The girl"s hands went out to him, and she seemed like a child roused in the night from the influence of some evil dream.
"You are wounded."
She took him by the arm and shoulder, and was able to force him into a chair, so limp, so impotent, was he for the moment. His face had the uncanny pallor of one who was about to faint; his eyes stared at her in a dazed and wistful way.
"My G.o.d, you are not going to die!"
He shook his head, smiled weakly, and groped for her hand. She broke away, brought wine, and began to trickle it between his lips. Several of his knights came in, and looked on awkwardly from the doorway at the girl leaning over the man"s chair, with her arm under his head. Yeoland caught sight of them, coloured and called them forward.
The man"s faintness had pa.s.sed. He saw Modred and beckoned him to his chair.
"Take her away," in a whisper.
Yeoland heard the words, started round, and clung to his hand. There was a strange look upon her face. Flavian spoke slowly to her.