XLIV
Autumn had cast her scarlet girdle about Avalon; the woods were aflame with the splendours of the dying year. The oaks stood pavilions of green and gold; the beeches domes of burnished bronze; from their silver stems, birches fountained forth showers of amber. It was a season of crystal skies, of cloud galleons, bulwarked with gold, sailing the wine-red west. Wild Autumn wandered in the ruined woods, her long hair streaking the gilded gloom, her voice elfin under the stars. Even as she pa.s.sed, the crisp leaves swirled and fell, a pall for the dying year.
Avalon slumbered amid her lilies and the painted woods, gorgeous as rare tapestries, curtaining her meadows. Her mere laughed and glimmered amid the flags and lily leaves, and lapped at the lichened bases of her towers. Avalon had arisen from her desolation. No longer were her chambers void, her gates broken, her courts the haunt of death. The bat and the screech-owl had fled from her towers. She had lifted up her face to the dawn, like a mourner who turns from the grave to gaze again upon the golden face of joy.
Time with his scythe of silver rested on the hills. The black dragon of war had crawled sated to the labyrinths of the past; the red throne of ambition had been consumed by fire. Peace came forth with her white-faced choir, swinging their golden censers, shedding a purple perfume of hope over the blackened land. The death wolves had slunk to the wilds, the vultures had soared from the fields. A splendid calm had descended upon the land, a silence as of heaven after the hideous masque of war. The cloud-wrack and thunder had pa.s.sed from the sky. Men heard again the voice of G.o.d.
Six weeks had gone since the sacking of Gilderoy, and dead Duessa"s bower in Avalon had been garnished for a second mistress. A white rose lurked in a whorl of green. The oriel, with its re-jewelled gla.s.s, looked out upon the transient splendours of the woods. Tapestry clothed the walls, showing knights and maidens wandering through flowering meads. Rare furniture had been taken from the wrecked palaces of Gilderoy and given to the Lord Flavian by the King.
That autumntide Modred played seneschal in Avalon. He had cleansed and regarnished the castle by his lord"s command, and garrisoned it with men taken from the King"s own guard. Moreover, in Gilderoy he had found an old man groping miserlike amid the ruins, filthy and querulous. The pantaloon when challenged had confessed to the name of Aurelius, and the profession of Medicine by royal patent in that city. The townsfolk had spared his pompous neck for the sake of the benefits of his craft. From the fat, proud, prosperous worthy he had cringed into a wrinkled, flap-cheeked beggar. Him Modred had caught like a veritable pearl from the gutter, and brought with other household perquisites into Avalon.
In this rich refuge Aurelius awoke as from an unsavoury and penurious dream. He regained some of his plump, sage swagger, his rotund phraseology, his autocratic dogmatism in matters aesculapian. The atmosphere of Avalon agreed with his gullet. Above all things, he was held to be a man of tact.
In dead Duessa"s bower there still hung her mirror of steel, whose sheeny surface had often answered to her languorous eyes and moon-white face. Duessa"s hair had glimmered before this good friend"s flattery.
Gems, necklet, broideries, and tiars had sunk deep into its magic memory. The mirror could have told truths and expounded philosophies, had there been some Merlin to conjure with the past.
Aurelius of Gilderoy played the necromancer under more rational auspices. He was a benignant soul, subtle, sympathetic to the brink of dotage. His professional hint was that dead Duessa"s mirror should be exiled from the bower of Avalon. The oracle spoke with much beneficence as to the delusions of the sick, and the demoniac influence of melancholy upon the brain. Yet his wisdom was withstood in the very quarter where he had trusted to find obedience and understanding. Dead Duessa"s mirror still hung in the Lady Yeoland"s bower.
One calm evening, when the west stood a great arch of ruddy gold, a slim girl knelt in the oriel with her face buried in her hands. She was clad in a gown of peac.o.c.k blue, fitting close to her slight figure, and girded about the hips with a girdle of green leather. Her black hair poured upon her shoulders, clouding her face, yet leaving bare the base of her white neck where it curved from her pearly shoulders. She drooped her head as she knelt before the cas.e.m.e.nt, where the light entered to her, azure and green, vermilion and purple, silver and rose.
Anon she rose softly, turned towards the mirror hanging on the wall, gazed into its depths with a species of bewitched fear. One glance given, she turned away with a shudder, hid her face in her hands, walked the room in a mute frenzy of self-horror. Presently she knelt again before the window-seat, struggled in prayer, turning her face piteously to an open cas.e.m.e.nt where the golden woods stood under the red wand of the west. The light waned a little. She rose up again from her knees, shook her hair forward so that it bathed her face, trod slowly towards the mirror, stared at herself therein.
The crystal bowl was broken, the ivory throne dishonoured! The blush of the rose had faded, the gleam of the opal fallen to dust. Youth and its sapphire shield had pa.s.sed into the gloom of dreams. The stars and the moon were magical no more.
She wavered away from the window to a dark corner, hid her face in the arras. The same wild cry rang like a piteous requiem through her brain.
The man lived and loved her, and she had come to this! Burning Gilderoy had stolen her beauty, made her a mockery of her very self. G.o.d, that Fate should compel her to lift her scars to the eyes of love!
In the gathering dusk, she went again to the mirror, peered therein, with strained eyes and a tremor of the lip. The twilight softened somewhat the bitterness of truth. She shook her hair forward, saw her eyes gleam, fingered her white throat, and smiled a little. Presently she lit a taper, held it with wavering hand, peered at the steel panel once again. She cried out, jerked away, and crushed the frail light under her foot.
Darkness increased, seeming to clothe her misery. She wandered through the room, twisting her black hair about her wrist, moaning and darting piteous glances into the gloom. Once she took a poniard from a table, fingered the point, pressed her hand over her heart, threw the knife away with a gesture of despair. On the morrow the man would come to her. What would she see in those grey eyes of his? Horror and loathing, ah G.o.d, not that!
Anon she grew calmer and less distressed, prayed awhile, lit a lamp, delved in an ambry built in the wall. That night her hands worked zealously, while the moon shimmered on the mere, setting silver wrinkles on its agate face. The woods were still and solemn as death, deep with the voiceless sympathy of the hour. Black lace hung upon Yeoland"s hands; the sable thread ran through and through; her white fingers quivered in the light of the lamp.
Her few hours of sleep that night were wild and feverish, smitten through with piteous dreams. On the morrow she bound a black fillet about her brows, and let the dusky mask of lace fall over face and bosom. She prayed a long while before her crucifix, but she did not gaze again into dead Duessa"s mirror.
That same evening Modred the seneschal blasphemed Aurelius in the garden of Avalon. The man of the sword was in no easy humour; his convictions emerged from his hairy mouth with a vigour that was not considerate.
"Dotard, you have no more wit than a pelican."
"My lord, I embrace truth."
"d.a.m.n truth; what eyes have you for a goodly close!"
Aurelius spread his hands with the air of a martyr.
"The physician, my lord," he said, "should ever deserve the confidence of his patron."
For retort, Modred shouldered him into the thick of a rose bush.
"Pedant," quoth he, "crab-apple, say a word on this matter, and I will drown you in the moat."
Aurelius gathered his robes and still ruffled it like an autocrat.
"Barbarity, sir, is the argument of fools."
"Bag of bones, rot in your wrinkled hide, keep your froth for sick children."
"Sir!"
"You have as much soul as a rat in a sewer. Come, list to me, breathe a word of this, and I"ll starve you in our topmost turret. Leave truth alone, gaffer, with your rheumy, broken-kneed wisdom. You have no wit in these matters, no, not a crust. Blurt a word, and I pack you off to grovel in Gilderoy."
The man of physic shrugged his shoulders, seemed grieved and incredulous, prepared to wash his hands of the whole business.
"Have your way, my lord; you are too hot-blooded for me; I will meddle no further."
"Ha, Master Gallipot, you shall acknowledge anon that I have a soul."
XLV
Trumpets were blowing in Avalon of the Twelve Towers, echoing through the valley where the sun shone upon the woods, the sere leaves glittering like golden byzants as they fell. The sky was a clear canopy, drawn as blue silk from height to height, tenting the green meadows. Avalon"s towers rose black and strong above the sheen of her quiet waters.
From Gambrevault came the Lord Flavian to claim his wife once more.
Through the brief days of autumn Aurelius of Gilderoy had decreed him an exile from the Isle of Orchards, pleading for the girl"s frail breath and her lily soul that might fade if set too soon in the noon of love.
In Gambrevault the Lord Flavian had moped like a prisoned falcon, listening to the far cry of the war, hungry for the touch of a woman"s hand. Modred had s.n.a.t.c.hed the Madonna of the Pine Forest from burning Gilderoy. She had been throned at last above the tides of violence and wrong.
That day the Lord Flavian rode in state for Avalon, even as an Arthurian, prince coming with splendour from some high-souled quest.
The woods had blazoned their banners for his march. Trumpets hailed him from the towers and battlements. The sun, like a great patriarch, smoothed his gold beard and beamed upon the world.
Over the bridge and beneath the gate, Modred led his master"s horse.
The garrison had gathered in the central court; they tossed their swords, and cheered for Gambrevault. Trumpets set the wild woods wailing. Bombards thundered from the towers.
In the court, amid the panoply of arms, Flavian dismounted, took Modred"s hand, leant upon the great man"s shoulder.
"Old friend, is she well?"
"Ah, sire, youth turns to youth."
"Let my minstrels play below the stair some old song of Tristan and Iseult. And now I go to her. Lead on."
In dead Duessa"s bower a drooping figure knelt before a crucifix in prayer. Foreshadowings of misery and woe were stirring in the woman"s heart. She had heard the bray of trumpets on the towers, the thunder of cannon, the shouts of strong men cheering in the court. She heard lute, viol, and flute strike up from afar a mournful melody sweet with an antique woe.