"Well?"
"You are a necessity to me."
"And why, messire?"
"For a matter of religion and of justice. Trust to my honour. You shall learn more in due season."
Yeoland, smitten with incredulity, stared at the man in mute surmise.
Here was an amazing circ.u.mstance--robbery idealised, soul, body, purse, at one bold swoop. In her mystification, she could find nothing to say to the man for the moment, even though he had promised her a refuge.
"You are very sure of yourself," she said at length.
"I am a man."
"Yet you leave me in ignorance."
"Madame, we are to undertake great deeds together, great perils. I could hold up an astonishing future to your eyes, but for the present I keep silence. Rest a.s.sured that you shall be accorded such honour as the Virgin herself could desire. Remember that I give you promise of vengeance, and a home."
The girl drew a deep breath, as though taking the spirit of the hour into her bosom.
"If I refuse?" she said to him.
"You cannot refuse," came the level retort.
"And why, messire?"
"Your consent, though pleasant, is not necessary in the matter. I have long ago determined to appropriate you to my ambition."
VI
Fulviac"s lair lay deep within the waving wilderness of pines. Above the spires of the forest, a ma.s.sive barrier of rock thrust up its rugged bartisans into the blue. East and west it stretched a mile or more, concavitated towards the north, and standing like a huge breakwater amid the sea of boughs.
The rocky plateau above was peopled by pines and rowans, thatched also with a wild tangle of briar, whin, and heather. Crannies cleft into it; caves tunnelled its ma.s.sive bosom; innumerable minarets of stone mingled with the wind-wracked trees. The cliffs rose like the walls of a castle donjon from the forest floor, studded with dwarf trees, bearded with ferns and gra.s.s. The plateau was inaccessible from the forest save by a thin rocky track, where the western slope of the cliff tailed off to merge into the trees.
The significance of the place to Fulviac lay in the existence of a cavern or series of caves piercing the cliff, and opening both upon the southern and northern facades of the ma.s.s. A wooden causeway led to the southern entry, bridging a small gorge where a stream foamed under the pines. The yawn of the southern opening had been built up with great blocks of stone, and the rough walls pierced by narrow squints, and a gate opening under a rounded arch.
Within, the roof of the main cavern arched abruptly upwards, hollowing a great dome over the smooth floor beneath. This grotesque and rock-ripped hall served as guard-room and dormitory, a very various chamber. Winding ways smote from it into the black bowels of the cliff.
The height of the main cavern dwindled as it tunnelled northwards into the rock. A second wall of stone part.i.tioned the guard-room from a second and smaller chamber, lit always by a great lamp pendent from the ceiling, a chamber that served Fulviac as state-room.
From Fulviac"s parlour the cavern narrowed to a throat-like gallery that had been expanded by human craft into a third and smaller room. This last rock chamber was wholly more healthy and habitable than the others.
Its walls stood squarely from floor to rocky roof, and it was blessed with a wide cas.e.m.e.nt, that stared northwards over a vista of obeisant trees. A postern gave entry to the room from a narrow platform, and from this ledge a stairway cut in the flank of the cliff dwindled into the murk of the forest below.
A more romantic atmosphere had swept into the bleak galleries of the place that winter. Plundered stores were ransacked, bales of merchandise ungirded, caskets and chests pilfered as for the endowing of the chamber of a queen. The northern room in the cliff blossomed into the rich opulence of a lady"s bower. Its stone walls were panelled with old oak carvings taken from some ancient manor. There were tapestries of green, gold, and purple; an antique bed with a tester of silver silk, its flanks blazoned with coloured escutcheons. Painted gla.s.s, azure, red, and gold, jewelled the cas.e.m.e.nt, showing also Sebastian bound to his martyr"s tree. A Jew merchant plundered on the road had surrendered a set of brazen ewers, a lute inlaid with pearl, a carpet woven on the looms of the purple East. There were mirrors of steel about the walls.
A carved prayer-desk, an embroidery frame, a crucifix wrought in ivory: Fulviac had consecrated all these to Yeoland, dead Rual"s daughter.
A white lily amid a horde of thistles! The girl"s life had drawn under the black shadow of the cliff, and into the clanging torrent of these rough men of the sword. It was a wild age and a wild region. Fulviac"s rogues were like wolves in a forest lair, keen, b.l.o.o.d.y, and relentless.
There was a rude strain of violence running through the strenuous mood of the place, like the song of Norse rovers, piercing the roar of the sea. Mystery enveloped the girl, war, and the sound of the sword. She fumbled at the riddle of Fate with the trembling fingers of one who unbars a prison gate in the hush of night. It was all strange and fantastic beyond the riot of a dream.
"Madame," Fulviac had said to her when he had hung a key at her girdle, "I have bidden you trust me; remember that I trust you in turn. Take this room as your sanctuary. Lock me out when you will. I prepare, among other things, to perfect your vengeance."
Yeoland suffered him and her necessity. She was shrewdly wise in the conviction that it would be useless to rebel against the man. Though over-masterful and secretive, his purpose appeared benignant in the opulence of its favour. Moreover, the forest was as a vast web holding her within the maze of the unknown.
"I have no alternative," she said to him, "I am in your power. And yet, I believe you are no villain."
"Your charity pleases me. I am a man with a strong purpose."
"For good?"
"Do I not need you?"
"Am I then so powerful a person?"
"You will learn anon."
"You seem something of a mystic," she said to him.
"Madame," he retorted, "trust my discretion. In due season I shall unfold to you certain aspects of life that will kindle your sympathies.
I shall appeal to the woman in you. When you are wise you will commend my ambition."
"You speak in riddles."
"Wait. As yet you see through a gla.s.s darkly."
From the mountainous north to the warm southern sea, from the wooded west to the eastern fens, the good King ruled, holding many great barons in feudal faith, and casting his fetters of gold over Church and State.
Chivalry moved through the world to the clangour of arms and the songs of the troubadour. Lutes sounded on terrace and in garden, fair women bloomed like roses, bathed in a sensuous blaze of romance. Baron made war upon baron; glory and death were crowned together. The painter spread his colours in the halls of the great; the goldsmith and the carver wrought wondrous things to charm the eye. Church bells tolled.
Proud abbots carried the sword, and made fine flutter among the women.
Innumerable saints crowded the avenues to heaven. It was a fair age and very lovely, full of colour and desire, music and the odour of romance.
And the poor? Their lot hung largely on the humour of an overlord, or the state of a gentleman"s stomach. They had their saints" days, their games, their pageants, their miracle plays. They had hovels of clay and wattle; labour in wind and rain; plagues and pestilences in the rotting filth of their city alleys. They marked the great folk go by in silks and cloth of gold, saw the pomp and opulence of that other life, remembered their own rags and their squealing children.
And yet, consider the broad inclinations of the world. To eat, to be warm, to satisfy the flesh, to ease a l.u.s.t, to drink beer. There was no very vast gulf betwixt the rich man and the poor. The one feasted to music, the other sc.r.a.ped a bone to the dirge of toil. They had like appet.i.tes, like satisfactions, and h.e.l.l is considered to be Utopian in the extreme. The poor man envied the rich; the rich man ruled the poor.
Envy, that jingling demagogue, has made riotous profit out of such a stew since the world was young.
Fulviac"s cliff was shut out from the ken of man by leagues of woodland, moor, and waste. The great pine forest girded it in its inmost bosom.
No wayfarers rode that way; no huntsman ranged so deep; the place had an evil rumour; many whom it had welcomed had never returned. Romancers had sung of it, the lay of Guingamor. Horror ruled black-browed over its pine-c.u.mbered hills, its gloomy depths. Solitude abode there, as over a primaeval sea, and there was no sound save the moan or storm-cry of the wind over its troubled trees.
According to legend lore, Romulus peopled Rome with the offscourings of Italy. Fulviac had emulated the device with the state-craft of a strong conspirator. The forest stood a grand accomplice, abetting him with its myriad sentinels, who gossiped solely with the wind. The venture had been finely conceived, finely edificated. A cliff, a cave, five-score armed men. Not a vast power on the face of it to threaten a system or to shake a throne. Superficialities were fallacious, the surface false and fair as glistening ice. The forest hid more than a company of ruffians banded together to resist tyranny. Enthusiasm, genius, vigour, such torches, like a burning hovel, can fling a city into flame.
As for the girl Yeoland, she was more than mocked by the swift vagaries of life. Two days of mordant realism had erased from her heart the dream visions of childhood. To be declared homeless, kinless, in one day; to be bereft of liberty the next! To what end? She stared round the richly-garnished room into which Fate had thrust her, fingered the pearl-set lute, gazed at her own face in the steel mirrors. She was the same woman, yet how differently circ.u.mstanced! Fulviac"s mood had not hinted at love, or at any meaner jest. What power could he prophesy to his advantage in the mere fairness of her face? What was the gall of a woman"s vengeance to a man who had conceived the downfall of a kingdom?
Her knowledge of psychology was rustic in the extreme, and she had no wit for the unravelling of Fulviac"s subtleties. There were certain convictions, however, that abode with her even in her ignorance. She could have taken oath that he was no mere swashbuckler, no captain of outlaws, no mere spoiler of men. Moreover, she believed him to be the possessor of some honour, and a large guerdon of virility. Lastly, pity appealed her as a sentiment not to be discarded. The man, whoever he might be, appeared desirous of putting his broad shoulders betwixt her and the world.
Fulviac grew perspicuous sooner than she could have prophesied. He had a fine, cloud-soaring way with him that seemed to ignore the mole-hills of common circ.u.mspection. He had wit enough also to impose his trust on others with a certain graceful confidence that carried bribery in the very generosity of its hardiness.
March was upon them like a spirit of discord, wild, riotous weather, with the wind thundering like storm-waves upon the cliff. The pines were buffeting each other in the forest, and reeling beneath the scourgings of the breeze. Fulviac came to the girl one windy noon, when the caverns were full of the breath of the storm. His manner to her seemed as a significant prelude, heralding the deep utterance of some human epic.