BOOK III

THE WAR IN WALES

I

Aurelius Ambrosius the king was dead, taken off in Winchester by the hand of a poisoner. He had been found stark and cold in his great carved bed, with an empty wine-cup beside him, and a tress of black hair and a tress of yellow laid twined together upon his lips. The signet-ring had gone from his finger, and by the bed had been discovered a woman’s embroidered shoe dropped under the folds of the purple quilt. The truth, sinister enough in its bare suggestions, was glossed over by the court folk out of honour to Aurelius, and of love to Uther the king’s brother. It was told to the country how an Irish monk sent by Pascentius, dead Vortigern’s son, had gained audience of the king, and treacherously poisoned him as he drank wine at supper. The tale went out to the world, and was believed of many with a sincere and honest faith. Yet a certain child-eyed woman, wandering on the shores of Wales for sight of Irish ships, could have spoken more of the truth had she so dared.

Uther Pendragon had been hailed king at York before the bristling spears of a victorious host. But a week before he had marched against the heathen on the Humber, and overthrown them with such slaughter as had not been seen in Britain since the days when Boadicea smote the Romans. At the head of his men he had marched south in a snowstorm to be thundered into Winchester as king and conqueror. Twelve maidens of noble blood, clad in ermine and minever, had run before him with boughs of mistletoe and bay. Five hundred knights had walked bareheaded, with swords drawn, behind his horse. The city had glistened in a white web of frosted samite, sparkled over by the clear visage of a winter sun.

There were many great labours ready to the king’s hand. Britain lay bruised by the onslaughts of the barbarians; her monks had been slain, her churches desecrated. The pirate ships swept the seas, and poured torch and sword along the sunny shores of the south. Andredswold, dark, saturnine, mysterious, alone waved them back with the sepulchral threatening of its trees. Yet, for all the burden of the kingdom upon his broad shoulders, Uther gave his first care to the honouring of the dead. Aurelius Ambrosius was buried with great pomp of churchmen and nobles at Stonehenge, and a royal mound raised above the tomb. At Christmastide, with snow upon the ground, a great gathering was made at Sarum of all the petty kings, princes, and nobles of the land. Hither came Meliograunt, king of Cornwall, and Urience of the land of Gore. Fealty was sworn with solemn ordinance to Uther Pendragon the king, and common league bonded against the heathen and the whelps of the north.

There were other perils brewing for Britain over the sea. Pascentius, dead Vortigern’s son, had been an outcast and a wanderer since the days when the sons of Constantine had sailed from Armorica to save the land from the blind lust and treason of his father. He had been a drifting fire beyond the seas, an intriguer, a sower of sedition, a man dangerous alike to friend and foe. Beaten like a vulture from the coasts of Britain, he had turned with treasonable hope to Ireland and its king, Gilomannius the Black, a strenuous potentate, boasting little love for Ambrosius the king. Here, in Ireland, a kennel of sedition had arisen. Pascentius, keen, hungry plotter, had toiled at the task of piling enmity against those who had destroyed his father amid the flames of Genorium. A great league arose, a banding of the barbarians with the Irish princes, a union of the Saxons who ravaged Kent with the wild tribesmen over the northern border. Month by month a great host gathered on the Irish coast. Many ships came from the east and from the south. Mid-winter was past before Gilomannius embarked, and, setting sail with a fair wind, turned the beaks of his galleys for the shores of Wales.

Noise of the gathering storm had been brought to Uther as he journed through the southern coasts, rebuilding the churches, recovering abbey and hermitage from their desolate ashes. His zeal was great for God, and his love of Britain well-nigh as noble. Warned thus in due season, he marched for the west, calling the land to arms, assigning for the gathering of the host Caerleon upon Usk, that fair city bosomed in the fulness of its woods and pastures. Many a knight had answered to his call; many a city had sent out her companies; the high-roads rang with the cry of steel in the crisp winter weather.

Duke Gorlois had come from Cornwall from his castle of Tintagel, bringing many knights and men-at-arms by sea, and the Lady Igraine his wife, in a great galley whose bulwarks glistened with shields. In Caerleon Gorlois had a house built of white stone, set upon a little hill in the centre of the city. To Caerleon he brought this golden falcon of a woman, this untamable thing that he had kept prisoned in the high towers of Tintagel. He mewed her up like a nun in his house of white stone, so that no man should see the fairness of her face. She was wild as an eyas from the woods, fierce and unapproachable, and sharp of claw. Robbed of her liberty, had she not sought to take her own life with a sword, and to throw herself from the battlements of Tintagel? Gorlois had won little love by Merlin’s subtlety, and he feared the woman’s beauty and the spell of her large eyes.

It was the month of February and clear crisp weather. The white bellies of the Irish sails had shown up against the grey blue stretch of the sea, a white multitude of canvas that had sent the herdsmen hurrying their flocks to the mountains. Horsemen had galloped for Caerleon, and the cry of war went up over wood and water. Flames licked the night sky. From Caerleon to St. Davids, from St. Davids to Eryri, the red blaze of beacon-fires told of the ships at sea.

The cry of the storm arose in Caerleon, and the tramp of armed men sounded all day in her streets. The great host lodged about the city broke camp and streamed westwards along the high-road into Wales. Bugles blew, banners flapped, masses of sullen steel rolled away into purple of the winter woods. Bristling spears and lines of skin-clad shields vanished into the west like the waves of a solemn sea. On the walls of Caerleon stood many women and children watching the host march for the west, watching Uther the king ride out with his great company of knights and nobles.

At the casement of an upper room in Gorlois’s house stood a woman looking out over Caerleon towards the sea. She was clad in a mantle of furs, and in a tunic of purple linked up with cord of gold. A tippet of white fur clasped with a brooch of amethysts circled her throat. Her hair was bound up in a net of fine silk, and there was a girdle of blue silk about her loins, and an enamelled cross upon her bosom. She stood with her elbows resting on the stone sill, and her peevish face clasped between her hands. Her eyes looked very large and lustrous as she stared out wistfully over the city.

In the great court below horses champed the bit and struck fire from the ringing flags. Men in armour clanged to and fro; rough voices cried questions and counter-questions; bridles jingled; spear-shafts clattered on the stones. Now a clarion blared as a troop of horse thundered by up the street, their armour gleaming dully past the courtyard gate. The growl of war hung heavy over Caerleon, a grim sullen sound that seemed in keeping with the restless chiding of the wind.

Igraine’s face was hard as stone as she watched the men moving in the courtyard below. She looked older than of yore, whiter, thinner in cheek and neck, her great eyes staunch though sad under her netted hair. Her face showed melancholy mingled with a constant scorn that had rarely found expression with her in the old days, save within the walls of Avangel. She looked like one who had endured much, suffered much, yet lost no whit of pride in the trial. Though she may have been blemished like a Greek vase smitten by some barbaric sword, she was her self still, brave, headstrong, resolute as ever. The shame of the things she had suffered had perhaps wiped out the gentler outlines of her character and left her more stern, more wary, less honest, more deep in her endeavours. There was no passive humility or patience about her soul, and she was the falcon still, though caged and guarded beyond her liberty.

As she stood at the casement with the prophetic murmur of war in her ears, it seemed to her as though life surged to her feet and mocked her bondage like laughing water. The desire of liberty abode ever with her even to the welcoming of stagnant death. She thirsted for her freedom, plotted for it, dreamt of it with a zeal that was almost ferocious. Her life seemed a speculation, a perpetual aspiration after a state that still eluded her. In the Avangel days she had been wild and petulant. Then Pelleas had come through the green gloom of early summer to soften her soul and inspire all the best breath of the woman in her. Again, thanks to Gorlois, she had fallen with the usual reaction of circumstance upon evil times; the change had discovered the peevish discontent of the girl hardened into the strong wilfulness of the woman.

She hated Gorlois with a fanatical immensity of soul. When the man was near her she felt full of the creeping nausea of a great loathing, and she waxed faint with hate at the veriest touch of his hands. His breath seemed to her more unsavoury than the miasma of a gutter, and it needed but the sound of his voice to bring all her baser passions braying and yelping against him. He had driven the religious instinct out of her heart, and she was in revolt against heaven and the marriage pact forged by the authority of the Church. She had often vowed in her heart that she could do no sin against Gorlois, her husband. He had no claim upon her conscience. The bondage had been of his making; let God judge her if she scorned his honour.

Standing by the window watching the knights saddling for their lord’s sally, she heard heavy footsteps mounting up the stairs, and the ring of steel-tipped shoes along the gallery. The footsteps were deliberate, and none too fast, as though the man walked under a burden of thought. A shadow seemed to pass over Igraine’s face. She slipped from the window, ran across the room, shot the bolt of the door, and stood listening. A hand tried the latch. She knew well enough whose fist it was that rattled on the oaken panels. Her face hardened to a kind of cold malevolence, and she laughed noiselessly in her sleeve.

A terse summons came to her from the gallery.

“Wife, we ride at once.”

The man could not have made a worse beginning. There was a suggestion of tyranny in a particular word that was hardly temperate. Igraine leant against the door; she was still smiling to herself, and her hands fingered the embroidered tassel of the latch.

“We are late on the road; I can make no tarrying.”

The door quivered a moment as though shaken by a gusty wind. Everything was quiet again, and Igraine could hear the man breathing. Putting her mouth to the crack between post and hinge-board she laughed stridently as though in scorn.

“Igraine!”

The voice was half-imperative, half-appealing.

“My very dear lord!”

“Are you abed?”

“No, dear lord.”

“Open to me; I would kiss your lips before I sally.”

“You have never kissed me these many days.”

“True, wife; is it fault of mine?”

“Nor shall again, dear lord, if I have strength.”

She heard the man muttering to himself a moment, but this time there was no smiting of the door, no fume and tempest. His mood seemed more temperate, less masterful, as though he were half heavy at heart.

“Igraine—”

“Why do you whimper like a dog?” she said; “go, get you to war. What are you to me?”

“When will you learn reason?”

“When you are dead, sire.”

“Perhaps I deserve all this.”

“Are you so much a penitent?”

Her mockery seemed to lift Gorlois to a higher range of passion, and there was great bitterness in his voice as he tossed back words to her with a quick kindling of desire.

“Woman, I have been hard in the winning of you, but, God knows, you are something to me.”

“God knows, Gorlois, I hate you.”

His hand shook the door.

“Let me in, Igraine.”

“Break down the door; you shall come at me no other way.”

“Woman, woman, I am a fool; my heart smarts at leaving you.”

“You sound almost saintly.”

“I have left Brastias in charge of you.”

“Thanks, lord, for a jailer.”

Igraine drew back from the door and stood at her full height with her hands crossed upon her bosom. She quivered as she stood with the intense effort of her hate. Gorlois still waited without the door, though she could not hear him moving. The silence seemed like the deep hush that falls between the blustering stanzas of a storm.

“Igraine!”

It was a hoarse cry, quick and querulous. Igraine had both her fists to her chin in an attitude of inward effort, as though she racked herself to give utterance to the implacable temper of her scorn. Her face had a queer parched look. When she spoke, her voice was shrill like a piping wind.

“Gorlois.”

“Wife.”

“Would you have my blessing?”

“Give it me, Igraine.”

“Go then, and look not to me for comfort. When you are in battle, and the swords cry on your shield, I shall pray on my knees that you may get your death.”

Gorlois gave never a sound as he stood by the barred door with his hand over the mezail of his helmet. It seemed dark and gloomy in the gallery, and the staunch oak fronted him like fate. His eyes were full of a dull light as he turned and went clanging down the stairway with slow, heavy tread. His sounding footsteps died down into the din of arms that came from the great court. Igraine ran to the window and watched him and his men ride out, smiling a bleak smile as the last mailed figure gleamed out by the gate.

II

When Gorlois and his knights had gone, Igraine unbarred the door, and passed down the narrow stair to the state chamber of the house, where a fire was burning. It was a solemn room, shadowed with many arches, with vaults inlaid with marble, its walls painted green and gold, its glimmering casements lozenged with fine glass. Furs were spread upon the mosaic floor; painted urns held flowers that bloomed in the mock summer of the room.

Igraine stood and warmed herself before the fire. From an altar-like pillar near she took storax and galbanum from brazen bowls, and scattered the resinous tears upon the flames. A pungent fragrance rose up into her nostrils. The flicker of the fire played upon her face, and set a lustre in her eyes. It was winter weather, and the warmth was welcome.

The refrain of her talk with Gorlois still ran at fever heat like a wild song through her brain. She was stirred to the deeps of her strong soul. For Gorlois she had no measure of pity. He was a rotten tree to her, a slab of granite, anything but quick flesh and blood capable of aspiration and desire. She hated him more for his pleading than for his tyranny, fearing to be pleased by one she dreaded. He was strenuous and obstinate. She knew that it would be great joy to her if she saw his face no more, and if his body crumbled in the rain on some bleak coast in Wales.

As she stood by the fire and looked into it with pondering eyes she heard a curtain drawn and the sound of a footstep on the threshold. Turning briskly, like one accustomed to suspicions, she saw the man Brastias in the doorway looking at her half-furtively, as though none too proud of the office thrust upon him. He had great grey eyes and a calm face. Bending stiffly to Igraine with his hand over his heart, he turned aside to a cabinet by the wall, took therefrom an illumined scroll of legendary tales, and sat down on a bench to read, as though he had no other business in the room.

Igraine’s long lip curled. She knew the meaning of the man’s presence there shrewdly enough. Going to a window she opened the casement frame and looked out on the winter scene. Usk winding silver to the sea, the purple roll of the bleak bare woods, the far sea itself dying a sullen streak into a sullen sky. It was dreary enough, and yet it suited her; she could have welcomed thunder and the rend of forked fire above the woods. Thought was fierce in her with the wind crying about the house like a wistful voice, the voice of days long dead.

To be free of Gorlois!

To cast off her present self like a rotten cloak!

To adventure liberty, though the peril were shrill as the wind through the swaying pines on the hillside!

To deal with Brastias!

Now Brastias was a grave-faced knight, neither young nor old, but a very boy in the matter of the mock wisdom of the world. He was possessed of one of those generous natures that looks kindly on humanity with a simple optimism born of a contented conscience. He was a devout man, a soldier, and a gentleman. Moreover, he owned a holy reverence for women, a reverence that led him into a somewhat extravagant belief in the sincerity of their truth and virtue. He was blessed too in being nothing of a cynic in his conceptions of honour.

Gorlois knew the man to the heart, and trusted him, a fact well proven by the faith imposed upon him in his wardenship of the Lady Igraine. Brastias hated the task as much as he hated the telling of a lie. There are some men whose whole instinct is towards truth. They are golden souls, often too easily deceived with a gross dross that makes an outward show of kindred colour.

Brastias was no stranger to Igraine, for he had served her as one of the knights of the guard in the great castle of Tintagel. He was a man who could look into a woman’s eyes and make her feel instinctively the clear honour of his soul. There was nothing of the flesh about Brastias. And it was in this chivalrous faith of his that Igraine discovered a credulity that might make him prone to believe a certain profession of faith that was taking sudden and subtle form within her mind. Months ago, she would have hesitated before the man’s grey eyes. But feeling herself sinned against, and stirred by the shame of the past, she found ample justification for herself in the lie Gorlois had practised for her undoing.

She left the window, and went and stood by the fire, with her back to the man.

“Brastias,” she said, quite softly.

The man looked up from the scroll, and seemed ill at ease.

“I trust your duty is pleasant to you?”

Brastias’s eyelids flickered nervously, and he cleared his throat.

“May the Virgin witness,” he said, “I have no love of the task.”

“My Lord Gorlois trusts you?”

“He has said so, madame.”

“And am I not his wife?”

Brastias put the scroll aside with a constrained deliberation. He felt himself wholly in the wrong, as he always did before a woman, and his wit ran clumsily on such occasions. It had needed but the observation of a child to mark the gulf between Gorlois and his wife. Gorlois had spoken few words on the matter, had given commands and nothing more. Brastias was not the man to tamper officiously with the confidences of others. He thought much, said little, and bided quiet for Igraine to speak.

She stood half-turned towards the fire, with her face in profile, and her hands hanging limply at her side. Looking for all the world like a penitent, she spoke with a certain unconscious pathos, as though she touched on a matter that was heavy upon her heart.

“Brastias, I may call you a friend?”

“I trust so, madame.”

“Then there is no reason for me to be backward in speaking of the truth?”

The man bowed and said nothing.

“Come then, Brastias, tell me honestly, have I seemed to you like a woman who loved her husband?”

The girl’s blue eyes were staring hard into the man’s grey ones. There was little chance of prevarication before so blunt a question, and Brastias’s courtesy, like Balaam’s ass, refused to deny the scrutiny of truth. Igraine could read the man’s face like a piece of blazened parchment.

“Never fear to be frank,” she said; “your belief hangs on your face like an alphabet, and that shows me how much you know of a woman’s heart.”

“Pardon me, madame.”

“Never blush, man, you would have said that I had as little love for Gorlois as for the dirtiest beggar in Caerleon?”

Brastias frowned mildly and agreed with her, remembering as he did a certain wild scene on the battlements of Tintagel.

“And doubtless you would say that it pained me not a whit to see Gorlois my lord ride out from Caerleon into the wilds of Wales?”

There was such reproach in her voice that Brastias fell into confusion before her eyes, reddened, and began to excuse himself.

“Your ladyship’s behaviour,” he said, with an ingenuous look and an intense striving after propitiation,—“your ladyship’s behaviour would hardly warrant me in believing that my Lord Gorlois was vastly dear to you. And, pardon me, a woman does not seek to run away from her husband.”

“You insinuate—”

Brastias felt himself in the mire, and groaned in spirit.

“Madame, I would say—”

“Yes, yes, I understand you.”

“Give me leave—”

“Not another word.”

Igraine smiled softly to herself, turned her back on Brastias and stared long into the fire. The man stood by, watching her with a humbled look, his fingers twisting restlessly at the broidery of his black tunic. Igraine traced out the mosaic patterns on the floor with the point of her shoe.

“I think you men are all fools,” she said.

Brastias’s silence might have suggested contradiction.

“Have you ever loved a woman?”

The man shifted, and went red under his straight fair hair. His eyes took a dreamy look.

“Yes,” he said, as though half-ashamed.

Igraine hung her head and sighed.

“Perhaps,” she said, growing suddenly shy and out of countenance, "perhaps you may have learnt the lesson of the froward heart, the heart that comes by love when it is in peril of great loss."

Brastias drew a quick, deep breath.

“By the Virgin, that’s true,” he said.

Igraine turned to the fire and hid her face from the man. There was a pathetic droop about her shoulders, a listless curving of her neck, that made Brastias picture her as burdened with some immoderate sorrow. He was an impressionable man, not in any amorous sense, but in the matter of sympathy towards his fellows. He thought he heard a catch in the girl’s breathing that boded tears. Her hair looked very soft and lustrous as it curved over her ears and neck.

“Madame Igraine.”

No answer. Brastias went a step nearer.

“Listen to me.”

A slight turning of the head in response.

“What ails you, madame?”

“Never trouble.”

“I beseech you, tell me.”

The man was quite afire; his face looked bright and eager, and his eyes shone.

“Gorlois has gone to the war.”

The words were jerked out one by one.

“Madame!”

“War—and death.”

“Courage, madame, courage. On my soul, you are not going to say—”

“Brastias, you understand.”

“Then?”

“Man, man, don’t drag it out of me; don’t you see? are you blind?”

Brastias invoked a certain saint by the name of Christopher, and straightway emphasised his words by falling down on his knees beside Igraine. She had contrived to conjure up tears as she bent over the fire. Brastias found one of her hands and held it.

“This will be my lord’s salvation.”

“Think you so?”

“On my soul, my dear lady, I thank our Lord Jesu from my heart. For I know my Lord Gorlois, and the bitterness that weighed him down, though he spoke little to me on this matter, being staunch to you, and to his courtesy. And by our Lord’s Passion, madame, I love peace in a house, and quiet looks, and words like laughing water, for there is never a home where temper rules.”

“Brastias, you shame me.”

“God forbid, dear lady, there’s no gospel vanity in my heart. I speak but out.”

The man’s quaint outburst of gladness touched Igraine’s honesty to the core, but she had no thought of recantation, for all the pricking of her conscience. She passed back to the open window and leant against the mullion, while Brastias rose from his knees and followed her.

“I am faint,” she said, “and the fresh wind comforts me.”

“Courage, madame; Duke Gorlois fights for Britain and the Cross; what better blessing on his shield?”

Igraine was looking out toward the sea and the grey curtain of the sky cut in places by dark woods and the sweep of dull green hills. There was a wistful droop about her figure that made Brastias molten with intent to comfort, and dumb with words of sympathy that died inarticulate in his throat. He stood there, a man muzzled by his own sincerity, bankrupt of a syllable, though he commanded his wit to be nimble with stentorian cry of conscience. He felt hot in his skin and vastly stupid. By the time he had lumbered up some passable fancy, Igraine had turned from the window with a quick intelligence kindling in her eyes.

“Brastias.”

“Madame.”

“Listen to me, I have come by a plan.”

A sudden flood of sunlight streamed through a rent in the grey canopy of clouds. The landscape took a warmer tinge, the purple of the woods deepened. Brastias saw the sudden gleam of light strike on Igraine’s hair. Her head was thrown back upon her splendid neck, and her eyes seemed large with love.

“I will show Gorlois how I love him,” she said.

Brastias’s face was still hazed in conjecture.

“I will wipe out the past.”

“Ah!”

“We will follow Gorlois to the war, you and I, Brastias, together. What say you to that?”

The man looked at her with clear grey eyes, and with a transient immobility of feature that changed swiftly to a glow of understanding. The words had gone home to him like a trumpet-cry; their courage warmed him, and he was carried with the wind.

“A great hazard—and a noble,” he said, with a flush of colour; “the peril is on my neck, and yet—I’ll bear it.”

Igraine’s face blazed.

“Brastias, you will go with me?”

“By my sword, to the death.”

“Come hither, man; I must kiss your forehead.”

Brastias knelt to her again with crossed hands. She looked into his grey eyes and touched his forehead with her lips.

“Thus I salute honour,” she said.

“My lord’s lady!”

“You have trusted me.”

“Else had I been ashamed.”

The man went away to arm, warm at heart as any boy. Igraine stood a moment looking into the fire with an enigmatic calm upon her face. For Brastias she felt a throttled pity, an impossible admiration that only troubled her. Her lust for liberty bore her like a storm-wind, and her hate of Gorlois made her iron at heart. She could dare anything to fling off the moral bondage that cramped and bound her like a net.

While Brastias was away arming and ordering horses, she went to a little armoury on the stairs and filched away a short hauberk and a sheathed poniard. She wore these under a gown of black velvet bound with a silver girdle, and a cloak of sables hooded and lined with sky-blue cloth. She had a strange joy of the knife at her girdle as she passed down the stairway to the court.

A few silent servants gaped at her as she passed from the house. Brastias came out to her in armour. In the court she heard the cry of steel bridles, the sparking of hoofs on the stones. They were soon mounted and away under the great gate and free of Caerleon in the decline of the day. The west had no colour, and a wind pined in the trees as they swept into the twining shadows of the woods, and saw the boughs clutch each other against the sullen sky. Soon night came in a black cowl, and with a winter wind that roamed the woods like the moan of a prophecy. Igraine, riding with her bridle linked in that of Brastias, pressed on for the west with a mood that echoed the roar of the trees.

III

A man in black armour, a lady in a cloak of sables, a pine forest under a winter sky.

Myriad trunks interminably pillared, grey-black below, changing to red beneath the canopy of boughs; patches of grey-blue sky between; a floor overgrown with whortleberry and heather, and streaked seldom by the sun. Through the tree-tops the veriest sighing of a wind, a sound that crept up the curling galleries like the softly-taken breath of a sleeping world. Away on every hand oblivious vistas black under multitudinous green spires.

The woman’s face seemed white under the sweep of her sable hood. Its expression was very purposeful, its mouth firm and resolute, its air indicative of a deliberate will. Her eyes stared into the wood over her horse’s head with a constant care, dropping now and again a quick side-glance at the man in black armour riding on her flank. She spoke seldom to him, and then with a certain assumption of authority that seemed to trouble his equanimity but little. Often she would lean forward in the saddle as though to listen, her eyes fixed, her mouth decisive, her hand hollowed at her ear to concavitate some sound other than the wind-song of the trees. It was evident that she was under the spell of some strong emotion, for she would smile and frown by turns as though vexed by perpetual alternatives of feeling.

The man at her side watched with his grey eyes the path curling uphill between the trees. Having his own inward exposition of the woman’s mood, he contented himself wisely with silence, keeping his reflections to himself. He was not a man who blurted commonplaces when lacking the means of inspiration. And he was satisfied with the fancy that he understood completely the things that were passing through the woman’s mind. He believed her troubled by those extreme anxieties of the heart that come with war and the handiwork of the sword. Perhaps he was fortunate in being ignorant of the truth.

The interminable trees seemed to vex the woman’s spirit as their trunks crowded the winding track and shut the pair in as with a never-ending barrier. But for an occasional patch of heathland or scrub, no lengthy vista opened up before them. Tree-boles stood everywhere to baulk their vision, silent and stiff like sullen sentinels. The horses plodded on. Igraine’s impatience could be read upon her face, and discovered in her slighter gestures. It was the impatience of a mind at war within itself, a mind prone through the chafe of trouble to be vexed with trifles; sore, sensitive, and hasty. Brastias watched her, pretending to be intent the while on the path that wandered away into the mazes of the wood. He was a considerate creature, and he suffered her petulance with a placid good-humour, and a certain benevolence that was the outcome of pity.

Igraine jerked her bridle, and eyed the trees as though they were the members of a mob thrusting themselves between her and her purpose. She was inclined to be unreasonable, as only a woman can be on occasions. Brastias, calm-faced and debonair, contented himself with sympathy, and refrained from reason as from the handling of a whip.

“That peasant fellow was a liar,” he said, by way of being companionable.

“Yes, the whelp.”

“I’ll swear we’ve ridden two leagues, not one.”

“The fellow should have a stripe for every furlong.”

“Rough justice, madame.”

Igraine laughed.

“If justice were done to liars,” she said, “the world would be hideless, scourged raw.”

Brastias edged his horse past an intruding tree and chuckled amiably.

“It would be a pity to spoil so much beauty.”

“Eh!”

“The women would come off worst.”

Igraine flashed a look at him.

“Balaam’s ass spoke the truth,” she said.

They had not gone another furlong when Brastias reined in suddenly and stood listening. He held up a hand to Igraine, looking at her with prophetic face, his black armour lustreless under the trees.

“Hark!”

Igraine stared into his eyes. Neither moved a muscle for fully a minute.

“A trumpet-cry!”

Brastias lowered his hand.

“From the host. And the ‘advance,’ by the sound on’t.”

“Then we shall be out of the woods soon.”

“Go warily, madame; it would be poor wisdom to stumble on an Irish legion.”

“Brastias, I would not miss the day for a year in heaven.”

As they pushed uphill through the solemn shadows of the forest, a sound like the raging of a wind through a wood came down to them faintly from afar. It was a sullen sound, deep and mysterious as the hoarse babel of the sea, smitten through with the shrill scream of trumpets like the cry of gulls above a storm. In the alleys of the pine forest it was still as death, and calm beneath the beniscus of the tall trees.

Igraine and Brastias looked meaningly at each other as they rode. The sound needed no words to christen it. The two under the trees knew that they heard the roar of host breaking upon host, the cataractine thunder of a distant battle.

Pushing on as fast as the forest suffered, the din became more definite, more human, more sinister in detail. It stirred the blood, challenged the courage, racked conjecture with the infinite chaos it portended. Victory and despair were trammelled up together in its sullen roar; life and death seemed to swell it with the wind-sound of their wings; it was stupendous, sonorous, chaotic, a tempest-cry of steel and many voices merged into the grand underchant of war.

Igraine’s face kindled to the sound like the face of a girl who hears her lover’s lute at night under her window. Blood fled to her brain with the wild strength of the strain humming like a wind through the trees. She was in the mood for war; the tragedy of it solemnised her spirit, and made her look for the innumerable flash of arms, the rolling march of a multitude. For the moment it was life, and the glorious strength of it; death and the dust were hid from sight.

Yet another furlong and the red trunks dwindled, and the sombre boughs fringed great tracts of blue, and to the north mountains rose up dim and purple under an umbrage of clouds. To the west the sea appeared solemn and foamless, set with pine-spired aisles, and a great company of ships at anchor. Nigh the shore the grey pile of a walled town stood out upon green meadows. Igraine and the man pushed past the outlying thickets, and drew rein upon a slope that ran gradually down from them like the great swell of a sea.

Tented by the dome of the sky lay a natural amphitheatre, shelving towards the sea, but rising in the east by rolling slopes to a ridge that joined the mountains with the forest. The valley was a medley of waste land, scrub, gorse, and thicket, traversed by the white streak of a road, and closed on the west by the grey walls of the town rising up above the green. It was a wild spot enough. However still and solitary it may have seemed in its native desertedness, however much the haunt of the wolf and the boar, it seethed now like a cauldron with the boiling stir of battle. Men swarmed through scrub and thicket; masses of steel moved hither and thither, met, mingled, broke, and rallied. Wave rushed on wave. Bodies of horsemen smoked over the open with flashing of many colours and the glittering pomp of mail, to roll with clanging trumpets into some vortex of death. The whole scene was one shifting mass of steel and strife, dust and disorder, galloping squadrons, rolling spears, rank on rank of shields a-flicker in the sun. And from this whirlpool of humanity rose the dull grinding roar of war, fierce, stupendous, clamorous, grand.

To the trained eye of the soldier the chaos took orderly and intelligent meaning, and Brastias stood in his stirrups and pointed out to Igraine the main ordering of the hosts. Uther Pendragon held the eastern ridge with his knights and levies; Gilomannius and Pascentius thrust up at him from the sea; while the valley between held the wreck of the countercharges of either host, and formed debatable ground where troop ran against troop, and man against man.

The masses of Uther’s army swept away along the ridge, their arms glittering over the green slopes, their banners and surcoats colouring the height into a terraced garden of war, the whole, a solemn streak of gold against the blue bosoms of the hills. To the north stood Meliograunt with his levies from Wales, and next him Duke Eldol and King Nentres headed the men of Flavia Cæsariensis. South of all the great banner of Tintagel showed where Gorlois and the southern levies reared up their spears like a larch-wood in winter. Brastias pointed them all out to the girl in turn, keeping keen watch the while on the shifting mob of mail in the valley.

Igraine, stirred by the scene, urged on from the forest, and the knight following her, they crossed some open scrubland, wound through a thicket of pines, and stood at gaze under the boughs. Igraine’s eyes were all the while turned on the banner of Tintagel, and from the common mob of mailed figures she could isolate a knight in gilded harness on a white horse, Gorlois, her husband. The mere sight of him set her hate blazing in her heart, and seemed to pageant out all the ills she had suffered at his hands. Her feud against the man was a veritable insanity, a species of melancholia that wrapped all existence in the morbid twilight of self-centred bitterness. As she looked down upon the host there was a kind of overmastering madness of malice on her face, an emotion whose very intensity paled her to the lips, and made her eyes hard and scintillant as crystal. She was discreet for all her violence of soul. Turning to Brastias, who was scanning the valley under his hand, she pointed to the banner with a restless eagerness of manner that might have hinted at her solicitude for Gorlois, her lord.

“See yonder,” she said, “is not that the Lord Gorlois on the white horse by yonder standard?”

Brastias turned his glance thither, considered for a moment, and then agreed decisively.

“Love is quick of eye,” he said with a smile.

“Let us ride down nearer.”

“I care not for the hazard, madame.”

“Who fears at such a season?”

“By my sword, madame, not your servant; I am but careful of your safety.”

“Fear for me, Brastias, when I fear for myself.”

“Methinks, madame, that would be never.”

“Brastias, I believe you.”

Igraine’s courage had risen to too high an imperiousness for the moment to brook baffling or to endure restraint. She had been lifted out of herself, as it were, by the storm-cry of battle, and by the splendour of the scene spread out before her eyes. A furlong or more down the hillside a little hillock stood up amid a few wind-twisted thorns, proffering rare vantage for outlook over wood and dale. She was away like a flash, and several lengths ahead before Brastias had roused up, put spur to horse, and cantered after her. The man saw the glint of her horse’s hinder hoofs spurning the sod, and though the wind whistled about his ears, he was left well in the rear for all his spurring. Igraine, with her hair agleam under her tossed-back hood, and her cheeks ruddied by the wind, headed for the rising ground at a gallop, gained it, and drew rein on the very verge of a small cliff that dropped sheer to the flat below. The hillock was like a natural pulpit, its front face a perpendicular some twenty feet high, while its hinder slope tailed off to merge into the hillside. Gorlois’s mailed masses stood but a hundred paces away, and Igraine could see him clearly in his gilded harness under the banner of Tintagel.

Brastias galloped up to her with a mild bluster of expostulation.

“You court danger, madame.”

“What if I do, Brastias, to be near my lord.”

“Your sanctity lies upon my conscience.”

“I take all such care from you.”

“Madame, that is impossible; duty is duty both night and day, in battle and in peace; duty bids me fear for my lord’s wife.”

Igraine found certain logic invincible in the argument, and made good use of it; she meant to rule Brastias for her own ends.

“Fear,” she said; "I forget fear when I am nigh Gorlois, my husband; and who can gainsay me the right of watching over him? I forget fear when I think of Britain, the king, and my lord, and had I a hundred lives I could cast them down to help to break the heathen, and serve my country."

“Amen,” said Brastias, signing the cross upon his breast.

Sterner interests quashed any further polite bickerings that might have risen from Igraine’s pride of purpose, for Brastias, with the instinct of a soldier, marked some large development in the struggle that had been passing in the valley below them. The scattered lines of horse and foot that had been thrown forward by Uther to try the strength and spirit of the Irish host, were falling back sullenly uphill before the masses of attack poured up from the flats by Gilomannius the king. The whole battle had shifted to the east. Bodies of horse were spurring uphill, driving in Uther’s men, cutting down stragglers, harrowing the slopes for the solid march of the black columns of foot that were creeping up between the thickets, winding like giant dragons amid furze and scrub. It was a grand sight enough, the advance of a great host, a rocking sea of spears pouring up in the lull that had fallen over the valley as though the battle took breath and waited. Uther’s men kept their ground upon the ridge, watching in silence the advance of Gilomannius’s chivalry. Only a brief wild cry of trumpets betokened the gathering of the waves of war.

Even at this juncture Brastias racked his wit and courtesy to persuade Gorlois’s lady to fall back and watch from the shelter of the woods. He pointed out her peril to Igraine, besought, argued, cajoled, threatened. All he gained was a blunt but half-smiling declaration from the woman that she would hold to her post on the hillock till the battle was over, or some mischance drove her from the place. Brastias caught her bridle, spurred round, and tried to drag her back by main force, but she was out of the saddle instanter, and obstinate as ever. In the end the man capitulated, and gave his concern to the fortunes of war.

The sudden uproar that sounded out along the hillside made mere individual need dull and impossible for the moment. The shock of the joining of the hosts had come like the fall of snow from a mountain—a sound sweeping down the valley, echoing among the silent fastnesses of the hills. Men had come pike to pike, shield to shield, upon the ridge. Mass rushed upon mass, billow upon billow. From the mountains to the forest the sweat and thunder of strife rolled up from the long line of leaping steel, from the living barrier, steady as a cliff. It was one of the many Marathons of the world where barbarism clawed at the antique fabric of the past.

Igraine’s glance was stayed on Gorlois and the southern levies about the banner of Tintagel. Her hate surged up the green slope with the onrush of the Irish horde, and brandished on the charge in spirit towards the tall figure in the harness of gold. She saw Gorlois in the press smiting right and left with the long sweep of his sword. In her thirst for his destruction she grudged him strength, harness, sword, the very shield he bore. She was glad of his courage, for such would militate against him. Moment by moment her desire honoured him with death as she thought him doomed to fall beneath the surge of steel.

A sudden shout from Brastias brought her stare from this chaos of swords. The man was standing in his stirrups, and pointing to the west with his face dead white and his mouth agape.

“By God, look!”

Truth to tell, there was little need of the warning. A dull rumble of hoofs came up like thunder above the shriller din around. Igraine, looking to the west, saw a black mass of horsemen at the gallop, swaying, surging, rocking uphill full for Gorlois’s flank. The sight numbed her reason for the moment. She was still as stone as the column swept past the very foot of the hillock—a flood of steel—and plunged headlong upon Gorlois’s lines, hewing and trampling to the very banner of Tintagel. An oath from Brastias made her turn and look at him. He had his hand on his sword, and his face was twisted into a snarl of wrath and shame as he stood in his stirrups and watched the fight.

“My God!” he cried, “my God! they run.”

It was palpable enough that the southern line was breaking and crumbling ominously before the rush of Gilomannius’s knights. Little bunches of men were breaking away from the main mass like smoke, and falling back over the ridge. Igraine guessed at Brastias’s pride and fury, saw her chance of liberty, and took it. She set up a shrill cry that stirred his courage like a trumpet-cry.

“My Lord, my Lord Gorlois, Brastias, what of him?”

The man’s sword had flashed out.

“Send me to death, lady, only to strike a blow for Britain.”

Igraine spread her hands to him like a Madonna, and made the sign of the cross in the air. Brastias lifted up his drawn sword, kissed it, and saluted her with the look of a hero. Then he wheeled his horse, plunged down from the hillock, and rode full gallop into the battle. Igraine soon lost sight of his black harness in the mêlée, and since he met his death there, she saw Brastias alive no more.

Despite the grim uproar of the overthrow, despite the taunts of a patriot pride, there was an under-current of gladness through her thought as she watched Gorlois’s men giving ground upon the ridge. Her lord’s shame was her gratification. To such a pitch of passion was she tuned that she could find laughter for the occasion, and a shrill cry of joy that startled even her own ears when the banner of Tintagel quivered and went down into the dust. Men were falling like leaves in autumn, and the southern wing of Uther’s host seemed but a rabble—trampled, overridden, herded, and smitten over the ridge. Everywhere the swords and spears of Gilomannius’s knights and gallowglasses spread rout and panic, while the wavering mass gave ground, rallied, gave again, and streamed away in flight over the hillside. She could see no sign of Gorlois, and with a whimper of hate the strong doubt of his escaping the slaughter took hold on her heart, and found ready welcome there. She was rid of Brastias—good fellow that he was—and though she honoured him, she loved liberty better. Liberty enough! Gorlois her lord had been slain. Such were her reflections for the moment.

Pendragon’s host seemed threatened with overthrow. The southern wing had been driven off the field by a charge of horse; Gilomannius held the southern portion of the ridge, and pressed hard on Meliograunt, both flank and face. The imminent need of Britain was plain enough even to Igraine, yet a sense of calm and liberty had come upon her like the song of birds or the gush of green in springtide. Even her patriotism seemed dim and unreal for the moment before the treasonable gratitude that watched the overthrow of Gorlois’s arms. She was alone at last, solitary among thousands, able after the bitterness of past months to pluck peace from the very carnage of battle. Trouble had so wrought upon her mind that it seemed a negation of all probable and natural sentiment, a contradiction of the ethical principles of sense.

The day was fast passing, and the grand fires of a winter sunset were rolling all the caverns of the west into a blaze of gold and scarlet. The pine forest, black and inscrutable as night, stood with its spines like ebony to the fringe of the west, while the slanting light lit the glimmering masses of steel on hill and valley with a web of gold. To the north the mountains towered in a mystery of purple, a gleam of amber transient on their peaks.

Sudden and shrill came a cry of trumpets from the hills, a sinister sound that seemed to issue in the climax of the last phase of a tragedy. Igraine’s eyes were turned northwards to the green slopes of the higher ground where the great banner of the Golden Dragon had flapped over Uther the King. Here a great company of knights, the flower of the host, had stood inactive throughout the day. With a cry of trumpets this splendid company had moved down to charge the masses of Gilomannius’s men, who now filled the shallow valley east of the ridge, and threatened King Meliograunt and the whole host with overthrow. Uther had ridden out to lead the charge with his own sword. It was one of those perilous hours when some great deed was needed to grapple victory from defeat.

The rest of the scene seemed blotted out as Igraine watched from her hillock the glittering mass rolling downhill with the evening sun striking flame from its thousand points of steel. On over the green slopes, past the pavilions of the camp, it gathered like a wave lifting its crest against a rock, on towards the swarm of men squandered in pursuit of Gorlois’s broken line, on to where Gilomannius formed his knights for the charge. The green space dwindled and dwindled with the rush and roar of the nearing gallop. Igraine saw the rabble of Saxons, light-armed kerns and Irish gallowglasses, split and crack like a crumbling wall. For a short breath the black mass held, with Uther’s storm of mail cleaving cracks and wedges in it—streaks of tawny colour like lava through the vineyards and gardens of a village. Then as by magic the whole mass seemed to deliquesce, to melt, to become as mist. All visible was a thunderstorm of horsemen tearing like wind through a film of rain with scattering fringes of cloud scudding swiftly to the west. The knights had passed the valley and were riding up the slope, hewing, trampling, crushing, as they came. Gilomannius’s columns that had pushed Gorlois’s men into rout had become a rabble in turn—wrecked, scattered to the wind, trodden down in blood and dust. They were streaming away in flight over the ridge, scampering for scrub and thicket, no lust in them save the lust of life. Igraine saw them racing past on every quarter, a blood-specked, dust-covered herd, their hairy faces panting for the west and the ships on the beach. Not a hundred paces away came the line of trampling hoofs and swinging swords, a demoniac whirlwind of iron wrath that hunted, slew, and gave no quarter.

Beyond the summit of the ridge, and all about the hillock where Igraine stood, the glittering horde of knights came to a halt with a great shout of triumph. Right beneath Igraine and the straight face of the hillock a man in red armour on a black horse, with a golden dragon on his helmet, stood out some paces before the ranks of the splendid company. A great cry rolled up, a forest of swords shook in the sun. The knight on the black horse stood in his stirrups, and with sword and helmet upstretched in either hand lifted his face to the red triumph fire of the west. Igraine knew him—Pelleas, Uther, the King.

IV

The sun had rolled back between the pylons of the west. Night was in the sky, night in her winter austerity—keen, clear, aglitter with stars as though her robe were spangled with cosmic frost. The mountains’ rugged heads were dark to the heavens, and the sea lay a faintly glimmering plain open to the beck of the moon.

The Irish host had broken and fled at sunset before Uther’s charge and the streaming spears of Eldol and King Nentres. The green meadows, the wild scrubland, had been chequered over with the black swarm of the flying soldiery; the whole valley had surged with swords and the sound of the slaughter. By the grey walls of the town it had beleaguered, the driven host had turned and rallied in despair to stave off to the last the implacable doom that poured down from the hills. It was the vain effort of a desperate cause. Broken and scattered like dust along a highway, there had been no hope left them but their ships. The battle had ended in the very foam of the breaking waves. Crag and cliff, rock-citadel and yellow sand, had had their meed of blood and the shrill sound of the sword. The great ships had saved but a remnant, and had put out to sea in the dusk, their white sails like huge ghosts treading the swell of the twilight waters. Yet with night there had come no ceasing of the carnage. Despair had turned to front victory; Irish gallowglass and heathen churl, forsaken by their ships and hemmed in by sea and sword, had fought on to the end, finding and knowing no mercy. Gilomannius the King and Pascentius were dead, and the blood of invasion poured out like water.

Now it was night, and in the clear passionless light of the moon a figure in a cloak of sables moved towards the mound where Gorlois of Cornwall had flown his banner early in the day’s battle. Everywhere the dead lay piled like sheaves in a cornfield, their harness glinting with a ghastly lustre to the moon—piled in all attitudes and postures, staring blankly with white faces to the sky, or prone with their lips in blood, contorted, twisted, clutching at throat and weapon, mouths agape or clenched into a grin, man piled on man, barbarian upon Briton. Dark quags chequered the grass with the sickly odour of shed blood, and sword and spear, shield and helmet, flickered impotently among the dead.

Igraine went among the bodies like a black monk seeking some still quick enough to be shriven before their souls took flight from the riven clay. Her cloak was gathered jealously about her as she threaded her way among the huddled figures, peering under helmets, scanning harness narrowly in her death-inspired quest. Casting hither and thither in the moonlight, she came to a tangled bank of furze, and beyond it a low hillock that seemed piled and paved with the bodies of the slain. Here had stood the banner of Tintagel, and here the prowess of Gorlois’s household knights had fallen before the charge of Gilomannius’s chivalry. Igraine saw the medley of mail, the dead horses, jumbled figures, wreck of shield and spear rising out above her in the moonlight, cloaked with a silence grim and irrefutable, as though Death himself sat sentinel on the pyramid of carnage. Half shuddering at the sight like an aspen, for all the intent that was in her heart, she drew near, determined and resolved to search the mound. Compelled to climb over the dead and to set her foot on the breasts and shoulders of the slain, her tread lighted more than once on a body that squirmed like a dying snake. Strong to do the uttermost after that day of revelation she struggled on, loathing the task, her shoes clammy with the blood-sweat of death. On the summit of the mound she came upon Gorlois’s white horse lying dead by the wreathing folds of the fallen banner of his house.

A whimper of joy came up into Igraine’s heart. Sinister as the sign seemed, she was soon searching the mound with an alert desire in her eyes that prophesied no vestige of pity for the thing for which she sought. Hunt as she would, and she was marvellously patient over the gruesome business, no glint of Gorlois’s golden harness flattered her hate as she searched the mound. Many a good knight lay there, some that she had known at Tintagel, and hated because they served her husband, but of Gorlois she found no trace. As a last hope, she dragged aside the great standard and found a dead man there sheeted in its folds, a man in black armour with his face to the sky—Brastias, who had ridden with her from Caerleon.

She stood a moment looking down at him with a sudden feeling of awe such as had not come upon her through all that day. A white face lay turned to the sky,—a face that had looked kindly into hers with a level trust,—and smiled with a wealth of manly sympathy. It was a simple thing enough, nothing but one death among many thousands, but it touched Igraine to the core, and made her ashamed of the lies she had given him. She found herself wondering like a child whether Brastias was in heaven, and whether he watched her and her thoughts with his calm grey eyes. The notion disquieted her. She bent down, took his naked sword from his hand, and shrouded him again in the gorgeous blazonry of the flag for which he had died, and so left him with a sigh.

As she climbed back again from the mound, a gashed and clotted face heaved up and stared at her from a heap of slain. It was the face of a man who had struggled up on his hands to look at her with mouth agape, dazed after a sudden waking from the stupor of a swoon. For a moment in the moonlight she thought it was Gorlois by certain likeness of feature, but discovered her error when the man spoke to her in gibberish she did not understand. He began to crawl towards her with a certain air of menace that made her start back and rear up the sword she had taken from dead Brastias. The threat of steel proved needless enough, for the man dropped again with a wet groan, and seemed dead when she went and bent over him with thoughts of succour.

Passing back again to her hillock, she stood there brooding and looking out towards the west. A great bell in the town by the sea was pulsing heavily as though for the dead, and there were many cressets flaring on the walls, and torches going to and fro in the meadows. The sound of a triumph hymn chanted by hundreds of deep voices floated up like a prayer from the western meadows.

At the sound Igraine’s eyes were strangely full of tears. By some strange echoing of the mind the idyls of past days woke like the song of birds after a storm of rain. Clear in the dusk she seemed to see the red figure on the black horse, his face lit like a god’s by the slanting light from the west as he stretched his sword to heaven. Again the scene changed, and she saw him riding through the flowering meads of Andredswold, looking down on her with a grave and luminous pity. She was glad of him, glad of his great glory, glad that he had kissed her lips, and bewrayed the love to her that was in his heart. The scene and the occasion were strange enough for such broodings, yet her eyes were very dim as she stood in a half-dream and let the picture drift across her mind.

The revelation had come upon her with such suddenness that she had been for the moment like one dazed. She had watched Uther sweep on with his horde of knights, and had stood mute and impotent as one smitten dumb while the red harness and the golden dragon of Britain vanished again into the moil of war. Now her whole soul yearned out with a wistfulness born of infinite regret. If he had only come to her alone; if he had only come to her as Pelleas in some gloom of green, she could have fallen down before his horse’s feet, kissed the scabbard of his sword, wept over his helmet, and burnished it with her hair. Sight of that dark sad face had made a beacon of her on the instant.

And Gorlois! If she had hated him yesterday, she hated him with a tenfold vigour since she had looked again upon Pelleas’s face. Certainly her malice had grown with an Antæan strength with each humbling of her heart to the dust, and the very thought of Gorlois seemed blasphemy against her soul at such an hour.

With the memory of Gorlois a cloud dulled the clear mirror of her mind, and her mood of dreams melted into mist. The strong sense of bondage, of ineffectual treason, came back with a fuller force as though to menace her with the fateful realism of her lot. A hand seemed to sweep down and wave her back with a meaning so sinister that even her hate stood still a moment as in sudden fear; she had some such feeling as of standing on the brink of a mysterious sea whose waves sang to her a song of peril, of misery and desire cooped up together in the dim green twilight of some coral dungeon. The lure of the unknown beat upon her eyes, while love and hate, like attendant spirits, beckoned her over the yawn of an open grave.

For the moment the importunity of her immediate need drew her from meditations alike bitter and divine. A battlefield after dark, with all its lust and pillage, was no pleasant place for a woman. The lights of the town still showed up brightly in the west, but Igraine had little desire of the teeming streets where victory would be matching blood with wine, and where the revels of the soldiery would celebrate the day in primal fashion. She was content to be alone under the stars, and even the dead seemed more sympathetic than the living at such an hour.

A wind had risen, and she heard the hoarse “salvé” of the forest in the night. The thousand voices of the trees seemed to call to her with a weird perpetual clamour. She saw their spectral hands jerking and clutching against the sky, and heard the creak and gibber of the criss-cross boughs swaying in the wind. Leaving the hillock, and still bearing Brastias’s sword, she held across the open, seeing as she went the dark streaks that dotted the hillside—the bodies of men fallen in the flight. She gained the trees, and was soon deep among the crowded trunks, pondering on her lodging for the night.

Wandering hither and thither, looking for some more sheltered spot, her glance lighted on a dim swelling of the ground that proved to be an ancient mound or barrow. It had been opened in times past, probably in the search for buried treasure or for weapons. Brambles, weeds, and heather had roofed the shallow cutting into a little recess or cave that gave fair shelter from the wind, and Igraine, braving the notion of barrow ghost or spirit, claimed the place as a God-send, and took cover therein.

The last crumbs in her wallet finished, she sat with her face between her palms, brooding, big-eyed, in the night, like any Druidess wreathing spells in her forest solitude. The wind was crying through the trees, swaying them restlessly against the starry sky, making plaintive moan through all the myriad aisles. Igraine listened like one huddled among her thoughts to keep out the cold. Miserable as was her lodging, her mind seemed packed with the day’s battle; the whirl and thunder of it were still moving in her brain, a wild scene towered over by a man bare-headed on a black horse, holding his helmet to the setting sun. Often and often she heard the roar of hoofs and saw the rush of the charge that had trampled the banner of Tintagel and hurled Gorlois and his men in rout from the ridge. Had it been death or life with the man? Was he with the King hearing holy mass and lifting up the wine cup to heaven under a flare of lights, or lying stiff and pinched under the mild eyes of night? It was this thought, holding hope and doubt in common yoke, that abode with her all the night in her refuge under the trees.

It was bleak enough, with a silvering of frost over the land, when darkness had rolled back over the western sea, uncovering the wreck of death that lay huddled on ridge and slope. Igraine was stirring early from the barrow. With the cold and her own thoughts she had slept but an hour, and at the first filtering of light through the branches she was glad and ready for the day. She wandered through the forest towards the open land that showed glimmering through the tree-boles, with no certain purpose moving in her mind. The future as yet was a blank to her, lacking possibilities, jealous of its secrets, saturnine as death itself. There shone one light above her that seemed to burn through the unknown; it had long led her from distant hills, yet even her red lamp of love beckoned her over a sepulchre.

Coming to the forest margin, she came full upon the incontestable handiwork of war. Under the sweep of a great pine lay the body of a knight in black harness, all blazoned with gold, while his grey horse was still standing with infinite patience by his side, nosing him gently from time to time. The man’s helmet, a visored casque, somewhat gladiatorial in type, had fallen off, and a young beardless face was turned placidly up to the blue, a white oval pillowed upon a tuft of heather. There was no blood or sign of violence visible save a blue bruise on his left temple; it seemed more than probable that he had been pitched from the saddle and found death in the fall.

Igraine stood and looked at him in some pity while the horse snuffed at her, staring with great wistful eyes as though for help or sympathy. The man was young, with a certain nobility of early manhood on his face, and it seemed to her very pitiful that he should be cut off thus in life’s spring. As she looked at him she noted that he was slim of figure, and not much above middle height. A sudden fancy took her on the instant. She tethered the horse, and kneeling down by the man her fingers were soon busy at the buckles and joints of his armour. Ungirding his sword, she drew it from the scabbard and set it upright at his head, sheathing Brastias’s in its place. Having stripped off his armour and long surcoat she covered him reverently with her cloak, slung the horse’s bridle round her wrist, and gathering up his arms and helmet went back to the barrow where she had passed the night.

The wood had received a woman in the dress of a woman; it gave in exchange a knight on a grey horse—a knight in black armour blazoned with gold under a surcoat of violet cloth. The brazen helmet, visored and hooded with mail over nape of neck and throat, gleamed and flashed under the green boughs. There were three lilies, snow-white, and a cloven heart upon the shield, and the horse trappings were bossed and enamelled gold and blue.

Igraine rode out from the trees with the pomp of a Launcelot. The grey horse’s mane tossed in the wind, the furze rippled on the hillside, the cloud-ships sailed the blue with white sails spread. The girl was aglow with new life under her guise of steel. The essence of manhood seemed to have created itself within her as from the soul of the dead knight, and she suffered the glory of arms with a pride that was almost boyish.

Holding out from the trees at a solemn pace, she headed westward down the valley along the grass slopes that slid between scrub and thicket to the sea. On the road below her a company of spears trailed eastward uphill in a snakelike column that glittered through the green. Pushing on boldly across ground where the battle had raged hotly the night before, she reached the road as the head of the column swung up at a dull tramp on their march home for Caerleon. Gruffing her voice in her throat she hailed the knight who headed the troop for news of the battle of yesterday, posing as one late on the scene, and sore at having struck no blow for Britain.

The knight drew aside, and letting his men tramp by, he gave tersely the tale of the fight as he had seen it from King Nentres’s lines.

“St. Jude be blessed,” said Igraine at the end thereof. “I am glad, friend, of these tidings. As for the field, it looks to have been as bloody a one as ever I set eyes on.”

“Bloody enough,” quoth the man, giving his moustache a twirl; “too bloody for Gilomannius and dead Vortigern’s whelp.”

“What of Uther?”

“Scarce a scratch.”

“King Meliograunt?”

“Wounded, but drunk as the devil.”

“And Gorlois of Cornwall?”

The man laughed as at a jest.

“Bedded in an abbey,” said he, “with a split face; mere flesh, mere flesh, nothing deeper.”

Igraine thanked him with her helm adroop, and turning her horse, rode back towards the forest heavy of heart.

V

The King’s house at Caerleon stood out above the Usk on a little hill whose slopes were set with shrubberies and gardens, the white pillars and broad façade glimmering above the filmy cloud of green that covered the place as with a garment. A great stairway ran to the river from the southern terrace that blazed in summer with flower-filled urns and stacks of roses that overspread the balustrade with crimson flame. It was a place of dawns and sunsets; of lights rising amber in the east over purple hills and amethystine waters; of quiet glows at evening in the west, with cypresses and yews carven in ebony against primrose skies; while in the burgeoning of the year birds made the thickets deep with melody; and all beyond, Caerleon’s solemn towers, roofs, casements bowered in green, rested within the battlemented walls that touched the domes and leaf-spires of the woods.

It was noontide in Caerleon, and down the great stairway, with its rows of cypresses, its banks of yew and myrtle, a fair company was passing to the river, where many barges clustered round the water-gate like gilded beetles sunning their flanks in the shallows. Knights and churchmen in groups moved down from the palace talking together as they went. There had been a council of state in the King’s hall, a great assembling of the noble folk and prelatry, to consider the need of Britain, the cry of the martyred and the homeless from Kentlands and the east. Anderida, that great city of the southern shores, had fallen in a tempest of fire and sword; no single soul had escaped from its smoking walls; the barbarian had entered in and made great silence over the whole city. Now it was told that more galleys had come bearing the fair-haired churls from the sand-dunes and pinewoods, the rude hamlets of that Angle land over the sea. Vectis had been overrun, Porchester burnt to the ground, even the noble city of Winchester threatened despite its walls. Beast and robber had sole rule in Andredswold; much of nether-Britain was a wilderness, a wistful land given over to solitude and the wild creatures of the forest. Churches were crumbling; gillyflowers grew on the high altars, and ivy wrapped the tombs; sanctuary bells were silent, homes empty and still as death. Desolation threatened the south, while the valleys of Armorica oversea gave refuge to many who fled before the Saxon sword.

In the great hall of the palace Uther still sat in his chair of ivory under a gilded roof that mingled huge beams with banners, spears, and rust-rotted harness. The walls were frescoed with Homeric scenes—Helen meeting Paris in the house of Menelaus, Achilles slaying Hector, Ulysses and Calypso. Twelve painted pillars held the crossbeams of the hall, and from the fire on the great hearth a fragrant scent of burning cedar wood drifted upon the air. A long table covered with parchment, tablets, quills and inkhorns, and an array of empty benches testified to the number of noble folk who had assembled at the royal conclave. A single councillor remained before the King—Dubricius, Bishop of Caerleon, a tall spare man, whose white hair and sensitive ascetic face bore testimony to an inward delicacy of soul.

Uther was clad in a tunic of scarlet, with a dragon in gold thread blazoned upon his breast. No crown, coronet, or fillet was on his brow; on his finger he wore the signet of Ambrosius, and his sword was girded to him with a girdle of embroidered leather. His look was much the same as when he rode as Pelleas in Andredswold and was nursed of his wound by Igraine in the island manor. Possibly there were more lines upon his face, a deeper dignity of sadness in his eyes. Circumstance had put upon him the cherishing of an imperilled kingdom, and with the charge his natural stateliness of soul had risen into a heroism of benignant chivalry. No more kingly man could have taken a land under the strong sweep of his sword. With the grand simplicity of a great heart he had grappled the task as a thing given of God, bending ever in prayer like a child before the inscrutable wisdom of heaven.

There had been grave business on his mind that day, and his face was dark with a cloud of care as he talked with Dubricius on certain matters that lay near his heart. Uther, like the men of old time, was superstitious and ever prone to regard all phenomena as possessing certain testamentary authority from the Deity. In mediæval fashion he referred all human riddles to religious instinct for their solving, and searched in holy writ for guidance with a faith that was typical of his character. Wholly a Christian in a superstitious sense, he gained from the very fervour of his belief a strength that seemed to justify his very bigotry.

It was a certain experience, that to his mystic-loving instinct omened history still dark in the womb of the future, and kept him closeted with Dubricius that day after knight and churchman had filed out from the conclave. In the twilight of the hall, with its painted frescoes and glimmering shields, Dubricius listened to the King as he spoke of portents and visions of the night. Uther, with his elbow resting on the arm of his chair and his chin upon his palm, stared at the cedar wood burning pungently upon the hearth and catechised Dubricius on visionary belief. The old man looked keenly at the King under his arched white brows. He was as much a mystic in his creed as this son of Constantine, a believer in miracles and in manifestations in the heavens. Certainly unusual powers had been given to the early Church, and it was not for the atomic mind of man to deny their presence in any later age.

“My lord dreamed a dream,” said Dubricius tentatively when he had heard the tale to the end.

Uther quashed the suggestion with the calm confidence of a man sure of his reason.

“Never a dream, Dubricius.”

The old man’s eyes were very bright, and his face seemed full of a luminous sanctity.

“A vision, then, my lord?”

“I am no woman, Dubricius; I must believe the thing a vision, or damn my senses.”

“My lord, it is no mere woman’s part to see visions; search holy writ where the chosen of God—the great ones—were miraculously blessed with portent and with dream.”

Uther looked into the old man’s face as though for succour.

“I am troubled to know what God would have me know,” he said. “Dubricius, you are aged in the service of the Church!”

“My lord, I have no privilege from heaven in the rendering of dreams.”

“Am I then a Pharaoh disappointed of mine own soothsayers?”

“Sire, what of Merlin?”

“Merlin—”

"The man has the gift of prophecy and can speak with tongues. Send for him, my lord; he is a child of the Church, though a mage."

Uther warmed himself before the fire of cedar wood, his face motionless in contemplative calm. Presently he turned, and looked deep into Dubricius’s vigil-hollowed eyes as though to read the thoughts therein.

“Merlin, the black-haired man who told Vortigern of the future!”

“He spoke the truth, my lord.”

“Sad truth for Vortigern.”

“Yet who should fear the truth?”

“Dubricius, to hear of death!”

“Death, my lord?”

“Remember Vortigern.”

“My lord, he was a planet lurid with murder, and so damned to darkness. Need the sun fear light?”

Uther smiled sadly in the old man’s face.

“You are too faithful a courtier, Dubricius.”

“My lord, you are the pillar of a distraught land; God be merciful and spare you to us.”

“I have done my duty.”

“Amen, sire, to that.”

Uther went and stood by the great window of the room with his arms folded upon his breast. His hollow eyes looked out over the city, and there was a gaunt grandeur of thought upon his face. He was not a man who galloped down destiny like a huntsman on the trail of a stag; deliberation entered into his motives, and he never foundered reason with over-use of the spur. Dubricius stood and watched him with the smile of a father, for he loved the man.

Presently Uther turned back towards the fire. Dubricius saw by his face that he had come by decision, and that his mind was steadfast.

“Merlin is at Sarum, my lord.”

“I shall not play Saul at Endor.”

“No, sire.”

“The man shall come to me with no jugglery in dark corners.”

“Wise forethought, my lord king.”

“I remember me, Dubricius, that you have little leisure to hear of dreams. I have given you the names of the holy houses to be rebuilt and consecrated in the name of God. We will save Britain by the help of the cross. God speed you.”

Alone in the half light of the hall Uther stood and stared into the fire, his eyes luminous in the glow, while the pungent scent of the burning wood swept up like a savour of eastern spices. There was intense feeling on his face, a kind of passionate calm, as he gazed into the red bosom of the fire. Presently, as though turning in thought from some enchantment of the past, he sighed wearily, put his black hair from his forehead with both hands, and looked at his image in a mirror of steel that hung from a painted pillar. There was a wistful look upon his strong face; he had a soul that remembered, a soul not numbed by time into mere painless recollection of the past. As in some mysterious temple, love, with solemn sound of flute and dulcimer, kept fire unquenched night and day upon the altar of his heart.

Rising up out of his mood of gloom, an earthly Hyperion whose face shone anew over Britain, he passed out, and calling to the guards lounging on the terrace, descended the stairway that sloped through gardens to the river. His state barge was in waiting at the gate, and entering in he was borne downstream towards the town whose white walls rose up amid the emerald mist of spring. Over all Uther cast his eye with a lustre look of love, a love that shone like the smile of a child at a mother’s face. Caerleon was dear to him beyond all other cities; its white walls held his heart with the whispered conjure word of “home.”

Landing at the great quay, where many ships and galleys lay moored, he passed up towards the market square with the files of his guard, smiling back on the reverences of the people, throwing here and there a coin, happy in the honour that echoed to him from every face. Before the walls of a pilastered house his guards halted with a fanfare of trumpets, a sound that rolled the gates wide and brought a mob of servants to line the outer court. Knights came down from the house with heads uncovered. It was the King’s first entry into Gorlois’s atrium since the disbanding of the host after the war in Wales.

A face scarred with red across cheek and chin, with nose askew, one lower lid turned down, came out to Uther from the doorway of an inner room. There was a drawn look upon the man’s face, a sullen saturnine air about him as though he were vexed inwardly with the chafe of some perpetual pain. The pinched frown, the restless bloodshot eyes, the hunched shoulders, were all strange to Uther, who looked for Gorlois, the man of arrogant and imperial pride, whose splendour of person, carriage of head, and long lithe stride had marked him a stag royal from the herd of meaner men.

Uther, grave as a god, gripped the other’s thin sinewy fingers, his eyes searching Gorlois’s face with a large-minded scrutiny inspired by the natural sympathies of his heart. Gorlois, for his part, half crooked the knee, and drew a carved chair before the ill-tended fire. He had an Asmodean pride, and the look in Uther’s eyes was more troublesome to him than a glare of hate. His face never lightened from the murk of reserve that covered it like a mask, and it was the King who spoke the first word over the flickering fire.

“What of your wounds?” he said.

Gorlois’s black beard was down on his breast, and he looked only at the fire. He seemed like a man furtive beneath the consciousness of some inward shame, mocking his honour.

“My wounds are well, sire.”

“You look like a man newly risen from a sick bed.”

"If I look sick, sire, blame my physician; he has tinctured me to the level of perdition. Bodily I never felt in better fettle. I could hew down a horse, and thrust my spear through a pine trunk. A man’s face is a fallacy."

Uther saw the scars, the harsh smile, and caught the twinge in the seemingly careless voice. He could comprehend some humiliation in the marring of personal comeliness, but not the humiliation that seemed to lurk deep beneath Gorlois’s pride. There was more here than the scarring of a cheek.

“There is some care upon you, Gorlois,” he said.

“Sire, you have much observation.”

“Your men have spoken of the change to you.”

“They are too discreet, God save their skins.”

“Pride, pride.”

“Sire, you are right; my pride suffers the inquisitiveness of kings, not subjects. Eagle calls to eagle; men are mere magpies. Chatter maddens me.”

“I grip your hand in spirit.”

Both men were silent for a while, the fire crackling sluggishly at their feet. Gorlois’s eyes were on the window and the scrap of green woodland in the distance; Uther’s eyes were on Gorlois’s face. The latter, with the sore sensitiveness of a diseased spirit, felt the look and chafed at it. His petulance was plain enough to Uther as he sat and watched him, and pondered the man’s trouble in his heart.

“Gorlois.”

“Sire.”

“I am no gabbler.”

“True, my lord.”

“You are trouble ridden.”

Gorlois’s eyes flashed up to Uther’s, faltered, and fell.

“What of that, sire?” he said curtly.

“You have a deadly pride.”

“I own it.”

Uther leant forward in his chair, and looked earnestly into the other’s face.

“I too am a proud man in my trouble,” he said, "buckling up unutterable things from the baseness of the world, jealous of my inward miseries. Yet when I see a strong man and a friend chained with the iron of a silent woe, I cannot keep my sympathy in leash, so tell him to unburden to a man whose pride feels for the pride of others."

The words seemed to stir Gorlois from his lethargy of reserve and silence. Uther’s very largeness of soul, his stately faith and courtesy, were qualities that won largely upon the mind, lifting it above factious things to the serene level of his own soul. Gorlois, impulsive spirit, could not rebuff such a man as Uther. There was a certain calm disinterestedness in the King’s nature that made trust imperative and condemned secretiveness as churlish. Gorlois was an obstinate man in the extreme rendering of the epithet. He had spoken to no one of his trouble, leaving his thoughts to be inferred. Yet staunch sympathy like Gige’s ring has power over most hidden things of the heart, and Gorlois was very human.

“It is a woman, sire.”

“Mine was a woman, too.”

Gorlois scattered the half-dead embers with his foot.

“I married a wife,” he said.

“I had never heard it.”

“Few have.”

“The woman’s name?”

“Never ask it, sire; it will soon lie with her in the dust.”

“These are grim words.”

“Grim enough for the man of my own house,—my own familiar friend.”

“Mother of Christ,—your friend!”

“My brother in arms, sire.”

“The shedding of such blood seems like justice. Had I suffered thus—”

“Sire, you warm to my temper.”

“It should be the sword.”

“Mine yet waits white for blood.”

Gorlois, implacable, grim as a werewolf, threw open the door of a closet and led Uther within the narrow compass of its walls. It was a little oratory, dim and fantastic, with lamps hanging from the roof, and black curtains over the narrow casement. Two waxen candles burnt with steady, windless flames upon the altar, and beneath their light glimmered a great sword, naked, and a cup half filled with purple wine. Gorlois took up the sword and touched it with his lips.

“For the man,” he said.

Then he set the sword down beneath its candle and touched the goblet with his fingers; his black eyes glittered.

“For the woman, sire.”

“And the candles?”

“I burn them till I have crushed the life out of two souls; then I can pinch the wicks between my fingers, and snuff them out in smoke.”

VI

It was spring at Caerleon, and a web of green had swept upon the empty purple of the woods and shut the naked casements to the sun. The meadowlands were plains of emerald that glimmered gold; the gorge blazed with its myriad lamps lighting the dark gateways of the pine forests, and covering all the hillsides as with a garment of yellow. In the woods the birds sang, and hyacinths and dog violets spread pools of blue beneath the infinite greenness of the boughs. In Caerleon’s orchards the fruit trees stood like mounts of snow flecked with ethereal pink and a prophecy of green. Yew, cypress, cedar, reared their dark bosoms betwixt the gentler foliage, and many a bronze-leafed oak made mimic autumn with a mist of leaves.

In a forest glade that opened upon the high-road some three leagues eastward of Caerleon, an old man sat beside a shallow spring, whose waters lay a pool of tarnished silver within the low stone wall that compassed them. The old man by the pool was clad in a ragged cloak of coarse brown cloth lined with rabbit skin; he had sandals on his feet, a staff and wallet by his side, and under the shadow of his hood of fur a peaky white beard hung down like an icicle under the eaves of a house. His hands were thin and white, and he seemed decrepit as he sat hunched by the well with a crust of brown bread in his lap and a little bronze pannikin that served him as a cup.

It was late in the day, and the great oaks that reached out their arms over the well stood solemn and still in the evening calm, while the cloud masses bastioned overhead were radiant with the lustre of the hour. The road curled away right and left into the twilight of the woods; no folk passed to and from Caerleon to throw alms to the beggar who squatted there like any old goblin man out of a tomb. From time to time he would turn and look long into the pool as into a mirror, as though he watched the future glimmering dimly in a magic well. He had finished his crust of bread, and his head nodded over his lap as though sleep tempted him after a day’s journey. Rabbits were scampering and feeding along the edge of the forest; a snake slid by in the grass like a streak of silver; far down the glade a herd of fallow deer browsed as though caring nothing for the huddled scrap of humanity by the well. The beggar man might have been dead, for all the heed he gave to the forest life that teemed so near.

Yet it was soon evidenced that his faculties were keenly alive to all that passed about him by a marvellous perception of sound, a perception that made itself plain before the sun had drifted much further down the west. The old man had heard something that had not stirred the fallow deer browsing in the glade. A thin metallic sound shimmered on the air, the clattering cadence of hoofs far away upon the high-road. The beggar by the pool had lifted his head, and was listening with his hooded face turned towards the west, his thin fingers picking unconsciously at his beard.

Presently the deer browsing in the glade reared up their heads to listen, snuffed the air, and swept back at a trot into the forest. Jays chattered away over the trees; rabbits stopped feeding and sat up with their long ears red in the sunlight. The indifferent suggestion of a sound had grown into a ringing tramp that came through the trees like a blunt challenge to the solitary spirit of the place. Through the indefinite and mazy screens of green a glitter of harness and a streaking of colour glimmered from the wizard amber glow of the west. Three horsemen were coming under the trees,—one in lurid arms before, and two abreast behind in black. The beggar by the pool pulled his cowl down over his face, and stood by the roadside with his bronze pannikin held in a shaky right hand to pray for alms.

The knights drew rein by the pool, and he in the red harness flung down money from his belt, and required tidings in return:

“The Lord Jesus have mercy on your soul in death,” came the whine of gratitude; “what would your lordship learn from an old man?”

Uther considered him from the shadow of his casque. He had his suspicions, and was half wise in his conjectures. He could see nothing of the old man’s face, and so elected to be innocent for the moment.

“Grandfather, have you heard in your days of Merlin the prophet?”

“Have I heard of the devil, lording!”

“Were he to ride here, should you know his face?”

“Sir, I have seen no man these three hours. Yet, in truth, I did but now smell a savour as of hell; and there was a raven here, a black villain of a bird that croaked ‘Abracadabra to the letter.’”

Uther smiled.

“Are you from Caerleon?” he said.

“No, sire, it is Uther the King who comes from the City of Legions.”

“Uther, say you? Put back that hood.”

“My lord, lo! I bow myself; I have kept the tryst.”

The cowl fell back, the cloak was unwrapped, the beard twitched from the smooth, strong chin. The bent figure, feeble and meagre, straightened and dilated to a stature and bulk beyond mere common mould. A man with hair black as a raven’s wing, and great glistening eyes, stood with his moon-face turned up to Uther Pendragon. A smile played upon his lips. He was clad in a cloak of sombre purple, wreathed about with strange devices, and a leopard’s skin covered his shoulders; his black hair was bound with a fillet of gold, and there were gold bracelets upon his wrists. It was Merlin who stood before Uther under the arch of the great trees.

“The benisons of all natural powers be upon you; the God of the stars and the spirit fires of the heavens keep you. Great is your heart, O King, and great your charity. Bid me but serve you, and the beggar’s pence shall win you a blessing.”

The man bowed himself even to the ground. Uther left his horse tethered to a tree, and faced Merlin over the pool. Both men were solemn as night in their looks.

“Merlin,” said the King.

“Sire.”