Uther and Igraine/Book 2/10

X

IGRAINE forded the brook and followed the man by the winding path that curled away into the wood.

She was ever a sanguine soul, and the mere sinister influences that might have discouraged her in her purpose that morning were impotent before the level convictions of her heart. She had seen Pelleas ride in amid the trees; she was sure as death as to his cognizance and his armour. Now Pelleas, she could vow, had not heard her call to him, and if he had heard he had not understood; if he had seen he had not recognised. Doubts could have no place in the argument before such a justification by faith.

It was not long before she caught sight of the red glint of armour going through the trees. It came and went, grew and disappeared, as the path folded it in its curves or thrust out a heavy screen of green to hide it like a heavy curtain. The man was going as he pleased, now a walk, now a casual jog, now a short burst of a canter over an open patch. One moment Igraine would see him clearly, then not at all. Sometimes she gained, sometimes lost ground, yet the knight of the red harness never seemed to come within lure of her voice.

In due course she reached the place where the path ended bluntly on the Winchester high-road, and where the way ran straight as a spear-shaft, so that she could see Pelleas riding for Winchester with a lead of a quarter of a mile. The distant ringing tramp of hoofs came up to her like a mocking chuckle. Putting her hands to her mouth, she hallooed with all the breath left her by her run through the wood; yet, as far as she might see, the man never so much as turned in the saddle, while the smite of hoofs died down and down into a well of silence.

Another halloo and no echo.

"He's asleep, or deaf in his helmet."

She forgot the distance and the din of hoofs that might well have drowned the thin cry that could have reached the rider. Maugre her heat and her flushed face Igraine had no more thought of giving in than she had of marrying Gorlois. With Pelleas so near she had made her vow to follow him, and follow him she would like a comet's tail. If needs be she would wear her sandals to the flesh, but catch the man she must in the end.

A mile more on the high-road, with her feet and the hem of her gown dust-drenched, and she was still little nearer the man in the red harness for all her hurrying. She could have vowed more than once that he turned in his saddle and looked back at her as though to see how near she had come to him on the road. A mile from the hermitage path he turned his horse southwards from the track into a grass valley headed by a ruined tower and hedged densely on either hand by pine woods. Igraine, seeing from a slight rise in the road this change of course, cut away crosswise with the notion of getting near the man or of intercepting him before he should win clear law again. After all, the effort added only more vexation. She saw the black horse pressed to a canter and cross the point where she might have cut him off, while a great stretch of furze that rolled away to the black palisading of the pines came down and threw a promontory in her path. Pelleas was a mile to the good when she had skirted the furze and the bend of the wood, and taken a straight course southwards down the valley between the pines.

All that morning the sport of hunter and hunted went on between the novice in grey and the man on the black horse. For all her trouble Igraine won little upon him, lost little as the hours went by; while the rider in turn seemed in no wise desirous of being rid of her for good. They passed the pine woods with their midnight aisles, forded a stream, climbed up a heath, went over it amid the heather. From the last ridge of the heath Igraine saw the country sloping away into undulating grasslands, piled here and there with domes of thicketed trees. Far to the south a dense black mass rose like a rounded hill against the sky. The man in red was still about a mile in front of her, riding slowly, a red speck in a waste of green. Igraine, having him in view from her vantage point, lay down full length to rest and take some food. She was tired enough, but dogged at heart as ever. She vowed that if the man was playing with her she would tell him her mind, love or no love, when she came up with him in the end.

As the sun swam into the noontide arc she went on again downhill, and found in turn that the man had halted, for he had been hidden by trees, and getting view of him suddenly she saw him sitting on a stone with his horse tethered near. As soon as Igraine was within measurable distance she took advantage of a hollow, dropped on her hands and knees, and began to crawl like a cat after a bird. Edging round a thicket she came quite near the man, but could not see his face. His spear stood in the ground by his horse, and he had his shield slung about his neck, and a bare poniard in his hand. It was clear that he was watching for Igraine, for despite her craft he caught sight of her face peering white under the hem of a bush, and climbed quickly into the saddle. Igraine started up, made a dash across the open, calling to him as she ran. Perverse as hate his horse broke into a canter and left her far in the rear. The girl shook her fist at him with a sudden burst of temper. She was standing near the stone where the man bad been sitting. Looking at its flat face she saw the reason of the naked poniard in his hand, for be had been carving out thin straggling letters in the stone.

"Sancta Igraine," she read--

"Ora pro nobis."

The screed dispelled the doubts in Igraine's mind on the instant. Palpably the man knew well enough who was following him, and was avoiding her of set purpose; but for what reason Igraine racked her wit to discover. She ran through many things in her heart, the possible testing of her devotion, a vacillating weakness on Pelleas's part that would not let him leave her altogether, a freakish wish to give her penance, Then, she knew that he was superstitious, and the thought flashed to her that he might think her a wraith, or some evil spirit that had taken her shape to have him in temptation. Maugre her vexation and her pride she held again on the trail, eating as she went some dried plums that she had in her wallet. The man had slackened down again and was less than half a mile away, now limned against the sky, now folded into a hollow or shut out by trees. Like a marsh-fire he tantalised her with a mystery of distance, holding steadily south at a level tramp, while Igraine plodded after him, her hair down and blowing out to the casual wind, her eyes at gaze on the red lure in the van.

So the mellower half of the day passed, and towards evening they neared the mount of trees Igraine had seen from the last ridge of the heath at noon. The black horse was heading straight for the cloudy mass in a way that set Igraine thinking and casting about for Pelleas's motive. Perhaps he had some quest in the solitary place that needed his single hand. Would he take to the wood and let her follow as before, or had he any purpose in leading her thither? Drowned in conjecture she gave up prophecy with a vicious sense of mystification, and accepted inevitable ignorance for the time being as to the man's moods and motives. She was no less obstinate to follow him to the death. If she only had a horse she would come near the man, pride or no pride, and tell him the truth.

Pressing on, with her strained ankle beginning to limp, she topped the round back of a grass rise and came full in view of the wood she had long seen in the distance. It looked very solemn in the declining light. The great trunks of giant beeches were packed pillar upon pillar into an impenetrable gloom. The foliage above, densely green, billowy, touched with red and gold, rolled upwards cloud on cloud as the ground ascended to the south and east. A great bronze carpet of dead leaves swept away into the night of the trees. There was an eternal hush, a gross silence, over the glooming aisles that seemed to beckon to the soul, to draw the heart into the night of foliage as into a cavern. Over all was the glowing ægis of the setting sun.

Igraine saw the man on the forest's edge where an arch of gloom struck into the inner shadows. He was facing the west, motionless as stone on his black horse, with the slanting light plucking a dull red gleam from his harness. There was a mystery about him that seemed to harmonise with the stillness of the trees and the black yawn of the forest galleries. Igraine imagined that he might be in a mood at last to speak with her if he believed her human. At all events, if he took to the trees, and she did not lose him, she would have the vantage of him and his horse in such a barricaded place.

It began to grow dark very quickly as she passed down the gradual slope towards the forest. The trees towered above her, a black mass rising again towards the east. Keen to see the man's mood, she hurried on and found him still steadfast in the great arch, that seemed like the gate of the wilderness, ready to abide her. A hundred paces more and her heart began to beat the faster, and the moil of the day's march dwindled before the influx of a rosier idyl. Every step towards Pelleas seemed to take her higher up the turret stair of love till her lips should meet those that bent at last from the gloom to hers. Pride and vexation lay fallen far below, dropped incontinently like a ragged cloak; a more generous passion shone out like cloth of gold ; she was no longer weary. Her eyes were very bright, her face full of a splendid wistfulness, as she neared the man under the trees, looking up to see his face.

Twilight lay deep violet under the wooelshawe, while horse and man were dim and impalpable, great shadows of themselves. Igraine could not see the man's face for the mask over the mezail of his helmet, and he was silent as death. She was quite close to him now and ready to speak his name, when he wheeled suddenly, looked back at her, and pointed into the wood with his long spear. She ran forward and would have taken hold of his bridle, but he waved her back and slanted his spear at her in mute warning. Igraine, heart-hungry, could hold herself no longer.

"Man--man, are you stone? "

He rode straight ahead into the night of the trees and said never a word. Igraine drew her breath.

"Pelleas."

"Ah, Igraine."

The voice that came to her was muffled like the voice of a mourner, yet the girl thought she caught the old deep tone of it like the low cry of the wind.

"Why do you vex me?"

"Follow!"

"Pelleas, Pelleas, I am no nun!"

"Follow!"

"I kept this truth from you too long."

"Follow!"

"Pelleas, would you hurt my heart more?"

"Follow; God shall make all plain and good."

She gave in with a half-sob, and bent quietly to the man's mood, though she had no notion what he purposed in his heart, or what his desires were in mystifying her thus. No doubt it would be well in the end if Pelleas bade her follow like a penitent and promised ultimate peace. At least he had not turned her away, and she trusted him to the death. He was a strong, deep-sensed soul, she knew, and her deceiving may have made him bitter in measure, and not easily appeased. In this queer trial of endurance, this tempting of her temper, she thought she read a penance laid upon her by the man for the way she had used his love.

They were soon far into the wood, with the western sky dwindling between the innumerable pillars of the trees. It began to be dark and utterly silent save for the rustle of the dead leaves as they went, and the shrilling chafe of bridle or scabbard, or the snort of the great horse. Wherever the eye turned the forest piers stood straight and solemn as the columns in a hypostyle hall in some Egyptian temple. The fretwork of boughs roofed them in with hardly a glimmering through of the darkening sky above. There was a pungent autumn scent on the air that seemed to rise like the incense of years that had fallen to decay on the brown flooring of the place, and there was no breath or vestige of a wind.

Presently as the day died the wood went black as the winter night, and Igraine kept close by the man, with his armour giving a dull gleam now and again to guide her. They were passing up what seemed to be a great arcade cut through the very heart of the wood, as though leading to some shrine or altar, relic of Druid days, or times yet more antique. The tunnel ran a curved course, bending deeper and deeper as it went into the dense horde of trees. So dark was the wood that it was possible to see but a few paces in advance, and Igraine wondered how the man kept the track. She was close at his stirrup now, with the dark mass of him and his horse rising above her like a statue in black basalt. Though he never spoke to her, and though she touched no part of him, his horse, or his harness, she felt content with the queer sense of trust and proximity that pervaded her. There was magic in the mere companionship. As she had humbled her will to Pelleas's the night when he had taken her from the beech tree in Andrcdswold, so now in like fashion she surrendered pride and liberty, and became a child.

Suddenly the trackway straightened out into a great colonnade that ran due south between trees of yet vaster girth. Igraine felt the man rein in and abide motionless beside her as she held to the stirrup and waited for what next should chance. Silence seemed like depths of black water over them, and they could hear each other take breath like the faint flux and reflux of a sea. Igraine saw the man lift his spear, a dim streak less black than the vault above, and hold it as a sign for her to listen. Her blood began to tingle a very little. There was something far away on the dead, stagnant air, a sort of swirl of sound, shrill and harmonious, like a wind playing through the strings of a harp. It was very gradual, very impalpable. As the volume of it grew it seemed to rush nearer like a wind, to swell into a swaying plaintive song smitten through with the wounded cry of flutes. It gave a notion of wood-fays dancing, of whirling wings and flitting gossamer moonbright in the shadows. Igraine's blood seemed to spin the faster, and her hand left the stirrup and touched the man's thigh. He gave never a word or sign in the dark. She spoke to him very softly, very meekly.

"What place is this, Pelleas?"

She saw him bend slightly in the saddle.

"It is called the Ghost Forest," he said.

"What are the sounds we hear? "

"Who can tell!"

Igraine had hardly heard him, when a streak of phosphor light flickered among the trees, coming and going incessantly as the great trunks intervened. It neared them in gradual fashion, and then blazed out sudden into the open aisle, a man in armour riding on a great white horse, his harness white as the moon, his face pale and wide-eyed, his hair like a mass of twisted silver wire. A misty glow haloed him round, and though he rode close there seemed no sound at all to mark his passing. As he had come, so he went, with streaks of flickering light that waxed less and less frequent till they died in the dark, and left the place empty as before. Igraine thought the air cold when he had gone.

She felt the black horse move beside her, and they went on as before into the night of the trees. The noise of flute and harp that had ceased awhile bubbled up again quite near, so that it was no longer the ghost of a sound, but noise more definite, more discrete. It had a queer way of dying to a sighing breath, and then gathering gradually into an ascending burst of windy melody. Igraine could almost fancy that she heard the sweep of wings, the soft thrill of silks trailing through the trees, yet the man on the horse said never a word as they went on like a pair of mutes to a grave.

The colonnade opened out abruptly on a great circular clearing in the wood shut in by crowded trunks, its open vault above cut by a dense ring of foliage. A grey light came down from the sky, showing great stones piled one upon another, others fallen and sunk deep in rank grass and brambles. The man halted his horse in the very centre of the clearing, with Igraine beside him, watchful for what should happen, and for the moment when Pelleas should unbend.

Hardly had she looked over the great cromlechs, black and sinister in that solitary wilderness, than the whole wood about them seemed dusted suddenly with points of fire. North, south, cast, and west torches and cressets came jerking redly out of the night, flitting behind the trees in a wide circle, gathering nearer and nearer without a sound. They might have been great fireflies playing through the aisles and ways, or goblin lamps carried by fairy folk. Igraine drew very close to the man's horse for comfort, and looked up to see his face, but found it dark and hidden. Her hand crept up past the horse's neck, rested on the mane a moment, and ventured yet further to meet the man's hand, where it gripped the bridle. For a minute they abode thus without a sound, watching the weird torch-dance in the wood.

With a sudden gibber of laughter and a swirl of pipes the throng of lights seemed to seethe to the very margin of the clearing. Queer phantastic shapes showed amid the trees, and the great circle grew wide with light, and the grey cromlechs surprised in sleep by the glare and piping. At that very moment Igraine had a thought of some one looking deep into her eyes, of a will, a power, streaming in upon her like sunlight into a sleepy pool. Her desire went from the man on the black horse into the square shadow of the great central cromlech, where an indefinite influence seemed to lurk. Looking long under the roofing stone, she grew aware of a tall something standing there, of a pair of eyes like the eyes of a panther, of a lean white hand moving in the shadows.

The eyes under the cromlech seemed to follow Igraine like fire, and to burn in upon her a foreign influence. Rebellious and wondering, she stiffened herself against a spiritual combat that seemed moving upon her out of the dark. She could have smitten the eyes that stared her down, and yet the magnetic stupor of them kindled up things in her heart that were strange and newly sensuous. She felt her strength sway as though her soul were being lifted from her, and she was warmed from top to toe like one who has taken wine, and whose being swims into an idyllic glorification of the senses. Again her desire seemed turned to the man in red harness, yet when she looked the saddle was empty, and the horse held by an armed servant who wore a wolf's head for covering. Still mute with fear, desire, and wonder, she saw a tall figure move into the full glare of the torches, a figure in red harness with a shield of green, and a red dragon thereon, and with head unhelmed. The armour was like the armour of Pelleas, but the face was the face of the man Gorlois.

And now the eyes under the shadow of the cromlech were full and strong upon Igraine. Breathing fast with a hand at her throat she stepped back from Gorlois--hesitated--stood still. She was very white, and her eyes were big and sightless like the eyes of one walking in a dream. For all her strength, her scorn, and the tricking of her heart, she was being swept like a cloud into the embraces of the sun. Reason, power, love, sank away and became as nothing. A shudder passed over her. Presently her hands dropped limp as broken wings, and her body began to sway like a tall lily in a breeze. A gradual stupor saw her cataleptic; she stood impotent, played upon by the promptings of another soul.

Gorlois went near to her with hands outstretched, stooping to look into her face. A sudden light kindled in her eyes, her lips parted, and new life flooded red into her cheeks as at the beck of love. She bent to Gorlois full of a gracious eagerness, a wistful desire that made her face golden as dawn. Her hand sought his, while the shadowy shape under the cromlech watched them with never-wavering eyes. Gorlois's arms were round her now all wreathed in her hair; her face was turned to his; her hands were clasped upon his neck. Another moment and he had touched her lips with his.

A sound of flutes, the tinkling of a bell, and a solemn company came threading from the trees, guests, acolytes, torch-bearers, in glittering cloth of gold, with a great crucifix to lead them. Gorlois and Igraine were hand in hand near the stone that hid the frame of Merlin. A priest in a gorgeous cape drew near, and began his patter. The vows were taken, the pact sealed, with the noise of a chant and music. Thus under the benedictions of the great trees, and the spell of Merlin, Gorlois and Igraine were made man and wife.