Uther and Igraine/Book 2/7

VII

WHILE Igraine slept in the abbey dormitory and dreamt of Pelleas, the man Gorlois burnt on the grid of his own passions, and found no peace for his soul.

The night sky was not a whit more black than his spirit, and his sinister cogitations were chequered ever with palpitating points of fire. The restless fever of an unfed leopard seemed his, and he was in and out of his tumbled, sleepless bed ten times before dawn. Only a boar-hound kept him company, a savage red-eyed brute whose temper suited that of his master; the dog followed Gorlois as he wandered from bed-chamber to atrium, out from the peristyles to the garden, down walks of yew and cypress, between the beds of helicryse and asphodel, over the smooth lawns clear in the eye of the moon. There was an evil thing in Gorlois's thought, a thing fit for beggarly disrelish, yet very white and lovely to look upon. He stalked like a ghost in the night, biting his lips, looking into the dark with red and eager eyes. How often he reached out in naked thought and clasped only the air. He cursed himself and the woman, honoured and abused her in one breath, grew hot and cold like a live coal played upon by a fickle wind.

As soon as dawn came he had a plunge and a swim in a pool in the garden, and having suffered the ceremony of a state toilet, went out unattended into the town. It was the very hour when Igraine was shaking her fist at Winchester for thought of him, but Gorlois was spared the prick of self-knowledge and the frank truth of the girl's distaste. He thought her nothing more than a shrew, and the possessor of a splendid temper. His long legs and the heat at his heart soon took him down through the quiet streets and the market square to Radamanth's house.

Early as was the hour, the goldsmith had escaped sloth and was busy at his ledgers in his little counting-house behind the parlour. Gorlois came in in great state, with the serving wench who announced him feasting her curiosity on his face with a sheepish giggle. Radamanth, fetched from his figures, bowed very low, and made the gentleman a most obsequious welcome. He was wondering what Gorlois's humour might be after the repulse of yesterday. To tell the truth, Radamanth felt somewhat ashamed of the trick he had served Igraine, and he was none too eager to meet his niece, seeing that she still seemed determined to hide her anger in her room. His doubts as to Gorlois's mood were set at rest by that gentleman's somewhat saturnine opening.

"Radamanth!"

"Your honour's servant."

"I have come to make peace."

"Your lordship's magnanimity is phenomenal."

"Was I over hasty, goldsmith?"

"A young man's way, my lord; no fault at all. Many's the time I had my face smacked as a youngster, and was none the worse in favour. Take no serious view, sir, but press her the harder. She'll give in--my faith, yes, being young and full of bone. You are troubled, my lord, with too much conscience."

"Have you seen the woman since?"

Radamanth raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

"Well, no," he said. "I am afraid my niece has rather a hot spirit--breeding, my lord--proud blood in her."

"I know that part of her nobleness well enough."

Radamanth refrained a moment from a sense of discretion.

"My lord would see her?"

"I'll not budge till I have done so."

"You understand women?"

Gorlois smiled a peculiar smile.

"I have wit enough," he said. "I have my plan."

"If it please you, sir, to go into the garden, I will endeavour to send her to you."

"No more locking of doors, goldsmith."

"Sir, I contemn my late indiscretion in your service."

Gorlois passed out by a long passage into the gardens, with its green leaves shelving to the river, while Radamanth, half a coward at heart, went towards the stair that led to Igraine's chamber. Halfway up be met the girl Lilith coming down, very white and frightened looking, as though she dreaded her father's face. Radamanth kissed her and asked for Igraine. Then her distraught look dawned on him in the twilight of the stairway, and made him suddenly suspicious.

"Is Igraine awake?"

Lilith hid her face in his sleeve.

"Speak, girl, what's amiss?"

"The room is empty."

"What?"

"Igraine has left us," said the girl with a stifled whimper.

Radamanth, sage and solemn soul, lapsed into the sin of blasphemy.

"When did you learn this, girl?"

"Father--"

"Quick now, don't lie."

He shook her by the shoulder.

"Father, be gentle with me."

"Quick, hussy."

"I can't, I can't."

Radamanth took her firmly by the wrist and brought her with no very considerate care into the parlour.

"Now," he said, thrusting her into a chair, "you atom of ingratitude, tell me what you know."

Lilith began to sob. She hid her face behind her fingers and dared not look at Radamanth. The goldsmith chafed and paced the room, hectoring her.

"Don't think to fool me," he said; "you know more yet; you would have answered before if there had been any truth in you."

Radamanth's harshness seemed certainly to calm the girl, and to conjure up some passing antagonism in her heart.

"The blame is yours, father."

"Impertinent child."

"Igraine was angry with you."

"Well, have I not treated her like a daughter?"

"She fled away last night."

"Where?"

"I don't know."

"You do."

"I don't, father; 'tis truth."

The girl's brown eyes appealed to him tearfully; she was honest enough, and Radamanth knew it. He took her sincerity for granted and proceeded to question her further.

"How was she clothed, child?"

Lilith looked at the floor and plucked at her gown with her fingers.

"Do you hear me?"

"Yes, father."

"Then answer at once."

"I can't."

"Upon my soul--"

"Igraine made me promise."

Radamanth lost his temper again and began to bluster like a March wind. Lilith's cheeks were wet with her tears; they ran down and dropped into her lap like little crystals. She shook and sobbed in her chair, but answered not a word, a martyr to her promises. Then Radamanth man of money-bags and craft, found something wherewith to loose her tongue.

"Listen," he said; "a certain lad never enters this house again, and you never again have speech with him, unless you answer me this at once."

The mean measure triumphed. Lilith's tears never ceased, but she gave way at last, and hating herself, told Radamanth what he wanted. Then he left her there to whimper by herself, and went into the garden to speak with Gorlois.

The Count of Cornwall guessed from the merchant's face that matters had fallen out ill for him somewhere. He forestalled Radamanth's confession with an impatient gust of words.

"She is still in a deuce of a temper?"

"My lord, it is otherwise."

"Then why so glum--man, have I not uncovered ingots of gold for you if I wed?"

Radamanth held his hands up like a priest giving a blessing. Any one might have thought him grieved to death by the ingratitude of his niece's desertion. The goldsmith dealt in coarser sentiment.

"My lord, the girl has forsaken my house and fled."

Gorlois had half expected some such news. He said nothing, but merely stared at Radamanth with dark masterful eyes, while his fingers played with the tassels of his belt. His heart was already away over moor and dale chasing the gleam of a golden head of hair.

"When did you miss her, goldsmith?"

"She crept away at dusk yesterday."

"Whither?"

"Heaven knows, my lord."

"How dressed?"

"As a grey nun."

"Has she gone back to the Church?"

"She did not love such a life, my lord."

"By God, no."

Gorlois frowned a moment in thought. The scent of the girl's dress was still in his nostrils, and her eyes haunted him. Then he turned past Radamanth to go, hitching up his sword belt, a significant habit he had learnt long ago.

"I shall find her," he said.

"Good, my lord."

"I have your countenance."

"Be kind to the girl, sir."

"I could go to hell for her."

"My lord, why not try heaven?"

"A good jest."

"Men always go to hell for things," said the goldsmith.

There was life and stir enough in Gorlois's great house when its master came back that morning. Gorlois's orders were like a torch to tinder. Men went to every wind, some to the gates, some to the market, others to the religious houses and the inns, all bent on striking the trail of a nun's grey gown. The men knew their master's mood, and the measure of his pulse on such occasions. Gorlois bided quiet in his garden, more like a leopard than a lover. He had made up his mind to catch Igraine, and to win mastery of her, hook or by crook, since she chose to play the shrew and mar his wooing. It was not likely that one of the first men in Britain should be baffled by the temper of a goldsmith's niece.

About noon a certain slave who bad gone out to news came back with much elation and claimed his lord's ear. Brought in before Gorlois, he told how he had talked with a boy selling fruit in the market-place, and how the boy, when questioned, had told him of a nun he had seen sitting under a tree by the road to Sarum that very morning. The lad had described her as a very beautiful lady with large eyes, and a cloud of red-brown hair, and that she wore a grey nun's habit somewhat torn and travel-stained. Gorlois thought he recognised Igraine, and gave the slave fifty acres and his freedom on the instant. Waiting for further news, word was brought him that a grey nun had been marked by the guard going out of the western gate not very long after dawn. Later still Gorlois heard of such a nun, calling herself Melibœa, having lodged the night at the great abbey of St. Helena.

Gorlois held himself in leash no longer. He buckled on his richly gilt armour, and his great white horse was saddled and brought into the court. Not a knight would he have at his back, neither groom nor page. Getting to horse in the full welt of the afternoon sun, he rode out of Winchester alone by the western gate, watched of many people. Once clear of the town he pricked incontinently for Sarum, lusting much to catch Igraine upon the way.

About that very same hour Eudol was exerting himself in Igraine's service in the manor farm in the meadows.

The men had carried her up from the ford and set her at her own seeking in a shady place in the garden when she might lie at peace. It was a pleasant nook enough where they had set her bed, a patch of bright green grass with a bank of flowers on one hand and dense laurel hedge hiding it from the track to the house on the other. A vine trained upon poles raised a pleasant pavilion there. Autumn would soon be whispering in the woods, and already some few leaves were ribbed with gold and maroon.

Eudol played the physician and made a very critical examination of her ankle. He prided himself, among his other vanities, on having studied Galen, and since the healing craft is often a matter of phenomenal words and wise nothings, Eudol might have outphysicked Gildas at his own game. The art of medicine is the art of hypocrisy, and the sage apothecary is often a broken reed trembling in the wind of ignorance. Eudol, having no reputation at stake, pronounced Igraine's hurt to be a mere strain of the ankle-joint, and, as it happened, he was right. He swathed her foot in wet linen and set it on a pillow, while the woman who kept house for him, a red-cheeked piece of buxomness, brought wine and food-stuff on a tray. Seeing a nun's habit the good woman was comforted, and indulged Igraine with many smiles and much motherly care.

Eudol came and sat beside her with a great book on his knee, Virgil's Bucolics, as he told her, and writ most learnedly for the edification of the wise. Eudol read very little of the book that afternoon. The volume abode with him for effect, but he preferred rather to dwell upon the more Ovidian interest of the girl beside him, and to talk to her in his familiar and fatherly fashion. He made many sly attempts to get the purpose of her pilgrimage from her, but Igraine had enough wit to keep him discreetly mystified on the subject. She was wondering all the while how long her strained ankle would keep her to her bed.

Eudol smothered her with offers of hospitality.

"On my word you shall not be dull," he said, "though there is only an old man to entertain you. One day you shall ride, out in a litter to my vineyards, another you shall be carried out a-hunting. I have a little wench here who can harp and sing like a mermaid. By the poets, I can make you quite a merry time."

Igraine made the best smile she could, and thanked him.

"You must not put yourself out for me."

"Nonsense."

"You are very good."

Eudol shook his finger with most earnest expression.

"My dear lady, it is duty, duty," he said.

They had not been so very long in the garden when Igraine's quick ear caught the sharp and rhythmic smite of hoofs on the stony track across the meadows. The sound disquieted her, for she was in the mood for dreads and suspicions. Listening to make sure that the sound approached, she appealed to Eudol and asked him to look and see who rode for the manor. There was a little wicket-gate some way down the laurel hedge carefully screened by shrubs. Eudol went to it, and scanned the meadows under his hand. He came back somewhat flustered to Igraine, and told her that a knight in gilded armour mounted on a white horse was riding up the track to the house.

Igraine started up on her bed with her eyes very big and suspicious.

"It is Gorlois," she said.

"Heavens, my dear!"

"You have not been lying to me?"

"On my soul--no."

Igraine touched her forehead with her hand, and looked askance at the sun.

"Master Eudol, if you would serve me, go and fool the man--send him away."

"My dear child--"

"He must not see the servants or have speech with them."

"But--"

"I command you, go. and speak to him; he is very near."

Eudol looked at her with his lower lip a-droop. His grey-green eyes met Igraine's, gleamed, and faltered. He bent over the bed.

"I will do my best. Give me a kiss, my dear. By Augustus, I will get rid of Gorlois if I can."

He went out quickly by the wicket-gate, and closing it after him, waited for the knight to approach. There were no slaves about, and Eudol remembered with confidence that his men were in the corn fields, well away to the north. Gorlois came up with the splendid arrogance that so suited him, his rich armour glowing above the white flanks of his horse, his spear balanced on his thigh. Eudol went forward some paces to meet him, as though to learn his business. Igraine, listening behind the laurel hedge, heard their words as plainly as though the two men were but three paces away.

"Greeting, sir," said Eudol's thin voice.

Then she heard Gorlois's clear sharp tenor questioning him. She heard him ask whether a grey nun had called for food, or whether Eudol had seen or heard of such a person. She heard the old man's meandering negative, and Gorlois's retort that a grey nun had been seen riding beside a merchant on a white mule. Igraine's heart seemed to race and thunder. Eudol, rising to the event, suggested that the merchant might be a certain fabulous person from Aquæ Sulis; a man of means, he said, who often came by Sarum to Winchester in the fur trade. He hinted that the knight might overtake them on the road, or discover them at Sarurn that evening. Gorlois fell to the suggestion. Igraine heard him inquire further of Eudol, speak to his horse, and ride away with a ringing clatter. She sat on her couch behind her laurel rampart and laughed.

Eudol came back to her, pleased as possible.

"How was that done,--sweeting?"

"Nobly," laughed Igraine.

"The Virgin pardon me; what perjury for a pair of lips."