Uther and Igraine/Book 2/9

IX

RADAMANTH the goldsmith had not wasted the hours since his niece had fled Winchester and his house in the dark. He was a man who did not let an enterprise slip into the limbo of the past till he had attempted honestly, and dishonestly, for that matter, to bring it to a successful issue. He had set his heart on getting Igraine married to one of the first lords in the island, and he also had skew ideas as to brimming up his own coffers. Taking it for granted that Lilith and the girl had not been close friends for weeks together without sharing secrets, and being also strongly of the opinion that Igraine's perversity arose out of some previous affair, he laid methodical siege to his daughter's confidences, and cast a parental dyke about her that should compel her to open every gate and alley to his scrutiny.

Lilith, amiable, but weak as milk, was soon worn into surrender by her father's methods. He had an unfailing lash wherewith to quicken her apprehension, in that young Mark, the armourer's son, should be barred the house unless she bent to the parental edicts. Lilith soon brought herself to believe that after all there could not be so much disloyalty in telling certain of Igraine's adventures to her father. Radamanth, bit by bit, had the whole tale of the way from Avangel to Winchester. Seeing how often Igraine--woman-wise--had pictured her man to Lilith, the goldsmith won a clear perception of the strange knight's person, how he rode a black horse, wore red armour, bore a red dragon on a green shield, and was called Pelleas. Radamanth made a careful note of all these things, and laid the knowledge of them before Gorlois. Various subtleties resulted from these facts--subtleties carefully considered to catch Igraine.

To turn to Eudol. That lean old satyr had fallen gravely into error in the conviction that he had fooled Gorlois's men so cleverly over the wine-pot. The deceit had been deeper on the other side, and more effectual, seeing that there had been a kirtled traitor in the manor camp. If Eudol had been stirring just after daybreak on the morning after the carouse, he might have caught one of Gorlois's men coming down a little winding stair that led to a certain portion of the house. A little earlier still he would have found the fellow with his arm round Dame Phœbe's waist in a dark entry on the stairs. The woman did not love Igraine, nor did she want her in the house; moreover, Gorlois's man was young, and had fine eyes, and a most wicked tongue. Eudol, like most diplomats, was far from being infallible when there was a woman in the coil, and Dame Phœbe was very much a woman.

Gorlois's fellows had no sooner cleared the meadows that morning than they were away for Winchester at a dusty rattle. It was fast going over the clean, straight road, and the grey walls were not long in coming into view. The pair swung through the western gate, and went straight through the streets in a way that set the city folk staring and dodging for the pathway. At the gate of Gorlois's house the porter had a vexatious damping for the spirits of these fiery gentlemen. Gorlois had ridden out. The men swore, off-saddled, and made the best of the matter over a game of dice in the kitchen.

There was great bustle when Gorlois had heard the men's tale. They excused their not having taken Igraine on the plea that Gorlois had forbidden any to approach her save himself. The man was in a smiting mood, and he swore Eudol should rue giving him the lie and sending him a wild chase miles into the west. Getting to horse at once, and taking the two men with some ten more spears, be rode out and held for Sarum.

There was a swirl of dust before Eudol's gate, and a sharp scattering of shingle as Gorlois and his troop rode up. A slave, who had seen them from the garden, and had taken them for robbers, was prevented from closing the gate by a brisk youth wedging it with his foot. There was a short scuffle at the tottering door. Then Gorlois and his men burst it in, and cut down those slaves on the threshold who had tried to close the door. The women folk were herded screeching into the kitchen, and penned there like sheep. Out of a cupboard in an upper room they dragged the woman Phœbe, limp with fright, and hurried the truth out of her that Igraine had gone that very morning, and that Eudol was still in the fields. Gorlois, believing her a liar, had the house searched, beds overturned, cupboards torn open, every nook and cranny probed. Then they tried the garden and the stables, with like fortune. One of the fellows catching sight of the barn across the meadows, half-hidden by pines, they made a circle round it, closed in, and forced the door. A blinking, red-eyed face came up out of the shadows, its beard and thin thatch of hair whisped with hay.

Eudol, collared with little kindness, began to wonder after his drunken sleep who these rough folk could be. A word as to Igraine brought him to his senses. He saw Gorlois, a dark-bearded, black-eyed man, with a frown that he did not like the look of. He began to shake in his slippers, to excuse himself, and to deny all knowledge of the girl since the morning. Matters were against Eudol. Gorlois thought that he had plucked the old man from hiding, and that he was a liar to the bone; his shrift was short, measured out by the man's hard malice. They struck him down at the door of his own barn, covering his grey head with his hands, and screaming for mercy. His blood soaked the hay, and shot black streaks into the dusty floor. Then they cast back to the manor, and half-throttled the woman Phœbe, till Gorlois was satisfied that he had got all the truth from her he could. In half an hour they were at gallop again for Sarum.

Gorlois reined in cruelly more than once to fling hot questions at the folk they passed upon the road. His horse was all sweat and foam, and its mouth bloody with the heavy hand that played on the bridle. Wayfarer after wayfarer looked up half in awe at the iron-faced man towering above them in the stirrups. Their blank, irresponsive faces chafed Gorlois's patience to the bone. Not a word did he win of Igraine and her grey gown. Waxing sullen as granite, and very silent, he looked neither to right nor left, but plodded on like a baffled sleuth-hound with the rest of the pack trailing at his tail. The girl's hair seemed tossing over the edge of the world, like a golden hue from the west, and there was a passionate wind through the man's moody thought.

It was towards evening when Gorlois with his men--a bunch of spears--came upon. the peasant in the green smock driving his wain-load of faggots slowly towards the setting sun. Gorlois drew up and hailed him, and began his cate-chism anew. The fellow pulled in his team, and eyeing the horseman with some caution, acknowledged curtly that he had carried in his cart a league or more such a woman as Gorlois had pictured. To further quick queries he proved stubborn and boorish. Gorlois had lost his temper long ago. "Speak up, you devil's dog!"

The man looked sullen. Gorlois's sword flashed out. He spurred close up, and held three feet of menacing steel over the peasant's head.

"Well, you be damned!" he said.

"What want you with the woman, lording?"

"Am I to argue with a clod of clay? The woman is marked for great honour, and must be taken. Will you spoil her fortune?"

The man fingered the reins, looking hard at Gorlois with his stupidly honest face. He guessed he was some great lord, by his harness and his following. It was not for him to gainsay such a gentleman, especially when he flourished a naked sword.

"I would do my best for the good nun, lording," he said.

"Then speak out."

"She promised to pray for my woman."

Gorlois gave a laugh, and scoffed at the notion.

"Let prayers be," he said; "tell me where she went."

The man told Gorlois of the hermitage in the dale where Igraine had gone for a night's lodging. He described how the path could be found, a mile or more nearer Winchester. Gorlois threw a gold piece into the cart, and let the man drive on. Then he sat still on his black horse with his sword over his shoulder, and looked into the wood with dark, glooming eyes. For a minute he sat like a statue, staring on nothing in keen thought. His men watched him, looking for some swift swoop from such a pinnacle of pondering; they knew his temper. His sword shot back into its scabbard, and he was keen as a wolf.

"Galleas of Camelford."

A man with a hooked nose and high check bones heeled his horse forward, and saluted.

"Ride hard, find the hermitage, be wary, watch at a distance for sight of the Lady Igraine. If she is at the hermitage, gallop back to Sarum before nightfall. I shall be in Sir Accolon's house. Attend me there."

The man saluted again, turned his horse instanter, and rode hard into the east. Gorlois, with a half smile on his lips, rode on with his troop for Sarum.

In Sarum town there was a queer house of stone, very dark and very saturnine. It was hid away behind high walls, and hedged so blackly with yews and hollies that it seemed to stand in the gloom of a perpetual twilight. After dark a sullen glow often hung above the trees; casements would blaze blood-red light into boughs creaking and clutching in the wind; or there would be a moony glimmer on the glass, and belated folk passing near might hear voices or elvish music about them as though dropped from the stars. It was the house of Merlin,--the man of dreams,--wrapped in the gloom of immemorial yews.

That night Gorlois sat in a room hung with black velvet, where a brazier held a dying fire, and a bowl thereon steamed up perfumes in a heavy vapour. A man with a face of marble and eyes like an eternal night was chaired before him, with his long, lean, restless fingers continually touching the cloud of hair that fell blackly over his ears. His fingers were packed with rings gemmed with all manner of stones--jasper, sardonyx, chrysolite, emerald, ruby, and the like. His gown was of black velvet, twined all about with serpent scrolls of white cloth. On his breast was brooched a great diamond that blazed and wavered back the glow from the fire.

Gorlois sat in his carved chair stiff as any image. His strenuous soul seemed mewed up by the psychic influence of the man before him. He spoke seldom, and then only at the other's motion--at a curious gesture of one of those long, lean hands. The room was as silent as the burial hall of a pyramid, and it had the air of being massed above by stupendous depths of stone.

Presently the man in the black robe began to speak with deliberate intent, holding his voice deep in his throat so that it sounded much like the voice of an oracle declaring itself in the noise of a wind.

"The woman is beautiful beyond other women."

"Like a golden May."

"And true."

"As a sapphire."

"Yet will not have you."

"Not a shred of me."

The man with the rings smiled out of his impenetrable eyes, and fingered the brooch on his breast.

"The woman has great destiny before her."

"Ah!"

"I have seen her star in the night. You dare take her fate on you?"

"Like ivy holds a tree."

"As a wife?"

Gorlois laughed.

"How else?"

"As a wife--by the church."

"Ah!"

"Or no help of my hand."

Again there was silence. A coal fell in the brazier, and seemed like a rock down a precipice. The black eyes that stared down Gorlois were full of light, and strangely scintillant. Gorlois listened, with his limbs asleep and his brain in thrall, while the man spoke like a very Michael out of a cloud. The clear glittering plot given out of Merlin's lips came like a dream vivid to the thought of the dreamer. If Gorlois obeyed he should have his desire, and catch Igraine to a white marriage-bed by law and her own willing. The fire died down in the brazier, and the bowl ceased to smoke perfumes. Gorlois saw the man gather his black robe with his glittering fingers, and move like a wraith round the room, to stand beckoning by the door. In another minute Gorlois was under the stars, with the house and its yews a black mound against the sky. Like a sleeper half wakened he took full breath of the night air, and stretched his arms up above his head. But it was not to sleep that he passed back through the void streets to the house of the knight Accolon.

To return to Igraine housed for the night in the little hermitage. At the first creep of dawn, when daffodils were thrown up against the eastern sky, she left her pallet bed in the cell and went out into the hermit's garden. The recluse was down at the brook drawing water, whither the dog and the doves had followed him. Igraine passed through the garden--spun over as it was with webs of dew. To her comfort she found her ankle scarcely troubling her, for she had feared pain or stiffness after the walk of yesterday. Going down the dale, she patted the old dog's head, and picked up the pitcher as the recluse gave her good-morning.

"You are an early soul, sister. My dog and I come down to the brook each morning as the sun peeps over the hill."

"You are not lonely," said Igraine.

The old man tightened his girdle, looked over the solemn piers of the woods, sniffed the air, and hailed an autumn savour.

"Not I," he said. " I have my dog and my doves, and folk often lodge here, and I have word of the world and how the Saxons vex us. The good people near bring me alms and pittances, or come to ask prayers for their souls, and"--with a twinkle--" for their bodies, too."

Igraine remembered the peasant's little son.

"Was it you," she said, " who gave a peasant fellow near here a saint's dust to scatter over a sick child?"

The old man shook his head and smiled enigmatically.

"I have no dealings in such marvels," he said.

"The boy died."

"Of course."

"They will sell your dust some day."

A keen look, cynical with beaming scorn, spread over the man's gaunt face.

"Much good may it do them," he said; "death is monstrous flatterer of mere clay. I may feed a rose bush with my bones; a better fate than the cheating of superstitious women."

He made a sign with his hand, and the birds went wheeling in circles above him. The dog crept up and thrust his snout into the old man's palm. The garden lay above them, ripe with an autumn mellowness; yet there was no regret though winter would soon be piping, and the man's hair was grey.

"What think you of life?" said Igraine.

"You should know, sister, as well as I."

"But you see, father, I am not a nun,--only a novice."

He stared at her a moment with a slight smile.

"Remain a novice," he said.

"You advise me so! "

"Why subordinate your soul to chains forged of men."

"These seem strange words."

He patted his dog's head, and, half stooping, looked at her with keen grey eyes.

"Have you ever loved a man?

"Yes," she said, with a clear laugh and a slight colour.

"Is he worthy?"

"I believe him a noble soul."

"Naturally."

"He ran away and left me because he thought I was a nun."

The hermit applauded.

"That sounds like honour," he said critically.

"I am seeking him to tell him the truth."

"And I will pray that you may soon meet, said the old man, "for there is nothing like the love of a good man for a clean maid. If I had married a true woman, I should never have taken to the scourge or the stone bed. Marry wisely and you are halfway to Heaven."

They broke fast that morning in the garden, it being the man's custom to make his meals on the granite slab that served him as a bed. The little dale looked very green and gracious in the tranquil light, with its curling brook and dark barriers of trees. Igraine, as she sat on the great stone and ate the hermit's bread, followed the brook with her thoughts, wondering whether it became the stream that ran through Eudol's meadows. She was for Sarum that day, where she would throw off her grey habit and take some dress more likely to baffle Gorlois. She had enough money in her purse. Worldling again, she could give herself to winning sight of this Uther, and to learning whether he was the Pelleas she sought or no.

As she sat and fingered her bread, something she saw down the dale made her rigid and still as a priestess smitten with the vision of a god in some heathen oratory. Her eyes were very wide, her lips open and very white, her whole air as of one watching in a sudden stupor of awe. Another moment and she bad broken from the mood like a torrent from a cavern. With eyes suddenly amber bright, she touched the hermit's hand and pointed down the dale, gave him a word or so, then left him and ran down the hill.

A man on a black horse had ridden out from the trees, and was pushing his horse over the brook at a shallow spot not far away. His red armour glowed in the sun with a metallic lustre. Even at that distance Igraine had seen the red dragon rampant on a shield of green. As she ran down the grass slope she called the man by name, thinking to see him turn and come to her. Pushing on sullenly as though he had not heard the cry that went after him like winged love, he drew up the further slope without wavering, and sank like a red streak into the dense green of the trees.