Uther and Igraine/Book 3/1

BOOK III

THE WAR IN WALES

I

AURELUS 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 west-wards 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 own 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 impla-cable 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.