Uther and Igraine/Book 3/7

VII

WHILE Gorlois was lowering over an imagined shame, and Uther given to brooding on a vision, the Knight of the Cloven Heart wandered through wild Wales and endured sundry adventures that were hardly in concatenation with the distaff or the cradle.

In rough ages might was right, and every man's inclination law unto himself. To strike hard was to win crude justice; to ride a horse, to wear mail, to carry a sword, were characteristics that ensured considerable reverence from men less fortunate, by maintaining at least an outward arrogance of strength. Not only on these grounds alone did the Knight of the Cloven Heart hold at a disadvantage those folk of the wilderness who went--to speak metaphorically--naked. She made brave show enough, had a strong arm and a strong body, and could match any man in the mere matter of courage. The moral effect of her great horse, her shield and harness, and the sword at her side, carried her unchallenged through wood and valley where meaner wayfarers might have come to grief, or suffered a tumbling. The forest folk assumed her a knight under her helmet and her harness; a certain bold magnificence of bearing in no wise contradicted the assumption.

It would be wearisome to record the passage of two months or more, to construct an itinerary of her progress, to chronicle the events of a period that was solitary as the wilds through which she passed. She never slept a night under populous roof the whole time of these wanderings. Luckily it was fair weather, and a mild season ; forest shade, such as it was, and the caves of the wilderness, a ruined villa, the forsaken hut of a charcoal burner, an empty hermitage--such in turn gave her shelter from the placid light of the moon, or the black stare of a starless sky. She never ventured even among peasant folk unhelmeted. Her food was won from cottager or herdsman by such store of money as she had about her, though many she came across were eager to appease so formidable a person with milk, and pottage, and the little delicacies of the rude home. Often her fine carriage and youthful voice won wonders from the bosom of some peasant housewife. She had her liberty, and was free to roam; the life contented her instincts for a season, and at least she was saved the sight of Gorlois. Since war had failed to loose her from the man, she would essay her best to keep him at a distance.

If hate repelled, love drew with dreams. Yet had Igraine been asked of peace at heart, she would have smiled and sighed together. There are degrees of misery, and solitary suffering is preferable to that publicity which is very torture in itself, a galling whip to the tender flanks of pride. In being free of Gorlois she was happy; in thinking of Uther and in contemplation of the shadows of the unknown she was of all women most miserable. A mood of self-concentration was settling slowly upon her like an inevitable season upon the face of the earth. Day by day a dream prophetic of the future was pictured in the imagery of thought till it grew familiar as an often looked on landscape that awakes no wonder and no strange unrest. The ordinances of man had thrust on her a damnable tyranny, and she was more than weary of the restrictions of the world. The inevitable scorn of custom bad long taken hold upon her being, and she had been driven to that state when the soul founds a republic within itself, and creates its ethics from the promptings of the heart.

Uther was at Caerleon; she had heard the truth from many a peasant tongue. Caerleon therefrom drew her with magic influence, as a lamp draws a golden moth from the gloom, or the light in the night sky wings on the wild-fowl with the prophecy of water. Caerleon became the bourn of all her holier thoughts ; strange city of magic, it held love and hate for her, desire and obloquy; though its walls were as a luring net scintillant with spirit gossamer, her very reason lulled her fears to sleep, and turned her southwards towards Uskland and the sea.

It came to pass, on the very day that Uther spoke with Merlin in the forest, that Igraine rode over a stretch of hills by a sheep-track, and came down into a valley not many leagues from Caerleon. The place stood thick with woodland, ranged tier on tier with the peaked bosses of huge trees. That impenetrable mystery of solitude that abides where forests grow was deeply hallowed in this silent dale. The infinite majesty of nature had cast a spell there, and the vast oaks, like pyramids of gloom, caverned a silence that was utter and divine.

Glimmering beneath the huge, stupendous boughs, through darkling aisles and the colossal piers that held the innumerable roofing of the leaves, Igraine passed down through umbrage and still ecstasies of green, by colonnade and gallery,--interminable tunnels, where stray light struck slantwise on her armour, that it seemed a moving lustre in the solemn shade.

Deep in the woodland lay a valley, a pastureland girt round with trees, and where the meadows, painted thick with flowers, seemed all enamelled white and azure, green, purple, pink, and gold. A peace as from the sun shone over it like saffron mist. A pool gleamed there, tranquil and deep with shadows; all the trees that Britain knew seemed girdled round it--oak, beech and holly, yew, thorn and cedar, the elfin pine, the larch, whose delicate kirtle shames even broidery of silk. No sound save the cuckoo's cry, and the uncertain twittering of birds, disturbed the sanctuary of that forest solitude.

Igraine, halting on the brink of the meadowland, looked down over wood and water. The quiet of the place, the clear glint of the pool, the scent of the meadows, brought back the valley in Andredswold, and the manor in the mere. She loved the place on the instant. Even a blue plume of smoke rising straight to the sky, and the grey-brown backs of a few sheep in the meadows, evidencing as they did the proximity of man, failed to disenchant the solitary grandeur of the scene.

There is no stable perpetuation of peace in the world; care treads upon the heels of Mammon, and lust lies down by the side of love. Even in the quiet of the wilderness the hawk chases the lark's song out of the heavens, and wind scatters the bloom from the budding tree. Thus it was that Igraine, watching from under the woods, saw the sheep scampering suddenly in the meadows as though disturbed by something as yet invisible to her where she stood. Their bleating came up with a tinge of pathos, to be followed by a sound more sinister, the cry of one in whom pain and terror leapt into an ecstasy of anguish--a shrill, bird-like scream that seemed to cleave the silence like the white blade of a sword. Igraine's horse pricked its ears with a snort of wrath, as though recognising the wounded cry of some innocent thing. The girl's pulses stirred as she scanned the valley for explanation of this discord, sudden as the sweep of a falcon from the blue. Nor was she long at gaze. A flickering speck of colour appeared in the meadowlands, the figure of a woman running through the grass like a hunted rabbit, darting and doubling with a whimpering outcry. Near as a shadow a tall streak of brown followed at full stride, terrible even in miniature. Hunter and hunted passed before the eye like the figures of a dream, yet with a fierce realism that whelmed self in an objective pity.

Never did Britomart herself, with splendid soul, find fitter cause in faerie-land than did the Knight of the Cloven Heart in that woodland dale. Igraine rode down from the trees, a burning figure of chivalry that galloped through the green, and bore fast for the scudding forms, that skirted round the pool. Like a stag pressed to despair, the hunted one had taken to the water, and was already waist deep in ripples that seemed to catch the panic of the moment. Plunging on past tree and thicket, Igraine held on, while sheep scattered from her, to turn and stare with the stupidest of white faces at the horse thundering over the meadows. The pursuer had passed the water-weeds, and was to his knees in the pool when the Knight of the Cloven Heart came down to the bank and halted, like a mailed statue of succouring vengeance.

The white heat of the drama seemed cooled for the moment. Over the flickering scales of the little mere the girl's white face, tumbled hair, and blue smock showed, as she half-floated and half-paddled with her hands. Nearer still, the leather-jerkined, fur-breeched figure of the man bent like a baffled satyr baulked of evil. On the green slope of the bank the mailed splendour of chivalry waited like Justice to uphold the right.

The man in the mere wore the short Roman sword, or parazonium; any more effective weapon that he had possessed had been thrown aside in the heat of the chase and in the imagined security of his rough person. He had the face of a wolf. In girth and stature he seemed a young Goliath, a savage thing bred in savage times and savage places, and blessed with the instincts of mere barbarism. Igraine's disrelish equalled her heat as she looked at him, and slanted her great sword over her shoulder.

In another instant the scene revived, and ceased to be a mere picture. The girl in the pool had found a footing, and her half-bare shoulders showed above the water. The man, with his short sword held behind him, was splashing through the shallows with a grin on his hairy face that meant mischief. Igraine, every whit as hot as he, held her horse well in hand, and put her shield before her. Matters went briskly for a minute. The man made a rush; Igraine spurred up and sent him reeling with the charging shoulder of her horse; the short sword pecked at nothing, the long one struck home and drew blood. A second panther leap, a blow turned by the shield, a counter cut that made good carving of the fellow's skull. The shallows foamed and crackled crimson; hoofs stirred up the mire; a plunge; a noise of crossed steel; a last sweep of a sword, and then victory. Igraine's horse, neighing out the spirit of the moment, trampled the fallen body as it had been the carcase of a slaughtered dragon.

The girl in the pool waded back at the sight, her blue smock clinging about her, and showing an opulent grace of shoulder, arm, and bosom--a full figure swept by the damp tangle of her dark brown hair. She had full red lips, eyes of bright blue, a round and ruddy face that told of a mind more for tangible pleasures than for spiritual aspiration. She came up out of the shallows like a water-nymph, her frightened face already all aglow with a smile of gratitude, mild shame, and infinite reverence. Going down on her knees amid the water-weeds and flags, she held up her playful hands as to a deliverer direct from heaven. "Grace, Lord, for thy servant."

With the peril past, Igraine could not forego the sly scrap of mischief that the occasion offered; her white teeth gleamed in a smile under her helmet, as she wiped her sword on the horse's mane, before sheathing it.

"Give Heaven thanks," she said, with a quaint sententiousness of gesture. "Be sure in thy heart that it was a mere providence of God that I heard thy screaming. As for yon clod of clay, we will bury it later, lest it should pollute so goodly a pool. For the rest, child, I am an old man, and hungry, and would taste bread."

The girl jumped up instantly, with a shallow and half--puzzled smile. The voice from the helmet was young, very young, and full of the free tone of youth; yet both manner and matter were sage, practical, leavened with a hoary-headedness of intention that seemed to baulk the inferences suggested by such panoply of arms. With a bob of a curtsey, she took the knight's bridle, and led the horse some fifty paces round the pool, where, under the imminent shoulder of a cedar tree, a little cabin nestled under a hood of ivy. It was built of rough timber from the forest, and thatched with reeds; honeysuckle clustered over its rude façade, and thrust fragrant tendrils into its reed-latticed windows, where an early rose or so shone like a red star against the russet-wood. A garden full of flowers lay before the rustic porch that arched the threshold; and an out-jutting of the pool brought a little fiord of dusky silver up to the very green of the path, a streak of silver blazoned with violet flags, golden marigolds of the marsh, and a lace-like fringe of snowy water-weed in bloom. All around, the great trees, those solemn senators, stood with their green shoulders bowed in a strong dream of deep eternal thought.

Igraine left the saddle and suffered the girl to tether her horse to a cedar bough. Her surcoat of violet and gold swept nearly to her ankles, and saved from any marring the infinite art of the anomaly that veiled her sex. Her man's garb seemed every whit as worthy of a woman, nor did it hinder that loving grace that made her beauty of body the more admirable and rare.

The girl came back with more bendings of the knee, and led Igraine amid the flowers to the porch of the forest dwelling. Once within, she drew a settle close the doorway, spread a rug of skins thereon, and again to bowed herself in homage.

"Let my lord be seated, and I will serve him."

"I am hungry, child; but first put off that wet smock of thine."

The girl crept behind the door of a great cupboard, with a blush of colour in her cheeks. Cloth rustled for a moment; a circle of blue and a slim pair of legs showed beneath the cupboard door ; soon she was back again in a gown of apple green, fastening it with her fingers over the full swell of her bosom.

"What will my lord eat?"

"What you have, child."

"Bread and dried fruit, the flesh of a kid, new milk and cheese, a little cider."

"Give me milk, child, a mere flake of meat, some cheese and bread, and I ask nothing more. I will pay you for all I take."

"Lord, how should you pay me, when I owe more than life to your sword?"

The little shepherdess went about her business with a barefooted tread, soft as any cat's. The cottage proved a wonder of a place. The great cupboard disgorged a silver-rimmed horn, wooden platter, a napkin white as apple blossom, red fruit piled up in a brazen bowl. The girl set the things in order on the table, with an occasional curious look stolen at the figure in mail on the settle--splendid visitant in so humble a place. And what a rich voice the knight had,--how mellow, with its many modulations of tone. His hands too were wonderfully shapen, fingers long and tapering, with nails pink as sea-shells. There surely must be a face worth gazing at, for its very nobility, under that great brazen helmet that glinted in the half light of the room.

The meal was spread, but the guest still unprepared. The forest child dropped a curtsey, and a mild suggestion that the knight should make a beginning.

"Will not my lord unhelm?"

A rich, mischief-loving laugh startled her for answer.

"Child, take the thing off if you will."

The little shepherdess obeyed, and nearly dropped the helmet in the doing of it. A mass of gold fell rippling down over the violet surcoat; a pair of deep eyes looked up with a sparkling laugh ; a satin upper lip and chin gave the lie to the nether part of the picture.

"Christ Jesu!" quoth the girl with the helmet, and again "Christ Jesu," as though she could get no further.

Igraine caught her smock and drew her nearer.

"Come, little sister, kiss me for--'thank you.' "

With a contradictory impulse the girl fell down on her knees and began to cry, with her brown hair tumbled in Igraine's lap.

When persuasion and comforting had quieted her some-what, she sat on the floor at Igraine's feet, her round eyes big with an unstinted wonder. Even Igraine's hunger and the devoir done upon the new milk could hardly persuade the girl that this being in armour was no saint, but a very real and warm-blooded woman. She even touched Igraine's fingers with her lips, to satisfy herself as to the warmth and solidity of the slim strong hand. She had never heard of such a marvel, a woman, and a very beautiful woman, riding out as a man, and doing man's bravest work with courage and cleverness. The girl made sure in her heart that Igraine was some princess at least, who had been blessed with miraculous power by reason of her maidenhood and the magic innocence of her mind.

Igraine talked to the girl and soon began to win her to less devotional attitude with that graciousness of manner that became her so well at such a season. She forgot herself for the time, in listening to this child of solitude. The girl's father--an old man--had died two winters ago, and she had buried him with her own hands, under a tree in the dale. Since his death, she had lived on in the cabin, alone, a forest child nurtured in forest law. Every Sabbath, Renan, a shepherd lad in a lord's service, would come over the hills and pass the day with her. They were betrothed, and the lord of those parts had promised Renan freedom next Christmastide; then Renan and Garlotte were to be married, and the cabin in the dale was to serve them as a home.

Garlotte was soon chattering like any child. She talked to Igraine of her sheep and goats, her little corn-field on a sunny slope, her garden, her wild strawberry beds and vine, her fruit trees, and her marigolds. The lad Renan, bronze-haired and brown-eyed, sprang in here and there with irresistible romance. He could run like a hound, swim like an otter, fish, shoot with the bow, and throw the javelin a great many paces. He had such eyes, too, and such gentle hands. Igraine's sympathies were quick and vivid on matters of the kind. The girl's head was resting against her knees before an hour had gone.

The evening was still and sultry and the sky overcast. When Igraine went to the porch after supper, rain had begun to fall, and there was the moist murmur of a heavy, windless shower through all the valley. The sheep had huddled under the trees. Infinite freshness, unutterable peace, brooded over the green meadows and the breathless leaf-clouds of the woods. For all the sweet, dewy silence a bitter discontent lay heavy upon Igraine's heart, and woe made quiet moan in her inmost soul. Green summer swooned in the branches and breathed in the odours of honeysuckle, musk, and rose, yet for her there seemed no burgeoning, no bursting of the heart into song.

The girl Garlotte stood by and looked with a quaint awe into the proud, wistful face.

"What are you thinking of, lady?" she said.

Igraine's lips quivered.

"Of many things, child."

"Tell me of them."

"What should you know, child, of plagues and sorrow, of misery in high places, of despair coroneted with gold, of hearts that ache, and eyes that burn for the love of the world that never comes?"

"I am very ignorant, dear lady, but yet I think you are not happy."

"Is any woman happy on earth?"

"Yet you are so good and beautiful."

"Child, child, beauty brings more misery than joy; it is a bright fire that burns upon itself."

"Renan has told me I am beautiful."

"So you are, and to Renan."

"I never think of it, lady, save when Renan looks into my eyes and touches my mouth with his lips; then say in my heart, 'I am beautiful, and Renan loves me, God be thanked!'"

The words echoed into Igraine's soul. There was such pain in her great eyes that the girl was startled from the simple contemplation of her own affairs of heart.

"You are sad, lady."

"Child, I am tired to death."

"Bide with me and rest. See, I will feed your horse and give him water; he will do famously under the tree. There is my bed yonder in the corner; I spread a clean sheet on it this very morning. Shall I help you to unarm?"

"Thanks, child. How the rain hisses into the pool."

"I love the sound, and the soft rattle on the green leaves. All will be fresh and aglister to-morrow, and the flowers will smile, and the trees shake their heads and laugh. How clumsy my fingers are; I am so slow over the buckles; ah! there is the last. I will put the sword and the shield by the bed. Shall we say our prayers?'

"You pray, child ; I have forgotten how to these many months."