Love Among the Ruins

by Warwick Deeping

  XI

  Give doubt the password, and the outer battlements are traitorouslystormed. Parley with pity, and the white banner flutters on the keep.

  Provided her emotions inspire her, a woman is strong; let her take tologic, and she is a rushlight wavering in the wind. In her red heartlies her divinity; her feet are of clay when reason rules her head.

  The girl Yeoland took doubt to her chamber that night, a malicioussprite, sharp of wit and wild of eye. All the demons of discord wereloosed in the silence of the night. Pandora's box stood open, and thehours were void of sleep; faces crowded the shadows, voices wailed inthe gloom. Her thoughts rioted like frightened bats fluttering andsqueaking round a torch. Sleep, like a pale Cassandra, stood aloof andwatched the mask of these manifold emotions.

  Turn and twist as she would amid her fevered pillows, a wild voicehaunted her, importunate and piteous. As the cry of one sinking in astormy sea, it rang out with a passionate vehemence. Moreover, therewas a subtle echo in her own heart, a strong appeal that did not spareher, toss and struggle as she would. Decision fluttered like a woundedbird. Malevolence rushed back as an ocean billow from the bastion of acliff that emblemed mercy.

  With a beating of wings and a discordant clamour, a screech-owl buffetedthe casement. A lamp still burnt beneath the crucifix; the glow hadbeaconed the bird out of the night. Starting up with a shiver of fear,she quenched the lamp, and crept back to bed. The darkness seemed tosmother her like a cloak; the silence took to ghostly whisperings; adeath-watch clicked against the wall.

  The night crawled on like a funeral cortege. Baffled, outfaced,sleepless, she rose from her tumbled bed, and paced the room as in afever. Still wakefulness and a thousand dishevelled thoughts that hungabout her like her snoodless hair. Again and again, she heard thedistant whirr and rattle of wheels, the clangour of the wire, as theantique clock in Fulviac's chamber smote away the hours of night. Eachecho of the sound seemed to spur to the quick her wavering resolution.Time was flying, jostling her thoughts as in a mill race. With thedawn, the Lord Flavian would die.

  Anon she flung the casement wide and stared out into the night. A calmbreeze moved amid the masses of ivy, and played upon her face. Shebared her breast to its breath, and stood motionless with head thrownback, her white throat glimmering amid her hair. Below, the sombremultitudes of the trees showed dim and ghostly, deep with mystery. Avague wind stirred the branches; the dark void swirled with unrest,breaking like a midnight sea upon a cliff. A few straggling starspeeped through the lattice of the sky.

  She leant against the sill, rested her chin upon her palms, and brooded.Thoughts, fierce, passionate, and clamorous, came crying like gusts ofwind through a ruined house. Death and dead faces, blood, the yawn ofsepulchres, life and the joy of it, all these passed as visions of firebefore her fancy. Vengeance and pity agonised her soul. She answeredyea and nay with the same breath; condemned and pardoned withcontradicting zeal. Youth lifted up its face to her, piteous andbeautiful. Death reached out a rattling hand into her bosom.

  Presently, a far glow began to creep into the sky; a gradual greynessabsorbed the shadows of the night. The day was dawning. From theforest, the trembling orisons of the birds thrilled like golden lightinto the air. Unutterable joy seemed to flood forth from the pipingthroats. Even the trees seemed to quiver to the sound. With a rush ofbitter passion, she closed the casement, cast herself upon her bed, andstrove to pray.

  Again came the impotent groping into nothingness. A dense mist seemedto rise betwixt her soul and the white face of the Madonna. Aspirationlessened like an afterglow, and dissolved away into a dark void ofdoubt. Prayer eluded her; the utterances of her heart died in amiserable endeavour, and she could not think.

  The spiritual storm wore itself away as the dawn streamed in with aglimmer of gold. Yeoland lay and stared at the casement, and the figureof Sebastian rendered radiant by the dawn, the whiteness of his limbstongued with dusky rills of blood, where the barbs had smitten into theflesh. Sombre were the eyes, and shadowy with suffering. A halo of goldgilded the youthful face. The painted glass about him blazed like ashower of gems.

  The Sebastian of the casement recalled to her with wizard power the faceof the man whom death claimed at dawn. The thought woke no new passionin her. The night's vigil had left her reason like a skein of tangledsilk, and with the day she verged towards a wearied apathy. The voice ofpity in her waned to an infrequent whisper that came like the rustlingof leaves on a summer night. She realised that it had dawned an hour ormore; that the man had knelt and fallen to Nord's sword.

  Suddenly the silence was snapped by a far outcry sounding in the bowelsof the cliff. Gruff voices seemed to echo and re-echo like breakers ina cavern. A horn blared. She heard the thudding of a door, theshrilling of mail, the clangour of iron steps passing up the gallery.

  Shivering, she raised herself upon her elbow to listen. Were theybringing her the man's head, grey and blood-dabbled, with closed lidsand mangled neck? She fell back again upon her pillows, pressed herhands to her face with a great revulsion of pity, for the image hadburnt in upon her brain.

  The clangour of harness drew near, with an iron rhythm as of the marchof destiny. It ceased outside the door. A heavy hand beat upon thepanelling.

  "Who knocks?"

  Her own voice, strained and shrill, startled her like an owl's hoot.Fulviac's deep bass answered her from the passage.

  "Unbar to me, I must speak with you."

  She started up from the bed in passionless haste, ran to a closet, drewout a cloak and wrapped it about her shoulders. Her bare feet showedwhite under her night-gear as she slid the bolt from its socket, and letthe man in. He was fully armed save for his salade, which he carried inthe hollow of his arm. His red cloak swept his heels. A tower ofsteel, there was a clangorous bluster about him that bespoke action.

  The girl had drawn apart, shivering, and gathering her cloak about her,for in the gloom of the place she had thought for an instant thatFulviac carried a mangled head.

  "A rider has brought news," he said to her. "John of Brissac's men havetaken Prosper the Preacher, to hang him, as their lord has vowed, overthe gate of Fontenaye. They are on the march home from Gilderoy, tenlances and a company of arbalestiers. I ride to ambuscado them. Prospershall not hang!"

  She stood with her back to the casement, and looked at him with arestless stare. Her thoughts were with the man whose grey eyes hadpleaded with her through the night. Her fears clamoured like captivesat the gate of a dungeon.

  "What is more, this vagabond of Avalon has been begging twelve hours'grace to scrape his soul clean for Peter."

  "Ah!" she said, with a sudden stark earnestness.

  "I will give him till sunset----"

  "If I suffer it----"

  "The dog has spirit. I would thrust no man into the dark till he hasstruck a bargain with his own particular saints."

  She drew back, sank down into a chair with her hair half hiding herface.

  "You are right in being merciful," she said very slowly.

  Magic riddle of life; rare roseate rod of love. Was it youth leapingtowards youth, the cry of the lark to the dawn, the crimson flowering ofa woman's pity? The air seemed woven through with gold. A thousandlutes had sounded in the woods. Voiceless, she sat with flickeringlids, amazed at the alchemy that had wrought ruth out of hate.

  Fulviac had drawn back into the gloom of the gallery. He turned suddenlyupon his heel, and his scabbard smote and rang against the rock.

  "I take all the men I have," he said to her, "even the dotard Jaspar,for he knows the ways. Gregory and Adrian I leave on guard; they aretough gentlemen, and loyal. As for the lordling, he is well shackled."

  Yeoland was still cowering in her chair with the mysterious passions ofthe moment.

  "You will return?" she asked him.

  "By nightfall, if we prosper; as we shall."

  He moved two pac
es, stayed again in his stride, and flung a last messageto her from the black throat of the passage.

  "Remember, there is no recantation over this business. The man is myaffair as well as yours. He is a power in the south, and would menaceus. Remember, he must die."

  He turned and left her without more palaver. She heard him go clangingdown the gallery, heard the thunder of a heavy door, the braying of ahorn. A long while she sat motionless, still as stone, her hands lyingidle in her lap. When an hour had passed, the sun smote in, and foundher kneeling at her prayer-desk, her breviary dewed with tears.