Love Among the Ruins

by Warwick Deeping

  XXVI

  It was dawn; mists covered the forest; not a wind stirred or sobbed amidthe boughs. A vast grey canopy seemed to tent the world, a mysteriousveil that tempered the sun and spread a spiritual gloom over rock andtree.

  The noise of horns played through the misty aisles--horns many-tongued,faint, clamorous, like the trumpeting of forest elves. There was thedull, rhythmic onrush of many thousand feet, the hurrying, multitudinoustramp of men marching. Armour gleamed through the glooms; casque andbassinet, salade and cap of steel flowed on and on as phosphorescentripples on a subterranean stream. Pike, glaive, gisarme shone likestubble over the forest slopes. The sullen tramp of men, the clashingclamour of arms, the blaring of a solitary clarion, such were songs ofthe great pine forest on that July morning.

  Yeoland, rebel lady and saint, on a great white horse, rode at Fulviac'sside in full armour, save for her helmet. Her horse was cased insteel--chamfron, crinet, gorget, poitrel, croupiere gleaming likeburnished silver. She made a fine and martial figure enough, aglittering dawn star for a heroic cause. About her rode her guard, thepick of Fulviac's men, some fifty spears in all, masses of steel, eachbearing a scarlet cross blazoned upon his white jupon. Nord of theHammer bore the red banner worked by the girl's own hands. They werehardy men and big of bone, sworn to keep and guard her to the death.

  Fulviac and Yeoland rode side by side like brothers in arms. All aboutthem were rolling spears and rocking helmets moving among the myriadtrees. The sound of arms surged round them like the ominous onrush of asea. War followed like a thunder-cloud on their heels.

  Fulviac was in great spirits, somewhat solemn and philosophic, but fullof the exultation of a man who feels his ship surging on the foamingbacks of giant billows. His eyes were proud enough when they scanned thegirl at his side. His heart thundered an echo to the grim tramp of hismen on the march.

  "To-day," he said, making grandiose flourishes with his sword, "thefuture unrobes to us. We plunge like Ulysses into the unknown. This islife with a vengeance!"

  She had a smile on her lips and a far-away look in her eyes.

  "If you love me," she said, "be merciful."

  "Ah, you are always a woman."

  "There are many women such as I am; there are many hearts that may bewounded; there are many children."

  He looked at her meditatively, as though her words were both bitter andsweet in his mouth.

  "You must play the philosopher, little woman; remember that we work forgreat ends. I will have mercy when mercy is expedient. But we muststrike, and strike terror, we must crush, we must kill."

  "Yet be merciful."

  "War is no pastime; men grip with gauntlets of iron, not with velvetgloves. Fanaticism, hate, revenge, patriotism, lust of plunder, and therest, what powers are these to let loose upon a land! We have theoppression of centuries red in our bosoms. War is no mere subtle gameof chess; the wolf comes from the wilderness; the vulture swings in thesky. Fire, death, blood, rapine, and despair, such are the elements ofwar."

  "I know, I know."

  "To purge a field, we burn the crop. To convert, we set swords leaping.To cleanse, we let in the sea. To move the fabrics of custom and thepast, a man must play the Hercules. God crushes great nations to insurethe inevitable evolution of His will. To move the world, one must playthe god."

  It was noon when the vanguard cleared the trees, and spread rank on rankover the edge of a moor. A zealous sun shone overhead, and the worldwas full of light and colour, the heather already a blaze of purple, thebracken still virgin, the dense dark pines richly green against thewhite and azure of the sky.

  Fulviac, Yeoland, and her guards rode out to a hillock and took stationunder the banner of the Cross. The forest belched steel; rank on rankswept out with pikes glittering; shields shone, and colours juggledmosaics haphazard. Horse and foot rolled out into the sun, and gatheredin masses about the scarlet banner and the girl in her silvery harnesson the great white horse. The forest shadows were behind them, they hadcast off its cloak; the world lay bare to their faces; they were hurlingtheir challenge in the face of Fate. Every man in the mass might wellhave felt the future glowing upon his brain, might well conceive himselfa hero and a patriot. It was a deep, sonorous shout that rolled up,when a thousand points of steel smote upwards to the heavens. Yeoland,amid her guards, had dim visions of the power vested in her slendersword. Where her banner flew, there brave men would toss their pikeswith a cheer for the charge home. Where her sword pointed, a thousandblades would leap to do her bidding. Even as she pondered these things,the trumpets sounded and the men of the forest marched on.

  Fulviac's plans had been matured but a week. His opening of thecampaign was briefly as follows. He was bearing north-west towardsGeraint, and Geraint was to rise that night, massacre the King'sgarrison, and come out to him. Avalon lay in Fulviac's path. He was tosmite a blow at it on his march, surprise the place if possible, andthen hold on for Geraint. The same night, Gilderoy would rise; thecastellan, who was with the townsfolk, would open the gates of thecastle and deliver up all arms and the siege train that was kept there.From Geraint, Fulviac trusted to ride on with a single troop to takecommand at Gilderoy, leaving Nord, Prosper, and the girl Yeoland incommand at Geraint. With his numbers raised to some twenty thousandmen, he would have his force divided into two bodies--ten thousand atGilderoy, ten thousand at Geraint. These two bodies would sweep up byforced marches, converge on Gambrevault, crush the Lord Flavian's smallarmament, shut him up in his castle. Assault or leaguer would do therest. Meanwhile the peasantry would rise and flock in to the standardof the people.

  Free of the forest, Fulviac sent on a troop of horse towards Geraint towarn the townsfolk of his advance. With the main mass of the foot, heheld northwards over hill and dale, and towards evening touched the hemof the oak woods that wrapped the manor of Avalon. The place was butfeebly garrisoned, as the Lord Flavian had withdrawn most of his men toGambrevault, dreaming little of the thunder-storm that was shadowing theland.

  Fulviac had his plan matured. Fifty men-at-arms in red and green, theGambrevault colours, were to advance with a forged pennon upon theplace, as though sent as a reinforcement from Gambrevault. The mainbody would follow at a distance and lie ambushed in the woods. If theruse answered, and it was an old trick enough, the barbican and gatecould be held till Fulviac came up and made matters sure. Thus Avalonwould fall, proto-martyr on the side of feudalism.

  Nor were Fulviac's prognostications at fault. There were not sixty menin Avalon, and Fulviac's fifty gained footing in the place and heldtheir ground till the rest came up. The affair was over, save for somedesultory slaughter on the turrets, when Fulviac galloped forward overthe meadows with Yeoland and her guard. The man kept the girl on thefurther side of the moat, and did not suffer her to stumble too suddenlyon the realities of war. He feared wisely her woman's nature, and didnot desire to overshock her senses. The butchery was over when theyneared the walls. They heard certain promiscuous yelpings, and saw halfa dozen men-at-arms, who had made a last stand on a tower, tumbledheadlong over the battlements into the moat below. Fulviac did notsuffer the girl to cross the bridge. What passed within was hidden bythe impenetrable massiveness of the sullen walls.

  Thus Avalon, fair castle of the woods and waters, sent out her wistfulprophecy to the land. In her towers and galleries men lay dead, bleakand stiff, contorted into fantastic attitudes, with pike or swordsucking their vitals. Blood crept down the stairs; dead men cumbered thebeds and jammed the doors. There had been much screaming among thewomen; even Fulviac's orders could not cool the passions of the mob; itwas well indeed that he kept Yeoland innocent in the meadows.

  Fanaticism, ignorance, lust were loose in Avalon like evil beasts. Allits fairness was defamed in one short hour. Hangings were torn down,furniture wrecked and shattered, chests and cupboards spoiled of alltheir store. In the chapel, where refugees had fled to the altar, t
herehad been slaughter, merciless and brutal. Bertrand, the old knight andseneschal, lay dead on the altar steps, with a broken sword and fiftyrents in his carcase. Men were breaking the images, defacing thefrescoes, strewing all the place with blood and riot. Nord of theHammer stood over the cellar door with his great mace over his shoulder,and kept the men from the wine. Elsewhere the mob rooted like a herd ofswine in the rich chambers, and worked to the uttermost its swinishwill.

  When the day was past, Fulviac and his men, as hounds that have tastedblood, marched on exultantly towards Geraint. Night and great silencesettled down over Avalon. The woods watched like a host of plaintivemourners over the scene. The moon rose and shone on the glimmering mereand swooning lilies, and streamed in through shattered casements on mensleeping in their blood, on ruin, and the ghastly shape of death.