Love Among the Ruins

by Warwick Deeping

  XXXVII

  Fortune had not blessed the cause of the people with that torrentialtriumph toiled for by their captains. The flood of war had risen, hadoverwhelmed tall castles and goodly cities, yet there were heights thathad baulked its frothy turmoil, mountains that had hurled it back uponthe valleys. Victory was like a sphere of glass tossed amid the foam oftwo contending torrents.

  In the west, Sir Simon of Imbrecour, that old leopard wise in war, hadraised the royal banner at his castle of Avray. The nobles of thewestern marches had joined him to a spear; many a lusty company hadridden in, to toss sword and shield in faith to the King. From hiscastle of Avray Sir Simon had marched south with the flower of thewestern knighthood at his heels. He had caught Malgo on the march fromConan, even as his columns were defiling from the mountains. Sir Simonhad leapt upon the wild hillsmen and rebel levies like the fierce andshaggy veteran that he was. A splendid audacity had given the day as byhonour to the royal arms. Malgo's troops had been scattered to thewinds, and he himself taken and beheaded on the field under the blackbanner of the house of Imbrecour.

  In the east, Godamar the free-lance lay with his troops in Thorney Isle,closed in and leaguered by the warlike Abbot of Rocroy. The churchmanhad seized the dyke-ways of the fens, and had hemmed the rebels behindthe wild morasses. As for the eastern folk, they were poor gizardlesscreatures; having faced about, they had declared for the King, and leftGodamar to rot within the fens. The free-lance had enough ado to keepthe abbot out. His marching to join Fulviac was an idle andstrategetical dream.

  Last of all, the barons of the north--fierce, rugged autocrats, hadgathered their half-barbarous retainers, and were marching on Lauretiato uphold the King. They were grim folk, flint and iron, nurtured amidthe mountains and the wild woods of the north. They marched south likeWinter, black and pitiless, prophetic of storm-winds, sleet, and snow.Some forty thousand men had gathered round the banner of Sir Morolt ofGorm and Regis, and, like the Goths pouring into Italy, they rolled downupon the luxurious provinces of the south.

  Fortune had decreed that about Lauretia, the city of the King, thevultures of war should wet their talons. It was a rich region, gemmedthick with sapphire meres set in deep emerald woods. Lauretia, like agolden courtesan, lay with her white limbs cushioned amid gorgeousflowers. Her bosom was full of odours and of music; her lap litteredwith the fragrant herbs of love. No perils, save those of moonlitpassion, had ever threatened her. Thus it befell that when thestorm-clouds gathered, she cowered trembling on her ivory couch, thepurple wine of pleasure soaking her sinful feet.

  In a broad valley, five leagues south of the city, Fulviac's rebelsfought their first great fight with Richard of the Iron Hand. Awarrior's battle, rank to rank and sword to sword, the fight had burntto the embers before the cressets were red in the west. Fulviac hadheaded the last charge that had broken the royal line, and rolled theshattered host northwards under the cloak of night. Dawn had foundFulviac marching upon Lauretia, eager to let loose the lusts of war uponthat rich city of sin. He was within three leagues of the place, when ajaded rider overtook him, to tell of Malgo's death and of the battle inthe west. Yet another league towards the city his outriders camegalloping back with the news that the northern barons had marched in andjoined the King. Outnumbered, and threatened on the flank, Fulviacturned tail and held south again, trusting to meet Godamar marching fromthe fens.

  He needed the shoulders of an Atlas those September days, for rumourburdened him with tidings that were ominous and heavy. Godamar layimpotent, hedged in the morasses; Malgo was dead, his mountaineersscattered. Sir Simon of Imbrecour was leading in the western lords toswell the following of the King. Vengeance gathered hotly on the rebelrear, as Fulviac retreated by forced marches towards the south.

  It was at St. Gore, a red-roofed town packed on a hill, amid tall,dreaming woods, that Colgran, with the ten thousand who had leagueredGambrevault, drew to the main host again. Fulviac had quartered aportion of his troops in the town, and had camped the rest in themeadows without the crumbling, lichen-grown walls. He had halted butfor a night on the retreat from Lauretia, and had taken a brief breathin the moil and sweat of the march. His banner had been set up in themarket-square before a rickety hostel of antique tone and temper. Hisguards lounged on the benches under the vines; his captains drank in thelow-ceilinged rooms, swore and argued over the rough tables.

  It was evening when Colgran's vanguard entered the town by the westerngate. His men had tramped all day in the sun, and were parched andweary. None the less, they stiffened their loins, and footed it throughthe streets with a veteran swagger to show their mettle. Fulviac cameout and stood in the wooden gallery of the inn, watching them defileinto the market-square. They tossed their pikes to him as they pouredby, and called on him by name--

  "Fulviac, Fulviac!"

  He was glad enough of their coming, for he needed men, and the roughforest levies were in Colgran's ranks. Ten thousand pikes and brownbills to bristle up against the King's squadrons! There was strength inthe glitter and the rolling dust of the columns. Yet before all, theman's tawny eyes watched for a red banner, and a woman in armour upon awhite horse, Yeoland, wife of Flavian of Gambrevault.

  In due season he saw her, a pale, spiritless woman, wan and haggard,thin of neck and dark of eye. The bloom seemed to have fallen from heras from the crushed petals of a rose. The red banner, borne by a manupon a black horse, danced listlessly upon its staff. She rode withslack bridle, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, butinto the vague distance as into the night of the past.

  Around her tramped Colgran's pikemen in jerkins of leather and caps ofsteel. The woman moved with them as though they were so manysubstanceless ghosts, stalking like shadows down the highway of death.Her face was bloodless, bleached by grievous apathy and chill pride.The bronzed faces round her were dim and unreal, a mob of masks, void oflife and meaning. Sorrow had robed her in silent snow. The present wasno more propitious to her than a winter forest howling under the moon.

  Before the hostelry the column came to a halt with grounded pikes. Thewoman on the white horse stirred from her stupor, looked up, and sawFulviac. He was standing with slouched shoulders in the gallery aboveher, his hands gripping the wooden rail. Their eyes met in a suddenmesmeric stare that brought badges of red to the girl's white cheeks.There was the look upon his face that she had known of old, whenperilous care weighed heavy upon his stubborn shoulders. His eyesbewildered her. They had a light in them that spoke neither of angernor reproach, yet a look such as Arthur might have cast upon fallenGuinivere.

  They took her from her horse, and led her mute and passive into thesteel-thronged inn. Up a winding stair she was brought into a sombreroom whose latticed casements looked towards the west. By an openwindow stood Fulviac, chin on chest, his huge hands clasped behind hisback. Colgran, in dusky harness, was speaking to him in his rough,incisive jargon. The woman knew that the words concerned her heart. Ata gesture from Fulviac, the free-lance cast a fierce glance at her, andretreated.

  The man did not move from the window, but stood staring in morosesilence at the reddening west. Hunched shoulders and bowed head gave acertain powerful pathos to the figure statuesque and silent against thecrimson curtain of the sky. The very air of the room seemed burdenedand saturated with the gloomy melancholy of the man's mood. War, withits thousand horrors, furrowed his brow and bowed his great shouldersbeneath its bloody yoke. Her woman's instinct told her that he waslonely, for the soul that had ministered to him breathed for him nomore.

  He turned on her suddenly with a terse greeting that startled herthoughts like doves in a pine wood.

  "Welcome to you, Lady of Gambrevault."

  There was a bluff bitterness in his voice that forewarned her of hisample wisdom. Colgran had surrendered her, heart and tragedy in one, toFulviac's mercy. A looming cloud of passion shadowed the man's face,making him seem gaunt and roug
h to her for the moment. She rememberedhim standing over Duessa's body in Sforza's palace at Gilderoy. Lifehad too little promise for her to engender fear of any man, even ofFulviac at his worst.

  "I trust, Madame Yeoland, that you are merry?"

  The taunt touched her, yet she answered him listlessly enough.

  "Do what you will; scoff if it pleases you."

  Fulviac shrugged his shoulders, and tossed his lion's mane from hisbroad forehead.

  "It is a grim world this," he said; "when thrones burn, should we seekto quench them with our tears! Whose was the fault that God made you toomuch a woman? Red heart, heart of the rose, a traitorous comrade artthou, and an easy foe."

  She had no answer on her lips, and he turned and paced the room beforeher, darting swift glances into her face.

  "So they killed him?" he said, more quietly anon; "poor child, forgethim, it was the fate of war. Even to the grave he took the love I mightnever wear."

  She shuddered and hid her face.

  "Fulviac, have pity!"

  "Pity?"

  "This is a judgment, God help my soul!"

  "A judgment?"

  "For serving my own heart before the Virgin's words."

  The man stopped suddenly in his stride, and looked at her as though herwords had touched him like a bolt betwixt the jointings of his harness.There was still the morose frown upon his face, the half closure of thelids over the tawny eyes. He gripped his chin with one of his bonyhands, and turned his great beak of a nose upwards with a gesture ofself-scorn.

  "Since the damned chicanery of chance so wills it," he said, "I willconfess to you, that my confession may ease your conscience. TheMadonna in that forest chapel was framed of flesh and blood."

  "Fulviac!"

  "Of flesh and blood, my innocent, tricked out to work my holy will. Weneeded a Saint, we cleansers of Christendom; ha, noble justiciaries thatwe are. Well, well, the Virgin served us, and tripped back to a warmnest at Gilderoy, reincarnated by high heaven."

  Yeoland stood motionless in the shadows of the room, like one strivingto reason amid the rush of many thoughts. She showed no wrath at herbetrayal; her pale soul was too white for scarlet passion. Thesignificance of life had vanished in a void of gloom. She stood likeHero striving to catch her lover's voice above the moan of the sea.

  Fulviac unbuckled his sword and threw it with a crash upon the table.He thrust his arms above his head, stretched his strong sinews, tookdeep breaths into his knotted throat.

  "The truth is out," he said to her; "come, madame, confess to me inturn."

  Yeoland faced him with quivering lips, and a tense straining of herfingers.

  "What have I to tell?" she asked.

  "Nothing?"

  "Save that I loved the Lord Flavian, and that he is dead."

  "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

  "Ah, you are avenged," she said, "you have crushed my heart; may thethought comfort you."

  Her parched apathy seemed to elapse of a sudden, and she lost hercalmness in an outburst of passion. She was athirst for solitude, to becloistered from the rough cavil of the world. Colour glowed upon hersunken cheeks as she stretched out her arms to the man with a piteousvehemence.

  "Fulviac----"

  "Girl."

  "Ah, for God's love, end now this mockery. Take this armour from me,for it burns my bosom. Let me go, that I may hide my wounds in peace."

  "Peace!" he said, with a twinge of scorn.

  "Fulviac, can you not pity me? I am broken and bruised, men stare andjeer. Oh, my God, only to be out of sight and alone!"

  The man stood by the window looking out into the sky with loweringbrows. The west burnt red above the house-tops; from the street camethe noise of men marching.

  "Do not kill yourself," he said with laconic brevity.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "There is truth in the suspicion."

  "Ah, what is life to me!"

  "We Christians still have need of you."

  The man's seeming scorn scourged her anguish to a shrill despair. Thehot blood swept more swiftly through her worn, white body.

  "Cursed be your ambition," she said to him; "must you torture me beforethe world?"

  "Perhaps."

  "I renounce this lying part."

  "As you will, madame; it will only make you look the greater fool."

  "Ah, you are brutal."

  He turned to her with the look of one enduring unuttered anguish in thespirit. His strong pride throttled passion, twisting his rough faceinto tragic ugliness.

  "No, believe it not," he said; "I desire even for your heart's sake thatyou should make the best of an evil fortune. Learn to smile again;pretend to a zest in life. I have fathomed hell in my grim years, and mywords are true. Time loves youth and recovers its sorrow. Know thisand ponder it: 'tis better to play the hypocrite than to suffer theworld to chuckle over one's tears."