Love Among the Ruins Part 19

"Shall I fence with an infidel?" he asked.

"Sire, a man may be a man without the creed of Athanasius."

"How much of me do you understand?"

Fra Balthasar cleared his throat.

"The Lady Duessa, sire, is a rose of joy."

"Monk!"

"My lord, it was your dictum that you are ever ingenuous. I echo you."

"Need I confess to you on such a subject?"

"Nay, sire, you have the inconsistency of a poet."

"How so?"

"Well, well, one can sniff rotten apples without opening the door of the cupboard."

The younger man jerked away, and went striding betwixt the array of frescoes with something of the wild vigour of a blind Polyphemus.

Balthasar, subtle sophist, watched him from the angle of his eye with the sardonic superiority of one well versed in the contradictions of the world. He had scribbled a shrewd sketch of the pa.s.sions stirring in his patron's heart. Had he not heard from the man's own lips of the white-faced elf of the pine woods and her vengeance? And the Lady Duessa! Fra Balthasar was as wise in the gossip of Gilderoy as any woman.

"Sire," he said, as the aristocrat turned in his stride, "I ask of you a bold favour."

"Speak out."

"Suffer me to paint your mood in words."

The man stared, shrugged his shoulders, smiled enigmatically.

"Try your craft," he said.

Balthasar began splas.h.i.+ng in a foreground with irritable bravado.

"My lord, you were a fool at twenty," were his words.

"A thrice d.a.m.ned fool," came the echo.

Balthasar chuckled.

"And now, messire, a golden chain makes a Tantalus of you. Life crawls like a sluggish river. You chafe, you strain, you rebel, feed on your own heart, sin to a.s.sert your liberty. Youth slips from you; the sky narrows about your ears. Well, well, have I not read aright?"

"Speak on," quoth the man by the altar.

"Ah, sire, it is the old tale. They have cramped up your youth with book and ring; shut you up in a moral sarcophagus with a woman they call your wife. You burn for liberty, and the unknown that s.h.i.+nes like a purple streak in a fading west. Ah, sire, you look for that one marvellous being, who shall torch again the youth in your heart, make your blood burn, your soul to sing. That one woman in the world, mysterious as the moon, subtle as the night, ineffably strange as a flaming dawn. That woman who shall lift you to the stars; whose lips suck the sap of the world; whose bosom breathes to the eternal swoon of all sweet sounds. She shall light the l.u.s.t of battle in your heart.

For her your sword shall leap, your towers totter. Chivalry should lead you like a pillar of fire out of the night, a heroic G.o.d striving for a G.o.ddess."

The Lord of Avalon stood before the high altar as one transfigured.

Youth leapt in him, red, glorious, and triumphant. Balthasar's tongue had set the pyre aburning.

"By G.o.d, it is the truth," he said.

The friar gathered his brushes, and took breath.

"Hast thou found thy Beatrice, O my son?"

"Have I gazed into heaven?"

Balthasar's voice filled the chapel.

"Live, sire, live!" he said.

"Ah!"

"Be mad! Drink star wine, and snuff the odours of all the sunsets!

Live, live! You can repent in comfort when you are sixty and measure fifty inches round the waist."

XIV

Dame Duessa had come to Avalon, having heard certain whisperings of Gilderoy, and of a golden-haired Astarte who kept house there. Dame Duessa was a proud woman and a pa.s.sionate, headstrong as a reformer, jealous as a parish priest. She boasted a great ancestry and a great name, and desires and convictions in keeping. She was a woman who loved her robe cupboard, her jewel-case, and her bed. Moreover, she pretended some affection for the Lord Flavian her husband, perhaps arrogance of owners.h.i.+p, seeing that Dame Duessa was very determined to keep him in bonded compact with herself. She suspected that the man did not consider her a saint, or wors.h.i.+p her as such. Yet, termagant that she was, Dame Duessa could suffer some trampling of empty sentiment, provided Fate did not rob her of her share in the broad demesne and rent-roll of Gambrevault.

Avalon was a castle of ten towers, linked by a strong curtain wall, and built about a large central court and garden. A great moat circled the whole, a moat broad and silvery as a lake, with water-lilies growing thick in the shallows. Beyond the moat, sleek meadows tufted with green rushes swept to the gnarled piers of the old oaks that vanguarded the forest. The black towers slumbered in a mist of green, girded with sheeny water, tented by the azure of a southern sky.

Dame Duessa, being a lady of silks and tissues, did not love the place with all her soul. Avalon of the Orchards was dull, and smacked of Arcady; it was far removed from that island of fair sin, Lauretia, the King's city. Moreover, the Lord Flavian and his ungallant gentlemen held rigorously to the northern turrets, leaving her to lodge ascetically in her rich chamber in a southern tower.

Her husband contrived to exile himself as far as Castle Avalon could suffer him. If the pair went to ma.s.s, they went separately, with the frigid hauteur of an Athanasius handing an Aryus over to h.e.l.l. When they hunted they rode towards opposite stars. No children had chastened them, pledges of heaven-given life. The Lady Duessa detested ought that hinted at caudle, swaddling-clothes, and cradles. Moreover, all Avalon seemed in league with the Lord Flavian. Knights, esquires, scullions, horse-boys swore by him as though he were a Bayard. Dame Duessa could rely solely on a prig of a page, and a lady-in-waiting who wore a wig, and perhaps on Fra Balthasar, the Dominican.

Meanwhile, the Lord of Avalon had been putting forth his penitence in stone and timber, and an army of craftsmen from Geraint. The glade in Cambremont wood rang to the swing of axes and the hoa.r.s.e groaning of the saw. The tower had been purged of its ashes, its rooms retimbered, its cas.e.m.e.nts filled with gla.s.s. A chapel was springing into life under the trees; the cleverest masons of the south were at work upon its pillars and its arches. Fra Balthasar, the Dominican, held sway over the whole, subtle in colour and the carving of stone. Flavian could have found no better pander to his penitence. Rose n.o.bles had been squandered.

Frescoes, jewel bright, were to blaze out upon the walls. The vaulted roof was to be constellated with glimmering gold stars, s.h.i.+ning from skies of purple and azure.

To turn to Fulviac's great cliff hid in the dark depths of the forest of pines. The disloyal chaff of the kingdom was wafted thither day by day, borne on the conspiring breeze. The forest engulfed all comers and delivered them like ghosts into Fulviac's caverns. An army might have melted into the wilds, and the countryside have been none the wiser.

Amid the pines and rocks of the cliffs there were marchings and countermarchings, much shouldering of pikes and ordering of companies.

Veterans who had fought the infidels under Wenceslaus, drilled the raw levies, and inculcated with hoa.r.s.e bellowings the rudiments of military reason. They were rough gentlemen, and Fulviac stroked them with a gauntlet of iron. They were to attempt liberty together, and he demonstrated to them that such freedom could be won solely by discipline and soldierly concord. The rogues grumbled and swore behind his back, but were glad in their hearts to have a man for master.

To speak again of the girl Yeoland. That March night she had met Fulviac over the wreckage of the broken gate, and had made a profession of the truth, so far, she said, as she could conjecture it. She had been long in the forest, had returned to the cliff to find the guards slain, and the Lord Flavian gone. By some device he had escaped from his shackles, slain the men, and fled by the northern postern. The woman made a goodly pretence of vexation of spirit over the escape of this reprobate. She even taunted Fulviac with foolhardiness, and lack of foresight in so bungling her vengeance.

The man's escape from the cliff roused Fulviac's energies to full flood.

The aristocrat of Avalon was ignorant of the volcano bubbling under his feet, yet any retaliatory meddling on his part might prove disastrous at so critical an hour. Fulviac thrust forward the wheels of war with a heavy hand. The torrents of sedition and discontent were converging to a river of revolt, that threatened to crush tyranny as an avalanche crushes a forest.

The Virgin with her moon-white face still inspired Yeoland with the visionary behest given in the ruined chapel. The girl's fingers toiled at the scarlet banner; she spent half her days upon her knees, devout as any Helena. She knew Fulviac's schemes as surely as she did the beads on her rosary. The rough rangers of the forest held her to be a saint, and knelt to touch her dress as she pa.s.sed by.

Yet what are dreams but snowflakes drifting from the heavens, now white, now red, as G.o.d or man carries the lamp of love? The girl's ecstasy of faith was but a potion to her, dazing her from a yet more subtle dream.

A faint voice summoned her from the unknown. She would hear it often in the silence of the night, or at full noon as she faltered in her prayers. The rosary would hang idle on her wrist, the crucifix melt from her vision. She would find her heart glowing like a rose at the touch of the sun. Anon, frightened, she would shake the human half of herself, and run back penitent to her prayers.