Читать книгу Love Among the Ruins (Historical Novel) - Warwick Deeping - Страница 11

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The crowd had streamed from the cavern, swirling like black water under the tossing torches, the hollow galleries reverberating to the rush of many feet. Prosper had gone, borne away by the seditious captains of the Commune and the armed burghers who had guarded the entries. A great silence had fallen upon the crypt. Fulviac and the girl were left by the altar of black marble, their one lamp burning solitary in the gulf of gloom.

Fulviac had the air of a man whose favourite hawk had flown with fettle, and brought her quarry tumbling out of the clouds. He was warm with the zest of it, and his tawny eyes sparkled.

"May the Virgin smile on us!" he said. "Gilderoy will serve our ends."

The girl's eyes searched him gravely.

"You make holy war," she charged him.

"Ha, my sister, it is well to profess a strong conviction in the justice of one's cause. Tell men they are heroes, patriots, martyrs, and you will make good fighting stuff. Applaud fanaticism, make great parade of righteousness, hail the Deity as patron, assemble all the saints under your banner. Ha, trust me, that is a way to topple a kingdom. Come, we must stir."

By many labyrinthine passages, strange galleries of death, they passed together from the dark deeps of the catacombs. At one point the roof shone silvered as with dew, and the air stood damp as in a marsh on a winter's eve. The river Tamar flowed above them in its rocky bed, so Fulviac told the girl. Anon they came out by a narrow stair that opened by a briar-grown throat into a thicket of old oaks in the Gilderoy meadows. The stairhead was covered by a species of stone trap that could be covered and concealed by sods. In the thicket a man awaited them with the bridles of three horses over his arm. Fulviac held Yeoland's stirrup, and they rode out, the three of them, from under the trees.

A full moon swam in a purple black sky amid a shower of shimmering stars. Gilderoy, with its climbing towers and turrets, stood out white under the moon. The city walls gleamed like alabaster in the magic glow. In the meadows the ringlets of the river glimmered. Far and distant rose the nebulous midnight of the woods.

Fulviac had bared his head to an inconstant and torpid breeze. They were riding for the west along a bridle track that curled grey and dim through the sombre meadows. The calm, soundless vault of the world rose now in contrast to the canopies of stone and the passion-throes of the catacombs. Human moil and effort seemed infinitely little under the eternal scrutiny of the stars. So thought the man for the moment, as he rode with his chin sunk upon his breast, watching keenly the girl at his side.

Yeoland was young. All the roses of youth were budding about her soul; idealism, like the essence of crushed violets, hovered heavy over the world. Her soul as yet was no frayed and listless lute, thrummed into discords by the bony hand of care. She was built for love, a temple of white marble, lit by lamps of rubeous glory. Colours flashed through the red sanctuaries of the flesh. Yet pain and great woe had smitten her. The grim destinies of earth seemed bent on thrusting an innocent pilgrim into the turbulent contradictions of life.

The pageant in the catacombs that night had stirred her strangely beyond belief. The fantastic faces, the zeal, the hot words of gesturing enthusiasm, these were things new to her, therefore the more vivid and convincing. New worlds, new passions, seemed to burst into being under the stars. She was utterly silent as she rode, looking forth into the night. Her hood had fallen back; her face shone white and clear; her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Fulviac, like a chess-player who had evolved some subtle scheme, rode and watched her with a smile deep in his eyes. For the moment he was content to leave her to the magic of her own thoughts.

At certain rare seasons in life, virgin light floods down into the heart, as from some oriel opened in heaven. The world stands under a grander scheme of chiaroscuro; men comprehend where they once scoffed. It was thus that Yeoland rose inspired, like a spiritual Venus from a sea of dreams. As molten glass is shaped speedily into fair and exquisite device, so the red wax of her heart had taken the impress of the hour. Gilderoy had stirred her like a blazoned page of romance.

Fulviac caught the girl's half glance at him; read in measure the meaning of her mood. Her lips were half parted as though she had words upon her tongue, but still hesitated from some scruple of pride. He straightened in the saddle, and waited for her to unbosom to him with a confident reserve.

"Well?" he said at length, since she still lingered in her silence.

"How much one may learn in a day," she answered, drawing her white palfrey nearer to his horse.

Fulviac agreed with her.

"The man on the end of the rope," he said, "learns in two minutes that which has puzzled philosophers since Adam loved Eve."

She turned to him with an eagerness that was almost passionate even in its suppressed vigour.

"How long was it before you came to pity your fellows?"

"Some minutes, not more."

"And the conversion?"

"Shall satisfy you one day. For the present I will buckle up so unsavoury a fable in my bosom. Tell me what you have learnt at Gilderoy."

Yeoland looked at the moon. The man saw great sadness upon her face, but also an inspired radiance that made its very beauty the more remarkable. He foresaw in an instant that they were coming to deeper matters. Superficialities, the mannerisms of life, were falling away. The girl's heart beat near to his; he felt a luminous sympathy of spirit rise round them like the gold of a Byzantine background.

"Come," he said, with a burst of beneficence, "you are beginning to understand me."

She jerked a swift glance at him, like the look of a half-tamed falcon.

"You are a man, for all your sneers and vapourings."

"I had a heart once. Call me an oak, broken, twisted, aged, but an oak still."

Yeoland drew quite close to him, so that her skirt almost brushed his horse's flank. Fulviac's shadow fell athwart her. Only her face shone clear in the moonlight.

"I have ceased," she said, "to look upon life as a stretch of blue, a laughing dawn."

"Good."

"I have learnt that woe is the crown of years."

"Good again."

"That life is full of violence and wrong."

"A platitude. Yes. Life consists in learning platitudes."

"I am only one woman among thousands."

"A revelation."

"You jeer."

"Not so. Few women learn the truth of your proverb."

"Lastly, my trouble is not the only woe in the world. That it is an error to close up grief in the casket of self."

Fulviac flapped his bridle, and looked far ahead into the cavern of the night. He was silent awhile in thought. When he spoke again, he delivered himself of certain curt cogitations, characteristic confessions that were wholly logical.

"I am a selfish vagabond," he said; "I appeal to Peter's keys whether all ambition is not selfish. I am an egotist for the good of others. The stronger my ambition, the stronger the hope of the land in generous justice. I live to rule, to rule magnanimously, yet with an iron sceptre. There, you have my creed."

"And God?" she asked him.

"Is a most useful subordinate."

"You do not mean that?"

"I do not."

She saw again the mutilated beings in the catacombs, aye, even her own home flaming to the sky, and the white face of her dead father. Faith and devotion were great in her for the moment. Divine vengeance beaconed over the world, a torch borne aloft by the hand of Pity.

"It is God's war," she said to him with a finer solemnity sounding in her voice; "you have stirred the woman in me. Is that enough?"

"Enough," he answered her.

"And the rest?"

"God shall make all plain in due season."

Gilderoy had dwindled into the east; its castle's towers still netted the moonlight from afar. The meadowlands had ceased, and trees strode down in multitudes to guard the track. The night was still and calm, with a whisper of frost in the crisp, sparkling air. The world seemed roofed with a dome of dusky steel.

Before them a shallow valley lay white in the light of the moon. Around climbed the glimmering turrets of the trees, rank on rank, solemn and tumultuous. The bare gable ends of a ruined chapel rose in the valley. Fulviac drew aside by a bridle path that ran amid rushes. To the left, from the broken wall of the curtilage, a great beech wood ascended, its boughs black against the sky, its floor ankle-deep with fallen leaves. The chapel stood roofless under the moon. Hollies, a sable barrier that glistened in the moonlight, closed the ruin on the south. Yews cast their gloom about the walls. A tall cross in the forsaken graveyard stretched out its mossy arms east and west.

The armed groom took the horses and tethered them under a clump of pines by the wall. Fulviac and the girl Yeoland passed up through weeds and brambles to the porch. A great briar rose had tangled the opening with a thorny web, as though to hold the ruin from the hand of man. The tiled floor was choked with grass; a rickety door drooped rotten on its rusty hinges.

Fulviac pushed through and beckoned the girl to follow. Within, all was ruinous and desolate, the roof fallen, the casements broken.

"We must find harbour here," said the man, "our horses go far to-morrow."

"A cheerful hostel, this."

"Its wildness makes it safe. You fear the cold. I'll see to that."

"No. I am hungry."

The high altar still stood below the small rose window in the east, where the rotting fragments of a triptych hid the stonework. There was a great carved screen of stone on either side, curiously recessed as though giving access to an ambulatory. The altar stood in dense shadow, with broken timber and a tangle of briars ringing a barrier about its steps. On the southern side of the nave, a patch of tiled flooring still stood riftless, closed in by two fallen pillars. The groom came in with two horse-cloaks, and Fulviac spread them on the tiles. He also gave her a small flask of wine, and a silver pyx holding meat and bread.

"We crusaders must not grumble at the rough lodging," he said to her; "wrap yourself in these cloaks, and play the Jacob with a stone pillow."

She smiled slightly in her eyes. The groom brought in a saddle, ranged it with a saddle cloth covering it, that it might rest her head.

"And you?" she said to Fulviac.

"Damian and I hold the porch."

"You will be cold."

"I have a thick hide. The Lady of Geraint give you good rest!"

He threaded his way out amid the fallen stones and pillars, and closed the rickety gate. The groom, a tall fellow in a battered bassinet and a frayed brigantine, stood by the yew trees, as on guard. Fulviac gestured to him. The man moved away towards the eastern end of the chapel, where laurels grew thick and lusty about the walls. When he returned Fulviac was sitting hunched on a fallen stone in the corner of the porch, as though for sleep. The man dropped a guttural message into his master's ear, and propped himself in the other angle of the porch.

An hour passed; the moon swam past the zenith towards the west; a vast quiet watched over the world, and no wind rippled in the woods. In the sky the stars shivered, and gathered more closely their silver robes. In the curtilage the ruined tombs stared white and desolate at the moon.

An owl's cry sounded in the woods. Sudden and strange, as though dropped from the stars, faint music quivered on the frost-brilliant air. It gathered, died, grew again, with a mysterious flux of sweetness, as of some song stealing from the Gardens of the Dead. Flute, cithern, and viol were sounding under the moon, merging a wizard chant into the magic of the hour. Angels, crimson-winged, in green attire, seemed to descend the burning stair of heaven.

A sudden great radiance lit the ruin, a glory of gold streaming from the altar. Cymbals clashed; waves of shimmering light surged over the broken walls. Incense, like purple smoke, curled through the casements. The music rushed in clamorous rapture to the stars. A voice was heard crying in the chapel, elfin and wild, yet full of a vague rich sanctity. It ceased sudden as the brief moan of a prophecy. The golden glow elapsed; the music sank to silence. Nought save the moonlight poured in silver omnipotence over the ruin.

From the chapel came the sound of stumbling footsteps amid the stones. A hand clutched at the rotting door, jerked it open, as in terror. The girl Yeoland came out into the porch, and stood swaying white-faced in the shadow.

"Fulviac."

Her voice was hoarse and whispering, strained as the overwrought strings of a lute. The man did not stir. She bent down, dragged at his cloak, calling to him with a quick and gathering vehemence. He shook himself, as from the thongs of sleep, stood up and stared at her. The groom still crouched in the dark corner.

"Fulviac."

She thrust her way through the briars into the moonlight. Her hood had fallen back, her hair loose upon her shoulders; her eyes were full of a supernatural stupor, and she seemed under the spell of some great shock of awe. She trembled so greatly, that Fulviac followed her, and held her arm.

"Speak. What has chanced to you?"

She still shook like some flower breathed upon by the oracular voice of God. Her hands were torn and bloody from the thorns.

"The Virgin has appeared to me."

"Are you mad?"

"The Virgin."

"Some ghost or phantom."

"No, no, hear me."

She stretched out her hands like one smitten blind, and took breath swiftly in sudden gasps.

"Hear me, I was but asleep, woke, and heard music. The Virgin came out upon the altar, her face like the moon, her robes white as the stars. There was great light, great glory. And she spoke to me. Mother of God, what am I that I should be chosen thus!"

"Speak. Can this be true?"

"The truth, the truth!"

Fulviac fell on his knees with a great gesture of awe. The girl, her face turned to the moon, stood quivering like a reed, her lips moving as if in prayer.

"Her message, child?"

"Ah, it was this: 'Go forth a virgin, and lead the hosts of the Lord.'"

Fulviac's face was in shadow. He thrust up his hands to the heavens, but would not so much as glance at the girl above him. His voice rang out in the silence of the night:--

"Gloria tibi, Sancta Maria! Gloria tibi, Domine!"