Part 28 (1/2)

A gauntlet of steel was dashed often into the white face. Hands clawed his collar, clutched his body. Dragged, jerked onwards, buffeted, beaten to his knees, he sank down before the Lord Flavian's chair, blood streaming from his mouth and nostrils, specking his white habit, drabbling the floor. Then only did the flas.h.i.+ng, growling circle recede like waves from a fallen rock.

Modred, a black man, burly, a bigot to honour, stood out a giant before his fellows. His great sword quivered to the roof; his deep voice shook the rafters.

”Blood, sire, blood.”

The man in the white habit quailed, and held up his hands.

”Let me smite him as he kneels.”

”Sirs, give me the courtesy of silence.”

Flavian started from his chair and looked at the man, who knelt, huddled into himself, at his feet. It was a scene replete with the grim cynicism of life. Here was a man of mind and genius, cowering, quivering before the strong wrath of a dozen muscular illiterates. Here was the promulgator of bold truths, an utter dastard when the physical part of him was threatened with dissolution. Not that this event was any proof against the moral power of pagan self-reliance. Not that there was any cause for the bleating of sanctimonious plat.i.tudes, or the pointing of a proverb. A true churchman might have carved a fine moral fable out of the reality. It would have been a fallacy. Fra Balthasar was a coward. He had none of the splendid mental anatomy of a Socrates.

He would have played the coward even under the eye of Christ.

Silence had fallen. Far away, choked by the long throats of gallery and stair, rose the wild, pa.s.sionate screaming of a woman. It had the rebellious, blasphemous agony of one flung into eternal fire. Without modulation, abatement, or increase, malevolent, impotent, ferocious, piteous, it pealed out in long, tempestuous bursts that swept into the ears like some unutterable discord out of h.e.l.l.

The kneeling man heard it, and seemed to contract, to shrink into himself. His white habit was rent to the middle; his ashy face splashed over with blood. He tottered and shook, his hands clasped over the nape of his neck, for fear of the sword. His tongue clave to his palate; his eyes were furtively fixed on the upreared yard of steel.

Torches and cressets flared. Servants stared and shouldered and gaped in the screens; all the castle underlings seemed to have smelt out the business like the rats they were. Modred's knights put them out with rough words and the flat of the sword. The doors were barred. Only Flavian, the priest, and Modred and his men took part in that tribunal in the hall of Avalon.

Flavian stood and gazed on Balthasar, the man of tones and colours. The Lord of Gambrevault was calm, unhurried, and dispa.s.sionate, yet not unpleased. The man's infinite abas.e.m.e.nt and terror seemed to arrest him like some superb precept from the lips of a philosopher. He had the air of a man who calculates, the look of a diplomat whose scheme has worked out well. From Balthasar he looked to Modred the Strong, the torchlight lurid on his armour, his great sword quivering like a falcon to leap down upon its prey. The distant screaming, somewhat fainter and less resolute, still throbbed in his ears. He thought of Dante, and the _bolgias_ of that superhuman singer.

Going close to the Dominican, he spoke to him in strong, yet not unpitying tones. Balthasar dared not look above the Lord Flavian's knees.

”Ha, my friend, where is all your fine philosophy?”

The man cringed like a beggar.

”Where are all your sonorous phrases, your pert blasphemies, your subtleties, your fine tinsel of intellect and vanity?”

Balthasar had no word.

”Where is your G.o.dliness, my friend, where your glowing and superhuman soul? Have we found you out, O Satanas; have we shocked your pagan heroism? Be a man. Stand up and face us. You could hold forth roundly on occasions. Even that Saul of Tarsus was not afraid of a sword.”

Balthasar cowered, and hid his face behind his hands. He began to whimper, to rock to and fro, to sob. The grim men round him laughed, deep-chested, iron, scoffing laughter. Modred p.r.i.c.ked the priest's neck with the point of his sword. It was then that Balthasar fell forward upon his face, senseless from sheer terror.

Flavian abandoned philosophic irony, and addressed himself to Modred and his knights.

”Put up your swords, sirs; this man shall go free.”

”Sire, sire!” came the ma.s.sed cry.

”Trust my discretion. The fellow has done me the greatest service of my life.”

”Sire!”

”He has given me liberty. He has gnawed the shackles from my soul. You are all my witnesses in this, and may count upon my grat.i.tude. But this man here, he has danced to my whim like a doll plucked by a string. For my liberty has he sinned; out of Avalon shall he go scatheless.”

The men still murmured. Modred shot home his sword into its scabbard with a vicious snap. Flavian read their humour.