Part 41 (1/2)
”You are sad?”
”Fulviac has the whole kingdom at his back.”
”If he led the world, I should not waver.”
”With me it is different; I am a woman and you know my heart.”
”So well that I seek to know nothing else in the world, I desire no greater wisdom than my love. You are with me, and my heart sings. No harm can come to you whatever doom may fall on Gambrevault.”
”Think you my thoughts are all of my own safety?”
”Ah, golden one, never fear for me. What is life? a little joy, a little pain, and then eternity. I would rather have an hour's glory in the sun than fifty years of grey monotony. It is something to fight, and even to die, for the love of a woman. There is no shadow over my soul.”
There was a great heroism in his voice, and her eyes caught the light from his. She touched his cuira.s.s with her slim white fingers.
”G.o.d keep you!”
”Ha, I do not smell of earth to-day, nor dream of requiems.”
”No, you will come back to me.”
”Give me your scarf.”
She took the green silk and knotted it about his arm; a rich colour shone in her cheeks, her eyes were warm and wonderfully luminous.
”G.o.d keep you!”
So he kissed her lips and left her.
The rebel horde had rolled down in their thousands from the hills.
Flavian saw their black ma.s.ses moving from the woods, as he rode down from the great gate. It was evident to him that Fulviac would try and force the ford and win his way to the open meadows beyond. The river ran fast with a deep but narrow channel, and there was only one other ford some nine miles upstream. His own men were under arms in the meadows.
With his knights round him, Flavian rode down to the redoubt and trenches by the river-bank, packed as they already were with archers and men-at-arms. He was loudly cheered as he reined in and scanned the rebel columns moving over the downs.
Fulviac had ridden forward with a company of spears to reconnoitre. He saw the captured banner of The Maid hoisted derisively on Gambrevault keep; he saw the redoubt and the stockades covering the ford; the foot ma.s.sed in the meadows; Flavian's mounted men-at-arms drawn up under the castle walls. Sforza and several captains of note were with Fulviac.
The man was in a grim mood, a slas.h.i.+ng t.i.tanic humour. The pa.s.sage of the river was to be forced, Flavian's men engaged in the meadows. He would drive them into Gambrevault before nightfall. Then they would cast their leaguer, bring up the siege train taken from Gilderoy, and batter at Gambrevault till they could storm the place.
Early in the day Fulviac detached a body of two thousand men under Colgran, a noted free-lance, to march upstream, cross by the upper ford, and threaten Flavian on the flank. The fighting began at ten of the clock, when Fulviac's bowmen scattered along the river and opened fire upon the stockades. Flavian's archers and arbalisters responded. A body of five thousand rebels advanced with great mantlets upon wheels to the northern bank and entrenched themselves there. A second body, with waggons laden with timber and several flat-bottomed boats, poured down to the river a mile higher up, and began to throw a rough, raft-like bridge across the stream. At half-past ten ma.s.ses of men-at-arms splashed through the water at the ford, under cover of a hot fire from the archers lining the bank, and began an a.s.sault upon the redoubt and the stockades.
By twelve o'clock the bridge higher up the stream had been completed, and a glittering line of pikes poured across, to be met on the southern bank by Geoffrey Longsword and a body of men-at-arms. It was hand to hand, and hot and strenuous as could be. Men grappled, stabbed, hacked, bellowed like a herd of bulls. Flavian had reinforced the defenders of the ford, who still held Fulviac at bay, despite a heavy archery fire and the almost continuous a.s.saults poured against the stockades. Yet by one o'clock Fulviac's levies had forced the pa.s.sage of the bridge and gained footing on the southern bank. Longsword's men, outnumbered and repulsed, were falling back before the black ma.s.ses of foot that now poured into the meadows.
The situation was critical enough, as Flavian had long seen, as he galloped hotly from point to point. Fulviac's rebels had shown more valour than he had ever prophesied. Flavian packed all his remaining foot into the trenches, and putting himself at the head of his knights and mounted men-at-arms, rode down to charge the troops who had crossed by the pontoons. Here chivalry availed him to the full. By a succession of tremendous rushes, he drove the rebels back into the river, did much merciless slaughter, cut the ropes that held the bridge to the southern bank, so that the whole structure veered downstream.
The peril seemed past, when he was startled by the cry that the redoubt had been carried, and that Fulviac held the ford.
Looking south, he saw the truth with his own eyes. His troops were falling back in disorder upon Gambrevault, followed by an ever-growing ma.s.s, that swarmed exultantly into the meadows. The last and successful a.s.sault had been led by Fulviac in person. Flavian had to grip the truth. The rebels outnumbered him by more than five to one; and he had underrated their discipline and fighting spirit. He was wiser before the sun went down.
”Come, gentlemen, we shall beat them yet.”
”Shall we charge them, sire?”