CHAPTER XXXVII
They brought a settle out from the solar, and setting it against the wall, made ready for a night’s vigil. Since the last torch had gone out the place was in utter darkness save for one patch of moonlight at the far end of the hall.
Fulk pulled off his right gauntlet, and felt for Isoult’s hand.
“Try to sleep. Why should two keep watch?”
“Then it is you who should sleep.”
“By my love, do you think that I could sleep to-night? There will be some devil’s work to be baffled.”
They sat close together like two children, listening for any sound, for the night had grown strangely silent, and silence told them nothing, save that there was danger near.
An hour passed before Fulk and Isoult heard a sound of stirring in the darkness. Voices spoke in undertones, and there was the crackling of brittle wood. There was movement down yonder in the hall, a kind of groping movement that came nearer and nearer. Fulk stood ready behind the barricade made of chests, thinking that Merlin’s men were crawling up the stairway, but it was a subtler attack that they were preparing.
A faggot was thrown down with a crash at the foot of the stairs. They heard men running. More faggots were carried in and piled in a heap that covered the dead men and the wrecked furniture. The darkness hid them at their work, though there was just one patch of moonlight where the doorway of the hall opened, and Fulk could see nothing more than the suggestion of shadows coming and going across this patch of moonlight.
He found Isoult beside him, and her very nearness quickened his consciousness of their danger.
“Are we to be smoked out?”
“Burnt like rats. The house is all timber and thatch.”
“What’s to be done?”
“Isoult, there is but one thing to be done. Help me to lift this chest aside.”
She put her hands to it, and between them they carried it back into the solar.
“Isoult!”
He caught her and held her almost roughly, for the love in him had come to desperate ends.
“Let us fight rather than burn.”
“That’s the cry. I will give these dogs cold steel in the dark. It is a chance, and nothing more. If I can but clear the hall of them, we can throw faggots across the doorway and hold it. And we can open the shutters and get out of this black pit.”
He held her a moment longer.
“Isoult, bide here, but come to me if I call. It will mean that I have won the fight. If I do not call, you will know how things have sped. Unbuckle these greaves and thigh-pieces; they are too heavy for such a game as hide-and-seek.”
She knelt down and plucked at the buckles, and her fingers trembled a little.
“Fulk, fight through, fight through.”
He touched her hair with his hand.
“There is life for us yet.”
Fulk climbed over the oak chest and went step by step down the stairs, stooping with one hand stretched out to feel what lay before him. He had laid aside his gauntlets, and stuck his dagger into its sheath, meaning to trust solely to his sword and to quick wits and quick feet. Six steps from the bottom his hand touched the faggots, and feeling about him cautiously he found that he could step down on to the daïs table. As he crouched there, faggot after faggot was carried in and thrown upon the pile. Moving along the daïs table to the end wall of the hall, he came upon a gap that had been left, and through it he was able to slip to the ground.
Fulk groped his way round by the wall till he came to the wooden screen across the far end of the hall and was able to see the outline of the great doorway filled with pale moonlight. A man appeared in it, carrying a faggot, but he vanished directly he gained the inside of the hall.
Fulk saw his chance and took it. He could not tell how many men were in the hall, but he judged that he would have to deal with no more than two or three at a time, since they were strung out in their coming and going between the woodstack and the door of the hall. Holding his sword pointed ready, he moved along the screen and reached the borderland where darkness and moonlight met just as another figure appeared in the porch with a couple of faggots on its back.
Fulk struck so hard and so swiftly that the man went down without a cry, the faggots falling on top of him. Fulk kept in the shadow as running footsteps came down the hall. A second figure appeared, bending over the fallen man, not grasping what had happened. Fulk laid him beside his comrade, only to be struck in turn by some invisible enemy. A blow on his helmet made his ears ring.
He thrust in the direction from which the blow had come, struck nothing in the darkness, but heard a quick shuffle of footsteps go up the hall. He gave chase, following the footsteps, drawing his dagger as he ran. The footsteps stopped abruptly, and Fulk halted in response, probing the darkness about him with his sword. He thought that he heard the sound of someone breathing close on his left, and he let out a deep thrust towards the sound, and touched something solid.
The unseen gave a snarl of pain. A body blundered against Fulk, staggered, and gripped him with desperate arms. Fulk could not use his sword, and the man who had closed with him crooked one knee round his, and tried to throw him on his back. They swayed and tottered across the hall, Fulk stiffening every muscle and sinew. His dagger cut that tangle. The man made a sobbing sound in his throat; his arms relaxed; Fulk felt him sink away into the darkness. He used his sword again to make sure of the business, and, turning towards the doorway, reached it as two other figures appeared with faggots on their shoulders. The long sword shot out into the moonlight; the first man fell on his face; the other dropped his faggots and ran.
Fulk called to Isoult, and he heard the crackling of wood as she climbed over the faggots, and for a moment he listened anxiously, wondering whether he had left any live thing lurking in the darkness.
“Here—here, by the doorway.”
He stepped forward into the moonlight, and she joined him there, her bow in her hand, her arrow ready in her girdle.
“Not hurt?”
“Not a scratch. Stand here with your bow. I will give them something to climb over.”
He picked up the fallen faggots and threw them across the doorway, on top of the dead men who lay there. Several more from the stack against the solar stairway made a breastwork four feet high, sufficient to stop a rush.
“Keep in the shadow.”
As he spoke he saw her raise her bow and take a snapping shot at something that had showed outside the porch. A man yelped like a dog struck with a stone. Voices muttered together—voices that moved slowly away from the porch.
Fulk and Isoult stood listening.
“I slew four here: three by the door and one in yonder. That leaves but five.”
Isoult’s eyes never left the panel of light framed by the heap of faggots and the arch of the doorway.
“All the windows are shuttered.”
“They may try to fire the house from the outside—thrust a torch into the thatch.”
“Let them try it. There is God’s air outside for us. Your bow and my sword can tackle five men.”
“Listen!”
She touched his arm, and he heard what she had heard—the splashing of water down by the mere.
“Are more coming over?”
“No, no; it is on this side.”
There was no doubt as to the sound; it was the noise made by the men’s rough paddles striking the water. They had taken to the raft of tree trunks, and were ferrying back across the mere, for the sound went away towards the farther bank.
Fulk dropped his sword, caught Isoult, and held her.
“Isoult, Isoult, death goes over the water.”
“Ah—and life comes in!”
A great silence descended over the Black Mere—a silence that was strangely soft and kindly after that half silence that had hidden the stealthy movements of men. For a while they stood listening, hardly believing that they were alone. But the stillness was unbroken; the peril that had threatened them had melted into the night.
Fulk threw the faggots aside and went out into the moonlight. He was cautious at first, half suspecting some trick, and he looked sharply to right and left as he walked down through the garden to the mere. All ripples had died away; the water lay still and untroubled.
Isoult had followed him, and they held hands and looked over the mere.
“What of to-morrow, Isoult, what of to-morrow?”
“I would rather be beyond the sea, where Merlin is not.”
“Is Merlin still to be feared?”
“He is a lustful hound who has hunted for many masters. Who knows whom he serves?”
They made their way back to the house, but it seemed full of a horror of darkness and of dead men lying in their blood. Isoult would not enter it.
“That darkness would choke me. I would rather lie out under the moon.”
Fulk remembered the horses, and went round to the stables to see if the beasts were safe. The door was still shut as he had left it, and he blessed the good luck that had left them the horses, for they might need them on the morrow.
He found a truss of hay, and, carrying it into the garden, broke the bands, and spread it under an old yew tree about ten paces from the house.
“Lie down and sleep. I will keep watch.”
“We will take turns at watching.”
“Sleep first, then.”
“Promise that you will wake me.”
“I promise.”
She lay down, being dead weary, and conscious of her weariness now that the stress of their peril had passed. Fulk sat down beside her under the yew, and very soon she was asleep; nor had he the heart to wake her that night, though he could hardly keep his own eyes open. So he watched the night out and the dawn in, listening to Isoult’s breathing, and loving her as he listened. The grey half-light grew in the east; the birds woke; a soft wind came out of the west and stirred the willows.
A sudden restlessness seized on Fulk as he looked at Isoult sleeping, and thought of the dead men in yonder. He rose, and went towards the porch, telling himself that he would carry out wine and food, so that the horror of the place should not hurt her.
Dead men and faggots were lying in a tangle by the door. Fulk stepped over them, his nostrils narrowing, his eyes looking at them askance. He threw open several of the shutters, and let daylight into the hall, and it was then that he saw something that made him turn sharply and stand staring at a grey figure that lay in the middle of the hall close to the round hearth.
The grey cowl had slipped back, and a line of grinning teeth and a gaunt, stark chin showed. One arm was half bent and standing up rigidly in the air, the fingers and hand turned over like a shepherd’s crook. It was Merlin, the man who had wrestled with Fulk in the dark and been stabbed for his pains.
Fulk went and stood over him, staring. Then he bent nearer, his eyes fixed upon Merlin’s upraised hand. It was as though the dead man were holding it up for him to see—Richard’s ring, the very ring that Fulk had worn when he had played the King behind the King.
He turned sharply and ran out of the hall, to find Isoult awake and sitting up under the yew. She had unlaced his helmet for him before she had fallen asleep, and Fulk’s face was as grim as a cold winter dawn.
“Merlin is in yonder.”
“Merlin?”
“Dead. He is one of those whom I slew in the dark. I know now whom he served.”
“Ah!”
“He has the King’s ring upon his finger.”