There, in the torchlight which Faulkener held above him, slept that kiln-dried soldier. He lay flat upon his back, and, while one knotted, shriveled fist was stretched stiff in front in deathless anger, the broken digits of his other hand were welded by red iron rust about the red rusty hilt of a bladeless sword. And that soldier’s soulless face was set stiff and hard, while on his stern, shut lips and deep in his eyeless sockets even now restless passion and quenchless hate seemed smoldering. About that frail body still clung in melancholy tatters the shreds and remnants of purple webs and golden tissue. On his shoulders, sunk into his withered, lifeless flesh, were the moldy straps and scales of harness and cuirass, and on his head what once had been, though now it was more like winter wrack, a gay helmet and a horseman’s nodding crimson plume. It was a ghostly plaything to unearth like that under the wavering starlight, and it was doubly dreadful to note how deathlike was it while yet all the hot life-passion lay stamped forever in unchanging fierceness on the hideous mask of dissolution. I turned away as Faulkener, gleefully shouting that he was a thousand years old if he was a day, tore the russet trophies from him, and pushed him down the hill; I turned away, grimly frowning, out into the black starlight, with folded arms, for that contorted thing was jolly Caius Martius, my merry Byzantine captain of those mercenaries who stood it out with me that last night of Roman power in England! Jolly Caius Martius! Often we two had set the British dogs a-yelping as we wandered home from noisy midnight frolics down the moonlit temple streets; often we two had driven the same boar to bay deep in his reedy stronghold; often at banquet and at feast, when the roses lay deep below and the strong warm breath of scented wine hung thick above, that curly black head the Mercian damsels liked so well had sunk happy and heavy on my shoulder. Jove! how the world had spun since then!—and there was Faulkener pushing him down the slope, and I could not raise a comrade finger for merry Caius, and could only stupidly remember, as the sprawling head went trundling away into the brambles, how, in that long ago, I had owed him half a silver talent and had never yet repaid it!
Well, we fell to work again, and farther on, amid the passages where these ancient men had fought and fallen in the rout, we found a limb, and dug about it till we uncovered another strange, twisted hide of what was once humanity—a stalwart shell this one, but Faulkener thought little on him because he wore no links or chains, and set him rolling after the other with scant ceremony. The next we came to seemed by gear and weapons a Southern mercenary. He lay asprawl upon his face, and my master levered him out and plucked him of his scanty metal relics with no more compunction than if he were a pigeon. It was grim, wild work, there under the leer of the yellow dawning, all in the hush of the twilight, coming on those ghastly relics thus one by one, and prising them out of their ashy shells, and turning them over, and reading on each black mummy mask, that seemed to smile and grin with dead ferocity under the flickering flambeau light, the countenance and fashion of ancient comrade and ally. And ever and anon as I worked, held to the labor by a strange fascination, the melancholy footfall of the gusty wind came pacing round the hill, and with a frown and start I would look over my shoulder, half fearing, half hoping it was my gray countryman once more. So we toiled, and toiled, while the light waned, and Faulkener’s treasure-heap was swelling. And the nearer we worked to the center of that ample round of corridors and courts the thicker came to light those old world fighters, and presently we got right down to the tessellated paving of Electra’s lordly hall, and here we found what it was which made all these ancient warriors so still and lasting. It was that strange, mysterious fountain. That jet of pungent taste and wondrous properties, when the walls fell in, had overflowed its basins and percolated through the deep soft ashes lying thick about these marble rooms and chambers, and, by the stony magic wherewith it was charged, had lined and filled those ancient gentlemen it met with, and thereafter, in long dark months of silence, had supplemented their wasting tissues with its calcareous sediment, and kept them forever as we found them—strange, horrible, exact, and real, with passion and life stamped deep on every face, and strength and vigor in every limb, although those faces wore only ashy masks, and those limbs no stouter than the vellum on which I write.
Under the crust of welded stone and ashes it was wonderful to see how perfectly was everything preserved. We raised it in great flakes from the stony flooring, and all the stain and litter of the fight lay under it, as though they were not a dozen hours old; we chipped that scaly covering from the walls, and there, fresh as the moment they were made, gleamed up under our wavering torchlight all the gay mural paintings, the smudges of battle, and the scars of axe and arrow. We lifted that pale, stiff shroud from the inner chambers, and beneath lay shreds and shells of furniture and gear; the half-baked loaves were in the oven; the flesher’s knife was on the block! Round about the bounds of that stately ruin we went, uncovering at every spadeful something mournful, forgetting fatigue and time, as wonder after wonder rose to view; thus we came at last to the mid court, where the great fight had been, and peeled the thin turf from off it, far and near.
We had scarce begun to rake aside the ashes, when down to help us came, out of the black parting clouds, strong gusts of cold morning wind, blowing fitfully at first and chill, and sobbing overhead and all about us, as though the gray air was full of spirits. It gathered strength, and, wailing over the wide floor we had uncovered, in one strong breath swept back the veil of ashes, and there—Jove!—all amid the juts of fallen masonry and stumps of beam and rafter, blackened in that fire which seemed but yesterday, were high, protruding knees of dead combatants, and stiff bent elbows, as thick as grass; and haggard, wizened faces, all stamped with twenty fine degrees of terror; and fierce clenched fists, and hands that still waved above them broken hilt and blade. There they lay in heaps and rucks about that ancient villa floor, just as they had died fighting amid the red choking ashes of the blazing roof, all horribly lifelike and yet so grimly dead! Old Faulkener yelled in sheer affright, and capered, and shook his fists toward them, and tore his lean white locks ’tween dread and wonder; and stiff my Phrygian curls seemed on my head, and cold the sweat upon my forehead.
And then, while we watched, a very wonderful thing happened, and, dreadful and beautiful, those cinders began to glow. Jutting beam and rafter grew red and redder, pile and timber and cornice caught the ambient blush, the crimson stain crept all across the hall, it burned in mockery upon ruined wall and portico, and lit with an unearthly radiance those parched, contorted faces that grinned and leered and frowned, still in frantic struggle with their kind, all round us. Was I mad? Was this some hideous last delusion which beset my aching mind and horror-surfeited eyes? No! there was Faulkener saw it too, and had fallen on his knees and buried his fearful face behind his hands and thrown his gaberdine cloak over his head to shut out that dreadful sight. I drew my hand across my face and looked again: it was true, too true—that charred and ancient villa was all alight once more; wherever fire had been, at every point and crevice, there the ambient glow was smoldering with a flameless brightness. It underlay the silver ashes with a hot golden shine; it gilded all the fallen metal statues of gods and goddesses until they seemed to shimmer beneath its touch; it shone near by under the walls and far out upon the steps—it was so real, so terribly like what it had been here a thousand years before, that I half bent to take a weapon, in the delusion of that brilliant fantasy, a husky cry of encouragement to those stark, ancient warriors half framed itself upon my lips—and then, how exactly I know not, but somehow a slight insequence fleshed upon me, and in another minute I had spun angrily round upon my heel—and there I saw, right behind us, calm, benignant, crimson, the great May sun was topping the eastern oak-trees.
CHAPTER XXIV
After that eventful episode just detailed, life ran smooth and uneventful for a time in the old manor-house. I had had enough to think of for many a day, and was inert and listless somehow. War, that had seemed so bright, had lost its color to me. Honor! and renown! Why, the green grass in the fields were not more fleeting, I began to think; and what use was it striving after conquests which another age undid, or attempting brave adventures whereof a later time recognized neither cause nor purpose? I was in a doleful mood, as you will see, and lay about on Faulkener’s sunny, red-brick terraces for days together, reflecting in this idle fashion, or pressed my suit upon his daughter when other pastimes failed.
Now, this latter was a dangerous sport for one like me, and one whose fair opponent at the game had such a fine untaught instinct for it as Mistress Bess possessed. I began to speak soft things unto that lady’s ear, as you may remember, like many another, for lack of better occupation, and because it seemed so discourteous to be indifferent to the sweet enticement of my friend, and then I took the gentle malady from her, and, growing worse than she had been, how could she do aught but sympathize? And so between us we eked the matter on in ample leisure, until that which was a pretty jest became at last very serious and sober earnest.
It was a strange wooing. I still worked in the forge, riveting, hammering, and piecing together the fragments of the scholar’s shattered dream, and down the damsel would come at times into the grimy den and sit upon the forge-corner in her dainty country smock, twirling her ribboned points and laughing at me and my toil, as fresh and dainty among all that gloomy black litter round about as a ray of spring sunshine. I was so solitary and glum, how could I fail to be pleasured in that dear presence? And one time I would hammer her a gleaming buckle or wristlet out of a nob of ancient silver, and it was sweet to see that country damsel’s eagerness as, with flushed face and sparkling eyes, she bent over and watched the pretty toy shine and glitter and take form and shape under my cunning hammer. Or then again, perhaps, another day I would tell her, as though it were only hearsay, some wondrous old story of the ancient time, so full of light and color and love as I could fill it, and that dear auditor would drink in every syllable with thirsty ears, and laugh and weep and fear and tremble just as I willed, the while I pointed my periods with my anvil irons, and danced my visionary puppets against the black shadows of that nether hall. Hoth! a good listener is a sweet solace to him whose heart is full! Those narratives did so engross us that often the forge went cold, and bar and rivet slumbered into blackness, while I stalked up and down that dingy cavern peopling it with such glowing forms and fancies as kept that dear untutored damsel spellbound; often the evening fell upon us so, and we had at last to steal shamefacedly across the courtyard to where the warm glow behind the lattices told us supper and the others waited.
There was small difference in these days. I hammered cheerful and I hammered dull, I hammered hopeful and I hammered melancholy, I hammered in tune to the merry prattle of that girl, and I hammered sad and solitary. And ever as I forged and welded by myself you may guess how I thought and speculated—thought of all the love that I had loved, and all the useless strife and ambition, and now hung over my blackening iron as the pain of ancient perplexities and disappointments beset me, and then anon laughed and beat new life into the glowing metal as the light of forgotten joys flashed for a moment on the fitful current of my mind. Ah! and again I forged hot and impetuous on my master’s rods and rivets as the old pulse of battles and onset swelled in my veins—forged and hammered while the stream of such fancies bore me on—until, unwitting, the very molten stuff beneath my hands took form and fashion of my thoughts, and grew up into shining spear-heads and white blades until the fantasy in turn was passed, and I checked my fancies and saw, ashamed, the foolish work my busy hammer had fashioned, and sadly broke the spear-heads and snapped the blades, and came back with a sigh to meaner things.