"Gentlemen," he said, "I have not the fitness and youth of many of you, but I can lay claim to some wisdom in war. To my liege lord, whom, sirs, I honour as a man of soul, I would address two proverbs. First, despise not, sire, your enemies."
Modred laughed in his black beard.
"Reverence the scum of Gilderoy?"
"Ha, man, if we are well advised, these folk have been breathed upon by fanaticism. I tell you, I have seen a meanly-born crowd make a very stubborn day of it with some of the best troops that ever saw service. Secondly, sire, I would say to you, turn off your mercenaries if the sky looks black; never trust your neck to paid men when any great peril threatens."
Flavian, out of his good sense, agreed with Tristram.
"Your words are weighty," he said. "So long as we are campaigning, I will pay them well and keep them. If it comes to a siege, I will have no hired bravos in Gambrevault. And now, gentlemen, it is late; get what sleep you may, for who knows what may come with the morrow. Modred and Geoffrey, I leave to you the visiting of the outposts to-night. Order up my lutists and flute-players; I shall not sleep without a song."
He passed alone to the outer battlements, and let the night expand about his soul, the stars touch his meditations. From the minstrels' gallery in the hall came the wail of viols, the voices of flute, dulcimer and bassoon keeping a mellow under-chant. He heard the sea upon the rocks, saw it glimmering dimly to end in a fringe of foam.
So his thoughts soared to the face of one woman in the world, the golden Eve peering out of Paradise, whose soul seemed to ebb and flow like the moan of the distant music. He fell into deep forecastings of the future. He remembered her words to him, her mysterious warnings, her inexplicable inconsistencies, her appeal to war. Gilderoy had taught him much, and some measure of truth shone like a dawn spear in the east. A gulf of war and vengeance stretched from his feet. Yet he let his soul circle like a golden moth about the woman's beauty, while the wail of the viols stole out upon his ears.
XXIX
Little store of sleep had the Lord of Gambrevault that night. War with all its echoing prophecies played through his thought as a storm wind through the rotting casements of a ruin. He beheld the high hills red with beacons, the valleys filled with the surging steel of battle. Gilderoy and its terrors flamed through his brain. Above all, like the moon from a cloud shone the face of Yeoland, the Madonna of the Forest.