About this time a horde of heathen ships came from the east, sailed past Vectis, and began to pour their wild men into the country ’twixt Winchester and the sea. Hamlets and manors were burnt, peasant folk driven to the woods, the crops fired, the cattle slain. The noise of it came into Winchester with a rabble of frightened fugitives who had fled to the city for refuge. Ambrosius the king was in Caerleon, and Uther errant, so that the chance fell to Gorlois of driving the heathen into the sea.
No man could have been more heartily glad of this innovation. Igraine should see him swoop like a hawk in his strength; she should hear how he led men, and how his sword drank blood. In making war on the heathen he would boast himself before her eyes, and show her the merit of manhood, and the glory of a strong arm. Winchester bustled like a camp. Troops poured in from Sarum, and the sound of war went merrily through the streets. Folk boasted how Gorlois would harry the heathen. He rode out one night with picked men at his back, and held straight for the coast, while Eldol of Gloucester, a veteran knight, marched southward before dawn with five thousand footmen. It was Gorlois’s plan to cut the heathen off from their ships, and crush them between his knights and the spearmen led by Eldol.
It was such a venture as Gorlois loved,—keen, shrill, and full of hazards. Riding straight over hill and dale they saw the glimmer of waves as the sun rose, and knew they had touched the sea. Gorlois’s scouts had located the main mass of the Jutes camped in a valley about a nunnery they had taken, and the British knights coming up through the woods saw smoke in the valley and men moving like ants about the reeking ruin of the holy house. Looking north they saw a beacon burning on a hill,—Eldol’s signal that he had closed the woods, north, east, and west, with his footmen, and that he waited only for Gorlois to sweep up and drive the heathen on to the hidden spears.
Never was there a finer light in Gorlois’s eyes than at such a season. He loved the dance and noise of steel, the plunging hustle of horses at the gallop, the grand rage of the shout that curled like the foam on an ocean billow. His courage sang with the wind as his knights rode down over the green slopes in a great half-moon of steel, a moving barrier that rolled the savage folk northwards, and rent them like a harrow of iron. By the blackened walls of the nunnery Gorlois caught sight of a line of mutilated bodies tied to posts,—dead nuns, stripped, and still bleeding. The sight roused the wolf in him. “Kill! kill!” were his words as they rode in upon the skin-clad horde. It was savage work, bloody and merciless. Eldol’s men closed in on every quarter, and the heathen were cut down like corn in summer.
Very few went back to their ships that day. Scores lay dead with their fair hair drabbled in the blood about the ruins, and on the quiet slopes of the dale. As they had measured out violence to the peasant folk and women, so it was meted to them in turn,—vengeance, piled up, great measure, running over with blood. Some sixty maimed men were taken alive, but mere death was too mild for Gorlois when he remembered the slain nuns. He had certain of the captured burnt alive, others hacked limb from limb, the rest crucified near the river for the birds to feed upon. Then he buried the nuns, and made a great entry into Winchester, taking care to ride past Igraine’s window with his white horse bloody to the saddle, and his armour splashed as he had come from the field. She should see his manhood, if she would not have his presents.
This single slaughter, however, did not end matters on the southern shores. Bands of Saxons were forraying from Kent, where they had established themselves, and Gorlois rode out again and again to crush and kill. There would be battles in the woods, bloody tussles in the deep shadows of Andredswold, wild flights over moor and waste, triumph cries at sunset. Three times Gorlois rode out at the head of his knights from Winchester; three times he came back victorious, hacked and war-stained, thundered in by the people, past Radamanth’s house to the church in the market-square. Igraine sat at her window and watched him go by, lowering his spear to her with all his proud love ablaze on his face. Had he not driven the barbarians into the very heel of Kent, and left many a tall man from over the seas rotting in sun and rain?
It was customary year by year in Winchester to hold a water pageant on the river, depicting legendary and historic things that had passed within the shores of Britain. August was the pageant month, and in this particular year the display was made more elaborate in order to celebrate the rout of the heathen by Gorlois, and to please the common folk who had made him their idol. The pageant was of no little splendour. Great galleys, fittingly decorated, were rowed down the narrow stream amid a horde of smaller craft, each great barge bearing figures famed in British legend lore. The first barge portrayed Brute the Trojan voyaging for Britain; others, Locrine’s death by the river Severn, Rudhudibras, mythical founder of Winchester, the reunion of Leyr and Cordelia, Porrex the fratricide done to death by damsels. One barge, draped in white and purple, moralised the reconciliation of Brennius and Belenus at the intercession of their mother. A great galley in red and white bore Joseph of Aramathy and the Holy Grail, and a choir of angels who sang of Christ’s blood. Last of all came Alban the protomartyr, pictured as he knelt to meet his death by the sword.
The day was blue and quiet, with hardly the shimmer of a cloud over the intense gaze of the sky, while banners of rich cloth were hung over the balustrades of the river terraces, and the gardens themselves were full of gay folk who kept carnival, and watched the boats go by. The great pageant galleys had hardly passed, and the small craft that had kept the bank were swarming out into mid-stream, where a great barge with gilded bulwarks and a carved prow came sweeping down like a swan before the wind. It was driven by the broad backs of twenty rowers clad in scarlet and gold. In the stern sat Gorlois, holding the tiller, with a smile on his keen lips as a quavering clamour went up from the gardens and the boats that lined the shallows.
By Radamanth’s house Gorlois held up a hand, and the blades foamed as the men backed water. The great barge lost weigh and lay motionless on the dappled silver of the stream. Slowly it was poled in to the steps that ran from the water’s edge to the terrace of Radamanth’s garden. A light gangway was thrown ashore, and a purple carpet spread upon the steps, while the men lined the stairway with their oars held spearwise as Gorlois went up to greet Igraine.
Clad in white and gold, with a rose over her ear, she was sitting between Radamanth and Lilith on a bench at the head of the stairway. There was an implacable irresponsive look on her face as Gorlois came up the steps and stood in front of her like a courtier before a queen’s chair. Radamanth and the merchant folk present were on their feet, and uncovered; only Igraine kept her seat in the man’s presence, and looked him over as though he had been a beggar.