They were left alone together on the terrace, Radamanth shepherding his merchant friends aside for the moment with the discreet desire to please the count. Gorlois stood by the stairhead and told Igraine the reason of his coming, as though she had not guessed it from the moment his barge had foamed up beside the steps. He told her frankly that he wished to speak to her alone, and that his barge gave her an opportunity of hearing him without his having the advantage of her in solitude, while the noise of oars would drown their words. Igraine listened to him with a solemn face. She began to feel that she must face her destiny and give the man the truth for good. Procrastination would avail nothing against such a man as Gorlois. Being so minded, she gave Gorlois her hand and hardened herself to satisfy him that day.
Away went the great barge before the strong sweep of the long oars. Igraine watched the water slide by—foaming like a mill race as the blades cut white furrows in the tide. The river gleamed with colour as innumerable galleys, skiffs, and coracles drifted in the shallows or darted aside to give passage to Gorlois’s barge. Fair stone houses, gardened round with green, slid back on either side. They passed the spectacular galleys one by one, and the wooden wharfs packed with the mean folk of the city, and foaming on under the great water-gate, drew southward into the open country and the fields.
Igraine looked at Gorlois, and found his face impenetrable with thought. A fillet of gold bound his hair, and he was wearing his great sword, and an enamelled belt over his rich tunic. The cushions of the barge had been sprinkled with perfumes, and the floor covered ankle deep with flowers. Igraine groaned in spirit, and read the old extravagance that had persecuted her so long, and made a mockery of her love for Pelleas.
Gentle meads lapped greenly to the willows, giving place anon to woods that seemed to stride down and snatch the river for a silver girdle. The festival folk and their skiffs were out of sight and hearing, yet Gorlois’s barge ran on, to plunge into emerald shadows, tunnels whose floors seemed of the blackest crystal webbed with nets of green and blue, whose vaultings were the dense groinings of the trees. Not a wind stirred. The great curving galleries in the woods were dark and mysterious, the water like glistening basalt, the trees dreaming over their own images in an ecstasy of silence. The foam from the oars was very white, and the moist swish of the blades made the silence more solemn by contrast, while the water seemed to catch a golden flicker from the flanks of the barge.
Igraine knew well enough what was in the man’s heart as he sat handling the tiller, and watching her with his restless eyes. She was quite cold and undisturbed in spite of her being at his mercy, and the consciousness that in her heart she did not trust him vastly. Gorlois had spoken only of the town, and they were running on under dense foliage into the forest solitudes that edged the river. Yet Igraine had faith in her own wit, and believed herself a match for Gorlois, or any man, for that matter, save Pelleas. Gorlois passed the time by telling her of his battles in Andredswold, how he had driven the heathen into Thanet, and freed Andred’s town from leaguer. Igraine began to wonder how long it would be before he would turn to matters nearer to his heart. She had marshalled up her courage for the argument, and this waiting under arms for the bugle-call did not please her.
The day had already slipped into evening, for the water pageant was ordered late, so that it might merge into a lantern frolic on the river after dusk. Igraine, seeing how the light lapsed, told Gorlois to have the barge turned for Winchester. She had hardly spoken when the boat ran out from the trees into open water. In the west the sky was already aflame, ridged tier above tier with burning clouds, while the blaze fainted zenithwards into gold and azure. A queer cry as from a man weary of torture came down from the west. On a low hill near the river, bleak against the sky, stood a black concourse of beams set upright in the ground, looking like the charred pillars of a burnt house. They were crosses, and the bodies of men crucified.
Gorlois pointed to them with the evening glow on his face, and taking a horn that hung at his belt, blew a loud call thereon. At the sound a vulture rose from a crossbeam, and went flapping heavenwards—a black blot against the scarlet frieze of the west. Others followed, like evil things driven from their food. Again the cry, the wail from one who had hung torn and wracked in the parching sun, came down from the darkening hill.
Igraine shuddered and felt cold at the sound, and watched the figures against the sky with a kind of awe.
“Who are these?” she said.
“Dogs from over the sea.”