It was the shield that caught Gorlois’s eye as he stood on a balcony of his house and looked out over Caerleon. The device smote him sudden as the lash of a whip. The red harness, the black horse, the painted shield, mingled a picture that burnt into his brain with a vividness that passed comprehension. He knew well enough to whom such arms should belong; had he not carried them fraudulently to his own doubtful profit? This knight must be that Pelleas whose past had worked such mischief with his own machinations, that Pelleas who had won Igraine the novice fresh from the shadow of her convent trees. Gorlois watched the man go by with a kind of superhuman envy twisting in him like a colic. The smart of it made him stiffen, go pale, gnaw his lip.
If this was the knight Pelleas, what then? Gorlois could not reason for the moment; his brain seemed a mass of molten metal in a bowl of iron. Convictions settled slowly, hardened and took form. Igraine had loved the man Pelleas; Igraine was his wife; he had lost her and Brastias also; poison and the sword waited to do their work. Supposing then this Pelleas was in quest of Igraine; supposing they had come to know each other again; supposing Brastias and Pelleas were one and the same man. Hell and furies—what a thought was this! It goaded Gorlois into action. He would ride after the man, hunt him, track him, in hope of some fragment of the truth. Hazard and hate, blood and battle, these were more welcome than chafing within walls as in a cage, or frying on a bed as on a gridiron.
Gorlois’s voice rang through gallery and hall like a battle-cry.
“Ho, there!—my sword and harness.”
There was a grimness in the sound that made those who came to arm him bustle for dear life. They knew his black, furious humour, the hand that struck like a mace, the tyranny that took blood for trifles. The stoutest of them were cowards before that marred and moody face. Be as brisk as they would, they were too slow for Gorlois’s temper, a temper vicious as a wounded bear’s.
“God and the Saints—was ever man served by such a pack of stiff-fingered fools! The devil take your fumbling. Go and gird up harlots, or hold cooking-pots. On with that helmet.”
A fellow, very white about the mouth, clapped the casque on, and drew a quick breath when the angry eyes withered him no longer. Armlets, breastplates, greaves, cuishes, all were on. Gorlois seemed to emit fire like metal at white heat. He went clanging down stairway and through atrium to the courtyard, where a horseboy held a white charger. Gorlois cuffed the lad aside, mounted with a spring, took his spear from an esquire, and rode straight for the gate, his horse’s hoofs sparking fire from the courtyard stones. Half an hour or more had gone since Pelleas had passed by on his black horse, and Gorlois spurred at a gallop through Caerleon, bent on catching sight of the red knight before he should have ridden into the covering masses of the woods.
Pelleas meanwhile rode on like a lad whose first quest led him into the infinite romance of the unknown. Woods and waters called; bare night and the blink of the stars summoned up that strangeness in life that is like wine to the heart of the strong and the brave. He was young again—young in the first glory of arms; the world shone glamoured as of old as he turned from the high-road to a bridle-track that led up through woods towards the north.
Holding on at a level pace he passed the woods and saw them rolling back like a green cataract towards the sea. Bare hills saluted him; the beacon height with its great wooden cross stood out against the sky; mile on mile of wooded land billowed out before him, clouded with a blue haze where the domes of the trees rose innumerably rank on rank. The Abbey of the Holy Mary lay low in meadows on his left, its fish pools shimmering in the sun, its orchards densely green about its walls. Two leagues or more of wood and wild, a climb over hills, a long descent, and Usk again shone out trailing distant in the hollows. A crumbling tower stood up above the trees. Pelleas passed close to it, giving antiquity due reverence as was his custom, looking up at its ivied walls, its crown of gillyflowers, its windows wistful as a blind man’s eyes. Another mile and Usk ran at his feet. A hermitage stood by the ford. Pelleas gave the good man a piece of silver and besought his prayers before he rode down and splashed through the river to the further bank. Heathland and scrub rolled to the east, merging into the blue swell of a low line of hills. It was wild country enough, haunted by snipe and crested plover, an open solitude that swept into a purple streak against the northern sky.
It was noon before Pelleas had made an end of its shadeless glare and taken to the hills that rose gently towards the east. His red harness moving over the green was lost to Gorlois, who had missed the trail long ago in the woods beyond St. Mary’s. It was dusk when the Cornishman came guided to the ford, and learnt from the hermit there that the chase lay across Usk and eastward over the heath. Gorlois gave the man no piece of silver, only a savage curse to gag his alms-seeking. Night came and caught him in the open, and rather than wander astray in the dark he spent the night under a whin bush, calming his incontinent temper as best he might.