“Rogue!”
Once, twice, a streaking shadow rose and fell with the faintest glinting of steel. There was a staggering sound, a wet cough, a sharp-drawn breath, and then silence. Malmain fell against the wall with her hands to her side, held rigid a moment, and then slid into a heap. Mark bent over the woman and gripped her wrist.
In a short while he left the body lying there and moved to the door. Sliding his long fingers over the panels, he found the spring that marked the catch. Light streamed through into the gallery and fell upon Malmain as she lay huddled against the wall, her hair trailing along the floor like rills of blood.
A lamp burnt in the room, showering a thin silvery lustre from its pedestal, leaving the angles in dull brown shadow. The room was bare and bleak as a beggar’s attic. The one window had been shuttered up against the rain, and the crazy lattice shook in the wind. The whole tower seemed to quake, pressed upon by the broad shoulders of the storm.
Gorlois’s wife lay asleep on a rough bed in the centre of the room. Mark went forward and stood over her. The light fell upon Igraine’s face and haloed it with a quiet radiance. Her hands were folded over her breast, and the man looking upon her face saw it drawn and haggard even in sleep. It had a kind of tragic fairness, a stained beauty like the wistful strangeness of an autumnal garden. It was pale, piteous, thin, and spiritual. The flesh shone like white wax; the short hair glimmered like a net of gold.
So changed, so ethereal, was the face of the sleeper, that the man stood and looked at her with gradual awe. Passed indeed was the blood-red rose of life, green summer with its ecstasy of song. Autumn’s rich tapestries of bronze and gold were falling before the wind of winter and the shrill sword of death. The woman on the bed looked like some pale princess slumbering out her doom in some baleful tower.
Igraine’s sleep was shallow and ineffectual, a restless stupor impressed upon a troubled mind. The storm seemed to figure in her dreams. A kind of splendid misery played upon her face, such misery as floods forth from some old legend, strange and sad. Her hands tossed to and fro over the coverlet like fallen flowers stirred by a wind. Her lids drooped over half-opened eyes.
A sudden gust broke the catch of the casement, and swung the frame into the room. All the boisterous laughter of the storm seemed to sweep in with the wind. With the racket Igraine woke and started up in bed upon her elbow. The lamp flame, draught-slanted over the rim, gave but a feeble light; the room was filled with wavering darkness.
Mark stood back from the bed. There was blood upon his tunic. For a moment he was speechless like a man caught in a theft.
In the dim light and to the half-awakened senses of the sleeper, the intruder stood for Gorlois, beard, face, and figure. A moment’s hesitancy lost Mark the lead. The door stood wide. What ensued came crowded into the compass of a few seconds.