gilderoy had risen.
it was midnight. a great bell boomed and clashed over the city, with a roar of many voices floating on the wind, like the sullen thunder of a rising sea. torches flashed and ebbed along the streets, with hundreds of scampering shadows, and a glinting of steel. knots of armed men hurried towards the great piazza, where, by the city cross, sforza the gonfaloniere and his senators had gathered about the red and white gonfalon of the commune. all the guild companies were there with their banners and men-at-arms. "fulviac," "saint yeoland," "liberty and the commune": such were the watchwords that filled the mouths of the mob.
cressets had burst into flame on the castle's towers, lighting a lurid firmament; while from the steeps of the city, where stood the palaces of the nobles, smoke and flame began to rush ominously into the night. waves of hoarse ululations seemed to sweep the city from north, south, east, and west. trumpets were clanging in the castle, drums beating, fifes braying. through the indescribable chaos the great bell smote on, throbbing through the minutes like the heart of a god.
it will be remembered that the lord flavian was in gilderoy for the purchasing of arms. at midnight you would have found him in his state bed-chamber in the abbot's palace, tugging at his hose, fumbling at his points and doublet, buckling on his sword. he was hardly awake with the single taper winking in the gloom. the shrill ululations of the mob sounded through the house, with the clash of swords and the crash of hammers. the lord flavian craned from the window, saw what he could, heard much, and wondered if hell had broken loose.
"fulviac and the commune!"
"saint yeoland!"
"down with the lords, down with the priests!"
the man at the window heard these cries, and puzzled them out in his peril. certainly he was a lord; therefore unpopular. and yeoland! wherefore was that name sounding on the tongues of brothel-mongers and cooks! was he still dreaming? certes, these rallying-cries carried a certain blunt hint, advising him that he would have to care for his own skin.
malise, his page, knelt at the door with his ear to the key-hole. the boy was in his shirt and breeches, and trembling like an aspen. flavian stood over him. they heard a rending sound as of a gate giving, a roar as of water breaking through a dam, a yelp, a scream or two, a confused medley of many voices.
flavian told malise to open the door and look out into the gallery. he did so. a man, more zealous than the rest, sprang out of the dark and stabbed at the lad's throat. he fell with a whimper. flavian plunged his sword home, dragged malise within, barred the door again. very tenderly he lifted the boy in his arms. malise's hands clung about his lord's neck; he moaned a little, and was very white.
"save yourself, messire!"
flavian bore him towards a door that stood open in the panelling. he felt the lad's blood soaking through his doublet; entreaties were poured into his ears.
"i die, i die; oh, the smart, the burn of it! leave me, messire; let me lie still!"
"nonsense----"
"it is no use; i have it deep, the man's knife went home."
flavian felt the lad's hands relax, saw his head droop on his shoulder. he turned and put him down on the bed, and knelt there, while malise panted and strove to speak.
"go--messire."
flavian was trying to staunch the flow from the boy's neck with a corner of the sheeting. his own doublet was drenched with blood. in a minute he saw the futility of such unconscious heroism; the flickering taper by the bed told that malise's life would ebb before its own light would be gutted. blows were being dealt upon the door. flavian kissed the lad, took the taper, and passed out by the panel in the wainscotting.
a stairway led him to a little gate that opened on the abbot's garden. he more than thought to find the passage disputed, but the place stretched quiet before him as he came out with sword drawn. the scent of the flowers and fragrant shrubs was heavy on the night air, and the shouts of the mob sounded over the black roofs, and rang in his ears with an inspiriting fury.
there was a gate at the far end of the garden, opening through a stone wall into a narrow alley, and flavian, as he scoured the paths, could see pike points bobbing above the wall, and a flare of torches. men were breaking in even here, and he was caught like a rat in a corner. in an angle of the wall he found a big marrow bed, and crawling under the leaves like a worm, he smeared dirt over his face and clothes and awaited developments. in another minute the garden gate fell away, and a tatterdemalion rout poured in, strenuous and frothy as any tavern pack. they spread over the garden towards the house, shouting and blaspheming like a herd of satyrs. flavian saw his chance, plunged from his dark corner, and joined the mob of moving figures. dirty face and dirtier clothes were in kindred keeping. he shouted as lustily as any, and by dint of gradual and discreet circumlocutions, edged to the gate and escaped into the now-deserted alley.
running on, he skirted the abbey and came out into the square that flanked the abbey church, and the great gate. a hundred torches seemed moving behind the abbey windows. the square teemed and smoked with riot. flavian went into the crowd with drawn sword, screeching out mob cries like any huckster, smiting men on the back, laughing and swearing as in excellent humour. his gusto saved him. as he passed through the mob he saw heads, gory and mangled, dancing upon pikes; he saw women drunk with beer and violence, waving a severed foot or hand, kissing men, hugging each other, mouthing unutterable obscenities in the mad delirium of the hour. he saw whelps of boys scrambling and struggling for some ghastly relic; scavengers and sweeps dressed up in the habits of the benedictines they had slain. one man carried in his palm an eye that had been torn from its socket, which he held with a leer in the faces of his fellows. further still, he saw half a dozen beggars dragging the dead body of a lady over the stones by cords fastened to the ankles, while dogs worried and tore at the flesh. he learnt afterwards that it was the body of his own cousin, a young girl who had been lately betrothed. last of all, he saw a carcase dangling from a great iron lamp bracket in the centre of the square, and understood from the crowd that it was the body of the abbot, his uncle. men and women were pelting it with offal.
and he, an aristocrat of aristocrats, dirty and dishevelled, rubbed shoulders with the scourings of the gutter, shouted their shouts, echoed their exultation. at first the grim humour of the thing smote him in grosser farcical fashion; but the mood was not for long. he remembered malise, whimpering and quivering in his arms; he remembered the body dragged about the square and worried by dogs; he remembered the carcase swinging by the rope; he remembered the dripping heads and the fragments of flesh tossed about by the maddened and intoxicated mob. it was then that his eyes grew hot with shame and his blood ran like lava through his veins. it was then that the spirit of a vampire rushed into his heart, and that he swore great solemn oaths by all the bones and relics of the saints. god give him a hale body out of gilderoy, and this city scum should be scourged with iron and roasted by fire.
he got across the square by dint of his noisy hypocrisy, and turned morosely into a dark alley that led towards the walls. hot-hearted gentleman, the mere panic-stricken thirst for existence had cooled out of him, and he was in a fine, rendering passion to his finger-tips, a striding, blasphemous temper, that longed to take the whole city by the throat and beat a fist in its bloated face. he wondered what had become of his knights, esquires, and men-at-arms. it was told him in later days how they died fighting in the abbey refectory, died with the benedictines at their side, and a rare barrier of corpses to tell of the swing of their swords.
flavian dodged into a dark porch to consider his circumstances and the baffling influence of the same. he had caught enough from the mob to comprehend what had occurred, and what was to follow. certainly for many months he had heard rumours, but, like other demigods, he had turned a deaf ear and smiled like a saturn. the largeness of the upheaval stupefied him at first; now, as he pondered it, it gave a more heroic colour to his passions.
to be free of gilderoy: that was the necessity. he guessed shrewdly enough that the gates would be well guarded. and the walls! he smote his thigh and remembered where the river coursed round the rocky foundations, and washed the walls. a big plunge, a swim, and he would have liberty enough and to spare.
he set off instanter down alleys and byways, through the most poverty-stricken quarter of the city. the place had a hundred stenches on a hot summer night. naturally enough, such haunts were deserted, save for a few hags garrulous at the doorways, and a few fragments of dirt, called by courtesy, children. the rats had gone marauding, leaving their offal heaps empty.
keen as a fox, he threaded on, and came before long to the walls, a black mass, rising above the hovels packed like pigsties to the very ramparts. avoiding a tower, he held along a lane that skirted the wall, looking for one of the many stairways leading to the battlements. it was here, in the light of a tavern window, that he came plump upon two sweaty artisans, rendered somewhat more gross and insolent by the fumes of liquor. the men challenged flavian with drunken arrogance; they had their password, to the devil. all the accumulated viciousness of an hour tingled in his sword arm. he fell upon the men like a barak, kicked one carcase into the gutter, and ran on.
he was soon up a stairway, and on the walls, finding them absolutely deserted. the city stretched behind him, a black chaos, emitting a grim uproar, its dark slopes chequered here and there with angry flame. before him swept the river, and he heard it swirling amid the reeds. further still, meadows lay open to the stars, and in the distance stood solemn woods and heights, touched with the silver of the sky.
he moved on to where a loop of the river curled up to wash the walls. the water was in full flood at the place, and he heard it gurgling cheerily against the stones. flavian took a last look at gilderoy, its castle red with burning cressets, its multitudinous roofs, its uproar like the noise of a nest of hornets. he shook his fist over the city, climbed the battlements, jumped for it, plunged like a log, came up spluttering to strike out for the further bank.
in the meadows the townsfolk kept horses at graze. flavian, aglow to the finger-tips, with water squelching from his shoes, caught a cob that was hobbled in a field hard by the river. he unhobbled the beast, hung on by the mane, mounted, and set off bare-back for the road to gambrevault.
