“Gil Morrice sat in good greenwood.
He whistled and he sang…
It had dawned upon George already that for some reason of her own Liri was re-telling the whole story of what had happened here. Perhaps not to the end, for how could any ballad encompass everything that had happened? And this was genuine, no doubt of that. The effort he had to make to tear himself out of its spell for an instant was like tearing the heart out of his body. This girl was marvellous. Listen to her now, the voice light and careless again, and yet with an indescribable overtone of premonition and doom disregarded:
“ ‘Oh, what mean all these folk coming?
My mother tarries lang.’
The baron came to the greenwood
With mickle dule and care.
And here he first spied Gil Morrice.
Combing his yellow hair…”
The word, the unexpected, the impossible word, had passed George as it had been meant to do, drawn away before his mental vision in the tension of the story. But suddenly as it slipped away from him he caught it back, and the stab was like a knife-thrust into his consciousness. “My mother…”
My mother!
What did she know, and what was she about? How could she know? This couldn’t be accidental, it couldn’t be purposeless, and it couldn’t be wanton. What Liri Palmer did was considered and meant, and he doubted if she ever took anything back, or regretted much.
He cast a quick glance round into every corner of the room, but everywhere the tension held. She had them all in her hand.
“ ‘No wonder, no wonder, Gil Morrice.
My lady loved thee weel.
The fairest part of my bodie
Is blacker than thy heel.
‘Yet ne’er the less now, Gil Morrice.
For all thy great beautie.
Ye’ll rue the day ye e’er were born.
That head shall go with me.’ ”
The rage and grief of the accompaniment remained low and secret, hurrying bass chords suppressed and stifled. For a few moments she let her instrument brood and threaten, and looked down the room. Inspector Felse was sitting forward, braced and aware. Beside him Lucien was shadowed and still, very still; there was no way of knowing, with all her knowledge of him, what he was going through now. After all, it was not Lucien she was trying to reach.
But there was a movement now in the folds of the half-drawn curtain at the last window. Audrey’s little solitude lay in comparative light, but the curtains were of heavy brocade, and lined, there would be no shadow to betray her. Softly she got up from her place, and softly, softly, with infinite caution, she slipped back step by silent step from her chair, towards the unlatched window. Audrey had understood.
Now cover her, whatever happens. Don’t let any of them look round, don’t loose their senses for an instant. Cry out and cover her with the steely shriek of murder and the savagery of mutilation:
“Now he has drawn his trusty brand
And whatt it on a stone.
And through Gil Morrice’ fair bodie
Has the cauld iron gone.
And he has ta’en Gil Morrice’ head
And set it on a spear.
The meanest man in all his train
Has gotten that head to bear.
And he has ta’en Gil Morrice up.
Laid him across his steed.
And brought him to his painted bower
And laid him on a bed.
The lady sat on castle wall.
Beheld both dale and down.
And there she saw Gil Morrice’ head
Come trailing to the town…”
The clamour of violence died into the lamentable threnody of death. The guitar keened, and the voice extended into the long, fatal declamation of that which can never be put right again. The tension, instead of relaxing, wound itself ever tighter until it was unendurable. The singer’s face, sharpened in the concentrated light upon her, was raised to look over the heads of her audience. The lady was at the window, easing it silently open, melting into the outer air.
And this might well have been her voice, if things had gone differently, high, reckless and wild, as she came down from her tower to welcome her lover, her life laid waste about her for ever:
“ ‘Far better I love that bloody head.
But and that golden hair.
Than Lord Barnard and all his lands.
As they lie here and there.’
And she has ta’en her Gil Morrice
And kissed him cheek and chin.
“I was once as full of Gil Morrice
As the hip is of the stane.
‘I got ye in my father’s house
With mickle sin and shame…’ ”
To the last moment Audrey kept her face turned towards the singer; and as she slipped back through the window the freer light found her face, and showed Liri its white and resolute tranquillity, and the already irrelevant tears on her cheeks. The two women who loved Lucien exchanged one first, last glance of full understanding and acceptance, that paid off all the debts between them.
The spell-binding voice soared in fearful agony to cover the moment of departure:
“ ‘I brought thee up in good greenwood
Under the frost and rain… ’ ”
Audrey was gone, lost to sight at once, across the blind end of the terrace, and down the steps.
George felt the boy beside him strung tight to breaking point. He saw the bright lines of Liri’s face drawn silver-white in the light of the lamp on the dais, the huge eyes fixed and frantic. Something was happening, and yet nothing was happening, not a movement anywhere in the room, she wouldn’t let them move, that long, strong hand of hers that plucked the strings was manipulating them all like marionettes, the generous, wide-jointed fingers that drummed a funeral march on the body of her instrument held them nailed in their places.
“ ‘Oft have I by thy cradle sat
And fondly seen thee sleep.
But now I go about thy bier
The salt tears for to weep…’ ”
In the changing temperature of the evening the normal small dusk wind arose, as suddenly as was its habit here over the open sward. It took the unlatched window and swung it wide against the curtain, seized the folds and set them swinging. A chill draught coursed along the wall, and fluttered the skirts of gold brocade at every window embrasure.
George heard and felt the abrupt, cold whisper from the outer world. He came to his feet with a leap, lunged silently along the wall, and whisked round the curtain to the open window, now swinging fitfully in the fresh currents of air.
Far down the slope of grass he saw the fair head receding. The curtain shook, and he, too, was gone, down the steps and after her in a soundless run. And Lucien, the thread of his passionate concentration broken by the sudden movement beside him, came out of his dream to the sharper and more personal pains of the real world. She saw him rise, and felt the belated shock of knowledge and realisation sear through him; but there was nothing she could do, as he groped his way blindly after George, except sing on to the end, prolong the postlude, cover the slight, the very slight disturbance, and make those few who had noticed it forget it had ever been.
“ ‘And syne she kissed his bloody cheek
And syne his bloody chin:
‘Oh, better I love my Gil Morrice
Than all my kith and kin.’
‘Away, away, ye ill woman.
And an ill death may ye dee.
Had I but known he’d been your son.
He’d ne’er been slain for me.’ ”
Five minutes more, to preserve the integrity of the course, and nobody, certainly not the professor, would dream of filling in with something smaller after this monstrous tour-de-force. Liri knew her worth. But don’t let them go yet, hold them fast, keep them from looking out of the windows yet, tie their feet from following. She didn’t know what she had done, but she knew there must be no interference with it now, no well-meaning onlookers, no witnesses to tell the story afterwards.