What did she know, and what was she about? How
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:
