Armorel of Lyonesse. Walter Besant
and fern, the latter brown and yellow in September. Among the fern at this season stood the tall dead stalks of foxglove. Here and there were patches of short turf set about with the withered flowers of the sea-pink, and the long branches of the bramble lay trailing over the ground. The hand of some prehistoric giant has sprinkled the slopes of this hill with boulders of granite: they are piled above each other so as to make carns, headlands, and capes with strange resemblances and odd surprises. Upon the top they found a small plateau sloping gently to the north.
'See!' said Armorel. 'This is the finest thing we have to show on Samson, or on any of the islands. This is the burial-place of the kings. Here are their tombs.'
'What kings?' asked Dick, looking about him. 'Where are the tombs?'
'The kings,' Roland repeated; 'there can be no other kings. These are their tombs. Do not interrupt.'
'The ancient kings,' Armorel replied, with historic precision. 'These mounds are their tombs. See—one—two—half a dozen of them are here. Only kings had barrows raised over them. Did you expect graves and headstones, Dick Stephenson?'
'Oh, these are barrows, are they?' he replied, in some confusion. A man of the world does not expect to be caught in ignorance by the solitary inhabitant of a desert island.
'A long time ago,' Armorel went on, 'these islands formed part of the mainland. Bryher and Tresco, St. Helen's, Tean, St. Martin's and St. Mary's, were all joined together, and the road was only a creek of the sea. Then the sea washed away all the land between Scilly and the Land's End. They used to call the place Lyonesse. The kings of Lyonesse were buried on Samson. Their kingdom is gone, but their graves remain. It is said that their ghosts have been seen. Dorcas saw them once.'
'I should like to see them very much,' said Roland.
'If you were here at night, we could go out and look for them. I have been here often after dark looking for them.'
'What did you see?'
She answered like unto the bold Sir Bedivere—who, perhaps, was standing on that occasion not far from this hill-top.
'I saw the moonlight on the rocks, and I heard the beating of the waves.'
Quoth Dick: 'The spook of a king of Lyonesse would be indeed worth coming out to see.'
Armorel led the way to a barrow, the top of which showed signs of the spade.
'See!' she said. 'Here is one that has been opened. It was a long time ago.'
There were the four slabs of stone still in position which formed the sides of the grave, and the slab which had been its cover lying close beside.
Armorel looked into the grave. 'They found,' she whispered, 'the bones of the king lying on the stone. But when someone touched them they turned to dust. There is the dust at your feet in the grave. The wind cannot bear it away. It may blow the sand and earth into it, but the dust remains. The rain can turn it into mud, but it cannot melt it. This is the dust of a king.'
The young men stood beside her silent, awed a little, partly by the serious look in the girl's face, and partly because, though it now lay open to the wind and rain, it was really a grave. One must not laugh beside the grave of a man. The wind lifted Armorel's long locks and blew them off her white forehead: her eyes were sad and even solemn. Even the short-sighted Dick saw that his friend was right: they were soft black eyes, not of the gipsy kind; and he repented him of a hasty inference. To the artist it seemed as if here was a princess of Lyonesse mourning over the grave of her buried king and—what?—father—brother—cousin—lover? Everything, in his imagination, vanished—except that one figure: even her clothes were changed for the raiment—say the court mourning—of that vanished realm. And also, like Sir Bedivere, he heard nothing but the wild water lapping on the crag.
And here followed a thing so strange that the historian hesitates about putting it down.
Let us remember that it is thirty years, or thereabouts, since this barrow was laid open; that we may suppose those who opened it to have had eyes in their heads; that it has been lying open ever since; and that every visitor—to be sure there are not many—who lands on Samson is bound to climb this hill and visit this open barrow with its perfect kistvaen. These things borne in mind, it will seem indeed wonderful that anything in the grave should have escaped discovery.
Roland Lee, leaning over, began idly to poke about the mould and dust of the grave with his stick. He was thinking of the girl and of the romance with which his imagination had already clothed this lonely spot; he was also thinking of a picture which might be made of her; he was wondering what excuse he could make for staying another week at Tregarthen's—when he was startled by striking his stick against metal. He knelt down and felt about with his hands. Then he found something and drew it out, and arose with the triumph that belongs to an archæologist who picks up an ancient thing—say, a rose noble in a newly ploughed field. The thing which he found was a hoop or ring. It was covered and encrusted with mould; he rubbed this off with his fingers. Lo! it was of gold: a hoop of gold as thick as a lady's little finger, twisted spirally, bent into the form of a circle, the two ends not joined, but turned back. Pure gold: yellow, soft gold.
'I believe,' he said, gasping, 'that this must be—it is—a torque. I think I have seen something like it in museums. And I've read of them. It was your king's necklace: it was buried with him: it lay around the skeleton neck all these thousand years. Take it, Miss Armorel. It is yours.'
'No! no! Let me look at it. Let me have it in my hands. It is yours'—in ignorance of ancient law and the rights of the lord proprietor—'it is yours because you found it.'
'Then I will give it to you, because you are the Princess of the Island.'
She took it with a blush and placed it round her own neck, bending open the ends and closing them again. It lay there—the red, red gold—as if it belonged to her and had been made for her.
'The buried king is your ancestor,' said Roland. 'It is his legacy to his descendant. Wear the king's necklace.'
'My luck, as usual,' grumbled Dick, aside. 'Why couldn't I find a torque and say pretty things?'
'Come,' said Armorel, 'we have seen the barrows. There are others scattered about—but this is the best place for them. Now I will show you the island.'
The hill slopes gently northward till it reaches a headland or carn of granite boldly projecting. Here it breaks away sharply to the sea. Armorel climbed lightly up the carn and stood upon the highest boulder, a pretty figure against the sky. The young men followed and stood below her.
At their feet the waves broke in white foam (in the calmest weather the Atlantic surge rolling over the rocks is broken into foam), a broad sound or channel lay between Samson and the adjacent island: in the channel half a dozen rocks and islets showed black and threatening.
'The island across the channel,' said Armorel, 'is Bryher. This is Bryher Hill, because it faces Bryher Island. Yonder, on Bryher is Samson Hill, because it faces Samson Island. Bryher is a large place. There are houses and farms on Bryher, and a church where they have service every Sunday afternoon. If you were here on Sunday, you could go in our boat with Peter, Chessun, and me. Justinian and Dorcas mostly stay at home now, because they are old.'
'Can anybody stay on the island, then?' asked Roland, quickly.
'Once the doctor came for Justinian's rheumatism, and bad weather began and he had to stay a week.'
'His other patients meanly took advantage and got well, I suppose,' said Dick.
'I hope so,' Armorel replied simply.
She turned and looked to the north-east, where lie the eastern islands, the group between St. Martin's and St. Mary's, a miniature in little of the greater group. From this point they looked to the eye of ignorance like one island. Armorel