Autumn had cast her scarlet girdle about Avalon; the woods were aflame with the splendours of the dying year. The oaks stood pavilions of green and gold; the beeches domes of burnished bronze; from their silver stems, birches fountained forth showers of amber. It was a season of crystal skies, of cloud galleons, bulwarked with gold, sailing the wine-red west. Wild Autumn wandered in the ruined woods, her long hair streaking the gilded gloom, her voice elfin under the stars. Even as she passed, the crisp leaves swirled and fell, a pall for the dying year. Avalon slumbered amid her lilies and the painted woods, gorgeous as rare tapestries, curtaining her meadows. Her mere laughed and glimmered amid the flags and lily leaves, and lapped at the lichened bases of her towers. Avalon had arisen from her desolation. No longer were her chambers void, her gates broken, her courts the haunt of death. The bat and the screech-owl had fled from her towers. She had lifted up her face to the dawn, like a mourner who turns from the grave to gaze again upon the golden face of joy. Time with his scythe of silver rested on the hills. The black dragon of war had crawled sated to the labyrinths of the past; the red throne of ambition had been consumed by fire. Peace came forth with her white-faced choir, swinging their golden censers, shedding a purple perfume of hope over the blackened land. The death wolves had slunk to the wilds, the vultures had soared from the fields. A splendid calm had descended upon the land, a silence as of heaven after the hideous masque of war. The cloud-wrack and thunder had passed from the sky. Men heard again the voice of God. Six weeks had gone since the sacking of Gilderoy, and dead Duessa’s bower in Avalon had been garnished for a second mistress. A white rose lurked in a whorl of green. The oriel, with its re-jewelled glass, looked out upon the transient splendours of the woods. Tapestry clothed the walls, showing knights and maidens wandering through flowering meads. Rare furniture had been taken from the wrecked palaces of Gilderoy and given to the Lord Flavian by the King. That autumntide Modred played seneschal in Avalon. He had cleansed and regarnished the castle by his lord’s command, and garrisoned it with men taken from the King’s own guard. Moreover, in Gilderoy he had found an old man groping miserlike amid the ruins, filthy and querulous. The pantaloon when challenged had confessed to the name of Aurelius, and the profession of Medicine by royal patent in that city. The townsfolk had spared his pompous neck for the sake of the benefits of his craft. From the fat, proud, prosperous worthy he had cringed into a wrinkled, flap-cheeked beggar. Him Modred had caught like a veritable pearl from the gutter, and brought with other household perquisites into Avalon.