CHAPTER VI
Many a year had passed since the rough folk of the Seven Streams had first murmured against the sleek and masterful priests whose god seemed the god of wine-bibbing and of greed. Arrogance and luxury and all manner of uncleanness had spread through the abbeys of the land, staining the robes of the Church with scarlet, tainting every holy place. Charity had become as naught; lust and avarice had walked hand in hand; tyranny and violence had reigned together.
Thus through many long years there had been a great sundering of the sympathies of the people from the tall towers and gorgeous palaces of the Church. Not openly had the slow change come, but with stealth, even as the earth’s crust is mined by the tunnelling of subterranean streams. Celibacy, that perilous plant, had cast its unclean tendrils over the land, bearing dark fruit in many a solemn haunt, making vain show, hiding the bane beneath. Slowly all reverence had elapsed, and fear had been swallowed up in hate. From the broad lands and the dark forests teeming with wild beasts, murmurings, like the moanings of the wind, had spread and gathered through the Seven Streams.
Then Samson had come, like some tall demigod out of the dark unknown. Was it not told that all the wisdom of the East had been hoarded and stored within his brain? The philosophic lore of Greece was his. The sages of Egypt and the grey fathers of the Church had poured their mystic learning into his soul. Plotinus and Augustine, philosopher and Christian patriarch, had mingled in him their spiritual zeal. Half priest, half poet, half soldier, and half seer, he had lifted his voice in the Seven Streams, preaching Christ crucified, even as the Galileans had preached of old.
To him the rude instincts of the peasantry had risen, eager and passionate, hungering for the truth. Serf and lord had mingled in one cause. Many a good married priest, condemned because his heart was a father’s heart, had come to Samson, zealous for the faith. Then the deep thunder of the Great Pontificate had echoed over the streams and mountains. Synod and council had dared the strife; church and grave had been sealed up fast; anathema and interdict had followed on. The dead had been buried in unhallowed ground; the bread and wine had been denied the land. Still Samson had preached, so that the province followed him, even till the great abbeys were empty and in ruins, the shrines and churches given to the dust. So fierce and turbulent had waxed the storm that monk and priest had fled to the far south, fearing the people and the people’s enmity.
That same evening when Tristan came to Joyous Vale there was a gathering of the peasantry on the castle terrace to hear Samson the Heretic hold forth. He had ridden in towards vespers, a big man, cowled and cloaked, on a gaunt grey mare. By custom, a room had been set apart for him in Ronan’s tower, to serve as an oratory and cell. Here he could retreat like a hermit to his cave, and refresh in solitude both the flesh and the spirit, like the reasonable Christian that he was.
Above the terrace, the grey walls of the tower, crusted with lichen, rose towards the azure of the evening sky. A great silence covered the valley, save for the bleating of sheep in the meadows, the cry of the lapwing from the marshes. Distance purpled the far horizon; the woods stood wondrous green and fair. Peace prevailed over garden and garth; as yet there was no muttering of war beyond the hills.
Rosamunde sat in a great carved chair, draped at the back with scarlet cloth. Ronan her husband stood at her side. He was a lean man, with prominent shoulders, shallow eyes, and a cold mouth. The peasant folk sat on the benches before them. Rosamunde’s women were at her feet.
Tristan had throned himself on the wall where cactuses grew in urns of stone and gillyflowers flourished, yellow and red. He was watching Rosamunde and Ronan her lord. The man by the chair pleased Tristan little. The hollow chest, the sullen eye promised nothing virile in the matter of arms. It puzzled Tristan how he had won such a wife, for they were as a rose and a mandrake bound up together.
His cogitations were ended by the opening of a door. Samson in his black robe came out on the terrace. A wooden cross hung at his girdle; he wore leather sandals and an iron chain round his neck. Waving the peasant folk back as they thronged him, he took a stool of cedar wood that stood by the wall. Putting back the cowl from off his face, he gazed round on those who awaited his words.
Though a seeming monk, he wore no tonsure; the black hair was cropped close to the massive head. Seated there in the western glow, he looked like a Homeric hero with the face of a Jove. The eyes were black, bright as polished stone. The long jaw curved prominently under the thin, straight mouth. The brows met in a black line over the nose. A mass of passion and virile power, he faced the peasantry like a prophet of God.
As Tristan watched him, he began to speak, moving his hands to time his words. His voice bewitched from the first sound, and the simple folk before him were as still as stones. Even Tristan forgot Dame Rosamunde’s face.
Samson’s theme was simple and strong, yet grand in its bold simplicity. He expounded the pure spirit of the Christian creed, brushed aside dogmas, denounced outward forms. His convictions were great, his scorn as powerful. Greed in high places, luxury and lust, pride and simony, these were his victims. Casting Christ’s ideals against the pomp of the Church, he mined the rotten fabric with his tongue.
“People of La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said, “clean hearts avail with Heaven, clean souls, clean lives. Labour in the fields is a prayer to God. Live that you may not fear death; live that your lives may demand entry into Heaven. Actions build the stairway up to God, good deeds, pure thoughts. Believe not those who promise you salvation with hired prayers and the melting of much wax. Gold cannot bribe God. The Church’s wings cannot waft you into paradise if you are weighted with the iron girdle of your sins. Pardons, penitences, the ringing of bells, these are but mummeries to deceive your souls. Serve God in your hearts, and you will have no need of a Pope.”
Tristan’s eyes had wandered from the preacher to Rosamunde’s face. Its expression stirred him, even as a falling star smites the vision of one watching the night sky. The woman’s eyes were fixed on Samson’s face, with a certain passionate intentness that made Tristan wonder. The half-petulant curve had vanished from her mouth. A warm radiance seemed to burn upon her cheeks; her eyes were more bright than the stones at her throat.
By sudden instinct Tristan glanced at Ronan, who stood beside Rosamunde, leaning on her chair. The man’s narrow face was half in shadow. He was watching his wife with a curious stare, fingering his chin, his thin lips working. He appeared to be studying the play of thought on her face, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. More than once he cast a rapid glance at the preacher, like the glance a jealous hound casts at a rival.
To Tristan there was a strange underchant to the song, a secret movement he could not catch. Samson’s eyes were on the people before him, Rosamunde’s eyes on Samson’s face, Lord Ronan’s on the face of his wife. Tristan watched the three with his instincts groping in the dusk. He listened no more to the preacher’s words, but watched in silence the play before him.
The sun had ridden low upon the hills. In the gardens and thickets beneath the terrace a hundred birds made their vesper song. Shadows, purple and gold, increased on the lake. In the west, the moon was heaving up a broad shoulder above the world. A great silence descended like dew out of the heavens. Odours of rose and myrtle flooded the air.
From his vigil, Tristan woke to find the peasantry moving, Samson standing alone by the wall. The man had drawn down his cowl and re-knotted his girdle. He passed back slowly towards the door, walking gravely with his chin on his chest. Tristan was watching Rosamunde’s face. He saw her take a deep breath under her robe, her hands hanging limp over the carved rails of her chair. Her head seemed to droop on the scarlet cushion, as she watched Samson under half-closed lids. The town showed dim in the green gloom beneath, like white coral glimmering under the sea. An hour passed, and found Tristan on the terrace. Far beneath the lake shimmered, touched by the rising light of the moon. The cry of wild duck came from the shallows. In the thickets a choir of nightingales had broken the silence together.
On the terrace, Tristan had drawn beneath the shade of a cypress, that rose like a spire from the garden beneath. He was leaning his chin on his crossed forearms, staring out over the scene. The valley was as a battleground betwixt moonlight and gloom. The hill-tops led the silver host on, the water gleamed with the beat of their feet. In the deeps of the woods and the hollows of the hills the gloom kept the banners of the night unfurled.
There was a rough melancholy in Tristan’s mood. Samson’s words were as the noise of swords dinning perpetually within his brain. A vigorous zest breathed in the creed, a flash of the green woods, a scent of the sea. The bold truths of the man’s harangue were woven in his thought like a crown round Rosamunde’s brow. Her large eyes haunted him, wistful and brave. He remembered also her husband’s face, with its lack-lustre malice, its cold distrust. There was some romance in this heretical crown with the great stones set in its band, the treacherous opal scowling yellow and green, the sapphire blue and bold in the sun, the ruby red with its passionate fire.
Two voices came to Tristan out of the gloom, as he loitered on the terrace under the stars. Hunching his shoulders, he drew towards the tree. The voices came from the garden below, where there was a yew walk by the wall.
The first voice was Rosamunde’s; Tristan caught the mellow tones out of the dark. Anger flooded it, to judge by its temper. A second voice echoed the woman’s, a cold drawl, vain yet bitter. It was the Lord of Vallée Joyeuse who walked with her under the yews.
“Madame, I may claim some reverence from you,” came the taunt. “God knows, I am only your husband; a poor reason, it seems. This braggart preacher bulks too large in our house.”
“He is a man, messire. You are jealous, eh?”
“You suggest, madame wife, that there is cause for the passion.”
Silence held a moment, a pause as for breath. Tristan’s mouth hardened. It was the woman’s voice that sounded next, a ringing scorn in it that made Tristan’s eyes glitter.
“Is marriage a surety for insolence?” it said.
“Insolence! Is the truth insolent?”
“Shall I suffer this, though I am your wife?”
“Husbands, madame, suffer no tricking of their honour, save when they are blind bats and fools.”
There was again a pause. Rosamunde’s words came clear and passionate as the notes of a well-tuned harp.
“Man, you have said enough to me, though you are my mate.”
“Regret it, madame, as much as you will.”
“Ha!”
“But beware of trickery.”
“These lies, I’ll not brook them——”
“Cultivate discretion.”
“Silence! I am no puppet, though you have wedded me.”
The voices passed westwards under the yews, growing faint as the angle of the terrace came between. Tristan stood up, and spread his broad shoulders. There was an ugly look in his eyes, a firm closing of his iron mouth. He tightened his sword belt, passed from under the stars to the hall, spoke little as he sat at supper with Ronan’s men.
CHAPTER VII
Seven days had passed, and Tristan was still lodged under Rosamunde’s roof. Of his sister Columbe he had won no word, yet he tarried in Joyous Vale in Rosamunde’s service. The woman had need of a loyal sword. Tristan had learnt to serve her there with the quick instinct of a great-hearted dog. There was much of the mother in her mood towards the man; nor did she dower his face with any deeper passion.
Shadows had deepened round Joyous Vale, and vague rumours had come from the south, whisperings of sword and torch and the march of armed men. A shepherd had seen dim sails upon the sea. As to what summer would bring to them, prophecy stood silent. Rosamunde’s state was no easy one, as Tristan had gathered, for she was watched and spied upon by her husband’s men. Ronan’s jealousy was as a snake coiled in the grass, ready to dart and flesh its fangs. She could no more trust him than she could trust a priest. Moreover, his malice hindered her cause, barred her from plotting to save her people. Samson alone could help her in this, and Ronan’s jealousy kept the two apart.
It was the morning of Tristan’s second Sabbath there. He was on the terrace burnishing his arms, when Isabel, Rosamunde’s woman, crept out to him from the tower. He was to take horse and follow her lady that morning. She had need of him, and trusted his honour.
Tristan, having saddled and bridled his horse, rode out and met Rosamunde at the gate. She was mounted on a white palfrey, her woman Isabel beside her on a mule. Tristan saluted them, a silent discretion in his deep-set eyes. To him Rosamunde’s beauty was as the breath of June.
They rode out down the slope of the hill, where the gardens amid the thickets were ablaze under the noon sun. Rosamunde was clad in a green robe, with a girdle of red leather shaped to her figure. She rode on before Tristan and the woman Isabel, as though not sorry of solitude and freedom from stone walls. There was a calm unapproachableness about her, which, when she so willed it, became as a wall of glimmering ice. Her words, often imperious and curt, would have suggested insolence on the lips of one less fair. Tristan had seen her angered but once. There had been something of the splendour of a stormy sunset about the mood, a red rush of passion that had bewitched him more than smiles.
As they left the town behind a screen of poplars, Rosamunde called Tristan to her, but gestured Isabel to remain behind. Her lips had much scorn on them that day, scorn for her husband, jejune and jealous pedant that he was. Of the red wine of her love Lord Ronan had tasted little. She was unsmirched as a rose, pure as an ivory palace conceived in some deep dream.
Tristan eyed her over his massive shoulder, wondering much what was in her heart. A mask of thought covered her face, as she gazed ahead into the deeps of the woods. True, there was much in her heart to breed unrest, yet Tristan was as a child in a temple, ignorant of the many and manifold visions stirring within her brain. La Vallée Joyeuse stretched out before her, like a calm sea untouched by the wind. Yet beyond the mountains the black banners of war gathered. Fanaticism was streaming like fire to purge and to destroy. Had not the Pope armed the southern nobles against the land? Had not Sir Parsival put his legate to the sword?
Rosamunde, great lady that she was, feared not for herself the peril of a zealot’s war. The people of La Vallée Joyeuse were to her as children. She was their lady, and they loved her, even because she was gracious and merciful, a friend set above them like an altared saint. It was her spirit that had opened their rude hearts to Samson’s heresy. She, the first convert in mind and soul, had drawn them after her, as a shepherdess draws her sheep.
As for the lords and barons of the Seven Streams, they were scattered wide amid their woods and hills. Samson had preached and they had listened. Mewed in their mountains and their forest gloom, they were deaf to the thunder of ecclesiastic wrath. Ronan of Joyous Vale, first lord of the province, was mere selfish clay, careless of his people, jealous of his wife. His very malice made her mute to him. On Samson, rugged Titan piling mountains against the Papal Jove, rested the one ambition of the land.
Drawing Tristan to her that day, Rosamunde unbosomed something of her care to him. There was a serene stateliness in all her words, a tender dignity as of one who stoops, from love, not pride. The man seemed nothing but a casual friend, cast in her path by the hand of circumstance. She trusted him, had trusted from the first, because his face was ugly and his words came slow.
Tristan gathered the truth from her as they rode through the meadows. There was much shrewdness in his turbulent brain. Moreover, Rosamunde had taken hold upon his heart. Sympathies are warm where love treads fast; comprehension kindles when the torch burns bright.
“Lady,” he said to her, in his curt, calm way, “of the burden you bear—I am wise—in measure. Our cross bulks the heavier when the shoulder is chafed.”
“Ah,” she said, with a flash of the eye, “these valley folk are as children to me. I have no babe of my own, so the burden is honest.”
Tristan recalled such war lore as he had learnt from the rough mariners of Purple Isle. He would have served her more gladly with his sword than with his tongue. She had tempted his counsel; he bent his brows and played the philosopher.
“Madame,” he said, “I have heard men say that our fears are like hillocks seen through mist, bulking like mountains through the fog. I have found billows less big when I have breasted them. As for this land of yours, it is a maze of mountains and of woods. You can baulk your enemies, as King David baulked Saul.”
She plucked the strategy from the speech like a gem out of a casket, and played with it to her own good comfort.
“To leave our homes,” she said, “and take to the wilds. There is wisdom in the plan, and yet——”
Tristan attempted more stoical counsel.
“Better let your homes burn than your bodies,” he said. “Scattered and in hiding, you will provide no martyrs for these holy ravagers. They will return empty by their own tracks. Ten men are worth a hundred in the mountains.”
“Ah,” she said, with sudden passionate scorn, “if I could but trust my husband!”
“Trust yourself, madame,” quoth the man on the black horse.
“One staunch friend perhaps. What then?”
Tristan, full of the ready zeal of youth, set forth his faith to her with a gesture of the hand. He went red under his black brows, as though half ashamed of such an outburst of passion.
“Madame,” he said to her, “here is one sword more. I am young—you smile, by God—I have the strength of three. No man in Joyous Vale shall laugh twice in my face.”
“Ah, Tristan,” she said with deepened colour, “I trust you well. Why should I burden you with another’s yoke? What is Joyous Vale to you?”
“Madame,” he said very simply, “my shoulders are broad; try them.”
“To-day, I trust you,” she retorted slowly. “We meet Samson in yonder wood.”
Lines ran across Tristan’s broad forehead; his mouth hardened. He was as a man who felt himself outfaced, disarmed. There was no guile towards him in the woman’s heart, and yet his youth recoiled from her with jealous spleen.
“Madame,” he said half sullenly, looking no longer on her face, “I have promised faith to you. It is enough.”
Before them rose a great barrier of trees, a larch wood set upon the green bosom of a hill, whose slopes fell away towards a vague wilderness of pines. Many flowers and herbs were in bloom upon the hillside. Tristan, sullen of face, drew apart from Rosamunde as they mounted the slope and entered the alleys of the deepening wood. The sun poured through, streaking and ribbing the gloom with gold. Rosamunde’s green gown gleamed richly above her palfrey’s white flanks.
Deeper and deeper they threaded the shade, the grass track growing less green, dusted with cones and the fallen wind wrack of the trees. Whortleberry and heather grew there, with great pools of gorse. The silence increased, hanging like a purple pall, the sunlight plashing fitfully over the multitudinous boughs.
Deep in a dwindling aisle, they saw a man in a black robe seated upon a fallen tree. He rose, came towards them, when he marked the white brow of Rosamunde’s horse. Tristan, watching the woman’s face, a half-jealous gleam deep in his eyes, saw the colour increase the rose-white richness of her skin. She breathed more rapidly, held her head higher, watched Samson keenly as he came towards her under the trees.
Drawing near, he put his cowl back from his face, kissed the hand she stretched to him, held her stirrup while she dismounted. She cast her bridle over Tristan’s wrist, threw a rapid glance at him as he sat hunched and sullen upon his horse.
“Wait,” she said with an imperious tone tinging her voice, “watch, keep guard.”
Tristan, turning with a word, took the white palfrey and his own black horse, tethered them to a tree on the eastern side of the ride. Isabel had joined him on her mule, a smile on her broad mouth as she noted the man’s sour face. Samson and Rosamunde were pacing the grass together, looking in each other’s eyes as they talked. There was much on either tongue, question and counter-question, words as to the war and the gathering in the south.
The woman Isabel had slipped lightly from her mule. She was a plump, yellow-skinned wench, with roguish eyes and a red patch of colour over either cheek-bone. Her tongue was equal to her temper. Tristan, leaning against the trunk of a tree, paid no heed to her as he stared at Samson and the lady. The man’s stride spoke of his power; he gesticulated as he talked, and his words flowed fast. Rosamunde’s green gown swept the grass in stately fashion. She walked with arched neck and supple waist, her hair glimmering under its golden net, her red-slippered feet gliding glibly over the turf. Tristan gazed at her and marvelled. For the moment he half hated her for her loveliness and for the calm pride that kept him chained.
He awoke to find the woman Isabel at his elbow, peering with parted lips into his face. She smiled in her eyes as they met his, touched her mouth with a fat white hand, moved nearer to him with a little rustle of a sigh like a summer breeze through orange bloom.
“Coz, we are well sorted,” she said with a titter. “A silver cross for your thoughts, boy. Why so sour of face?”
Tristan scowled at her betwixt the brows, and unbent nothing to her coquetry.
“Ha, cousin,” he said, “men find the moon dull when the sun is away.”
“Sun!” she retorted, “you ugly stump! Keep your eyes wide. I am too bright for such as you.”
“Shine hard,” he said to her with a smile. “I shall have no need of a shield.”
She tightened her girdle, smoothed her gown, and eyed Tristan under drooping lids.
“Samson is a handsome fellow,” she said.
Tristan pursed up his mouth and answered her nothing. Rosamunde and the preacher had passed deeper into the wood, and were out of sight and hearing. Tristan would have given much to have known what passed between them under the trees.
“Samson,” said the girl at his elbow, “Samson, sirrah, has the wit to be courteous to a lady. He has no tongue like a tag of undressed leather, nor a face like a dinted buckler red with rust.”
Tristan played with the buckle of his sword belt and wished the woman Isabel a man.
“Ha, cousin,” she ran on, “I have heard of a horse-boy stealing a pair of red shoes, because they had covered a lady’s toes. As for her heart, it was a pearl, a great white pearl, sirrah, not to be breathed upon and handled by grooms. Hark! holy saints, what’s amiss in the wood?”
Isabel had started from her malice like a woman who sees a snake twisting at her feet. She stood rigid, with eyes dilating, her lips apart, the colour gone from her face. Through the alleys of the wood had come a sudden outcry, the loud voice of a man challenging a foe, the passionate declaiming of an angry woman. Tristan, with his back taut as the straining mast of a ship, stood snuffing the air, his muscles quivering, his broad chest spread. In the flash of a second he had plunged down the grass ride at a run, unbuckling his sword as he ran, flinging aside belt and scabbard. Voices, passionate and clamorous, were playing through the trees. They winged on Tristan’s heels, as he sped with tight mouth and kindling eyes under sun and shadow.
Coming upon a narrow glade in the wood, he saw the scene spread out before him. With her back to a tree stood Rosamunde, her eyes ablaze, her head held high. Before her, with uplifted knife, his robe gathered as a buckler in his left hand, stood Samson the Heretic, fronting four armed men who crouched round him like hounds about a boar. Even as Tristan came, they sprang together upon the monk, dragging him down in a moiling heap upon the grass. The fourth snatched out at Rosamunde, caught the neckband of her gown, rent it to the girdle as she strained from him with both hands set upon his face.
Tristan leapt in as though his blood had changed to fire. The man who had seized on Rosamunde sprang away with a red throat and an empty doom. Turning, Tristan plunged upon the three, who struggled and writhed over the powerful figure of the priest. Plucking the uppermost by the girdle, even as he would have plucked a beetle from a stone, Tristan threw him full against the stem of a tree. The man’s breath groaned out of him; he twitched and lay still. Samson, bleeding in the brow, had risen upon the others with a hand on either throat. Tristan, dodging round, ran his sword through the body of the taller man. Samson, bleeding and breathless, rose from the carcass of the other, and made way for Tristan’s blow.
Sudden silence fell upon the pool of death. Rosamunde stood with Tristan and the monk, staring at the brief havoc their hands had wrought. The grass was stained with red. Samson, shaking the blood out of his eyes, turned to Tristan with outstretched hand. Their manhood seemed to meet in that one strong grip. Rosamunde, tearing cloth from the border of her gown, came forward and caught Samson by the sleeve.
The monk knelt to her while she bound the green cloth about his forehead. Tristan stood apart from them, his eyes still ablaze, his great chest rising and falling beneath his hauberk. Jealousy, quenched for the moment, rose again in the hot blood that played about his brain. Turning upon his heel with a last glance at the man lying against the tree, he strode away towards the horses, where the woman Isabel stood with a face white as swan’s-down. To her querulous terror he gave no heed, for there was still bitterness gnawing at his heart. If he had been the wounded one, would Rosamunde have rent her gown?
Some minutes passed before she came towards them under the trees. She came alone, pale and distraught, yet cold outwardly as stone. Samson had parted from her in the woods; their words had been brief, significant as silence. She said nothing to the two who waited; pointed them to their saddles, and neither dared to question her, so imperious and clouded was her face. Then they mounted, rode out, and headed homewards over the fields.
CHAPTER VIII
Rosamunde, pale and silent, rode through the thickets that clothed the castle hill. Not a word had she spoken either to Tristan or to Isabel since she had parted with Samson in the wood. Her face seemed frozen into an unnatural calm, as though she strove to mask the passions that worked within. There was a deeper significance in the adventure than either Isabel or Tristan had imagined.
They wound through the gardens where the sunlight slept upon the lawns, and came through a myrtle thicket to the great gate. The place was deserted, steeped in the noon silence. Tristan, clattering in at a word from Rosamunde, woke a groom sleeping on a bench in the stable court, and sent the man out to take the horses. Rosamunde stood under the shadow of the gate. There was an angry calm upon her face, a statuesque scorn that seemed to prophesy of what should follow.
“Come with me—be silent, both.”
These were her only words to them as she turned towards the terrace, white above the green gardens spread below. At the entry of the passage leading to the great hall and the tower she turned on Tristan and Isabel with a rapid stare from her unwavering eyes. There was deep meaning in that glance of hers. Tristan felt it, even as a bolt piercing his hauberk. With it she challenged his faith, his loyalty towards her as a woman. Laying a finger on her lip, she beckoned them to follow.
Following in silence, they passed the gallery, climbed a short stair, found themselves in a dark entry set back in the thickness of the wall. A streak of light showed where a door stood. Rosamunde, lifting the latch, peered in and entered. Tristan and the woman followed her. They could hear nothing else save each other’s breathing.
A long room stretched with lessening shadow towards a tall window opening on the south, and hangings, green and gold, covered the walls. Eight carved pillars ascended towards the dark vault above. At a table near the window sat a man with his back turned towards the door; the table was littered with fragments of glass, colours, brushes, and illumined scrolls. The man by the window was bending over a glass panel, enamelling a red rose thereon with unsteady hand. He seemed oblivious of the three who watched him from the doorway.
Rosamunde, with her torn robe gathered in her hand, moved into the room, with a glance thrown at Tristan over her shoulder. Following, he stood behind her in the shadow, watching her every movement. She gestured to him to strike one of the pillars with the scabbard of his sword. As the clangour sounded through the room, the man by the table twisted on his chair, sprang up and stared at them, dropping his brush on the stone paving at his feet.
There was a significance in the scene, tinged as it was with the love feud of these two. Rosamunde, tall as a white lily, stared the man down with an imperious scorn that betrayed the truth. Tristan, watching the Lord of Joyous Vale as he would have watched a wolf, saw him pale under his brown hair before the damning figure of his wife. His eyes wavered, his jaw fell. He seemed to stoop, to contract, as a tree shrivels before the breath of a forest fire.
Rosamunde, still gazing on his face, advanced towards him across the room. The man would have fallen back before her had not the table barred his way. Her splendid height, her towering courage, seemed to cast into contrast his cringing guilt.
“Sir, thanks to Heaven, we have returned.”
There was so suggestive a scorn in her voice that the high roof seemed to quiver at the sound. Ronan, moistening his dry lips, frowned and found no answer. The poor smile that he conjured up was as a moonbeam flitting over ice. His blood ran cold; he was afraid, and showed his fear.
“Sir, we have returned,” she said with the slow torture of an unpitying tongue. “For your good welcome, husband, we give you thanks.”
The man bowed to her stiffly, clumsily, like a wooden doll jointed at the hips.
“Madame is ever welcome,” he said; “her prerogative demands it. Need I emphasise the truth?”
She laughed at his words, a laugh that seemed as foreign to her beauty as the cracked cackle of some shrivelled hag.
“Sir, your courtesy bribes me to silence. I see we but hinder you; trifle with such lordly cares as befit your temper. Pick up your brush, sir. Playing with crafty colours upon brittle glass, the pastime pleases you. I would commend it to a man of courage.”
His eyes flashed for the moment, grew dull again like treacherous water. He reached for the brush, to hide his face from her. Rosamunde, gathering her green gown, swept by him with scorn. At the door she turned and cast a last taunt at him over her shoulder.
“Samson the Heretic is well,” she said. “He sends you, sir, his great good will.”
All that noontide Tristan stood on guard at the door of Dame Rosamunde’s room. She was as a white bird in the nest of a snake, and for all his jealousy Tristan’s blood ran loyal in her service. They were Ronan’s men who had fallen upon Samson and Rosamunde in the wood that day. The Lord of Joyous Vale was no open and courageous smiter, for poison suited his senses better than an honest blow. That Rosamunde was in great peril Tristan le Sauvage knew right well. It seemed that his one buckler covered her from the world, nor was he sorry to sustain the feud.
Tristan, keeping guard before the door, watched the sun sinking towards the western hills. The light smote through the narrow casement in the rough stone wall, played and gleamed upon the laced rings of his hauberk. There were warring instincts in the man’s heart. Jealousy still stirred in him. Yet over his finer self there shone that luminous reverence for a woman’s name. Tristan, half savage, half Christian in his untempered youth, strove with his deepening manhood towards the finer faith.
As the gold mellowed in the west, the woman Isabel came out to him from her lady’s room. The morning’s adventure had sobered the wench’s mood; she had dropped her coquetry at her mistress’s feet. Drawing Tristan in, she barred the door, stood by it listening, pointed the man into an inner room. He noted the great bed with its rich hangings, the carved panels, the coloured cloths about the walls. There was a rich and mysterious savour in the air; even the flowers upon the casement ledge seemed brighter than their fellows in the fields below. To Tristan the place was as some rare shrine, whose odours and gleaming dyes breathed about the face of Love.
Rosamunde sat at the open window looking towards the lake. A bank of gillyflowers bloomed upon the sill. There was still the same proud pallor upon the woman’s face; solitude had not bribed her to salve her care with tears. Hers were not eyes that wept at the first kiss of anger or of pain.
Turning, she looked long at Tristan, like one who would be sure of the faith she needed. The man’s shoulders were broad; they might bear her honour. Woman that she was, she was the more eager for his comradeship, since jealousy had snatched at the red jewel over her heart. No doubt she thought it easy for the man to serve her, seeing that she imagined no bitterness upon his ugly face.
“Tristan,” she said, looking deep into his eyes.
He met the glance squarely, like one sure of his own honour.
“Tristan, to-day I have trusted you,” she said; “this morning you promised faith to me. I would try you further. Am I wise in this?”
“Madame,” he said with blunt simplicity, “you are apt at making servants. I obey you still.”
She rose, stood at the window, pointed him to the lake. Tristan drew to her side, gazed out as she told him of her charge.
“See, there is an island yonder, covered with trees.”
Tristan bent his head.
“There are boats on the strand below the town; go alone and ferry over. On the island there is a ruined chapel. By the altar, under the ambry in the right-hand wall, you will see a stone marked with a trefoil in the floor. Under the stone there lies a casket of black oak. Take the casket; sink it in the deeps of the lake.”
They gazed into each other’s eyes questioningly, like two mutes over a grave. Rosamunde was the first to break the silence.
“Tristan, you will take oath to me?” she said.
“By my sword, madame.”
“The casket goes unopened to the deeps?”
“I swear that.”
“Then, I am content.”
She stood forward suddenly, and stooping a little, kissed him upon the brow. It was done in a moment, but the shaft had sped. Tristan, red to the lips, went back from her with a strange light in his eyes. He was hers from that moment, body and soul.
The sinking sun had built a golden highway over the water when Tristan came to the lake’s rim. The woods stood wondrous green against the sombre purple of the hills, and the reeds and rushes glittered like silver wire. Water-fowl winged from out the shallows as he unmoored a boat that lay half grounded by a stone stage. Thrusting out and setting the water spinning at the prow, he was soon deep in the golden pathway towards the west. Two furlongs away the island cast its gloom upon the lake. The water lay black and deep about its rocks; the stunted trees were bannered with crimson and gold. Tristan was soon under their shadows, where he ran the boat aground in a small inlet, clambered out, and sought the chapel.
The place stood ruinous, plunged deep in weeds, festooned with ivy and many lusty plants, choked thick with brambles. A fallen pine tree lay across the roofless porch. Briers and nettles cumbered the floor. Tristan, struggling through in the half gloom, had to draw his sword where the chancel began. A great thorn tree flourished betwixt the roofless walls. Tristan clove a pathway through the prickly mass, trampled the nettles, climbed the low steps towards the altar. Crouching, he sought for Rosamunde’s stone. It was some while before he tore the rank herbage aside, and found the trefoil carved beneath. The slab had been glued by damp and moss. It was smooth and heavy, giving no vantage to his fingers. Working with the sword point, he prised up the stone, thrust in his hand, and drew the casket out.
Night had fallen and the west drew dim. Hardly had he huddled the casket into his bosom, turned back the stone over the hole, when an uprush of gruff voices rose as from the dark thickets of the place. Tristan, starting up with twitching sword, fell back against the altar, alert and grim. The plash of churned water broke on the evening silence, the creaking of sweeps in the rowlocks. Scrambling out towards the gate, Tristan saw the tall mast of a ship stride black across the sky. It skirted the island, towering over the trees, a scarlet streamer afloat from its gilded vane. Like a great finger it seemed to stretch towards the sky, held aloft as in silent warning.
Threading the thickets with the oaken casket under his arm, Tristan came to the island’s rim. He looked over the water towards the west, and saw that the lake seemed peopled with shadowy ships, striding solemn and silent out of the night. A thousand oars seemed to churn the water. Bulwarks glimmered, armour shone. Like giant ghosts the ships crept on, sable and strange against the fading west.
Sudden out of the gloom leapt the cry of a horn, its voice echoing from the hills. A vague clamour came from the shore. In the town, torches were gleaming like red moths in a garden. From the castle the alarm bell boomed and clashed, for the Papal fleet had descended on Joyous Vale.
CHAPTER IX
Tristan, made his way back to the boat, poled out from the island, keeping its black shadows betwixt him and the nearest galley. He rowed eastwards into the open cavern of the night, his eyes roving from the distant town to the great ships stealing over the water. Their tall masts rose against the last gleaming cranny in the west. Beyond them the mountains towered solemn and stupendous, fringed with aureoles of transient fire. Even in the half gloom Tristan could see a vague glittering movement on the slopes behind the castle, a glitter that told of armed men marching from the hills. It grew plain to Tristan, as his broad back swung with the oars, that the Pope’s men had come by sea from the Southern Marches, sailed up the great river, landed troops in the woods, struck a sudden blow at the chief lord of the province of the Seven Streams. While Ronan had grown drunk with the strong wine of jealousy, Death had descended upon Joyous Vale, and sprinkled the Cross with the blood of sacrifice.
There was a swirl of thought in Tristan’s brain. Rosamunde of Joyous Vale had his mind in thrall, and his first duty to her was easy in its consummation. Leaning his chest upon his oars, he reached for the casket where it lay on the plankings at his feet. The thing was bound with iron, its wood black and ponderous with age. Tristan balanced it in the hollow of his hand, wondering whether it would sink or swim. The feminine temptation to force the lid never thrust a suggestion into his brain. Tossing the casket over the gunwale, he saw it sink in a wavering circle of light. For fully a minute he watched the place, that he might be assured of the casket’s burial. With the vow to Rosamunde fulfilled, he turned both his thoughts and his boat towards the shore.
The ships had lighted flares upon their prows, a crescent of fire that deepened towards the town. Many of the galleys had touched the shore; Tristan could hear the crews shouting and plashing in the shallows, as they disembarked to attack the town. Behind the poops of the ships deep gloom prevailed, while a cresset glared on the castle tower, a red tuft of flame gemming the night. The bell still tolled. It ceased of a sudden; the silence was more sinister than its clangour.
Tristan pulled for the bank where a thicket of larches rose near the water. Climbing out, he splashed through the shallows, moored the boat to the stump of a tree. Strenuous stanzas were astir in his brain. What of Rosamunde in her husband’s tower? Swords were yelping about the place, torches tossing, spears aslant. Could Samson the Heretic save her now? It was the sword’s turn, and Tristan rejoiced.
Leaving the wood, he crossed the meadows that ran to the dark roofs of the town. There was no wall or ditch about the place; the streets could be swept by a charge of horse. A whimpering uproar rose towards the stars; there was fighting afoot. Tristan soon gathered as much. Going at a trot over the meadows, he blundered suddenly on a knot of armed men, a Papal picket guarding the road. So intent were they on watching the town that Tristan fell flat, and escaped unseen. The men wore white crosses over their hauberks, a blazoning adopted to distinguish their cause. Tristan, plunging on into the gloom, won a stretch of garden ground that dipped towards the meadows. Flowers bloomed pale-faced in the dusk. The scent of thyme and roses burdened the air.
The Papal levies had ended the tussle as Tristan gained the fringe of the streets. Houses were ablaze in the western quarter, flinging a red canopy over the town. Swords and pikestaffs swirled in the streets. Bronzed, sweaty bravos were looting the houses, letting lust loose in attic and cellar. Now and again a quick scream wavered from some darkened house, a scream followed by oaths and unclean laughter. Women and children in their nightgear ran headlong into the streets, to be hounded down and taken, or driven away into the woods. Now and again there was a scuffle, as men met and fought out the death feud in doorway and in garden.
Tristan, passing up an alley under the deep shadow of a wall, ran full face into the arms of a soldier who came stumbling out of a hovel with a wine skin under his arm. Seeing the white cross on the man’s chest, Tristan seized so kindly a chance. His great arms went round the man like the coils of a python. The wine skin burst under their feet as they struggled by the wall. Tristan lifted the soldier shoulder high, dashed him down on the cobbled path, where the man rolled on his side, lay still in the shadow. Tristan, kneeling down, unlaced his surcoat, stripped it off, and tumbled it over his own head. The white cross would serve him as well as his sword.
The road towards the castle teemed with steel, and torches flared through the thickets. The castle walls started pale and fitful out of the gloom, their battlements gleaming above the gardens dark under the stars. A hot burst of cheering came down into the town. The troops thronging the road shouted in answer, as they pressed on to share in the sacking of the place. Clarions blew a triumphant fanfare. The strident chant of a company of white monks rose from the market square. They were singing a “Gloria” as they wound in procession through the town, a great cross and a silver reliquary borne in state before them.
Tristan had joined himself to a company of archers who followed a knight in a green surcoat, bearing a scarlet leopard on his shield. They came by the black thickets and the silvery lawns to the broad entry of Sir Ronan’s hold. A bunch of pikemen held the gate, where broken beams told of the late assault. Three dead men lay by the guard-room door, slain there when the gate had crashed down. Tristan shouldered in with the rest, unquestioned since he wore the white cross on his breast.
The great court was packed from wall to wall. The Papists had dragged a horse-block into the midst, and were beheading such of the garrison as had escaped unscathed in the fight. Tristan saw a mere boy dragged forward by the wrists, forced down on the block despite his screaming. The fair hair was soon dabbled in blood. Near by stood a tall ruffian with a severed head on his spear. Even in the torchlight Tristan knew the face, for it was Ronan’s head on the soldier’s lance.
Shuddering still at the thought of the lad’s screams, he pushed on towards the terrace with the green knight’s men. His massive shoulders gave him the van. There was a great press in the gallery to the hall, as those on the terrace jostled in towards the door. Cries of “Back, sirs, back! reverence for the Lord Bishop,” echoed under the low-pitched roof. Tristan, putting brute force to good use, thrust his neighbours to the wall, the men’s oaths falling like water from his broad back.
Within, the hall was lit by flambeaux, borne by the guards about the wall. Grim, iron-shirted men packed the place, their surcoats turned up over their girdles, their swords bare to the red flare of the torches. In the waist of the hall a grove of spears tapered towards the smoke-wrapped rafters, their points like dim stars seen through clouds. Before the daïs had gathered a great company of knights and captains, ranged in long ranks against the walls. The many painted shields, azure, green, and red, shone in a rich array under the gloom-filled roof.
On the daïs in dead Ronan’s chair sat a man in a robe of black velvet, a gold cross hanging by a chain about his neck. He wore a cap of purple silk over his tonsured scalp. There were jewelled rings upon his plump white fingers; he had a belaced and perfumed diaper in his lap. At his right hand sat a burly lord with a black beard and a face of iron, Benedict, Warden of the Southern Marches, debauchée and despot, whose very winepresses ran blood. Christopher, Canon of Agravale, the episcopal secretary, was pointing his quill on the Bishop’s left.
Tristan, leaning against a stone pillar by the door, stared hard at the man seated in dead Ronan’s chair. The Lord Bishop of Agravale was a comely cleric, black of chin and bright of eye. A broad beak of a nose overhung a pair of full red lips. There was a sensual and feline smirk upon the face, an opulent and unctuous pride that shone from curved nostril and twitching mouth. His face was the face of a man who lived rather for his loins than for his soul. An affected dignity served to impress the mob with the ascetic sanctity of the episcopal honour.
Bishop Jocelyn and Benedict of the Marches sat cheek by jowl, debating together over a state letter to the Pope. At intervals the Bishop cast a rapid sentence into the ear of the Canon at his elbow, a pearl of sapience that the discreet cleric hoarded on the parchment under his hand. A silver bell tinkled from the Bishop’s table. Silence descended on those assembled. The throng of armed men parted, giving way before two guards who brought forward a man with his hands bound behind his back.
Tristan knew the fellow for a smith and armourer in the town, a rugged, cross-grained ranter, a stout follower of Samson in the path of heresy. The man had a bloody cloth bound about his head and his yellow beard bristled under his sullen face.
Bishop Jocelyn, lolling in his chair, considered the prisoner at his leisure, under drooping lids. He tilted his carnivorous nose with the air of a vulture, sniffed, and spoke with a high-pitched and priestly drawl, throating forth his words as though they came from his Mass Book. Tristan mistrusted the voice as a watch-dog mistrusts the persuasive cajolings of a thief.
“Friend,” said the Bishop, moistening his lips, “God prevent you from being damned to eternal torment. The Mother Church is merciful even to those who rebel against her care. Tell us, good son, why the people of Joyous Vale have rebelled against our Father the Pope.”
The man before the daïs was no panderer to the power of prosperity. He was as stubborn rock, quarried out of the very mountains that circled Joyous Vale. Moreover, he was sustained by pride in the primitive faith for which he was ready to stake all the tangible benefits of existence. From sheer native obstinacy of soul he was ordained a martyr.
“Priest,” he said, with blunt disrespect, “put off your gold chain and the rings from your fingers. Wash the hypocrisy from your face. Then I will speak with you as man to man.”
The churchman flushed a little under his smooth skin, pursed up his mouth, made a sign of the cross before him in the air.
“My son,” he said, with superb pity, “we are not here for obscenity and abuse, but for the controverting and purging of error. God pardon me if I am as iron with a froward flock. I will put such questions to you as will prove your heart.”
“Prove what you will,” said the smith with a frown; “you would damn the Christ, were He set here in my place.”
Certain of the rough men about the walls laughed at the retort. They loved courage and an insolent spirit even though their swords were to quench the same. The Bishop heightened his beneficent pity, towering from his pedestal of piety with the superb and unconscious egotism of the cleric.
“My son,” he said, “will you obey our Father the Pope?”
“I obey no Pope,” came the echo.
“Will you revere the Sacraments?”
“I claim the wine for all.”
“Blasphemy, my son. Should the Holy Blood touch your tainted lips? I trow not. As for confession and the remittance of sins——”
“God defend us from such lying ordinances.”
“Man——”
“None can remit sins save God.”
Bishop Jocelyn smiled like a Stephen, lifted up his face to the reeking roof, laid his hand on the silver bell.
“Hence,” he said, “we must purge this acre. God have pity on these fools; they know not what they do.”
Strong hands swept the man away; he disappeared into the press like a fallen tree dragged down by the eddies of a stream in flood. A knot of armed men charged out by the door, bearing an honest martyr in their midst. The floor before the Bishop’s chair was empty. A hush fell upon the hall. Tristan, keen as a hawk, waited for what should follow.
An odour of violets breathed sudden upon his face. The perfume recalled to him a woman’s room, burdened with odours, smothered with colours and fair flowers. The scent seemed to fall as from the richly embroidered bosom of a woman’s gown. Turning, he saw, with a leap of the heart, Rosamunde standing under the arch of the doorway, the woman Isabel shivering at her heels. The men gave back from her as from before a queen. The Lady of La Vallée Joyeuse carried her pride like an ivory coronet upon her brow. Tristan saw no fear upon her face, no tremor upon her lips. She moved towards the daïs, her green gown sweeping the stones, her long hair streaking her shoulders. She looked neither to the right hand nor the left. Her eyes were fixed upon the red banner blazoned with a yellow cross that hung above dead Ronan’s chair.
A great silence held the hall. The rough men of the sword stared mutely at the woman’s face, as she stood, a living emblem of tragedy, pale yet unfrightened, strong in her own strength. A slight colour played upon her face as she sustained the insolent gapings of those around her. Man muttered to man. Some jeered and grinned, elbowed each other, croaked like birds of prey. As for Tristan, the hot blood rose to his brain; he set his teeth, took a deep breath, bided his time.
Bishop Jocelyn was staring Rosamunde over with an appreciative loosening of the mouth that was in no way platonic. His eyes had a glassy brilliance under the finely arched brows. He played with the silver clapper of the bell, rose to his feet with an exaggerated display of courtesy, spoke to Rosamunde as she stood before the daïs.
“Madame,” he said, letting his glances rove over her full bosom and splendid throat, “we of the Church hold you accused of treachery and treason to our Holy Father the Pope. You and your people have set his ordinances at defiance. For this reason were we bidden to gather the armed sons of the Church, and make war upon such heretics as blasphemed the Creed. Yet, madame, it is given us to promise mercy to those whose hearts remain not froward towards the truth. God has dealt hardly with you and your home to-night. There is yet time for Mother Church to receive you once more into her bosom.”
Tristan, rugged rebel, would have laughed at the priest’s words had the chance been less momentous. God’s justice, forsooth! Mercy from the intolerable tyranny of the Church! The stout sense in him jeered and mocked at the pharisaical verbiage. Straining from the pillar, peering over the shoulder of the man in front of him, he waited with a frown for Rosamunde’s answer. He was forewarned in his heart what her words would be. Her back was towards him, yet there shone clear defiance from every line of her tall frame.
“Priest,” she said at last, casting out her words so that they seemed to smite the wall, “do you blaspheme God by working iniquities in His name? Is it Christ’s ordinance to spill blood—to dishonour women? Out upon you, mummers and jugglers that you are! Burn me to-night if the deed suits your religion.”
Her words rang like the blows of a sword in Tristan’s brain. Heavens! she had courage! The man exulted even in the temerity of her scorn. He mouthed her words over to himself with a grim and strenuous relish. Here were home-thrusts for the gamblers with God. Bishop Jocelyn still stood behind the table, a sleek worldliness warming his shaven face.
“Madame,” he said slowly, “your tongue out-runs your reason.”
“And your charity perhaps,” she answered him.
Jocelyn spoke on.
“You have been unstrung by the terrors of the night,” he said. “Calm yourself, return to your room, wait for the day. Commune with faith; pray, pray that the Holy Virgin may cleanse the heresy from your heart. On the morrow, madame, you shall speak with me again.”
“Bishop,” she said, with face upturned, “words will not serve you to change my heart.”
“Let the future prove,” he answered, “your blood runs hot to-night. Let me counsel you to ponder your peril in solitude.”
“I have considered all,” she said.
“According to the poverty of your faith,” he retorted; “on the morrow, madame, we will sift your doubts together.”
He rang the bell, while his eyes remained fixed on Rosamunde’s face. The guards came forward to take her from the hall. Setting herself between them without a word, she turned and walked steady and erect towards the door. The tongues of those assembled seemed loosed on the instant. A babel of laughter echoed under the roof amid the swirling smoke of the flambeaux; a wave of colour swept along the painted shields. Above the uproar came the insistent tinkling of the Bishop’s bell.
Before the doorway, Rosamunde came to a sudden halt, like one smitten on the face. She had seen Tristan standing by the wall, and their eyes had met, flashed, held in one swift stare. Scorn was on the woman’s lips, a sudden pallor upon her forehead. Tristan read “traitor” in that glance of hers. The white cross seemed to burn his bosom, for even as he stood speechless she passed out and was gone.