CHAPTER X
Tristan, strong man that he was, blundered out from the hall much as Peter fled from before the face of Christ. The thrust was perhaps the more bitter seeing that he was innocent, nay, brimming with ardent faith. The night breeze played upon his face as he reached the terrace; the stars were bright in the heavens, the moon streaming up through mountainous clouds. Pools of gloom lay between the fields of silvery vapour. Houses were burning in the town below, a red haze of smoke and light pouring from the place as from a pit.
Tristan, stung with shame, hurried out through the bloodstained court to the gardens fathoms deep in gloom. A sudden frost seemed to have fallen upon his heart, though his face still burnt with the blaze of Rosamunde’s scorn. The last look from her eyes seemed colder to him than the glances of the stars. Great passionate boy that he was, the wrong stung him like the hatred of a lost friend. Had not Rosamunde kissed him on the forehead that very day? He threw himself down on a grass bank and wept, and the damp grass licked his face as he rolled restlessly from side to side.
The newly inspired chivalry sank before the spear of rebellious pride. As for Rosamunde, had he not served her well? Martyrs and saints! was he deserving of such infidelity at her hands? The woman was a fool, had no wit in her to read the true cunning of a man’s endeavours. She was fickle as moonlight, quick to mistrust at the first mutterings of doubt. Moreover, he had wept over the injustice, he, Tristan the iron-faced, who had never puled since he left the cradle. Ha! if this was gratitude and faith, he would think no more of Joyous Vale, and this proud-lipped dame who conceived all men to have been born her lackeys.
Full of such callow spite as this, Tristan floundered up, tightened his sword belt, brushed the moisture from his face, passed on towards the town. Soldiers were returning from the castle, cursing and shouting under the trees. Rough horseplay ruled the road. Men were riding on each other’s shoulders, singing, scuffling, quarrelling as they went. Tristan, shy of such company for the moment, kept to the dark and the paths through the thickets. He strode on morosely, eating his own heart, letting his temper rage with the uncontrolled sincerity of youth.
Entering the town by a narrow by-lane, he bore for the market-place, where the waves of riot ran high. The Papal troops were as wild beasts let loose in an arena, and mere human flesh seemed an insignificant sacrifice for their savage zeal. Men were even hewing down the houses with axe and hammer, as though to leave no stone or beam unbroken in the place. Children were tossed from the attic windows on the bristling spears beneath. The wild pirates from the old pagan north had never worked more savagely than these children of the Cross.
Tristan’s anger began to cool apace before he had gone far through the streets of the town. No such tortures had been known in Purple Isle as were perpetrated here under the benediction of the Church. Men put indiscriminately to the sword, women dishonoured, children thrown from the flaming houses. The streets were full of death and despair; the very town was a great slaughter-house. Horror descended like a cloud on Tristan’s brain. He was weak as a frightened child for the moment amid the devastation of the night. The anger oozed from him like wine from a cracked jar. Only a great and empty pity remained in its stead.
Coming to the market square, he stood as one dazed by the terrific action of a dream. The place was packed with drunken men, wearing indeed the livery of the Church, yet appearing with their flaming torches more as the acolytes of hell. Great stakes had been set in the midst of the square, faggots and the timbering of ravaged houses piled around. Even as Tristan watched from under the low eaves of a house, a knot of soldiers passed him, bearing on their shoulders the figure of a man. He was so swathed in cordage as to look like an encased mummy. Setting the victim against a stake, they chained him there, buffeting and spitting in his face, as he had been the Christ. Torches licked at the faggots, and deep ululations ran through the square with the strident psalming of the monks for an underchant. The flames writhed like golden snakes; smoke blackened out the faces of the stars. Tristan saw the figure chained to the post jerk and strain from the rising flames. The man’s hands came free. He clutched the beam above his head, strove with great throes of agony to climb above the fire. Soon the smoke throttled him; the flames played the part of a shroud.
Tristan, sick with the sight, turned back down the street with his brain a-swimming. Would they set Dame Rosamunde in the market square and burn her there as they had burnt the smith? A great faintness gathered round; the reek of charred wood was in his nostrils. The flare of the flames died over the houses and the din and clamour grew less and less. Stumbling on, he reached the outskirts of the town, where the meadows ran white under the moon. The clean breath of the night beat on his face, and the scent of the pine woods rolled down from the hills.
A limb of the lake gleamed in the meadows. Tristan went down to the water’s brim, knelt in the weeds, and drank from his palms. He dashed up water in his face, let it run down his chest, cold and clean, rose up again with his heart more steady. The town still flickered and yelped under the stars. He turned his back on it and made towards the woods.
The scenes in Ronan’s town still played on his thoughts. Had he been zealous in the pay of the Church, his faith would have quailed before the deeds done that night. Moloch could have hungered for no bloodier work than this. Tristan remembered Ronan’s town as he had first seen it from the hills, glimmering peacefully in silver and green. He remembered the children playing in its streets, the red, comely women drawing water at its wells, the sturdy peasants labouring in the fields. If such a brutal doom as this had fallen upon Purple Isle? His sire slain, his mother—God forbid the thought. He grew grim and savage as his courage kindled; the petulant weakness of an hour had passed.
As for Rosamunde, her proud face was above him once again, clear as the moon, overtopping his manhood. The passionate spite had melted away, for he comprehended now the scorn in her heart. She was wiser, older, less selfish than he. Rosamunde had forecasted the savage zeal that had scorched the valley and those whom she loved, while his imagined falseness had embittered the truth. Tristan cursed his own hot wrath. What was he that he should resent her doubts! How else could she have read the cross on his breast?
The woods descended upon the meadows and the hills seemed to stretch their great arms to him out of the night. Tristan, full of a simple devotion, a sudden strong passion of chivalrous pity, knelt down under a tree and tore the white cross from his breast. The moonlight played upon his face as he knelt with arms folded, and made his short prayer openly in the eyes of Heaven.
“Great God and Father,” ran the words, “Thou who avengest all things, strengthen Thou my heart. Let honour prevail against those who blaspheme Thy mercy. Thou who didst gird King David against the pagans, give to Thy servant a strong arm and an unblunted sword. Here—now—I pledge my faith to these two women, even to Rosamunde and to Columbe my sister. Holy Jesu, shine Thou upon my shield.”
Even as Tristan prayed the stars seemed to brighten in the heavens, as at the touch of some high seraph’s hand. The man knelt a long while in the grass, thinking of Rosamunde, how she believed him a traitor. His heart was strengthened against her fate. He swore that night that he would prove his faith to her, even though it brought him to the gate of death.
CHAPTER XI
Rosamunde, standing at her window high in the tower of Joyous Vale, watched the dawn cleanse the sombre east. Over the hills the golden chariots flew. In the valleys, the shadows, like giant snakes, writhed and darted from the rush of the dawn. The heavens had taken the colour of June. Gold, azure, and rose were woven together as by the might of invisible hands.
Rosamunde, with dark shadows under her eyes, watched the burnt town rise out of the gloom. No glimmering casements flashed up to the dawn, no spirelets glittered, no red roofs shone. Smoke veiled the air beyond the gardens and the sleek green meadows, where tottering walls shook like palsied patriarchs, shaking their heads over this deed of shame. Charred beams stood black beneath the sky. The reeking ruin of the place rose up to Rosamunde from the dewy love-lap of the dawn.
On the lake the great ships lay at anchor, their white wings folded, standards and streamers afloat from their masts. Their prows were blazoned with many shields. The water, a silver sheet, lay spread about them, calm and clear. In the meadows the host had pitched camp for the night, and there were many pavilions ranged over the grass, red and purple, white and blue. A grove of spears stood round Benedict’s tent, with many shields swinging to the breeze. Horses were picketed on the outskirts of the woods. A company of men-at-arms stood to their lances without the great gate of the castle.
Rosamunde, leaning on the sill, put back her hair from off her forehead, and met the truth with a bitter calm. The burnt town betrayed the terrors of the night. A great silence covered the ruins; only the meadows spoke of life. From the tower she could look into the market square, where the charred posts still stood amid the steaming ashes.
Her loneliness grew the more apparent as Rosamunde looked out over the lake and the hills rising purple against the blue. Yesterday, necessity had stirred her courage and peopled a province with her cares. Her quick sympathies had created comrades. To-day all was changed. Death had claimed the allegiance of her people. Outlanders held her home, fed within her hall, lounged and jested in her courts. They had even taken the woman Isabel from her for the night, for the Bishop had ordained that she should be left alone with her own soul.
As she stood at the window, she thought of Tristan, traitor, as she believed. If she had ever trusted a man, she had trusted him, with his blunt tongue and his ugly face. None the less, his eyes must have lied to her again and again. Truly, he had played his part with a cunning mask of ingenuous passion. He had let the Pope’s men in. Spy and hireling that he was, he had blinded her well as to what should follow.
She hated Tristan with an immoderate hate as she stood at her window that golden day in June, for the burnt town seemed to stand as a grim witness to his dishonour. Why had he saved Samson from the sword? That he might blind her the more with professions of faith. She had trusted her heart in his great hands, and he had stood to mock her before them all.
The bar was withdrawn suddenly from her door, and the woman Isabel thrust into the room by those without. There was a clanging to and fro of harness in the galleries. Isabel had orders to prepare her lady for a second meeting with the Bishop. Rosamunde suffered the woman’s prattle with the listless silence of one whose thoughts flow deep. The army was to march southwards along the lake, so ran the report. Holy Chrysostom! the night had been red with blood! Would madame wear her grey gown with the blue sleeves? Yes. ’Twas very comely. And the girdle of beaten steel, with the poniard fastened thereto? Ah, yes, they had searched the place, and taken away the knife. Bishop Jocelyn was a courtly prelate, so men said. One of his servants was bringing up wine and meat on a silver tray. What? Madame had no taste for food? One must live, though men made war.
Rosamunde broke in upon her patter, desirous of hearing other news.
“Have they taken Samson?” she asked.
Isabel shook her head.
“Thank the Lord, no.”
“What of Tristan?”
“Madame, I have not seen the man.”
Rosamunde kept her countenance under the woman’s stare, and though her face felt hot she did not colour.
“The fellow had a hot heart and too ready a hand. He is slain, perhaps. God rest his soul.”
Rosamunde told nothing of the imagined truth, and of the beginning of her hate. Isabel had not seen Tristan in the hall.
Anon, robed, and fed by the Bishop’s clemency, she was taken by Christopher the Canon past the iron-coated sentry at the door. As a prisoner she passed through her own home, where the galleries were empty, the chambers void. The Bishop’s men had looted the place; they were carrying the plunder to the ships. The champion of the Church was worthy of his hire; many a cherished relic saluted Rosamunde’s eyes no more. The hall itself seemed grey and empty despite the streaming sunlight through the narrow windows set high up in the wall.
Bishop Jocelyn awaited her, sleek, polished, buxom of face, a most creditable sympathy pervading his mood. The heretic pleased, if the heresy offended. He bade Canon Christopher set Rosamunde a stool, thrust a silver mug aside with his hand, spread his tablets, crossed himself, and began.
“Madame,” he said, “I have given you audience alone, that we may talk the better. Mark you—how the sun shines, and that June is with us. The blood of the earth runs brisk and warm. It is my purpose here to persuade you to live.”
There was a suggestive comfort on the complacent face. The man’s philosophy smacked of compromise. That he was not unloth to pardon her, Rosamunde could see full well, yet she mistrusted his voice, strident with sanctimony, his soft, mobile mouth, his glittering eyes.
“Whether it is better to lie than to die,” she answered him, “out of the abundance of your righteousness, you can tell me, Lord Bishop.”
“Daughter,” he said, mouthing his words with an air of relish, “surely it is better to procrastinate for a month, than to be damned instantly and for ever.”
“Your charity foredooms me—thus.”
“Madame, St. Peter has the keys of heaven, and we are St. Peter’s ministers.”
The retort was such a one as Samson the Heretic would have rent with the splendid sincerity of his scorn. To Rosamunde, numb and lonely as she was, there yet appeared a grim pharisaical humour in the perfumed piety of this complacent prelate, decreeing the eternal fate of God-given souls. Could this lapwing, this piping swan, so far deceive himself and others as to claim the power of final pardon or of endless punishment? Rosamunde awoke at the thought with an echo of Samson’s strenuous eloquence in her memory.
“Priest,” she said very calmly, “we of La Vallée Joyeuse have been taught that a man’s soul speaks face to face with the Living God. Here we have hired no spiritual chapmen to trade and barter with our prayers. I claim my daughtership before Christ our Lord. Sure am I, that even as Mary of Bethany sat before God’s face, so may I serve Him without bribing the hirelings of a degenerate Church.”
Bishop Jocelyn set his finger tips together, elevated his eyebrows, suffered a slight smile to play upon his lips.
“Madame,” he said to her, “it is easy for me to know that you have been deceived by plausible and disastrous doctrines. It is easy to impose on women, seeing that they catch the reflection of any bold man’s mind. They answer men, as tides the moon.”
“There you are in error,” she retorted. “My conscience stands upon the mountain-top, and shuns not the light. I believe what I believe. I know my own heart.”
“Ah,” he said, with something of a sigh, “you are obdurate, my daughter, obdurate to the point of death. I fear there is but little hope for you. Well, well, I have played my part.”
He rang his silver hand bell, and a captain in full chain harness came in through a side door with a company of archers at his back. The men stood to their arms. Such were the justiciaries employed by the Church.
“Madame,” said Jocelyn with vigour, changing instantly his persuasive pose, “recant your heresy, or the stake awaits you. Come. Are you prepared to burn?”
She looked at him mutely, doubtingly, pale to the lips. The heavy breathing of the guards fanned the stagnant air. Above her hung the churchman’s face, contending passions playing thereon, like a red sunset through a cloud. The loneliness and despair cried out in her; the flesh rose up against the spirit.
“Is this your mercy?” she asked him, breathing fast.
“Madame, I am sent to prevent blasphemy, to restore the truth.”
“Ha! can you convert us by burning our bodies?”
“If you burn not now, woman, you will burn in hell hereafter.”
She stood back two steps from him, staring at the floor. In imagination, she heard the hiss of the green faggots, the grim purr of the gathering flames, felt their scorching breath upon her face. Was there no salvation save in this stark death? Was a heart full of convictions worth such torture? Great helplessness fell like a fog about her brain. Life, ruddy and eager, cried out for pity; the lust to live grew quick and violent in her blood.
“You tempt me to the death,” she said, with head thrown back.
“Not so, my sister.”
“To the death.”
“Nay, nay, to life. Lift up your face to the Church’s bosom. It is warm and fragrant to the faithful. Come, sister, come.”
She swayed forward like one about to faint, clutched at the table, steadied herself upon her straining arms.
“I surrender,” she said hoarsely. “What else is there for me to do?”
The man leant forward, touched her forehead, marked with his finger an invisible cross thereon. He smiled and laid his hand upon her shoulder.
“Trust in the Church, my sister,” he said; “it is enough. By God’s grace we shall cure you of the canker of heresy.”
CHAPTER XII
The Bishop’s men had plucked up their tents from about the blackened ruins of Ronan’s town, and marched southwards from La Vallée Joyeuse, burning and plundering as they went. They found few to poise the spear and trim the shield against them in those green wilds. The folk of the Seven Streams were scattered amid their moors and forests, nor had they banded together any great company of men-at-arms. Sometimes a lonely tower stood forth upon the hills, to start into scarlet flower when menaced by the Holy Truncheon of the Church. The peasant folk had fled to the mountains and the deep gloom of the woods, for these crusaders marched to purge the land, and torch and sword claimed an eloquent apostleship in that rough age.
The southern fleet had set its sails, and sailed out by the river towards the sea. The waters of Joyous Vale were left to the grebe and the heron, to the wild duck’s cry and the dull note of the bittern. Ronan’s tower stood a haunt for owls to perch in; bats played under the rafters in the twilight; spiders webbed the walls. Soon there would be grass and shaggy weeds in court and terrace. Briers would ravish the shrubs in the garden, docks and nettles destroy the flowers. The vines would fall from their rotting poles, the olives ripen and receive no care.
Rosamunde, Dame of Joyous Vale, had been set within a horse litter, a litter with painted panels and a canopy of purple cloth. The litter was Bishop Jocelyn’s, but he had surrendered it to her service, and mounted his white mule instead. A guard of twenty men marched about Rosamunde on the road, ten on foot and ten on horse. They were bearing her southwards towards the mountainous marches, over hills and through valleys foreign to her ken. All day she heard the trumpets whimper, saw pennons float and flicker through the woods. At night she would mark a glare in the dark sky, the glare of watchfires, or the flaming crown of a martyred town. At times they would let her walk beside the litter. No one spoke with her save Bishop Jocelyn, for her woman Isabel had turned wanton, and trudged the road with the servants of Christopher, Canon of Agravale.
As for Jocelyn, proud patron of the Faith, his theology had taken the wings of Mercury, and flown fast for temporal favours. He appeared zealous to convince Dame Rosamunde of the infallible nature of his doctrine. For the time being, there was no hinting at faggots and the ordeal of fire. He rode often beside the litter on his white mule, casting his subtleties at the woman lying within. He called her daughter, sister, child, as the unction stirred in him, while sanctity bubbled on his lips like wine out of a leaking cask. It had a more classic odour than Heaven might have desired. Since Bishop Jocelyn could conjure with Peter’s keys, he did not hesitate to tamper with the lock of honour.
As for Tristan le Sauvage, the burning of Ronan’s town had set him full face before his own strong manhood. The mere boisterous days of youth were behind him as a sunny sea, for he had seen death and had met distrust. Sterner, bolder blood played through the red cavities of his heart. To rebel against arrogance and tyranny was to live. To shatter injustice, to overthrow hypocrites, in such effort lay a strong man’s paradise.
Hidden in a thicket, he had seen Rosamunde set forth from Ronan’s tower in Bishop Jocelyn’s litter, the churchman riding beside her on his white mule. They had not burnt the woman yet, the fairest heretic in the land of the Seven Streams. Whether she had recanted or no, he could not tell, but Tristan, remembering the Bishop’s face, prophesied no such fate for her from so sensuous a source.
He had found food the first morning in a deserted cottage, yet his great need was a horse, for the beast he had taken in the valley by the sea had been converted once again to the service of the Church. Following the Papists through the woods on foot, he bided his time till night should fall. The Bishop’s men camped under the shadow of a hill, and Tristan, crawling down in the dark through the grass, found the place where the horses were tethered. His temerity prospered as it deserved. He escaped untouched from the Bishop’s ground, with a horse and food to reward the venture.
Next day he followed the army through the wild, waiting his chance for a swoop from the woods. What though twenty men marched round Rosamunde’s litter? With her eyes to watch him, he would break the steel wall, pluck the white rose out of the midst. That would be man’s work, worthy of a sword. He would set her behind him on the saddle, ride for the woods, escape. What then? First he would say to her with a noble air, “Madame, declare, am I a traitor or no?” Perhaps she would kiss him, even as she had kissed him in Ronan’s tower.
The chance came to Tristan one still evening when the mists were rising in the valleys and the sky was veiled with gold. The mounted men of Rosamunde’s guard had lagged behind to water their horses at a spring. They had loitered there, jesting and swearing as a stone bottle passed from hand to hand. Benedict’s men-at-arms were a good five furlongs to the south, while the rear guard marched by a track that ran westwards on the far flank of a low hill.
Tristan closed in, keeping cover behind the trees. The horses bearing the litter were plodding slowly, with heads hanging, ears adroop. The purple curtains were open towards the east, and Tristan could catch the white glimmer of a face within. All around them were tall hills deluged with green woods. A stream glittered through the flats under elms and drooping willows.
Tristan, with nostrils wide and every sinew taut as steel, trotted on through a grove of birches whose filmy foliage arabesqued the heavens. A glade opened to the road below, the purple litter shining like an amethyst set in green grass. The guards were slouching in twos and threes about the horses, their pikes and axes at the trail. Even as Tristan watched, a white hand drew the curtain, a mimic night drowning the day.
Tristan, twisting tight the strapping of his shield, whipped out his sword, pushed his horse to a gathering gallop down the glade. He shot like a hurled spear out of the gloom. Hurtling fast from the trees, he was on the men before they knew him for a foe. “Holy Cross, Holy Cross!” was his cry, as they scattered from him like pence from an almoner’s palm. Swerving right and left, his sword played grimly on their pates. Pike, staff, helmet, buckler, he hewed through all, as a woodman lops hazels with his bill. Five out of the half score were down in the dust; the rest scurried like winged partridges over the grass.
He was out of the saddle and beside the litter, bridle in hand. Rosamunde had jerked the curtains open at the first sound of the scuffle. It was no moment for vapourings. Tristan, hot with his sword work, played the master for once with a rough chivalry that suited his fibre.
“Come, madame, out with you. I keep faith to you, though you doubted me in Ronan’s hall. Fast! We must make for the woods.”
“Tristan!” was all she said.
He seized her suddenly in his eagerness, set her upon the horse, climbed up before her. Her arms girdled his body. She was silent and half ashamed, as though shaken out of the injustice of her hate.
“The casket?” she asked him, as they made towards the woods.
“Lies fathoms deep in the lake,” he said.
“Ah, Tristan, you have served me well.”
“I should have served you better, madame,” he said simply, “if I had been in Ronan’s tower before the Bishop.”
She mouthed a sudden “hist” into his ear, her arms tightening so that he could feel the rising and falling of her bosom. The warm perfume of her breath rose about his face. Half a score of mounted men had rounded the angle of the road. They sighted Tristan and Rosamunde on the rim of the wood, saw the deserted litter, the dead men in the road. They were at full gallop instanter over the grass, swords agleam, lances pricking the blue, while the hot babel of their tongueing echoed through the valley. Tristan, with a grim twist of the mouth, heeled on his horse and took to the woods.
The great trees overarched the pair, and beams of gold came slanting through. The grass was a deep green under the purple shadows. Through the silence came the dull thunder of hoofs, as the men racketed on, swerving and blundering through the trees. They rode faster than Tristan with his delectable burden, and the distance dwindled betwixt the pack and the chase.
Rosamunde was looking back over her shoulder, her hair shimmering and leaping with the breeze. The black boughs hurried over her head; the trunks seemed to gallop in the gloom. She could see steel flashing through the wood, like meteorites plunging through a cloud. Her fear was for Tristan as they threaded on, and she tightened her arms round him, spoke in his ear.
“Tristan,” she said, with her chin on his shoulder.
He hardly so much as turned his head, for his eyes were piercing the shadows before him.
“Tristan, set me down,” she said. “They will take us both; better one than two.”
“Hold fast, or you will fall,” was all he retorted.
“Leave me, Tristan,” she said again. “You can outpace them alone; I am their prize. They are ten to one; what can you do against ten men?”
“We shall see,” he said through his set teeth.
She surrendered for the moment, and clung to his shoulders. An open glade broadened sudden towards the east, a great star shining splendid in the eastern sky. Rosamunde, clinging fast to Tristan as they swayed along, heard a great trampling of hoofs in the wood. The nearest galloper swung out from the gloom. He was leaning over the neck of his horse, his lips parted over his teeth, his sword poised from his outstretched arm.
“Halt!”
Tristan glanced at him as they rode cheek by jowl, their horses plunging down the glade.
“Hold off!” he shouted.
“Halt, or I strike the woman first!”
“Be damned for a dastard, if you dare!”
The sword circled above Rosamunde’s head, its whistling breath fanning her hair. She cowered a little and loosened her hold. Tristan swerved of a sudden, drew up his horse on sluthering hoofs.
“Off—off!” he roared.
Rosamunde broke away and left him free. He charged on, caught the man cross-counter as he reined round to front him. The knight toppled down beneath the great swoop of the sword. Tristan clutched at the swinging bridle, gestured to Rosamunde with his shield.
“Mount, mount! By God! we will fool them yet.”
The wood grew alive with shouting and the noise of hoofs. Rosamunde’s guards had heard the clangour of Tristan’s blow as he smote the first man from the saddle. A second rider plunged from the trees, where Tristan met him, horse to horse. Their swords whimpered, screamed, and clashed. Tristan’s blade struck the man’s throat through.
Rosamunde had not mounted her horse, for the brute had grown restive and broken away. She stood by a tree and watched the fight.
“Guard, Tristan, guard——”
He caught a third sword on his upreared shield, smote out from under it, maimed his man. Two more blundered out of the gloom, while Rosamunde’s voice rang out under the trees:
“Guard, Tristan, guard! They are at your back.”
The cry came too late to the struggling knot of steel, for two more riders had come from the wood. One set his lance for the thrust, and smote Tristan between the shoulders. The man gave a roar like a wounded leopard, fought on awhile, meeting their swords like a sea-girt rock. A second lance-thrust pierced his side. His horse, overweighted, stumbled and rolled down. Tristan fell free, but did not move. The men trampled him underfoot, and turned on Rosamunde, who stood by a tree.
In an hour she was lying in the litter again, with the faint moon peering in through the hangings. Her eyes were dusky as the heavens above, her face pale, her lips adroop. She was thinking of Tristan slain in the woods, for he had proved his faith to her even in death.
CHAPTER XIII
Under the shade of a beech tree on the slope of a hill a man sat with a bare sword laid across his knees. On the hill-top above, half-hidden by pines, the walls of a ruined house rose against the unclouded sky. A deep valley dwindled beneath, choked with woodland and cleft in twain by a white band where a torrent thundered. Far to the south mountains towered against the gold of the evening sky.
It was Tristan le Sauvage who sat with his sword laid across his knees, watching the valley and the darkening hillside. Near by, an iron pot steamed over a wood fire, the smoke thereof ascending straight into the heavens. By the gate of the ruin a cistus was in bloom, its petals falling upon the long grass and the broken stones.
Tristan had been busy burnishing his sword, handling it lovingly, even as a miser fingers gold. Shield, helmet, and hauberk lay in the grass at his feet. His face was less boyish than of old, though but a month had passed since he had been left stricken and bleeding in the woods. He had been near death, and the staunch struggle to escape the grave had set a maturer forethought on his face. Moreover, he had suffered in heart as well as body, and the brisk youth in him moved to a sadder tune.
As he sat there under the shadow of the beech tree, burnishing his sword and parleying with the thoughts within his heart, a horn called to him from out the woods. The shrill echoes clamoured amid the hills.
“Tristan, Tristan,” they seemed to cry, like ghost voices stealing out of the night.
The man rose up from under the shade of the tree, and looked out down the hillside under his hand. Betimes, a figure mounted on a shaggy horse drew from the woods, and climbed the slope towards the ruin. The man was clad in chain mail that rippled in the sunlight, and he carried neither shield nor spear. At his back he bore a stout yew bow, and the body of a deer was slung before him on the saddle.
Tristan went out from under the tree, his bronzed face beaming in the sun. It was Samson the Heretic, returned from hunting in the woods, Samson, who had taken Tristan for dead where the Bishop’s men had left him, and recalled him to life amid the grey walls of the old ruin. The Heretic had followed Rosamunde from Joyous Vale, and lurked in the woods to cheat the Papists of their prey. Skulking with a few followers in the thickets, he had seen Tristan swoop from out the woods and seize on Rosamunde from the litter. Thus it had fallen out that Samson had found Tristan bleeding under the trees where he had been outmatched by Jocelyn’s men. Samson had taken him upon his horse, abandoning Rosamunde for Tristan’s sake, and in this old sanctuary had wrought his cure.
The men met with that heartiness of hand and voice that bespeaks brotherhood, that linking up of faith with straight looks and fearless words. Tristan, still smiling, took the body of the deer from the Heretic’s saddle bow. The shaft had flown straight to the poor beast’s heart. Tristan marked it, as he slung the deer to a bough of the beech tree, building analogies in his brain.
“Were this Jocelyn,” he said, “I should envy you, brother, to the point of death.”
“That murderous hand of yours——”
“Ha, Samson, shall I not pluck out the heart of that man, even as he plucked the Lady Rosamunde out of Ronan’s tower? What is youth but battle? and I am young, methinks, young enough to fly for the Southern Marches.”
Samson was unsaddling his horse. He stayed with his fingers on the buckle, and half stooping, looked somewhat sadly into Tristan’s face.
“Beware,” he said, “lest you open the old wounds again.”
Tristan spread his arms.
“I have bled,” he said, “and shall bleed again, methinks, or be called coward by every pledge of my good youth.”
Samson lifted the saddle to the grass, and stood up, fingering his beard and looking Tristan over.
“The men murmur for the sword,” he said. “I met Malan in the woods to-day, after I had slain this beast with a long flight. They clamour to be led against those who have harried and sacked the Seven Streams.”
“Let them murmur; I echo them.”
“Your wounds?”
“Are tough as leather. Shall we not take the sword?”
“It is God’s will.”
“Never had men better cause than we.”
The Heretic had not been idle while he played the Samaritan to Tristan in the ruin amid the woods. Even as in the wake of a great ship the waters seethe and foam, so the rude peasant folk of the Seven Streams had risen in the track of the Bishop’s host. Burnt hamlets and ruined towers, these were their witnesses, their solemn oracles. They had flocked to Samson, these homeless men whose kinsfolk had fallen to Jocelyn’s swords. Samson had preached to them more fiercely than of old. They were as tinder to a torch, these woodlanders; they were ready to burn for him in the quitting of revenge.
That evening Tristan and the Heretic watched the sun go down behind the hills, and spoke together of what might chance to them in the unknown. Far to the south towered the great mountains, like sable pyramids fringed with fire. The stream clamoured in the woods beneath, as though it voiced the turbulence of the age. They spoke together, these two men, of Rosamunde, of Joyous Vale, and the Bishop’s war.
Tristan, lifting his sword, pointed it to a star that shone solitary in the southern sky.
“Let us remember Ronan’s town,” he said.
There was a strange smile on Samson’s face as he laid his hand on Tristan’s shoulder.
“Whatever life may give,” he said, “some joy, much pain, travail, and discontent, I trow there is no better quest in life than such a one as hangs upon your sword.”
“You speak in riddles,” quoth the younger.
“This star, what a riddle lives therein.”
“Your tongue plays with me.”
“Not so, brother; have I not said enough?”
The two men looked into each other’s eyes. On Samson’s face there was that goodly light that streams up from a generous heart, brave and bounteous, man’s love for man. In the Heretic there were no ignoble moods, and, like Paul of old, he esteemed himself little.
“Brother,” he said, “the fight for the truth gives its own guerdon. That you are with us, I know full well; moreover, I mind me that a man’s heart reaches through human love into heaven. A fair face, two trustful eyes, the waving of a woman’s hair. How many a pure spell is wrought with these!”
Tristan stood leaning on his sword, looking not at Samson, but towards the south.
“Are you so old?” he asked him suddenly.
“I—brother?”
“You followed also through the woods. And had the eyes no spell for you?”
Samson leant his arm over Tristan’s shoulders, even like an elder brother, who banishes self.
“For me,” he said, “are no such songs as men make at sunset when the heavens are red.”
“And Rosamunde?”
“Can one bound to God, even as I am bound, turn to look on a woman’s face? Nay, Tristan, my brother, the dream is thine, a dream to set thy young blood stirring.”
Tristan looked long into the Heretic’s eyes.
“You love her?” he said.
“I have loved her,” Samson made answer, “even as others have loved her, because one cannot look on her unmoved. It is her privilege to be loved, yet may not my eyes confess the truth. Yours is the hand that must seize the torch, yours the sword that shall cleave the spell.”
“And you——”
“I am Christ’s man, brother. What I do, I do with my whole heart.”
CHAPTER XIV
Tristan and the Heretic rode south-west towards the sea with their hundred lances aslant under the summer sky. They were as men challenging a kingdom with their swords, and they tossed their shields in the face of fate. The fine audacity of such a venture set the hot blood spinning in their hearts. To raise the banner of liberty aloft against Pomp and Power! To hurl damnation in the mouth of the Church!
The Papists had left garrisons in many of the strong places of the Seven Streams. The main host had recrossed the river known in those parts as the Lorient, and had camped about Agravale, ducal city of the Southern Marches. They had raided the province of the Seven Streams into a desert, so far that life seemed absent. A great silence had descended over the land. Hamlets were in ashes; towers stood mere blackened shells upon the hills. As to the lords and gentry of the province, they had either fallen or taken like outlaws to the woods. It was such desperate men as these that Samson coveted to swell his company.
They pushed on warily, avoiding such places as were garrisoned by the Bishop’s men. Samson was as a merchant who possessed one ship; he would not imperil her as yet in troublous waters. Men gathered slowly to him as he made his march, grim, stony-faced men whose silence seemed fiercer than their words. Blood was thicker than dogmas and decretals; they had one common bond, these children of heresy, one common vengeance. They had suffered, all of them, in home and heart. In three days Samson’s company had increased to the number of two hundred spears.
As for Tristan, he was as a hound in leash; his sword thirsted in its scabbard; he had tasted blood, and was hot for a tussle. His sinews were taut despite the southron’s spear, and his strength seemed greater than of yore, perhaps because his heart bulked bigger. Nightly when they camped in the woods he would wrestle with any man whose ribs could bear his hug. He could take Samson by the hips, burly man that he was, and hold him high above his head. The fellows would gather round and gape at the giant. Tristan began to know his power the more as he found strong men mere pygmies in his grip.
They held westwards towards the sea, through grassy plains where streams went winding ever through the green, and poplars threw their towering shadows on the sward. Samson had trudged the land through in the days of his preaching. He knew each hamlet, each road, each ford. The Papists had padded through this same region like a pack of wolves, and Tristan and the Heretic found no life therein.
On the fourth day they came upon the ruins of a small town set upon a hill in a wooded valley. Vultures flapped heavenwards as they rode into the gate; lean, red-eyed curs snarled and slinked about the streets. Tristan smote one brute through with his spear that was feeding in the gutter on the carcass of a child. In the market square the Papists had made such another massacre as they had perpetrated in Ronan’s town. The horrible obscenity of the scene struck Samson’s men dumb as the dead. The townsfolk had been stripped, bound face to face, left slain in many a hideous and ribald pose. The vultures’ beaks had emulated the swords. The stench from the place was as the breath of a charnel house, and Samson and his men turned back with grim faces from the brutal silence of that ghastly town.
Near one of the gates a wild, tattered figure darted out from a half-wrecked house, stood blinking at them in the sun, a filthy tangle of hair over his dirty face. The creature gestured and gibbered like any ape. He fled away when Samson approached, screaming and whimpering as though possessed with a devil. The man was mad, had lost his reason in the slaughter of children and kinsfolk. Save the dogs and the vultures, he was the one live thing they found in the town.
When they were beyond the walls and under the clean shadows of the trees, Samson lifted up his hand to the heavens like one who called on God for help.
“Brother, shall such deeds pass?” he said. “Before God, I trow not. Heaven temper our swords in the day of vengeance.”
Tristan’s thoughts were beyond the mountains, hovering about a golden head and the ruffian priests who ruled the south. What might her fate be at the hands of the Church? His manhood rose in him like a sea thundering up in the throat of a cavern.
“Samson,” he said, with iron mouth, “God be thanked for the strength of my body.”
“Brother, thank God for it,” said the Heretic, grimly enough. “Would I had the power of a hundred men. My strength should be a hammer to pulverise these dogs.”
“Ha, Heaven see to it, when I have Jocelyn by the throat, I will break his back as I would break a distaff.”
Hard by the sea there was a certain strong place set upon a rock, Tor’s Tower by name. It was a wild pile of masonry clinging to naked stone, wind-beaten and boisterous. The place had fallen by treachery into Papist hands, so Samson gathered from men who joined him on the march. A Papal garrison had been established there, some of the bloodiest ruffians in the south.
Tor’s Tower stood a mile from a great arm of the sea. Between the rock and the shore were treacherous marshes, while on the landward side wild heathland dipped to a waste of woods. Dull skies hurried over the place; the wind piped keen from over the sea. A narrow causeway led to the tower, winding round the flank of the rock. It was the very aerie Samson coveted till he had hatched a flight of goodly eagles.
Tristan rode through the woods and reconnoitred the tower, saw that weeks would be needed to starve such a place. Even as he lay hid in the woods, some two-score spears rode home from a foray, passing close by Tristan’s lair. They had wine skins and spoil laid over their shoulders, also two young peasant girls bound back to back, and tied together on a horse. The men’s rough jesting reached Tristan’s ears, he heard their oaths and their unclean talk. His fingers itched for the pommel of his sword; he kept cover, however, and bided his time.
Tristan and Samson were soon agreed in the matter. When dark had fallen, they marched over the moor, left twenty men to guard the causeway, climbed up with the rough ladders they had hewn in the woods. The sky was of ebony, sealed up against the stars. Half the Papists were drunk in the place when Samson’s men planted their ladders against the wall. Tristan was the first to leap down into the court. He slew two guards who kept the gate, hurled down the bar, shot back the bolts. Samson’s men came in like a mill-race, and there was bloody work in court and hall. When they had made an end of the vermin, they cast their bodies down the cliff, remembering Joyous Vale and the town in the valley.
Tristan and Samson watched the dawn streak the eastern sky with gold above the woods. They were masters of Tor’s Tower and the wild wastes that glimmered towards the sea, while fifty dead men were wallowing in the marshes at the foot of the rock. The tower was well victualled, could be held for months by loyal and wary men. Samson was for making it a rocky refuge to the scattered companies of the Seven Streams.
“Give me but one sure pinnacle,” he said, striking the battlements with the scabbard of his sword, “one high place where we may rear up our flag, and the sheep will take courage, gather, turn to a pack of wolves. Tor’s Tower shall be our beacon height. Give me till the spring, and the southrons shall find no feeble rabble for their swords.”
Tristan had a more passionate quest within his heart, and his thoughts, like swift swallows, pinioned south. He had sworn solemnly to his own honour that he would follow Rosamunde and set her free.
“Brother,” he said, “hold Tor’s Tower till I come again; send out your riders through the countryside. Men will gather when a flag’s unfurled.”
“Go where you will,” said Samson, grasping his shoulder; “the star leads towards the south. Ha, good rogue, have I not hit you fair? God keep you on such an errand.”
“I ride south,” said Tristan, with a smile.
“Take ten men with you. I can spare no more.”
“Brother,” said Tristan, “I am content with my own carcass.”
“What devil’s scheme has caught your heart?”
Tristan laughed, spread his great chest.
“Samson,” he said, “believe me no traitor when I go to take service in the Bishop’s guard. I shall prove a good smiter, doubt it not. Master Jocelyn shall not complain of my sword.”