CHAPTER XL
About the White Palace far south of the Great Mountains were pitched a thousand tents, some under the shadows of the wooded heights, others on the banks of a broad river. The palace stood on a hill in the midst of a valley, like a white casket wonderfully carved set upon a pedestal of green marble. In its gardens fountains played amid groves of roses, myrtles, and orange trees. Huge cypresses rose against the gleaming walls, overshadowing beds of purple flowers, white marble stairways, tranquil pools. Towards the deep blue dome of the sky, tower, turret, and minaret mimicked the white peaks of the distant mountains.
About the White Palace on its hill were gathered the armies of Serjabil the Caliph. Pious Moslem that he was, a turbulent man with a heart of fire, he had sent a letter through all his caliphate to such as served Allah and loved the Crescent.
“In the name of the most merciful God, Serjabil to all true believers, joy and greatness be upon you. By the most high God and Mohammed his Prophet, this is to declare that I would send our arms against the infidels who have fallen upon each other beyond the mountains. For behold fighting for the truth is obedience to God. Therefore gather to me, children of the faith, with bow and spear, buckler and scimitar, that we may destroy the infidels, and beat down the Cross into the dust.”
In the great Hall of the Ambassadors sat Serjabil in his ivory chair, a hundred carved pillars dwindling around into the golden gloom of the deepening eve. The ceiling of the hall was of cedar wood, inlaid with silver and lapis lazuli. The walls were covered with tiles of azure and green; the pillars and arches decorated with arabesques and letters of beaten gold. The floor was of white marble, the hangings of scarlet silk.
Serjabil wore a green turban enriched with rubies. His red robe was edged with rare fur over a tunic that was white as the marble floor. In his belt shone a jewelled scimitar, and before him on a desk of cedar wood was laid the Koran—the book of the Prophet.
Serjabil’s black eyes gleamed and sparkled in his dusky face. It was the face of a man who was both a soldier and a sage, one who possessed the heart of a Kaled and the wisdom of an Ali knit together. About him were gathered the great ones of his land, emirs with snow-white beards, merchant princes, soldiers, scribes. They were gathered there in Serjabil’s palace to hear his commands concerning the war.
Before Serjabil’s chair stood Hassan the poet, a thin-featured man, with a short black beard. The Caliph had called him forth from the throng to utter panegyrics in praise of war.
“Oh Hassan,” were the Caliph’s words, “to what would you liken the servant of God who destroyeth the heathen and obeyeth the Prophet?”
The poet salaamed, and touched with his lips a little charm that he wore at his neck on a silver chain.
“Oh Lion of God,” quoth he, stretching out his hands, “who shall dare to praise the great? Behold, have I not seen the sun in his strength roll back the mists out of the valleys and launch his chariots over the hills? The hearts of the holy hunger for battle, for the sound of the sword and the cry of the trumpet. To the sun would I liken the Lion of God, who giveth life to the children of men, even life in death, and in death paradise.”
Serjabil took a brooch from his red robe, a brooch set with precious stones, and cast it on the floor at Hassan’s feet.
“Oh son of the golden mouth,” he said, “God give ye joy of the true belief.”
Hassan bowed low and took the brooch.
“Methinks,” he cried, with his face afire, “that I see the black-eyed girls of heaven gazing upon us from their scented gardens.”
At a sign from Serjabil two black slaves brought a man in shackles from a neighbouring alcove. It was Thibaut the Apostate, a renegade priest, who had fled from Agravale over the mountains. He had received many wrongs at Jocelyn’s hands, and in his shame he had abjured the Cross, and turned Mohammedan to serve his ends.
Standing before Serjabil’s chair, with the huge Æthiopians towering above him, Thibaut told of the state of the Christian provinces, and of the turbulence and vanity that reigned therein. He told how Samson had arisen in the Seven Streams, and had spread his heresy among the people till the Pope had decreed a crusade against him and the barons of the south had marched to war. Thibaut described the lands north of the mountains as empty and ruinous, rotten with decay. The Cross had been carried against the Cross, so that the Christians had sapped each other’s strength. The Southern Marches, ay, and the Seven Streams, waited for the conqueror who should come with the sword.
When Thibaut had spoken, Serjabil arose and laid his hand on the open Koran.
“In the name of God,” he said, “and of Mohammed His Prophet, shall we not march against these fools? Behold, we are strong, we are not divided. While these Christians quarrel, let us cross the mountains.”
Many dark eyes kindled at the words; hands were stretched towards the Sacred Book, swords drawn and held towards the cedarn roof. The dusky faces shone with zeal, and white teeth gleamed behind coal-black beards. Serjabil drew his scimitar from its sheath, kissed the naked blade whereon were carved texts from the Koran and the names of his ancestors.
“La illah il Allah,” cried they all with the dim, strange ardour of the East, “let us march, oh Lion, against the Cross.”
Then through the shadowy galleries, under the dreamy arches, came the cry of a muezzin from the minaret in the great court—
“To prayer, to prayer.”
For it was the hour before sunset, when the hills were red above the cypress thickets and the golden meads. Silence had fallen in the hall where black slaves knelt with bowls full of water under the blue and silver roof. The solemn worshippers cleansed themselves, washing face, hands, and neck before falling to prayer. Every turbaned head was bowed towards the east, while the prayers went up through the many arches into the gold of the evening sky.
When Serjabil rose from off his knees, he closed the Koran upon its stand of cedar wood, and passed out to the stone-paved terrace that looked over the valley towards the woods. Beneath lay the palace garden, its dark thickets steeped in the odour of a myriad flowers. Soldiers and scribes followed the Caliph, their many-coloured turbans like a rich parterre against the whiteness of the palace walls.
Beneath in the valley stood the tents of Serjabil’s camp. The Saracens had risen from the grass where they had knelt in prayer, their faces towards the east. Seeing the Caliph upon the walls, they raised a loud shout, stretched up their hands to him.
“La illah il Allah,” came the cry, “oh Lion of Heaven, the Prophet preserve thee.”
Many ran to where their horses were tethered, loosed them, mounted, and took spear and shield. They galloped and circled over the meadows, tossing their lances high in the air, making mimic onslaughts, troop against troop. Their wild cries rang over rock and river as the sun went down into the west.
Serjabil stood close by the parapet with Thibaut the Apostate by his side.
“Behold,” he cried to those around him, “how the crescent moon climbs into the sky. She shall shine full on us that night when we cross the mountains.”
CHAPTER XLI
Tristan was still at Agravale with some two hundred men, when a mob of peasant folk came into the city, bringing with them a lean, half-starved southron who had fled to Agravale over the mountains. The man had served as a slave in Serjabil’s palace, and being wise as to the Caliph’s schemes of conquest, he had dared martyrdom and fled for the north. Two other Christians who had shared his flight had been taken and beheaded on the road. The third had gained the mountains in safety, and having crossed by the pass known as St. Isidore’s Gate, had descended into the lowlands with the cry of a prophet—
“Fly, for the Saracens are at my heels!”
It was but two days since Blanche’s men had marched from Agravale, glad to return home through the Seven Streams after their campaigning in the south. The Duchess had tarried one day more, leaving Tristan and Rosamunde to guard the rear as they marched north towards the fords of the Lorient. At Agravale she had received an embassage from the King stating that he was coming south with his barons to restore peace to the Southern Marches. He besought her to meet him at a certain border town that they might discuss the state of the Seven Streams. And since Blanche had no great belief in the King’s honour, nor in the sincerity of his faith, she had determined to meet him at the head of her men, the most powerful plea for peace and justice.
It was evening when the news came to Tristan as he was preparing to evacuate Agravale on the morrow and follow Blanche towards the north. He had but two hundred men left in the city, mostly Samson’s veterans from the Seven Streams. The country folk crowded round him as he came out upon the steps of Lilias’s palace, and besought him not to desert them in their extremity, and to leave their farms and hamlets at the mercy of the Saracens. Tristan pointed out to the chief pleader the smallness of his company, reminded them that they had little cause to claim protection at his hands. But when some of the rough men wept, and besought him the more to save their homes and families from the sword, pointing out that St. Isidore’s Gate might be held by a hundred resolute men, he told them he would consider the matter, and give them an answer before dawn.
That night Tristan went alone into Lilias’s garden and paced to and fro through the tangled grass. He was tempted greatly to abandon the south, for he had fought his fill since he had sailed from Purple Isle and landed in the heart of the Seven Streams. He had met grief and conquered it, and found love at last after many days. He was as a man who had grown weary of the chaos of war and hungered for God’s peace, and the clear calm of a woman’s love.
It was about Rosamunde’s face that Tristan’s passions played as he walked in Lilias’s garden under the moon. Should he gamble once more with fate, stake that which he had won with his own good sword, when the future stretched clear as a summer dawn?
Had not the lords of the Southern Marches harried the province of the Seven Streams and carried death and despair into a thousand homes? What claims had these people upon his pity? Could it be that God had decreed their destruction?
Great was the temptation that assailed Tristan that night to take Rosamunde his love and to ride from Agravale, leaving the Southern Marches to their fate. He could overtake the Duchess in a day, and leave the future to her and the King. If Serjabil and his Saracens crossed the mountains, the King could gather his great vassals and give them battle in due season. Had he not done enough with his single sword?
But as great hearts rise to great needs, so Tristan cast the tempter out of his soul, and grew strong in the strength of heroic manhood. The shade of Samson seemed to walk at his side, Samson who had been crucified for Christ and the Cross, and who had met death, a living sacrifice. Should he not save these helpless peasant folk from the Saracen scimitars and the false creed of their Prophet? He would stand shamed before God when the villages flamed and the smoke of their burning ascended to heaven.
Tristan knelt down in the grass and prayed, with the deserted city silent under the moon and the great stars shining overhead.
“Lord Jesus,” he said, “I pray Thee pardon these weak thoughts that rose in my heart against my manhood and Thee. Grant me Thy grace to this good end that I may save these helpless ones who have sought my sword. Give me Thy strength against the heathen that I may quit myself as a Christian should.”
At midnight he went out from Lilias’s garden to the great hall where his men were gathered. Some were asleep on the rush-strewn floor, others were watching and talking together.
“Sirs,” he said, “how many will stand with me for the Holy Cross, and hold the passes till the Duchess comes?”
Every hand was stretched towards him; nor did they fail him, these iron men, who had followed Samson through the Seven Streams.
“God bless you all!” he cried, with a smile on his face. “Percival, take horse and ride after the Duchess. Tell her the Saracens are marching for the mountains, that we go to hold St. Isidore’s Gate. Ride, man, as though the devil rode at your heels. The Duchess will turn and give us succour.”
With the dawn came the great trial of Tristan’s strength, for Rosamunde was ignorant of what had passed, and it lay with Tristan to tell her the truth. Moreover, she had lived amid dreams since she had been brought from the Mad Mere into Agravale. For her life’s woes were at an end; she had forgotten that death still walked the earth.
She came to Tristan that morning in the garden, and found him pacing under the trees, fully harnessed, his sword at his side. There was that same grim earnestness upon his face that she had known of old when he had taken her to Holy Guard through the woods. As she came with her stately step over the grass betwixt the beds of balsams and the thickets of fruit trees her eyes grew dark under the sweep of her golden hair.
“Tristan,” she said, “you seem grim to-day. Should we be sad at leaving the south?”
He winced a little and looked into her eyes, solemnly and sadly, like a man who suffered. His earnest face awoke vague fears in her, sudden dread of some fresh misfortune. She held out her hands to him with a questioning smile.
“Tristan,” she said, “why are you silent?”
“I am thinking,” he answered her, “of how our lives change even in one setting of the sun.”
“Speak,” she said, “for I am no child to be kept carefully in the dark.”
“Rosamunde,” he answered, squaring his shoulders and stiffening his great neck, “I thought the sea had grown calm at last, and that no more storms would come between us. Yet how frail are the hopes of men. Once more the sword must leave the sheath.”
She reached out her arms to him with a sudden cry and the mute look of a frightened child. Tristan’s hands were upon her shoulders. There was a divine tenderness upon his face as he looked in her eyes and told her the truth.
“Take courage,” he said to her, “for if ever a man needed love, I, Tristan, am that man to-day. Serjabil and his Saracens are marching for the mountains, thinking to have an easy victory over Christians weakened by their feuds. It is God’s will that we should take the sword and save the innocent from further shame.”
She hung in his arms, looking up like one dazed into his face.
“Ah, Tristan, what must follow?”
His voice shook a little as he answered her words, holding her very close to him, like one who knew not what the days might bring.
“Rosamunde,” he said, “I go to hold the mountain passes till Blanche and her men can send me succour.”
“But you have so few with you——”
“We are enough,” he said; “and if not enough, where lies the shame?”
She turned her head upon his shoulder with a gesture of impatience, a pouting of the mouth that did not escape him.
“Tristan, you are mad,” she pleaded, “to risk so much for those who have injured us.”
“God knows, I fought not against the poor,” he said, “but against the evil in high places. Now comes the hour when I may save the weak.”
Rosamunde broke away from him suddenly and stood apart, like one whose pride takes umbrage at a threat. Her eyes grew bright with the impatience of the moment, for, believing all storm clouds to have passed from the sky, she had drifted dreamily towards a haven of rest. The sudden revulsion made her rebel against an enterprise that to her seemed mad.
“Tristan,” she said, “you shall not go. Are my wishes nothing in this?”
The man’s face appeared wreathed in shadows. He looked at her sadly out of his dark eyes, as though baffled by a mood that he had not foreseen.
“Would you love a man,” he answered her, “who played the coward and fled from fighting for Christ and the Cross?”
“You are no coward,” she retorted hotly. “I, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, can swear to that. But as for this madness, I will not praise it; you can play the hero without being a fool.”
“It is not folly,” he said very patiently.
“But why tempt death,” she cried again, “because your hot courage spurs you on? Wait till the King and the Duchess come, till the Southern Marches teem with steel and a thousand banners blow to the wind.”
“By then,” he said, shaking his head, “Serjabil and his men will have crossed the mountains and given the countryside over to rapine.”
“What of the countryside?” she retorted, growing less generous as her impatience increased. “Who set the torch to the great forests, and burnt homes and hamlets in the cause of God?”
Tristan started and caught his breath, as though she had turned a sword against his heart.
“Why taunt me,” he said, “because I fought for you and Samson and the Seven Streams? It was against the ruffians of the Church that I fired the forest. God judge me if I did ill. The greater be my duty now to guard the weak against the strong.”
“Not so,” she said, with a flood of bitterness; “the sword is more to you than a woman’s heart. It is your glory that you love, your strength and your great fame. I, a mere woman, must give way to honour. For you are afraid, Tristan, lest men should jeer.”
Tristan clung by patience even though her taunts were the more bitter by reason of their ingratitude. Though he had imagined that Rosamunde would have sped him with brave words, even to death if God so willed it, he took her anger more as the anger of a child than the strong purpose of a grown woman. Therefore he stood out before her, convinced of honour, and sure in his own heart that she would turn to him when the impetuous mood had passed.
“Not for glory,” he said, “shall I leave you here. It is not easy to run from love.”
“Why go, then?” she cried, turning away her head, her hands playing with the rich girdle about her body. “Is duty the sorry nag that bears you hence? Before Heaven, Tristan, if you refuse me this, I will return to Holy Guard and live among ruins.”
His dark eyes followed her as she drifted to and fro in her blue gown over the brilliant grass. She was very lovely even in her anger, with her warm cheeks and her eager eyes. Yet Tristan, having a will more strong than her wrath, determined to take her at her word.
“So be it,” he said, solemnly enough; “I will send Telamon with you and twenty men. The Gloire will bear you straight to the sea; Lilias’s barge is moored in the shallows. Man can promise no safer place than Holy Guard; if the worst comes to the worst, you can sail for the north.”
Rosamunde looked at him, sudden wistfulness shining through the mask of wrath, as though she half doubted the truth of his words. There was no wavering of Tristan’s eyes, no loosening of the determined mouth. Her pride waxed in her as she gazed on his face, perhaps because she felt that she had earned his pity, in that she had failed him when he needed her love.
“So be it, then,” she said, turning away under the trees. “I shall be ready for Telamon before the sun is at noon.”
CHAPTER XLII
Like a proud star, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale had set in the far west, over the wilds and the deep woods that stretched towards the sea. Lilias’s forsaken barge had borne her away down the silver curves of the mighty Gloire, with Telamon at the helm and ten men toiling at the oars. From a tower on the walls of Agravale Tristan had watched the gilded poop disappear into the gloom of the woods. In anger Rosamunde had parted from him, because he had set his duty before her love and had dared to deny her the tyranny of tears. Tristan wondered, as he watched from the tower, whether he would behold her face again.
“To horse, to horse!”
Such was the trumpet’s cry that noon. Tristan and his men tightened up the girths, rode out from Agravale under the sun at its zenith, wound down the steep road towards the river, crossed the stone bridge, and held for the south. Their horses’ hoofs rang on the old Roman road that stretched over the meadows like a great beam. They had taken certain of the peasant folk with them as guides, men who knew all the mountain passes and the narrow defiles of St. Isidore’s Gate.
So the sun climbed, descended, and set in the west, beating on the distant peaks with vapours of crimson and gold. Knight Tristan rode at the head of his men, his eyes fixed on the far mountains, the purple slopes that rose from the plain, the icy glimmer of the snow-white heights. He rode as a man who considered death, to whom the unknown stretched out like an unsailed sea. There was great loneliness upon Tristan’s soul that evening, for all the love seemed to have left his life, and all his battlings to have ended in bitterness. In the hour of trial Rosamunde had failed him, had hid her face from him behind the mask of pride. Nor cared he greatly what might befall from that hour, since death would honour him when hope stood apart.
Night came with a round moon swimming in a sky of dusky azure studded with the faces of many stars. Tristan halted his men to rest them and their horses on the march, for though the hours were precious, he would not deny them the sleep that they needed. They off-saddled at a little shrine by the roadside, a shrine dedicated to St. Geneviève by some good matron dead and gone. Roses clambered about the walls and slim cypresses streaked the misty grass where a little pool caught the light of the moon. A grove of poplars stood near in a broad meadow, the night breeze playing in their mighty tops.
As for Tristan, he had no hope of sleep, for there were thoughts moving in his brain, tramping like restless sentinels to and fro. The night seemed full of ghostly voices, crying to him out of the dark. He heard his mother’s voice, even as he had heard it as a little child when his hands clung to the folds of her gown. Also he listened to Columbe weeping, as she had wept once in Purple Isle long ago. Yet Rosamunde’s clear tones topped them all. He remembered the songs he had heard her sing in distant Joyous Vale to the women and children of Ronan’s town. For him, perhaps, she would sing no more. Tristan found himself wondering in his heart whether she would weep if he died in the mountains. Perhaps her anger would melt away when she learnt that she had lost his love for ever.
Tristan passed the night alone under the stars, pacing to and fro on the white road, with the wind playing in the poplar tops. Often he stood leaning upon his spear, gazing towards the mountains whose snowy peaks gleamed like white marble in the distant south. Yonder in the yawning passes and under the huge and savage crags he would meet Serjabil and his men, rear up his shield against their lances. There was much of the soldier’s joy in the thought that his sword would be measured against the scimitar.
Soon the dawn came, a golden haze rising in the east. The poplars caught the streaming light; in the meadows silvery mists smoked up; the far woods glistened, seemed to tongue forth flame.
From the gloom of the north a faint sound shivered on the wind. Tristan heard it and stood erect, peering along the empty road that ran so straight under the tall trees. The sound seemed to grow with the rising dawn, to swell into the thunder of many hoofs, the clash and clangour of hurrying steel. Vague lightnings came flashing from the gloom, shield and helmet mimicking the east. Huge mist-wrapped figures loomed out of the north, mailed phantoms pressing through the vapoury dawn along the white road betwixt the trees. A trumpet sounded beside the shrine. Tristan’s men came crowding up through the long grass amid the burning cypresses.
A trumpet’s scream answered Tristan’s challenge. Along the road rolled a hundred spears behind Blanche the Duchess on her great white horse, the Banner of the Bleeding Heart blowing above. They came to a halt before the shrine amid an eddying cloud of dust. Tristan and his men ran to meet the Duchess, cheering her mightily with great good will.
Blanche, big-hearted woman that she was, had straightway turned when Percival had ridden in with Tristan’s message concerning the Saracens. She had sent a rider to overtake Lothaire, bidding him march south again with all his men. Not waiting for him to join her, she had used whip and spur in her gallant haste to bring Tristan succour. Only her bodyguard, some hundred spears, had followed her past Agravale towards the mountains.
Blanche climbed down from her jaded horse and met Tristan face to face on the dusty road. The soldiers on either side stood back out of rough respect to these two great ones whose hands were clasped in the cause of the Cross. Though Blanche was weary with hard riding, her splendid spirit seemed unquenched, her courage fresh as the broadening dawn. Her eyes were very bright as they gazed on Tristan’s: she smiled at him dearly, held out her hands.
“Old friend,” she said, “we meet again.”
Tristan went down on one knee in the road and kissed the hands that were stretched towards him. Was she not a woman to serve and honour, a woman who could strengthen a soldier’s heart and give him help in the hour of need? She had seen no madness in this ride of his, but rather the desire of an heroic heart to bear the brunt against heavy odds.
“Madame,” he said to her, still kneeling in the dust, “Heaven wills it, it seems, that Tristan le Sauvage should be your debtor.”
She drew her hands away from his, as though half unwilling to see him kneel to her.
“Rise up, Tristan,” she said; “it is my good fortune that gives me the privilege. Where is Rosamunde? Will you not lead me to her?”
As for Tristan, when he heard her speak Rosamunde’s name he went both red and white under his tanned skin. He was jealous for Rosamunde, yet half ashamed at having to justify her before the Duchess. He would not have confessed, even under torture, that Rosamunde had failed him in her love.
“Madame,” he said, rising up from his knees and squaring his great shoulders against the truth, “Rosamunde have I sent to Holy Guard, that she might be safe there against all mischance.”
Blanche had been watching Tristan’s face, the shifting thought clouds that played over his eyes, nor had his answer wholly deceived her.
“How?” she said. “Rosamunde at Holy Guard? Was it her will that you should go alone to this great venture, whence none may return?”
Tristan was silent for one brief moment. Yet Blanche had discovered much of the truth in that short silence that held him mute.
“I planned for the best,” he made haste to answer her. “Who knows what may happen to us in the mountains? Should I drag love into the van of battle, and cast such a pearl into Serjabil’s treasury? Nay, Madame Blanche, give me but fifty of your men, and I will hold the passes till Lothaire comes south.”
On Blanche’s face there was a mysterious light, as though she rejoiced over some heaven-sent boon. Her dark eyes shone under her silvery hair; her voice rang deep as she gave Tristan her answer.
“Not fifty, but a hundred shall you have,” she said, “and I, Blanche, will stand at your side.”
Tristan’s eyes met hers in one long look.
“Nay,” he said, “you are too noble a soul to be risked against Serjabil’s sword.”
“I am a woman,” she answered him very simply, “a woman who loves to stand by those who do not flinch when the wind blows keen. Am I better than my men, who give their blood for Christ and the Cross? No, I trow not. Who fears death when those most dear are on the brink of the grave?”
Tristan answered her not a word, for he was glad at heart of her great courage. He could have blessed God for such a woman. Did not a deep voice cry within him, “If only Rosamunde had spoken thus!”
CHAPTER XLIII
All that day and the next Tristan and the Duchess rode south from St. Geneviève’s shrine, through the woods and meadows, rich with the magic of many flowers. The tall grass seemed as a rare robe shot through with threads of diverse colours. In the woods the ilex and the beech lifted their broad domes towards the blue, and in the pastures a myriad aspens shivered in the breeze.
Towards the noon of the second day the lowlands stretched back towards the north. Tristan and his men came to a wilder region, where the woods grew dark beneath the shadows of the mountains. Through a multitude of poplars whistling in the wind, amid fields spread with poppies, yellow and red, the road curled through dense thickets of chestnut and of beech. Higher still, under the deepening darkness of the trees, the road dwindled to a grass-grown track, so that the armed men rode in single file, a silvery snake that wavered through the green. Higher still, the spruce and larch fretted the blue dome of the sky, and heavenwards towered the silver firs and great pines, sombre and huge of girth.
Under the shade of a thicket of pines Tristan halted at noon to rest his men. A spring played by the roadside, where the thirsty riders drank from their palms, and led their horses to drink at the pool. Meanwhile, Tristan and the Duchess went forward with the guide to a great rock that was perched upon the hillside, and whence the man promised them full view of St. Isidore’s Pass. Above the trees the mountains towered, crag on crag and cliff on cliff, till the mighty tops, aureoled with golden vapour, clove the canopy of the sky. Here and there a snow-capped peak gleamed and flashed against the cloudless blue. Black gulfs yawned everywhere, edged with a thousand glittering crags, hoarse with the thunder of a thousand streams.
Before them lay St. Isidore’s Gate, a colossal rent betwixt two mountains, full of gloom even under the noon sun. Tristan and the Duchess scanned the pass, while the peasant told them how the road ran. At one point it dwindled to a narrow track, on the one hand a precipice plunging down, on the other the bluff shoulder of the mountain rising straight towards the sky. A great rock half closed the narrow track, and the gap was known as St. Isidore’s Gate. It was a point that could be held, the peasant said, by twenty men against a thousand. Nor could they be outflanked save by one wild track that led over the mountains towards the east.
Blanche laid a hand on Tristan’s shoulder.
“Let us give to Bertrand, my best knight, some eight score men to keep this path over the mountains. You and I, Tristan, can hold the pass together.”
The man looked into her fearless eyes, at the face so strong and yet so tender. Once more he besought her to consider her safety, and to remain with Bertrand on the slopes above.
“You are of greater worth,” he argued, “than we rough men, whose business it is to make play with the sword.”
But in Blanche’s soul deeper thoughts were moving towards the coming crisis. She loved Tristan, and in that hour when death was spreading forth his wings she took less pains to dissemble the truth. In the half-wistful sacrifice of herself she lost none of the dignity of her heart. Her rare womanliness seemed to stand the higher, even because her love was a noble thing.
“Tristan,” she said to him, “am I better than my men? Think you they will be the worse for having a woman in their ranks?”
“God knows,” he answered her, looking in her eyes, “we shall fight the better if you are with us in the pass.”
“Therefore,” she said, smiling a little, “you argue against your own plea. Is it not a woman’s joy to stand fast by those whom she has loved?”
“Madame,” he answered her, colouring to the lips, “would we were worthy of so great love.”
That night, when the round moon stood full upon the mountains, a line of spears glittered on the road that threaded the pass. On high the great peaks shone amid the stars, splashed with the moonlight, ribbed with deep shadows. A hundred torrents foamed in the ravines, their massed thunder rising like the hoarse cries of a multitude. Above, the peaks seemed monuments of silence, sublime and tranquil as they communed with the stars. Far below on the northern slopes the moonlit forests beat like a sea upon the bases of the mountains.
Tristan and Blanche rode side by side, the peasant trudging before their horses, an oaken staff over his shoulder. There were deep lines of thought on the woman’s face; it seemed wreathed in shadows, though the moonlight played upon her eyes and on the silver stephanos in her hair. The sublimity of the scene had constrained them to silence. Man and his machinations seemed infinitely small under the grand calm of the towering peaks.
Tristan’s thoughts had flown to Rosamunde and all the turbulence of those short months since he had sailed from Purple Isle to seek his sister over the sea. Glimmerings of death seemed to steal on him that night; vague voices called from the bleak cliffs above; mystery encompassed him and the strange twilight of the unknown.
“Lady,” he said suddenly, turning towards her in the moonlight, “how these torrents thunder. Methinks I hear the voices of the dead crying among the mountains. ‘Brother,’ they call me. Never have I known this mood before.”
Blanche’s eyes were fixed upon his face. She saw no fear there, only some sadness round the dogged mouth, a vague melancholy in the deep-set eyes.
“Who would not remember the dead,” she answered him, “amid these great mountains under the moon? Yonder white peak I would name the Christ. Does he not shine on us out of the night?”
“Even strong men die.”
“Not so,” she said; “the great ones never die. There is life in death for such as live like men. Can knightliness and honour end in dust? Nay, for they stand like these great mountains, rare spirits fronting the evil of the world, standing for God until the judgment come.”
“True, true,” he answered her; “and should a man grudge his poor dust to the All-Father who has made us men?”
“Never would I mourn for one,” she cried, “who died in some fair battle for the truth. They are not dead these great ones who have stood like mighty sentinels upon the towers of heaven. Joy is the incense we should give to such, not empty weeping and rebellious grief.”
They had left their horses on the lower slopes, and by midnight had reached the summit of the pass, where the road narrowed rapidly under the shadow of the cliff. A great rock hung like a bartizan over the precipice, narrowing the track still further so that a natural gate gave passage betwixt two walls of stone. A storm-twisted pine, clinging to the cliff, cast a broad shadow over the path, while over the thin grass the blue gentians grew even to the edge of the great ravine.
A sudden cry topped the far thunder of the torrents. Tristan’s guide stood beyond the rock, his tall figure outlined by the moon. He was pointing with his staff towards the south, beckoning them on with eager gestures.
“The Saracens, the Saracens!”
Tristan sprang up beside him, his melancholy gone in the flash of an eye. To the south a broad valley stretched up betwixt the spurs of the mountains, flooded by the tranquil light of the moon. Crag upon crag fell away to the distant scene where torrents ran like strands of flax into forests that stood like early bracken. From the dim depths where the pass began amid rolling woods there came a sense of movement under the moon. Columns of steel like shining beetles crawled up the rugged slopes from the edge of the forest. Nearer still under the bluff shoulder of a cliff the mountain road lay clear before their eyes.
Tristan whistled and laid his hand on his sword, for there to the south in the pale moonlight came long lines of armed men toiling up the pass towards the Saint’s Gate. Buckler and lance caught the moonbeams from afar; white tunics splashed the sable rocks; glittering corselets were merged together till the long columns of moving men seemed like dragons of steel climbing the mountains. Above stood the calm and silent peaks steeped in the stillness of the heavens. Below, the many torrents muttered, as though they cheered on the advancing host.
CHAPTER XLIV
To the north of St. Isidore’s Gate the road expanded into a broad platform, capable of holding some hundred men. Many boulders were strewn around, with squared stones fallen from the ruined parapet that had once edged the sharp precipice. Tristan and his men were quickly at work, carrying stones towards the Gate, and piling a rampart from the rock to the cliff. The peasant who had served them as guide had swarmed up the stem of the great fir and was perched amid the branches, watching the Saracens as they climbed the pass. Meanwhile, Tristan had sent a messenger to warn Sir Bertrand on the heights above that Serjabil was upon them with his host.
Soon a broad bulwark, a Cyclopean wall, closed the mouth of St. Isidore’s Gate. Tristan stood under the shadow of the tree with Blanche the Bold at his side. The melancholy that had possessed the man but an hour before had passed with the stir of the coming battle. He was once more that Tristan of dogged will who had slain Ogier the giant in fair fight and trodden down Jocelyn into the dust.
He spread his shoulders and smiled at the moon as he stood with Blanche upon the rough stone wall. His nostrils dilated with his deep breathing as he watched the columns climb the pass.
“But a day and a night,” he said, “and Lothaire should come. We could hold this wall for a week, I trow.”
“Even so,” she answered him; “yet before the moon climbs up again all my rough children from the north should tumble up to save their lady.”
“If only Bertrand holds the mountain path.”
“Bertrand will stand to the last sword.”
“And, by Heaven, we shall not fail him. God willing, I would hold the pass alone.”
The moon had passed behind one of the western peaks when Serjabil’s men came climbing up to where the fir tree grew by the Gate. A broad shadow was thrown athwart the pass, so that the road was plunged in gloom. Tristan had ordered his force into five companies, each numbering some fifty men. They were to reinforce each other from hour to hour, so that all could rest in turn. They lay quiet behind the wall, waiting calmly for Tristan’s orders.
Tristan crouched behind a boulder, his shield on his arm, his sword in his hand. Around him were stretched the motionless figures of his men, like leopards crouching for the spring. The stars were very bright in the sky, since the moon had sunk behind the peak.
Then above the distant roar of the streams came the sound of voices, the jingling of steel, the dull padding of a thousand feet. Tristan, peering round a rock, saw a man on a white mule turn an angle of the cliff with a long line of lances at his back. White robes showed in shadows as the men marched up, recking nothing of what would follow. When they were within twenty yards of the Gate, the emir on the white mule drew rein in the road, and looked ahead into the darkness. Tristan could see a broad turban wreathing a dusky oval face. It was plain that the man had marked the barrier before him, and was debating its nature and what lay behind.
He spoke some words to his men, and pointed them towards the tree and the rock overhanging the precipice. Then figures sprang forward, came running up the road towards the wall across the Gate. Tristan heard them muttering one to another as they clambered up the rough pile of stones; a turbaned head showed above the summit; another followed it, and yet another.
Tristan sprang up with a great shout.
“God and the Cross!”
Fifty shields heaved up around him. There was the shrill whistle of whirling blades, the sound of strokes that went heavily home. Several white-robed bodies rolled back from the rampart, and the first blood had been shed for the Cross.
Down the pass under the moonlight the long columns could be seen to waver and halt as the trumpets screamed amid the mountains, the echoes tonguing from crag to crag. The emir on the white mule rode back among his men, pointing them towards the Gate with his naked scimitar. The advance guard raised a great shout, and came pouring up with bucklers forward, calling on Allah and Mohammed the Prophet. Lithe, dusky warriors in quilted tunics and shirts of mail came clambering up the rude stone rampart, to take the spear-thrusts in their faces and meet the swing of the pitiless swords. Not a single man of them could top the parapet. Soon white-clad figures lay piled against the wall, like snow driven there by the wind.
These light-armed folk gave back by their emir’s orders to make way for Serjabil’s guard, the choice troops of the Caliph’s provinces, harnessed in chain mail and finely armed. They came up the road in a long column, their bucklers blinking at the moon, to be eclipsed in the shadows athwart the Gate. Like foam they dashed against the wall, with its ranks of shields and spears above. Vain was their fatalistic valour, the courage that claimed an eastern paradise. Time after time they clambered up to melt away before the wall. The dead were piled in the narrow road with cloven bucklers and broken spears. Many a man grudged not his blood that night for the languorous glances of the black-eyed girls.
When dawn came they rolled back baffled from St. Isidore’s Gate. Serjabil himself rode forward on a mule; his keen black eyes took in the truth, the rugged hazards of that narrow way. It seemed to him that he had spent the night in throwing snow against a rock. With the dawn he embraced a subtler means, ordered his men to bend their bows and shoot their arrows high in the air. Moreover, he sent a thousand men to climb the path that wound over the mountain where Sir Bertrand lay.
So the fight went on that day, with the whistling of arrows over the wall, where Tristan and his men lay low. From the heavens the shafts came rattling down, dancing upon the upreared shields, taking a life from time to time. There were many skirmishes upon the wall, and single combats, wherein Tristan slew seven tall Saracens born of one mother. It was Serjabil’s plan to wear the Christians out, to hold them in play while his thousand men forced the path that crossed the mountain.
Towards sunset Tristan stood under the shelter of the great rock, leaning upon his sword. He had come down from the wall to rest after the long day’s fighting in the sun. The shield that hung about his neck had been battered deviceless by the Saracen spears. A scarf was knotted round his right thigh, where an arrow had gored him, but had not sped deep.
Blanche the Bold stood at Tristan’s side. She had tended the wounded, and they had been many, under the shadow of the rock that day. Now her eyes searched Tristan’s face for foreshadowings of defeat, or wounds within. She saw no weakening of the dogged mouth, no bowing down of the massive head.
“I judge,” he said to her, leaning on his sword, “that we have lost this day some hundred men. These cursed archers have smitten us often.”
Blanche stood silent, as though her thoughts sped to the hamlets of the north, where women and children would grieve for the dead.
“Whether we live or die,” she said, “we stand here for a noble cause. Nor shall we flinch from the last blow.”
“Amen,” quoth Tristan, a smile on his mouth. “We can fight for another night and a day, if Bertrand can keep the path above.”
“By then Lothaire and the host will be here.”
“If Bertrand holds the path above.”
There was a prophetic spirit in these words, for hardly had they passed from Tristan’s lips than there came sound as of thunder from the cliffs above. Tristan looked up, rapped out an oath, pressed Blanche back against the wall. A great rock came hurtling down, scattering stones from the rugged slope. It leapt out from the last ledge, flew spinning over the narrow road, to disappear into the depths beneath. Tristan’s hand was on Blanche’s wrist. Above the mutterings of the streams they heard the great rock crash below into the branches of the trees.
“By God,” said Tristan, “they have forced the path!”
“On the mountain.”
“Bertrand has been beaten back. They are rolling the rocks on us, curse their souls!”
He set his arm about Blanche’s body and almost bore her to the foot of the cliff, where there was a shallow hollowing of the stone. They could hear the shouts of Serjabil’s men, who cheered when they saw that the heights were won. Tristan’s men were huddling up under the shelter of the cliff; they could face these Saracens on the wall, but not the rocks that smoked from the mountains.
Blanche lay back against the cliff and looked long into Tristan’s face.
“There is yet time,” she said to him suddenly.
“Ha?”
“To fly down the pass into the woods.”
He darted a look at her and threw back his head, his mouth firm, his eyes fearless.
“As for me,” he said, “I stay at the Gate. Take the rest with you and meet Lothaire on the road. Tell him and Didcart how I died.”
She spread out her arms against the cliffs, as though crucified by her own courage.
“Not so,” she said; “I will not go.”
“But——”
“Make no pleading with me, Tristan,” she said, “for my heart is fixed concerning this.”
He laid a hand upon her shoulder.
“For my sake, go, madame,” he said.
“For your sake,” she answered, “I will not stir hence.”
They stood looking for full half a minute into each other’s eyes, as though Tristan sought to read the truth that was shining on him out of her soul. Unconscious of the gesture, he laid his right hand over his forehead, for he understood of a sudden in that hour that Blanche loved him, even to the death.
“Madame,” he cried hoarsely, “what can I say to you?”
“Nothing, Tristan,” she said, with a strange smile.
Tristan was almost fearful of looking in her face. What were mere words to her but mocking symbols? Did she not know of his full love for Rosamunde? It was only at death’s gate that she had betrayed the truth.
A shower of stones came rattling down the cliff, dancing like huge hailstones on the rugged road. A great rock crashed down upon the wall, slew five men there among those who held the Gate. The rest cowered back under the cliff, while the Saracen arrows sped from the pass, dealing out death in the crowded space.
Tristan saw that it would be but slow slaughter, and that twenty men were as good as a hundred, now that the platform was swept by the stones. He stood forward and shouted to the men.
“Brothers,” he said, “I crave but a score of you to stand beside me, to hold the Gate to the bitter end. Let the rest make for the road to Agravale and tell Lothaire of how we stand.”
The men crowding under the cliff heard him in silence, half ashamed of their own fears. First one stood out and then another, till twenty were mustered at Tristan’s side. He bade the rest make haste to depart lest they should be caught in the pass and cut off from Agravale. Thus he was left with but twenty swords to hold the Saint’s Gate against the Saracens.
Again the moon rose on the snowy peaks and on the solemn foreheads of the mountains. Clouds passed slowly over its surface, building caverns and deep forests of silver in the magic silence of the sky. Ever and anon the Saracen trumpets screamed exultantly on the heights above. The mountains awoke to the roar of the rocks forced from their sleep on the wind-swept slope to thunder down into the depths beneath.
Tristan kept his twenty men under the cliff, that they might escape these grinding, hurtling bolts that leapt out of the calm sky into the pass. He had climbed the wall, and lay prone in the angle under the trunk of the great tree. Thence he could watch the stormers on the road beneath and warn his men when the tide rolled up.
Nor was he left long in such a posture, with the flat of his sword under his chin. A clarion wailed in the darkness of the pass, warning those on the heights above to cease from hurling down the rocks. Spear and buckler flashed up once more as the moon’s eye was uncovered by a cloud. With a great shout Tristan sprang up with sword aloft, his men thronging round him on the wall.
Again the moon sank into the west and huge shadows covered the cliffs. About St. Isidore’s Gate the dead lay thick, where Serjabil’s Saracens had recoiled once more. Yet empty of triumph was that desperate rally for those score heroes who held the wall. Tristan stood alone there on the bloody rampart, bleeding from a spear-thrust in his throat as he leant heavily upon his sword.
A voice called to him out of the gloom, and Blanche’s hand was on his shoulder.
“God help you, Tristan,” she said in his ear. “Is it death with you, soul of my soul?”
He staggered back against the cliff, while she held a wine-flask to his lips, then tore the scarf from off her bosom, and strove to staunch the blood from his throat. He leant heavily against the cliff, fighting for his breath, half dead with travail. Blanche’s arms went about his body, and she half bore his weight as she watched him suffer.
“Tristan,” she said, “Tristan, Tristan.”
He turned his head wearily, so that it half rested upon her bosom.
“I am athirst,” he said, “give me more wine.”
She reached down and held the flask again to his lips, drawing his right arm over her shoulder so that he leant his weight upon her.
“Tristan, look up,” she said at length. “Is it death with you? Great heart, take courage.”
“I am very weary,” he said, closing his eyes.
“Rest here, then,” she answered; “I can bear your weight.”
Slowly the dawn was streaming up, calm and clear after that night of travail. The peaks were glistening in the sky, the heavens mellowing from grey to blue. Under the white brows of the mountains, Tristan and Blanche were alone together, among the stricken and the dead. In death it seemed they would not be parted, though love and life had denied the dream.
Suddenly the woman’s arm tightened about Tristan’s body. The colour returned to her weary face; her eyes grew bright like the eyes of one who hears deliverance in the wind.
“Listen,” she said, “listen, listen!”
From afar came the stirring cry of a horn, a wild blast echoing among the mountains. From afar seemed to rise the shouts of men, strong and vigorous, hurrying to battle. A faint clamour came from the heights whence Bertrand had been driven by Serjabil’s Saracens.
“It is Lothaire,” Blanche said; “they are climbing the pass. Hear how the heathen give tongue above us.”
Tristan struggled up and gripped his sword. A second life seemed to breathe in his body; a second courage filled his heart.
“By God, they come at last!” he cried, with his eyes taking fire. “Give me a shield and I will hold the Gate.”
She hesitated a moment, then did his bidding, groping among the dead men by the wall. She thrust a shield on Tristan’s arm, her hands trembling, her eyes dim with tears. For the sake of his glory she was sending him forth to die in the pass for Christ and the Cross. Even as she armed him; she heard the sound of men storming towards the wall.
Tristan turned to her with the smile of a hero.
“One more fight,” he said, “and I shall have fought my fill.”
Tears were shining on Blanche’s cheeks.
“Go, Tristan,” she said, “and I will follow.”
He bent towards her and kissed her lips.
Therewith, he sprang up towards the parapet, and set his shield before his face. A hundred bucklers were surging up, with corselet and tunic playing beneath. Over the death wrack of the place the sons of the Crescent came streaming up. A single warrior held the wall as the dawn deepened and the night elapsed. Thus did Tristan take his stand with Blanche the Bold at St. Isidore’s Gate.