CHAPTER XLV
“Holy Cross, Holy Cross!”
Such were the shouts that set the wild cliffs echoing as hundreds of painted shields came up the pass to meet the dawn. Above, Sir Didcart with three thousand men had fallen upon those Saracens who had put Bertrand and his band to rout and had rolled down the rocks on Tristan at the Gate.
Up the road came Lothaire of the north, his men racing shoulder to shoulder behind him, panting open-mouthed towards St. Isidore’s Gate. The great rock with its black pinnacles flashed into view, the platform strewn with the Christian dead, the narrow rampart piled with the slain. For one moment Lothaire stood still in the road. Then with a shout he broke away, waving his men on with his sword.
On the rampart, outlined against the sky, stood a single warrior with his shield reared up, while his sword flashed and swept from side to side. A mob of white-robed infidels topped the wall, thrusting at him with their lances, fearing to close. Near by stood a woman wielding a spear, with which she strove to beat down the lance points that were levelled at the man’s body.
“Holy Cross, Holy Cross, God and the Duchess!”
Even as Lothaire’s men charged up, Tristan gave ground, for an arrow had smitten through the rings of his hauberk, and wounded him sorely in the breast. A tall Saracen, seeing him stagger, sprang forward and smote at him with an axe, but fell in turn beneath Tristan’s sword. Yet this was the last blow Tristan gave on the bloody rampart of St. Isidore’s Gate.
Blanche’s arms caught him as he fell; her body shielded him from the spears. Lothaire’s men saw their Duchess stand like a noble mother guarding a son. One outstretched arm pressed the infidels back; the other was round the stricken man’s shoulders.
Then came the roar of the rising tide as Lothaire and his avengers reached the Gate and poured up to save the Duchess there. The stalwart West rolled the Orient back, over the wall and down the road, with bustling shields and screaming steel. Buckler and lance went down in the dust, while the dragon of the North heaved on down the pass, its iron flanks hurling Serjabil’s men over the precipice into the depths beneath.
Tristan lay under the shadow of the cliff with the Saracen’s arrow betwixt his ribs. Beside him knelt Blanche, her noble hands dyed with the blood of the man she loved. Many a rough soldier stood mutely by, gazing on their lady and the man at her knees.
“Wine,” she called to them almost fiercely, “wine, ye fools, and linen, bring them. Ha, Walter, come hither, man, unfasten this hauberk. Thus—thus. Tristan, look up; is it death with you?”
Tristan stared in her face and smiled. They stripped off his hauberk, rent the clothes beneath till the flesh was bare about the barb. Blanche, with her teeth set, snapped off the shaft, but dared not do more, for the blood flowed fast. Her men brought her linen, strips that they had torn from the robes of the dead Saracens who lay around. Two soldiers supported Tristan’s shoulders, while Blanche wound the bands about his body, padding the place where the barb remained, knotting the linen tight to staunch the flow.
Her men made a litter out of a dozen spears with shields and clothing laid thereon. Very tenderly they lifted Tristan up, and bore him slowly down the road from the Saint’s Gate he had held so well. The great peaks glistened in the sun; the streams sang in the ravines beneath. Thus they bore Tristan from the mountains towards the woods that clothed the lower slopes, where they had left a horse litter that they had brought from Agravale for their lady’s use on the homeward road. Reaching the shadows of the trees, they laid Tristan within the litter and took the road towards the north.
Many hours had passed, and the gates of the shrine of St. Geneviève were opened full towards the west. The evening sunlight streamed within, warming the white stones in the floor, gilding the carved panels of the tomb. The wooden roof received the glow reflected from the stones beneath, so that its colours seemed to breathe with deepening dyes over the dead saint’s grave. Through the latticed windows roses climbed, dowering the air with a passionate incense that even in life suggested death. In the garden the cypresses, like black-robed Fates, spun the golden threads from the distaff of the west.
Tristan lay before the tomb with his great hands folded upon his breast. His eyes were turned towards the painted roof, where golden dragons seemed to move amid stars and moons, and meteor flame. Slowly his breath flowed in and ebbed under the crossed hands on his breast. Very silent was the shrine; the light seemed the more reverent for the saint’s tomb there.
Tristan turned his face towards the door with the wistful look of a stricken child listening for the sound of a mother’s voice. Little more than a year had passed away since he had knelt in the chapel of Purple Isle and watched his arms for Columbe’s sake. Then his heart had echoed back the sounding surges of the sea. Then in the high tide of youth he had heard no requiems and no ghastly cries stirring the pulses of the world. ’Twas different now; all changed the tones, the lights and shadows, the colours’ scheme. While the sunbeams slept upon the floor death seemed nearer than life itself.
A figure darkened the gate of the shrine, the figure of a woman who stood looking towards the tomb. She drew near to the place where Tristan lay on the warm stones under the painted roof. Blanche’s eyes were full of pity as she gazed on the strong man lying there, so weak and still was he, so changed in three days. Was this Tristan who had held the mountains, whose arm had been mighty in the van of battle? How white he was since the precious blood had ebbed hour by hour from the barb in his breast.
She sat herself down on the tomb’s steps beside him and felt that his eyes were fixed on hers. There was an unuttered prayer upon his lips. He looked like a man who thirsted for water, but could not crave the cup from her hands.
“Tristan, what would you?” she asked, reading in his eyes that dim desire that appealed to the woman in her like the look of a dog.
He moved restlessly upon the bed, his fingers plucking at the hem of the coverlet.
“I have no heart in me,” he said.
“No heart, Tristan?”
“To ask a boon of you at this last hour. For you have blessed me many times, nor have I aught but gratitude to give.”
She stretched out a hand and touched his forehead, knelt close to him, looking sadly in his face.
“What would you have given me, Tristan,” she asked, “other than the gratitude of a good heart? Am I one to crave weight for weight?”
As she knelt on the stones the sunlight gathered about Tristan’s face, so that it seemed haloed round with gold.
“My soul wings towards Holy Guard,” he said.
“Ah, Tristan——”
“I would that I might look on Rosamunde again and hear her speak to me before I die.”
Blanche leant back against the tomb and stared out straight through the open door. For the moment she saw nothing but the arch of gold, and set therein a woman’s face, fair with all fairness, rich with youth. In Blanche’s heart there was sudden bitterness, since she knew that she was growing old, and that love flew forth to the face of youth. In life this Rosamunde had stood between, and even in death the man’s last thoughts flew past her to Holy Guard by the sea.
And then she looked at Tristan’s face, with its wistful eyes and haggard mouth. How weak he was, how like a child’s this his last desire. Should she balk him when death stood by? No, by God, she was nobler than that.
“Tristan,” she said, “I will send to Holy Guard and fetch Rosamunde hither.”
His face brightened strangely at her words, but there was still a cloud before his eyes.
“Nay, send not to Holy Guard,” he said, “for days will elapse in the coming and going. And the lamp may be quenched before they return.”
“What would you, then?” she asked him again.
“Lo,” he said, “does not the great Gloire run from Agravale towards the sea? Set me, I pray thee, in a boat, and let them row me down to the sea.”
“What of your wound?” she asked once more.
“The blood,” he said, “flows from me still, though I lie here on the chapel floor. Therefore, I pray thee, bear me hence, that I may come to Holy Guard before I die.”
“So be it,” she said. “God grant thee life to behold thy love’s face.”
CHAPTER XLVI
They bore Tristan from the shrine of St. Geneviève northwards towards Agravale and the waters of the Gloire. All one day and a night they were on the road, riding slowly, since Tristan’s wound would stand but little jolting of the litter. Ever beside him rode Blanche the Bold, sorrowful at heart for Tristan’s sake, and for the last hours that she grudged to another. Had she not played the nobler part and contrasted her pity with Rosamunde’s pride? Yet to Tristan the end would be bitter if he looked not again on Rosamunde’s face, for the red stream never ceased to flow from where the barb was buried deep.
It was dawn when they came to the great Gloire and saw Agravale tower on the heights above, smitten with the sunlight from the east. Very peaceful seemed the green meadows where the tall poplars barred back the dawn. All the world seemed bathed in dew; the odours of flowers breathed in the air.
By the old stone bridge they found boats moored to the grey quays above the river. Blanche chose a black barge that lay in the shallows, and by Tristan’s desire he was set in the prow with his face turned towards the west. Twenty of Blanche’s men manned the barge, stout fellows who had held the thwarts in the north when the Duchess’s galley put out to sea. She herself was in the prow, where Tristan had been laid on the narrow deck.
The barge foamed away on the bosom of the Gloire, gliding with the strong current as two men toiled at each great oar. Agravale and its white towers dwindled into the azure above the woods as the sun stood full in the eastern sky. Far to the south the white peaks gleamed, seeming to watch the barge pass down the broad river towards the sea.
Very solemn were the wilds that summer day, as the Gloire spread its curves under the towering hills. Gnarled trees drank like hoar warriors at the brink, and betwixt the sable deeps of the woods the grassland was broidered with many flowers. Sunlight and shadow were embattled there where the hills bristled against the dawn, and the river gleamed into rippling bays with a thousand lightnings threading the green. Deep were the mysteries of the woods and deep the chanting of the river as the sedges sang of the distant sea.
Tristan lay in the prow of the barge with his face turned towards the west. Like one in a dream he watched the woodland waving by, the great trees splashed with gold by the sun, the meadows ablaze with a myriad flowers. Sometimes he would gaze into the blue above and watch the white clouds sailing by, or a hawk like a black speck poised in the heavens.
Thus the hours sped as in a dream while the barge swept on down the river, the oars swinging with the steady rhythm of a song. Sometimes Tristan counted the strokes till they seemed like the breathing of a mighty beast. Often he would fancy that Holy Guard towered up before him against the blue, or starting, he would seem to hear Rosamunde’s voice calling his name as the water bubbled about the prow.
Blanche the Duchess watched beside him, wondering whether his life would ebb before they brought him to the sea. With her own hands she gave him food and wine for the staying of his strength. Her voice indeed was as the voice of a mother as she tended him there, forgetting self in the hope that his prayers should not prove in vain.
“Courage, Tristan,” she would often say, with her mouth close to the wounded man’s ear, “the stream runs fast, and there is blood in you yet.”
So night came, and with it a summer storm of wind and rain sweeping up the valley from the sea. The men covered Tristan with a canopy of rough cloth, and propped their shields round him to shelter his bed. Gloom wrapped the woods where the tall trees battled with the wind. The Gloire’s waves were capped with foam, yet the men at the oars rowed on and on. No sounds were there save the groaning of the looms, the heavy downrush of the storm, the plashing of the water at the prow. Truly did the Gloire seem a river of the dead as the black barge forged on against the wind and rain, with the hoarse moan of the forest filling the night.
Yet as the dawn came the clouds gave back and a clear sky waited in the west. Soon the sun rent the vapoury veil, flashing upon the distant mountains, while the wind sank to utter rest. The woods seemed wrapped in a shimmering mist and golden smoke wreathed all the hills. The huge shadows were startled from their sleep where every tree top pearled by the rain glimmered and flashed towards the dawn. The great Gloire laughed as the light came up and the drenched meadows smiled in the sun.
Tristan had slept that night through the rain and the wind, for sheer weariness had brought him dreams. In his sleep he had beheld Rosamunde walking the waters, treading the river to meet the barge. Her face had lit the waters like the moon, and crimson flames had wreathed her feet as they touched the waves that flowed betwixt the woods. Her gown was of a splendid green, so bright that it was as some rare emerald shot through with the sun. She had come to the barge and entered in, knelt down by Tristan and kissed his lips. And with that dream kiss Tristan awoke to find the dim woods dripping dew.
Whether it was this dream, or the clear morning air, or the long sleep that had held him through the hours, Tristan felt stronger with the dawn. Steadily the long oars still laboured on, for ten men rested while ten men rowed. There was to be no halting towards the sea, and with the swift stream the barge moved fast.
Blanche had been long awake at Tristan’s side, watching the woods as they hurried by with the flower-filled valleys lying between. She had set her cloak to dry in the sun, and had spread her drenched hair over her shoulders. At the first lifting of Tristan’s lids she was quick to greet him with a smile and a word.
“Dawn,” he said; “how long have I slept? Are we nearer Holy Guard and the sea?”
“The men have rowed all night,” she answered him. “You have slept, Tristan, while we have watched.”
A strange smile played upon the man’s lips, the smile of one who remembered a dream, some shining forth of a mystic face from the shifting vapours of the night.
“I have dreamed a dream,” he said.
“Yes, Tristan,” she echoed.
“Methinks that I shall reach the sea and live to be carried into Holy Guard. Hark, whose voice is that? The steersman calls to us from the poop.”
One of Blanche’s men who steered the barge was pointing to where the tall woods were broken by a valley. Under a thick mist they could see the shining through of a goodly river, streaked and silvered by the sun. Its waters came fretting round a rocky point to merge into the bosom of the Gloire.
“It is the Lorient,” quoth Blanche, standing and looking under her hand.
Tristan half raised himself upon his elbow and gazed over the low bulwarks towards the woods. A tawny flood came flashing down to smite into the Gloire’s more silver breadth.
“The Lorient,” he said; “then we are but ten leagues from the sea.”
“By nightfall we should come to Holy Guard.”
He sank back again upon the bed with a spasmodic catching of the breath as the barb twinged in his wounded side. Fresh blood stained the linen bands. He coughed and winced as Blanche knelt by him and gave him wine out of an earthen flask.
“Courage, Tristan, courage,” she said; “for by God’s grace we shall bring you to Holy Guard before the night shall come again.”
So the day passed, and the great Gloire coursed on with broadening grandeur towards the sea. The silent thickets clambered down to where the glittering inlets played on sandy banks and amid the sedges. Ever the meadows lay between, streaked with green rushes and with golden flags, while the sky seemed full of thunder clouds, of light and shadow, and of shimmering mists that wreathed the hills with golden smoke. Ever the great trees seemed to sing of death as the barge swept on towards the sea.
CHAPTER XLVII
It was sunset at Holy Guard, and a strong wind blew from over the sea, where the tide was low, and the sands were purpled with the shadows of the clouds. The breakers were white on the distant rocks and about the black islands scattered there upon the bosom of the sea.
Ruin possessed Holy Guard, for Jocelyn’s men had laboured hard to fulfil the commands of the mighty Pelinore. Thus in the old days the Church knew well how to use the saints she herself had created. She could conjure with many a magic name and frighten the froward with the shades of the dead. Such prelates as Jocelyn could cheat their own creed with a cunning that claimed Heaven, though born of the Devil.
The chapel roof of Holy Guard had fallen in on the broken pillars and the grass-grown floor. The frescoes rotted on the walls, and through the empty casement frames shone vistas of sea and sky and wood. The wild voice of the wind played through the abbey, the red fires of the sunset glimmered in, and moonlight pierced the broken roof. Bats and sea-birds haunted the shadows ’mid the creaking and clashing of the doors and the hoarse roar of the waves beneath.
At a ruined window in the Abbess’s room stood Rosamunde of Joyous Vale looking out towards the night. Telamon and his men were quartered below in the bare refectory and the empty cells. On a rough stool in the midst of the room sat the girl Miriam, whom Tristan had saved with Rosamunde from the madhouse in the mere.
The Lady of Joyous Vale leant against the stone sill with her face resting betwixt her hands. There was but little light in her shadowy eyes, and her shoulders drooped from the fair sweep of her neck, as though she were weary, and had known no sleep. She stood there motionless, like one whose thoughts sped far away over the dim horizon into the distant land of dreams.
The girl Miriam watched her lady, crooning to herself some ancient song with a faint smile on her full red lips. She was not unhappy, this Hebrew child, though she wondered, as she sat there, what had passed betwixt the woman who brooded by the window and Tristan who had gone to the mountainous south. That Rosamunde was sorrowful she knew full well, since her sorrow spoke on her wistful face.
From below came the sound of a man singing the staunch lines of some old song forged in the smithies of the north. The girl Miriam smiled, and pressed one hand over the charm that hung over her heart. Rosamunde seemed to droop the more as she bowed down her head towards the night.
Miriam rose from her stool, went to Rosamunde, and touched her shoulder.
“What ails you?” she said. “May I not help?”
“It is nothing, child,” came the dull response.
“Are you ill, lady, in body or in heart?”
“Why question me, girl, when I have no answer?”
Both Miriam’s hands were on Rosamunde’s arm, and her eyes were very gentle under her dusky hair.
“Am I but a child, then?” she asked.
“Well?”
“Have I not suffered, am I not wise in a woman’s way? Ah, my lady, let me in. We have shared much together; trust me further.”
Very slowly Rosamunde took her hands from her face, and turned and looked into Miriam’s eyes. No vulgar curiosity did she find therein, no insolent challenging of the truth. The girl’s face seemed softened by pity, yet not that pert patronage that affronts the soul.
“Child,” she said sadly, turning again towards the east, “how easily are we women fooled by pride, driven to cheat our nobler self by the mad anguish of a passionate moment. Would to God I had had less pride!”
Miriam drew to her with her lithe, warm body, as though her very nearness should speak of sympathy.
“Lady,” she said, “we women err according to the fierceness of our instincts. Love turns to lightning in a moment; or, like the moon, we frown at a cloud that dulls for an instant the distant stars.”
“True, true,” said Rosamunde, gazing towards the woods. “Words wound us too easily when we dote on words and behold not the truth that shines beneath. We cannot always bear the truth when that same truth wounds our desire. So we rebel, even as a good hound will turn when stung by the lash in a master’s hand.”
“And yet it is not love that turns.”
“No, but the quick instinct of a passionate heart that snaps at destiny, to repent betimes. For when the pain is quick and keen, the finer reason slacks the lead, and the hot self leaps out on love, only to slink when the wrath is past.”
She leant her chin once more upon her hands and watched the azure deepen in the east, with the vain anguish of her penitence. Was it but a week since she had come from Agravale to the sea, stirred by the unreasoning fever of her wrath? Yet day by day her heart had cooled, till naught seemed left in it but slow despair. “Tristan, Tristan!” cried her soul. Often she would thrust her arms out in the night, and pray that Tristan might return once more.
Even as she stood there, gazing over the hills and woods where the river wound down towards the sea, she saw a black shape glide from the trees over the broadening bosom of the Gloire. She saw oars flash and glisten against the setting sun. Right in the golden path came a barge, bearing for Holy Guard across the river.
Rosamunde stood back and watched the boat with both hands folded over her heart. Then without a word she sprang away, sped down the galleries in the dusk, where many a shaft of gold smote through the narrow windows in the walls. Out through the ruined gate she sped, and down the rough path towards the river.
Nor was she so speedy that she reached the river before the barge had foamed up to the strand, where a narrow waterway wound to a wooden quay. Rosamunde, halting under a wind-twisted fir, saw four soldiers moving up the path, bearing upon a bed the figure of a man. Before them, some twenty paces, walked a woman whose face was turned towards the walls of Holy Guard. Rosamunde knew her as she climbed the path, Blanche of the North, even the Duchess.
The two women met on the narrow path that climbed the wild hillside from the waters of the Gloire. A great glory covered the sea, while the dark woods seemed steeped in shadow, as though the trees had drawn black cowls over their green polls. From the west came the hoarse murmur of the waves, as they foamed in over the yellow sand.
Blanche held out her hands to Rosamunde.
“Sister,” she said, “I bring you back Tristan from the mountains.”
As for Rosamunde, she was white as death, nor had she words wherewith to answer the Duchess. Going to the litter, she saw Tristan lying there with a grey face and great shadows under his sunken eyes. So weak was he that he could but stretch a hand to her as she drew near and touched his forehead with her lips.
“Rosamunde,” he said, with a great sigh.
Her hot tears fell upon his face, as she wept there, even before the men who bore him.
“Tristan, look not thus at me,” she said, “for I have been shamed out of all my pride.”
They passed on up the bare hillside with the moss-grown rocks lit by the setting sun. The perfume of the myrtle thickets scented the air, tossed abroad by the wild west wind. Over the sands rolled the rising tide, flowing fast under the flaming sky.
Thus they brought Tristan towards Holy Guard, its black walls haloed by the west. Rosamunde walked beside the bed with Tristan’s hand clasped fast in hers. The Duchess Blanche had drawn apart, a deep calm on her stately face, an unfathomable sadness filling her eyes. She had surrendered love into Rosamunde’s hands, and would fain be alone to hide the smart.
They carried Tristan through the gate, up the great stairway, and through the dim galleries into the chamber of the Abbess. There they left Rosamunde and the man alone, for Blanche would suffer none to meddle in the sacred meeting of the twain. She closed the door on them with her own hands, and passed out to the battlements to watch the sea drown the darkening sands.
In the twilight of the room Rosamunde knelt by Tristan’s bed, and bowed down her face over him as one who mourned. Through many a window the west wind moaned, and death seemed to move through the ruined house. In Rosamunde’s eyes there was a strange despair, for she had read the truth at the first glance, and her heart cried out in her as the night came down.
“Ah, Tristan,” she said, with her pride in the dust, “I have sinned against you and your love. Ah, God, must I lose all at this hour!”
“Grieve not,” he answered her, “for what is past. Fate has ever bruised our hearts; and though I die, I have love in death.”
There was a great light within his eyes, but Rosamunde’s face was hid in shadow. Not for her was the empty boast of love, the last triumph-cry of a wounded soul. She broke out suddenly into bitter weeping, and hung over Tristan as she wept.
“Love,” she said, with her words half smothered and her hair falling upon his face, “how can I lose you out of my life? O God, have pity! Is it for this that I have passed through all? Tristan, Tristan, is it death?”
Very tenderly he held her hands, and strove to comfort her as the night increased.
“It is God’s will,” he said at last. “I have fought my fight, and the end is near. And yet I shall not win the spoil, for death steps in—thus ends the day.”
“God is not merciful,” she cried, “to those who grieve and sorrow here.”
He drew her down to him, so that his face was wreathed in the glory of her hair.
“Let us not judge,” he said, “those things which ever balk our ken. Are we not children? Wife, take courage.”
She clung to him, and kissed his lips, as though to shut the warm life in.
“Ah, Tristan, Tristan, that I also might die!”
CHAPTER XLVIII
A night and a day had passed, and Tristan lived on, though the blood still flowed from his wounded side. Blanche and Rosamunde had dressed the wound with oil and wine and diverse herbs, but the barb would suffer no healing there, and the red stream still ebbed slowly forth. They saw that Tristan weakened hour by hour, his great hands growing white as a young girl’s, his eyes shining like crystal in a mask of wax.
Rosamunde watched at his side, counting the hours by the dial of her heart, neither sleeping nor leaving him long alone. As she saw him weakening with his wound, the fiercer mood returned to her heart as though to defy the power of death. It was not against Tristan that it arose, this passionate anger that strove with Fate. To the man she was mild and tender as moonlight, gentle towards him as the hours sped by. Against God it was that her heart cried out, against the God who would not hear her prayers.
When the second evening came, with the night’s fatalism deepening in the east, she passed out from the room like one whose heart could bear up no longer against despair. It was not to weep that she sped away and climbed to the topmost wall of Holy Guard. Nor was it for prayer in the gentler sense, but rather to fling her burning wrongs full in the countenance of the heavens.
The sun was setting over the sea like some great slave of the Creator, doomed to tread an eternal track amid the planets of the sky. The clouds, like demons, scourged him on, breathing forth fire and purple smoke. Beneath on the rocks the sea complained, that mighty rhapsodist whose words declared the troubled destinies of all mankind. For as the wind is often hushed, luring the ocean into sleep, so doubt and anguish cease at times, only to mock mankind the more.
So it was with Rosamunde that summer night as she stood alone on the wind-swept walls and watched the sun go down in flame. All hope had ebbed from her, and her pure faith had, like an angel, spread its wings, and vanished into the distant gloom. The sky seemed but an iron dome, riveted above the helpless world. All eloquence had passed away with the unfathomable truths of life that sometimes vivify and sometimes kill.
What had life given her? Insult and pain, death, terror, and unanswered prayers! Had not her beauty been a curse? What single blessing had she won but the strong love of a strong man’s heart, one fierce melody in the strifes of sound! And now this one good gift seemed gone, snatched like a jewel from her breast by the lean hand of a mocking fate.
In great bitterness she thrust up her arms and cried aloud under the sky:
“God, if there be a God, hear my voice. Give me some sign that I may know that we are not brute beasts who live to beget life, then—to die. Give me some sign of immortality. Show me that wisdom rules the heavens, that we of earth are not dust and air.”
And still the sun approached the sea, and still the hoarse waves laughed below as though there were no hope in heaven.
“Great God,” she cried again, her hands outstretched towards the west, “give me but one word in my heart, that I may know there is a God, and that some kindness rules the world.”
Yet there was no still small voice as that which spoke to the prophet in the cave when all the discords of the earth moved him to doubt in God’s design. The sea and sky were full of life, the wild woods clamoured and the west wind blew. And yet there shone no light in heaven to comfort her whose faith was dim.
Slowly, with her head adroop, Rosamunde passed back to the Abbess’s room, and stole in silently, to find Tristan asleep. A small lamp burnt on a sconce in the wall, shedding a vague light on the sleeping man’s face. Rosamunde, with the look of one very weary, drew a great wooden chair that had been the Abbess’s towards the bed, lay back therein, and rested her chin upon her hand.
The night had fallen about Holy Guard, filling its broken galleries with gloom. The stars were shining, and from below came the voices of those who sat at meat in the abbey refectory with Blanche the Duchess. It was Rosamunde’s vigil, and no one disturbed her, for she had wine and bread with her in the room.
Once more the heat of her despair died down like a fire that lacks for fuel. Her very soul seemed weary to death, and very lonely in that silent room. A hundred dark thoughts coursed through her brain: the sure knowledge that Tristan would die, that God had deserted her, if there were a God. Apathy possessed her hour by hour; afar she heard the sound of the sea, and the wind in the windows overhead.
As the hours passed her eyes grew hot and heavy with sleep; the long night began to weigh her down, as Tristan slept on and took no heed. Soon her head sank upon her shoulder, the very gloom seemed to grow more dim, and the noise of the wind ebbed from her ears. She drooped down in the great chair, her hands lying open in her lap, her hair clouding over her face. Sleep wiped the tired lines away from her mouth, and her large eyes strained towards the lamp no more.
That night Rosamunde dreamed a dream, a mystic vision, as though the God who watches over the ways of men had sent some seraph to His child. It seemed to her that she stood alone within the ruined chapel upon the rock. The chapel was full of golden vapour, a magic mist that seemed to move in luminous whorls towards the roof. The high altar was hid in gloom, as though a cloud enveloped it, like purple smoke over the moon. Even as she stood gazing in silent awe, a white arm was thrust from out the cloud, pointing its finger towards the floor that lay below the altar steps. A golden ray seemed to fall from the hand upon a stone a full cubit square. Letters of fire were traced on the flag. The purple vapour was rent aside, and in that dream shrine Rosamunde saw the White Christ bending from the Cross.
“Believe,” the Christ’s eyes seemed to say.
Then, with a sudden stream of light and a great sound as of a thunder-clap, the whole chapel rocked and sank into an abyss that had no ending.
With a cry Rosamunde awoke and stared around her in the room. Trembling, she sat up in the chair, awe and fear upon her face, as she remembered the vision she had seen. Tristan was still sleeping on the bed, and the great abbey was silent as death, save that she heard the sound of the sea.
Trembling and amazed, Rosamunde rose up like one whose soul groped in the dark towards the truth. She passed her hand over her heavy eyes, looked at Tristan as he slept close by the window where the night streamed in. Stung by sudden hope, she crossed the room, took the lamp from the sconce in the wall, passed out, and climbed towards the chapel. Up the great stair she made her way, the lamplight flashing on the walls and into her white palm as she shaded the flame. The wind played round her from above, moving her hair about her face. Her eyes were filled with hope and fear, like pools where darkness and moonlight mingle.
So through the gloomy galleries she came into the chapel of Holy Guard. Standing by the door with the lamp held high, she looked round under the ruined roof, as though half thinking to see her dream repeat its mysteries before her eyes. The lamplight quivered on the broken stones, the fallen rafters of the roof, and the snapped pillars that lay around. Above the altar the Cross still stood, but there was no purple mist about its limbs, no golden vapour filling the place.
Holding her lamp above her head, Rosamunde pressed forward over the ruinous floor towards the altar shrouded deep in gloom. Bending low, she gazed at the flagstones one by one as she passed up the aisle, lifting the broken rafters aside and thrusting away the fallen tiles. Before the very altar steps she came to a stone covered with words which she could not read. Kneeling and setting the lamp on the floor, she drew a poniard out of her girdle and worked at the joints with the point thereof.
Soon the stone lurched up, showing a streak of darkness beneath, for there was a goodly cavity under the flag. Bending low, and turning the stone back on its face, she groped in the darkness till her fingers touched the smooth lid of a metal box. Very slowly she lifted it out, laid it in her lap as she half knelt on the floor, and turned the clasp that fastened the lid. Lying within was a glass phial filled with a fluid red as blood, also some yellow silken stuff that looked to her like an eastern veil.
Rosamunde set the phial on the floor and held up the veil before the lamp. Even as the light came streaming through, a golden halo glowed round a face calm and grand as the face of a god. Great awe came down on Rosamunde’s soul, for she seemed to gaze on the face of the Christ.
CHAPTER XLIX
Bearing the casket with the veil and phial therein, Rosamunde passed out of the chapel of Holy Guard, down many a gallery and winding stair, to the room where Tristan slept. The look of awe still possessed her face, filling her eyes with solemn shadows, loosening the curves of her proud mouth. The lamp’s light played upon her hair as the west wind swayed it to and fro like golden threads upon the cloak of night.
Coming once more to the Abbess’s room, she found Tristan sleeping even as she had left him. A faint grey haze hung in the east, for the dawn was coming up over the woods and the waters of the Gloire. Rosamunde set the lamp on the sconce in the wall, and laid the casket on the great carved chair. With a rush of tenderness, she stooped and looked into Tristan’s face, hung over him with arms outstretched, as though her whole soul gave him its blessing.
Then, with her face towards the east, she knelt down by the window, her hands folded upon her breast. Out of the night she had struggled to meet the broadening glory of the dawn. Never before had Rosamunde prayed as she prayed that hour in Holy Guard. Her soul seemed borne on wings of fire upwards, ever upwards, till the heavy world grew bright in the beams of the rising sun. Ever she seemed to strive with God, and in the strife her own weak faith caught a trebled courage from her prayers. Once more the welkin seemed to wake to the deep mysteries of life and love. The woods grew green, the waters shone, the clouds gleamed white against the blue. The voice of the dawn rang loud and clear, bidding the phantoms of the night depart.
A new light shone on Rosamunde’s face, as though hope was reborn within her heart. She rose up from before the eastern window, took the casket in her hands, and knelt down at the side of Tristan’s bed. She smiled as she turned the coverlet aside, and began to cut the linen bands stained with the blood that still ebbed through. So deep was the man’s sleep that he slumbered on till she turned the last band from the clotted wound and saw the red stream oozing up.
Then Tristan awoke. His hands moved restlessly to and fro, and Rosamunde, bending over his body, caught them and held them fast in hers.
“Tristan,” she said, with her splendid hair falling around his haggard face.
His eyes questioned hers with a strange wistfulness, and he breathed deeply, but did not speak.
“Tristan,” she said again, with her mouth close to him, as he lay and looked at her like a child, “I have dreamed a dream, and God has given me back your life. This I believe, for my faith has returned.”
“Rosamunde,” he said, with a great sigh.
“Lie still,” she whispered, “while I dress your wound with the gifts God has given me in the night.”
“God?” he asked her.
“Even so,” she answered, “for as I slept the Christ appeared and bade me believe, and in my dream he showed me the place in the chapel above us where relics were buried. Yet, if this dream fails me at this hour, I shall never believe in Heaven more.”
Therewith she kissed him on the lips, with tears brimming in her eyes. Tristan watched her silently as she took the phial and poured the red liquid into the wound. Mingling there with the living blood, it sent forth an odour through the room as though all the spices of the East, spikenard and myrrh and wondrous balms, had spent their perfumes on the air. Then Rosamunde took the mystic veil, and pressed it deep into the wound, where it grew red with Tristan’s blood.
Leaning back against the chair, she half sat, half knelt beside the bed, watching the man with all her soul. The streaming sunlight flooded in, playing upon Tristan’s face with its hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. In either heart was poised the chance of life and death that summer dawn.
Very slowly the minutes passed, as though Time halted in his stride. The lamp had burnt out on the wall, and birds were awake in the thickets beneath, their shrill orisons greeting the dawn. Rosamunde, filled with unrest, watched no longer beside the bed, but rose and paced from wall to wall, gazing out through the ruined window at the Gloire gleaming amid the woods. For the moment she dared not look at Tristan, lest the last hope should prove but a dream. A cold hand seemed on her bosom, pressing heavily on her heart, while the distant clamour of the sea came like a dirge into her ears.
Suddenly Tristan called to her, his voice strong and resonant as of old, not the half moan of a dying man.
“Hither, Rosamunde,” he said; “come to me. What miracle is this?”
She turned instantly and was at his side, bending over him with her eyes afire. And lo, the blood had ceased to flow, and the red veil seemed clotted fast over the place where the barb was buried. There was a faint colour on Tristan’s cheeks, and his eyes had the lustre they had lost of late. Rosamunde knelt and gazed at his face, as though half fearful of trusting the truth.
Then with a low cry she bowed her head, and laid her hands on the man’s shoulders.
“Tristan, you will live,” she said.
“There is strange strength in me.”
“The dream, the dream!”
“No longer does the warm blood ebb.”
She raised herself from Tristan’s body and knelt with arms stretched towards the east, a great glory lighting her face.
CHAPTER L
It was evening, and Holy Guard was wrapped in silence, save that the sea laughed and clamoured on the rocks beneath.
Up the great stairway climbed Blanche the Duchess, with a purple cloak thrown over her shoulders and a small silver cross held in one hand. Solemnity dwelt on her face, as though joy and pain held converse there, while life and love were not accorded. Shadows there were beneath her eyes, and a sad smile playing about her mouth. Her hair seemed whiter than of yore, and age more manifest, as though her youth gave out at last, and bowed its head.
Very slowly she climbed the stair, as though her heart grew tired apace. The sun came through in golden beams from the thin squints that pierced the wall, smiting the silent shadows through, shadows that seemed to suffer pain.
Presently she came to the cloister court where seven tall windows broke the wall, giving view of the western sea, the great Gloire, and the thronging woods. About Holy Guard the world seemed to sweep like a rare tapestry, sea, forest, and stream, blending azure, silver, and green. The great abbey seemed arched with gold, an irrefragable peace begotten of heaven.
After standing awhile to look over the sea, Blanche passed down the long gallery that led towards the Abbess’s room. She walked noiselessly. The door of the Abbess’s room stood ajar, and from within came the sound of voices.
Blanche halted on the threshold, and gazed in with a smile hovering in her eyes. Tristan was lying on the bed half propped on pillows, with Rosamunde seated at his side. The woman’s arm was about Tristan’s shoulders, his head half resting on her breast, her hair falling down on either side, bathing his face as with golden light. Their eyes were turned away from Blanche towards the window in the wall.
They were talking together, these two who had come through storms to each other’s arms. Calm joy seemed theirs and deep content, a golden mood in which their thoughts were oblivious of all things save their love. Blanche leant her shoulder against the wall and watched them in silence, with her face in shadow.
“Tristan,” said the woman, “how dim seem the days when I played the great lady in Joyous Vale.”
He half turned his head upon her breast, so that he could look into her eyes.
“I was but a great boy then,” he said.
“And I a wise fool,” she answered him. “Ah, Tristan, when shall we women learn that cleverness suffices not the heart? The great love in a strong man’s eyes, the trustful clinging of children’s hands, these are the things that make for heaven.”
“True,” he said to her, taking her hair and winding a bright tress round his wrist; “we are wise in small things, unwise in the great. God, love, and health—Heaven give me these, and I will not envy any man.”
But Blanche drew back from before the door with a shadow as of pain upon her face. Such then was life for those who loved, the godly light in a husband’s eyes, the trusting smile of an honoured wife. For her there could be no magic words, no clinging lips, no straining hands. In her deep loneliness she turned away, and passed back to gaze on the restless sea.
Cassell & Co., Ltd., London, E. C.
Printed by Cassell & Company, Limited, La Belle Sauvage, London, E.C.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Spelling and hyphenation have been left as in the original. A few obvious typesetting errors have been corrected without note.
[End ofThe Seven Streamsby Warwick Deeping]