CHAPTER XV
The ducal city of Agravale queened it in the south amid the gloom of her ilex woods and the perfumes of her pines. The city stood on the verge of a great precipice that plunged to the sweeping waters of the river Gloire. Southwards from this line of precipices, crowned in the centre by the towers of Agravale, stretched a broad valley spreading many leagues to the great mountains that closed the Marches from the nether south. The plain was a vine-clad Arcady, rich in olives, painted thick with flowers. Purple and green and gold, it swept to the sombre bosoms of the mountains, whose snowy peaks smote like moonlight through the clouds.
On the north a wilderness of woods covered the plateau that ended in the great precipice above the river. Black was the tincture of this wild, a gloomy green like the sullen depths of some unsailed sea. Here the ilex made midnight in the valleys, and the stone pine lifted its beseeching palms towards the sky. Holly and cedar, cypress, oak, and yew, a torrential wilderness of trees choked up the valleys and concealed the hills. Here the wolf hunted and the wild boar rooted in the glades. Only the wind made music, while the shadows danced and quivered on the grass.
Agravale, proud city of the south, lay pale and luxurious under the southern sky. Its white walls stretched like marble veins into the sombre green-stone of the woods. It was an opulent city, sleek, sinful, and magnificent. Colour enriched its many gardens, where vines clustered and roses revelled. The pomegranate thrust up its ruddy blooms, and glowed with the gilded roundness of its fruit. The orange burdened its green canopies with gold. The arbutus bled; the oleander blushed against the blue. Like wine poured from heaven were the sunsets upon the white pinnacles of the mountains. Northwards flowed the woods, beating with leafy billows on the walls.
Agravale, rich city, possessed a duke in those times, Raymond the Simple, a puppet prince whose instincts were monastic, save in his obedience to his wife. The Duchess Lilias kept her husband like a half-tamed ape, mewed up in the palace with baubles to trick his temper. He was as weak of wit as he was feeble of limb, while Lilias, proud Semiramis that she was, queened it through all the Southern Marches. She was a greedy dame, loose of mouth and loose of life. Bishop Jocelyn was her confessor and her confidant. The pair pandered to the passionate temper of the city of Agravale, and were very obedient to their Father the Pope.
The Bishop and his companies had marched back from the Seven Streams with much plunder and honour, and the holy praise of Mother Church. They had martyred and massacred, laid waste the province, dangled their dogmas on the points of their lances. There had been much rejoicing at Agravale, much opening of wine casks. Triumphant Masses had been sung in the great cathedral of St. Pelinore. A tourney had been held without the walls, for there was good cause for pride and pleasure in Agravale. The children of the south had upheld the Roman Faith; their swords had shone in the cause of truth.
The great inspiration of the city was a certain passionate rivalry that existed between Bishop Jocelyn and Lilias the Duchess. The pair diced with gold, gambled with extravagance, for the edification of the saints and the good people of Agravale. When Dame Lilias laid out new gardens with marble fountains and towers therein, the Bishop out-gardened her by the magnificence of three acres. When Jocelyn feasted all the beggars of the city, the Duchess out-charitied him with much silver and good cloth taken from her coffers and her presses. The pair kept Agravale a-bubble with their vanities. The Bishop would have hired the angels out of heaven to out-dance the wantons who tripped at the bidding of Lilias the Duchess.
The rivalry between the pair had been exaggerated the more by the swaggering quarrels of their knights and mercenaries. Like hired gladiators, they were ever ready to rend each other’s throats in the cause of chivalry. It had so happened that the Bishop’s champions had been worsted by Lilias’s men in a late passage of arms without the walls. Percival, captain of the ducal guards, had unhorsed some dozen of the Bishop’s paladins with his single spear. There had been great wrath thereat in the episcopal palace.
One August morning, a bronzed, iron-faced man entered the forecourt of the Bishop’s palace, threaded his way through the loungers by the stair leading to the inner gate. A guard met him with crossed pike on the top step, bearing the episcopal badge on the breast of his tunic, a golden key in a mailed hand. Tristan, turning a deaf ear to sundry witty gentlemen who were sitting on the benches in the sun, told the guard his business.
“Friend, I would see your captain of the horse. Tell him a stranger has tramped leagues to serve under him. Tristan le Sauvage is my name.”
The guard grounded his pike and stared Tristan over.
“Sir Ogier is at dinner,” quoth he.
“He can listen the better, being so wholesomely occupied. Come, friend, lead on.”
The man took Tristan to a small room that was joined to the guards’ hall by a winding stair. At a table, with a page boy at his elbow, sat a giant with a great hairy jowl, gigantic hands, and a heavy paunch. He was gnawing a mutton bone like a huge ogre, and had a tankard of ale at his right hand. He stared Tristan over with his small, close-set eyes, showed his teeth when he heard his business. Ogier had been born a butcher’s son in the distant north, and had carved out his fortune by the sheer weight of his arm.
“So, lad,” he said, smacking his lips and tossing the bare bone upon the table, “you would serve the Bishop and drink his beer? Good, very good. Can you pay for your stomach?”
Tristan showed the girth of his arm, the knotted muscles swelling under the sleeve. Ogier rose up, towering like a poplar over Tristan’s head; his belt would have girded two common men’s loins.
“My child,” he said, setting a hairy hand on Tristan’s shoulder, and leaning his great weight thereon, “stand fast now; let me feel my prop.”
Tristan never budged; he was like a stone buttress against the flank of a tower, yet he rocked a little as the giant bore on him. Ogier grinned, puffed out his lips.
“Short men stand stiff,” he said. “Come, my troll, we will try you further.”
“What you will,” was Tristan’s retort.
Ogier thudded down by the winding stair, his broad body shutting out the light. There was a tilting yard joining the Bishop’s stables, and in the yard stood a horse-block of solid stone.
“Lift it,” was all the giant said.
Tristan unstrapped his shield from betwixt his shoulders, ungirded his sword, gave them Ogier to hold. He spread his feet, tilted the stone, got his fingers under the edge, held his breath, heaved the mass over his head. The block splintered a flagstone at Ogier’s feet. The giant blundered back against the wall with an oath.
“God’s truth, man!” he said. “Have a care of my toes.”
“What now?” said Tristan, breathing hard.
Ogier grinned and gripped his hand.
“You are the man,” he laughed, cracking Tristan’s bones in his paw. “We will set you on Percival, the Duchess’s lion. By my bones, you will break the man over your knee.”
Tristan, lodged within the gates of the Bishop’s palace, used eye and ear to gain some glint of Rosamunde’s fair head, some breathing of her name. Like a mirror he had to receive what passed before him, silent and unstirred. Caution bridled him, and he played his part like the dogged adventurer that he was; had an open hand for every man, scullion or squire, a smile for the womenfolk who came out into the stable court to giggle and gossip with the grooms and men-at-arms. Ogier had taken him with some pride to Bishop Jocelyn in his state closet. The churchman had felt Tristan’s limbs with his soft, womanly hands, and smiled over a strength that was as prodigious as his own conceit. He was a champion who should give Dame Lilias’s men the lie.
Of that proud woman, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, whom the Papists had snatched from him in the gloom of the woods, Tristan won no word or whisper. The men-at-arms of the palace spoke often of their march through the province of the Seven Streams. Many of the ruffians had carried torches in the sacking of Ronan’s tower, yet of Rosamunde and her fate the world seemed to have no care. Tristan, with his ugly face inscrutable as the face of a sphinx, watched and listened, bided his time. If Rosamunde was in Agravale, he would carry the gates of her prison off their hinges, and set her free. Once again he would look into those deep, wistful eyes, upon that face whose petulant splendour haunted him night and noon.
There was great love in his heart for Rosamunde. It had grown and fed upon the stoutest fibres of his heart. Her very name had taken root about him, even as a red rose clambers about a grave. Tristan was no visionary, no melancholy worshipper of the stars. Life to him was action, a bluff buffeting of waves, a gallop with the wind. He was alive and lusty from the iron sinews of his ankles to the corded muscles of his throat. Superbly young, yet older in passion than of yore, he took life cheerfully, knew no defeat.
As for Rosamunde, he loved her, and was not ashamed of this same love. It was no enigma to him, no subtle riddle begotten of a poet’s brain, for to Tristan this love was as natural as life itself. He loved the woods with their mysterious shadows, the sea for its hoarse splendour, the flowers—even because they were fair of face. In the same spontaneous fashion he loved this woman, whose face was beauty and whose lips were life. Above and beyond this impulse towards joy, the deeper truths were mellowing Tristan’s soul. He began to find new glories in his strength, to cherish his manhood, to build fast his honour. Since Rosamunde was Rosamunde, should he not consecrate his manhood to her?
The moon had not changed her scimitar for a silver shield before Tristan was proven both in arms and faith. The women of Agravale were bounteous beings, buxom and boisterous, red fruit to be plucked from the tree of virtue. A red gown trailed more than once round Tristan’s feet, and youth had tempted him to merge youth in youth. Yet he had shut his mouth, stiffened his head on his massive neck, for Rosamunde’s face shone high in the heavens.
As for his courage, that was another matter. Tristan could thrash a man, if he would not kiss a woman, and Ogier took him often through Agravale with half a score bravos at their back. They swaggered through the streets, loitered in the taverns, ogled such women as came their way. More than once they met the Duchess’s men, and shouldered them roughly to the wall. Ogier, the butcher’s son, had a tussle in view, and Percival of the Red Beard was to be brought to his knees.
From the square before the ducal palace, with its pomegranates studded with golden fruit, its rose trees and its acacias, ran a narrow passage-way leading to the gardens of the abbey of St. Pelinore. It was a shadowy place, flanked by high walls of stone, arched above by the dense foliage of chestnuts and great cedars. The path gave the shortest track to such of the Duchess’s men who returned from the lower city to the palace. Ogier had watched this “run” of late, eager to catch Knight Percival in a lane where there was no turning.
It was near the vesper hour one evening, when Ogier and Tristan turned from the palace square into this stone-walled walk. A knot of the Bishop’s men-at-arms had passed in before them; their voices and footsteps echoed with a metallic resonance betwixt the walls. Of a sudden there was a clangour of arms at the far end of the passage. Hoods and helmets hid the entry; a pike or two bobbed and shimmered under the trees. Ogier loosened his sword in its scabbard, warned Tristan with a wink of the eye.
Ogier’s men had met the ducal company in the midst of the passage. There was a tossing up of challenges that reverberated in the narrow throat of the place.
“Out, dogs, make way for the Duchess.”
“Hold, sirs, you shall take the wall of us.”
“Be damned, then, stand aside.”
There was a brief scrimmage, a swaying to and fro from wall to wall. A sword shone out in the gleam from the west. A tall man in a trellised hauberk, with a red tunic showing beneath, broke through the press, and came striding on with his chin in the air, his red moustachios curling up like the tusks of a boar. He twirled his sword, while his tawny eyes flashed rapid glances over Ogier’s face.
Ogier spread his great arms from wall to wall, thrust one foot forward, and barred the way. Percival of the Red Beard made a sweeping gesture with his sword.
“Out of the path, wine skin,” he said, “or I will set you leaking over the stones.”
“Church before State, my friend,” said the giant, standing firm.
“Out, dogs, the Duchess is at hand.”
“Devil take her,” was Ogier’s retort.
There was a blow from sword, a blow that Ogier caught upon his shield. Tristan, stooping, dodged under the giant’s arm, sprang at Knight Percival before he could gain his guard. He had his bear’s grip on the man’s body. A heave of the chest, and the Knight of the Red Beard was off his feet. An impotent waving of a sword, a dropped shield, a straining of sinews, and Percival crashed over Tristan’s head. His face struck the stones; he squirmed over and lay still.
Ogier brandished the rest of them back.
“Room for the Duchess,” he roared. “Come, madame, we are the Bishop’s men; though we fight your fellows, we serve the Duke.”
Tristan, standing over Percival’s body, saw a short, plump woman move through the lane of armed men. Two young girls carried the train of her purple gown. She had a round, pallid face, eyes of greyish green, somewhat protuberant, but very liquid. The eyebrows sloped outwards over the eyes. The nose was broad, with nostrils wide apart; the mouth large, with lustful lips. Her neck had a peculiar silken brilliancy; her bust was full, her hips very broad. It was Lilias herself, Duchess of Agravale.
Ogier saluted her, and lowered his point. Two of the men-at-arms had raised Percival up; he was bleeding about the face, for the fall had stunned him. Lilias’s eyes were on Tristan’s face.
“Ogier,” she said, speaking very rapidly, as was her wont, with much working of the lips, “you of the Bishop’s household are for ever picking quarrels with my gentlemen. See to it, Sir Butcher; you shall hear more of this.”
Ogier, ignoring her taunt against his origin, covered his heart with his hairy paw, turned back her wrath with a suave and ponderous unction.
“Ah, madame,” he said, “your men persecute us, have beaten us often, methinks, because your gracious self lives in the heart of each of your knights. If I served such a lady as the Duchess Lilias, by God and the prophets, I could thrash the world.”
The woman smiled a little, the smile of one to whom flattery was never gross. Even a great dolt such as Ogier could fool her with a few honeyed antics of the tongue.
“What of my poor Percival?” she said, stooping and looking in the fallen man’s face. “Pah, how a red nose spoils a man!”
“He would have split my poor carcass,” said Ogier, standing at her side, “had not my new Hercules pitched him like a sack of flour over his head.”
Lilias turned, stood at her full height, and looked Tristan over. She was a woman who loved muscle and strength in a man, and that flippant insolence that makes for pleasure. Tristan’s ugly face had a peculiar charm, a virile fascination in its uncomely vigour. Lilias smiled at him with her glassy eyes, gathered her gown close about her hips. She expected homage, but found not a flash of it. Tristan met her look for look, a frown on his face, his arms folded firmly over his chest.
CHAPTER XVI
It was but two days after his breaking of Sir Percival, that Tristan, idling through Agravale, saw before him the open door of the great church St. Pelinore. From the gloom within came the scent of incense and the sound of the chanting of the Mass. Tristan could see tapers shining on the high altar in the choir. Women were passing in and out, and two blind beggars sat at the gate.
Tristan, moved more by curiosity than by the desire for worship, entered in and uncovered his head. The rounded vault was painted vermilion and gold; the huge pillars of white stone were banded with silver and inlaid with stones. The basins for holy water were of black marble, their dark pools gleaming with the colours of the roof. Many chapels opened on either hand, dim sanctuaries steeped in vapour of gold and of rose.
Tristan, rugged islander, had never looked upon the like before. The place was full of that subtle beauty conceived and wrought by the mind of man. A strange idealism had sanctified the saints and dowered each relic with a magic mystery. The splendour of the place touched Tristan’s soul. Nothing in Joyous Vale had equalled this in pomp and magnificence, in form and colour. And yet the afterthought dethroned the spell. Was not Rosamunde’s gracious body fairer far than this great church?
Tristan took his stand by one of the great pillars, and setting his back to it, looked round the place. In the nave there was a stone pattern wrought in the floor, known in Agravale as the Penitent’s Rosary. There were some ten women moving round and round, halting over each great bead to breathe a prayer through silent lips. Tristan watched them as they circled round with bowed heads and folded hands, moving where the sunlight streamed from the tall windows overhead.
He was conscious suddenly that one of these dames was not wholly absorbed in prayer under her hood. A round white chin was tilted significantly under a pouting mouth, and two watchful eyes considered him with a suggestiveness that no man could mistake. As the woman circled over the stones, walking slowly in her grey mantle that but half hid the richer stuffs beneath, Tristan felt that her eyes held his, and that her thoughts were very far from heaven. The truth came to him as he watched her glide over the stones of the great rosary. It was Lilias herself who did penance there, penance with her feet, but not with her heart.
In due season the Duchess had ended her pilgrimage, and stood with her hood turned back, looking at Tristan across the church. Her women had gathered about her, and outside the gates Tristan saw the spear points of her guard. Turning, with a glance cast at him over her shoulder, she swept in state out of St. Pelinore’s, her women following her, save one young girl who loitered at the door.
Tristan, with his broad back resting against the pillar, stood thinking of the woman’s face tinted by the light reflected from the crimson lining of her hood. Her eyes had challenged him even as they had done in that narrow passage when Percival lay senseless in the dust. They puzzled Tristan—these same eyes; for they had no depth to harbour pity, and their shallow glances spoke of no high mood. Different was Rosamunde from this pale, sensuous dame whose scented garments perfumed the very church.
Tristan was roused out of his reverie by a small hand plucking at his sleeve. By the pillar stood a dark-eyed girl, half child, half woman, thin, and a little sad. There was a timid smirk on her childish face as she looked at Tristan and gave her message.
“Follow my mistress,” were her words.
Tristan stared down at her, his ugly face bathed in the sunlight that streamed from above.
“Whom do you serve, child?” he said slowly.
“Lilias the Duchess,” came the answer.
“What would your lady ask of me?”
The girl tittered and coloured before him, shamed, as it were, by the man’s straight stare.
“You are Tristan of the Bishop’s guard?”
“I am Tristan,” he answered her simply.
“You are to come with me,” she persisted, touching his arm.
The man’s mouth hardened as he considered her message, still leaning his weight against the pillar. What was Tristan to Lilias, or Lilias to Tristan? She was a woman, and a bad one, so he had gathered since he had sojourned in the city. Yet she ruled Agravale, and in her ruling was wise in the secrets of the south. In some vague way he even imagined that he might win news of her whom he sought.
Thus Tristan followed the girl from the church, and crossing the great court that lay without, entered the gardens of St. Pelinore. Mulberry trees towered above the lawns, studded thick with ripening fruit. Weeping ashes glittered there, and figs and cedars cast their shade over broad beds of mint and thyme.
The girl watched Tristan as she walked beside him, holding a little apart, with one hand to her cheek. She was a sharp wench enough, and Agravale had taught her to take the measure of a man. Therefore she studied Tristan’s face, that she might read his strength or weakness therein by the dogged set of the strong jaw, the keen eyes, the firm, clean mouth. She began to speak to him as they crossed the gardens with a coy simplicity that was well assumed.
“You are strange to Agravale?” she said.
Tristan looked at her slantwise over his shoulder, for she seemed but a child untouched by guile. Her glances wandered over the great trees, and the flowers that grew in the short grass.
“You would prosper?” she asked him tentatively, casting about in her mind how she might win his trust.
“I have begun passably,” said Tristan, with a smile.
“For you humbled Percival. Ah, how strong you must be! I am almost afraid, sir, when I look at your great arms.”
Her mild eyes trembled up innocently to Tristan’s. The flattery seemed so spontaneous in her words that it would have puzzled a young man to have uncovered her cunning. Nor was Tristan unwilling to seem strong to her, for youth takes pride in its great strength. For the moment he was half tempted to question her concerning Rosamunde of the Seven Streams.
“You may be a great knight in Agravale,” the girl said to him, with a shy smile.
“How so, sister?”
“Ah, sir, are you blind? Know you not that a woman loves not a beaten man?”
“So.”
“You trampled down Percival. The Duchess would have you serve her in his stead.”
“That is not possible.”
The girl stared at him, and for the moment lost her mask of innocence.
“Are you not ambitious?” she asked.
“I am young, good sister.”
“And a mighty man, though young.”
“You seem zealous for me.”
“I serve my lady. Why, it will be all plain for you. Is it so strange a thing to serve a woman?”
They had left the gardens and come to a high stone wall that skirted the precincts of Lilias’s palace. Cypresses and bays showed above the stone, while a great cedar cast a broad shadow there. In the wall there was a little door studded over with iron nails. The girl took a key that hung at her girdle, unlocked the door, and pointed Tristan in.
“Enter, sir,” she said, with a glib smile and a slight bending of her body.
Tristan stood and looked through under the lintel. He could see a garden spread within, the grass sleek under the noonday sun, beds of flowers, purple and red. At the end of a lawn stood an orange thicket, and under the trees a woman walked, clad in crimson, with her white arms bare. She wore sandals of gold stuff on her naked feet and her hair hung loose about her neck.
But Tristan turned back from the door and looked full into the girl’s dark eyes. She coloured a little under his gaze, as though half guessing what was in his heart, and that he knew the part she played. Nor was he slow to read the truth that shone for him on her thin, pale face.
“You will speak to my lady for me,” he said to her, casting a swift glance into the garden.
The girl looked at him, but did not stir.
“What, sir, shall I say?” she asked.
“That I will not enter yonder place.”
“Not.”
“No, for the youth in me will not serve.”
Her face changed suddenly like a fickle sky, and she began to mock him as he stood before her, thrusting her tongue out and beating her hands. To Tristan she seemed like some sly elf changed from a child to an evil imp, as he turned and left her by the wall with a grim frown on his ugly face.
CHAPTER XVII
When Tristan returned to the Bishop’s palace, he found two horses standing saddled and bridled in the inner court. One of them was Tristan’s, a raw-boned roan with one white foot and a white muzzle. A man-at-arms, half asleep on a bench at the bottom of the guard-room stair, scrambled up when he saw Tristan, and opened a great mouth with the gusto of a news-teller.
“Hallo, laggard! Ogier has been calling for you this hour or more, blaspheming you till the stones blushed. Above with you, if you would hear good downright cursing.”
Tristan passed through the guard-room, found Ogier striding to and fro in his closet, armed for riding, the froth from a tankard still on his beard. He unbosomed himself when Tristan entered, like a volcano to whom periodic outbursts were the natural vent of much accumulated spleen. Tristan let the giant’s cursing pass over him like water. He gained time by sitting down before Ogier’s table and finishing the remnants of that gentleman’s dinner.
“Feed away, my son,” said the giant, with his hand on the tankard; “you can keep your mouth shut, I guess, when it is a matter of discretion. You and I ride out with Jocelyn.”
“Am I not an image that beholds and sees not?” said Tristan from the table.
“Ha, lad, you will stand in need of blindness to-night. The Bishop will amuse himself. And to be honest, he can out-devil all the Gadarene swine when the fit is on him.”
“The good saint.”
Ogier laughed.
“My son,” he said, “I am getting grey, and I have seen many strange sights in my time. It has always puzzled me to discover where the devil all that virtue hides itself which the priests prate of, mostly to the women. Silence. Behold the virtue, my son, necessary to the honest fellow who would fill his pockets from the coffers of the Church. Come, now, I hear the trumpet in the court.”
Jocelyn, Bishop of Agravale, had possessed himself of some persuasions of piety in the hearts of the innocents to whom he ministered. He was a man who believed at least in cleansing the outside of the pot. To rule by means of the prerogative of righteousness, a man needs some little reputation for that virtue. And since the robes and insignia of office were scrupulously cleansed and burnished, Jocelyn found opportunities to pander in secret to the inner man. There was a subtle conviction in him that to be able to resist the devil, one must bow down and propitiate him at stated intervals. The occasional lapse made the intervening virtue the more easy. Priest that he was, he could not pose eternally, even to himself, as a species of waxen image in which the virile blood had been turned to milk.
It was publicly acknowledged in Agravale that the good Bishop rode regularly into the wilderness to eat grass like Nebuchadnezzar in order to purge the brain of the vain follies of human pride. He held long vigils in the woods, so his people believed; played the hermit under the winking stars. It was whispered that celestial visions had been spread before his eyes, that St. Pelinore had come down and walked the earth with him to his great comfort. Like Elijah in the wilderness, he was sustained by the grace of heaven, and by the dew of sanctity that descended upon his soul.
Thus Ogier and Tristan followed him that day from Agravale, two stalwart exemplars of the Church Militant. The Bishop rode a mouse-coloured mare, trapped with red harness and a saddle of carved ivory. He wore a plain black robe with a sable hood and a black mask over his face. Ogier rode a great white stallion, a huge beast, the only horse in Agravale who could bear his bulk. Tristan, with his red shield strapped between his shoulders and the episcopal white surcoat over his hauberk, rode beside Ogier on this saintly pilgrimage.
The three sallied from Agravale, leaving its white walls that climbed to the very verge of the great southern precipice. Its towers and turrets ascended towards the blue. Northwards the woods bristled under the sun, a glitter like blackened steel under the summer sky. The road wound under ancient trees. Many a huge ilex cast its gloom over the grass. The stone pine towered on the hills above the dense woods of beech and chestnut, and the valleys were full of primeval oaks, whose sinewy limbs stretched far over the sun-streaked sward.
As for Tristan, his mood partook of the silence of the woods. He was thinking of the Duchess Lilias, that she was not a dame to be flouted with impunity, nor one who could forgive the starving of her desire. Though the summer was flying he had no news of Rosamunde. So utterly had she vanished from the ken of the world, that some Old Man of the Sea might have mured her in a cave under amber-bosomed waves. That she was dead Tristan would not believe. There was an instinctive faith within his heart that Rosamunde lived, perhaps to her greater misery. Ogier himself might have the secret locked in his ungainly carcass, yet Tristan had no desire to betray his quest before he could mend matters to his credit.
Jocelyn had little to say to the pair as they rode through the wilds together. Once free of Agravale, he had put the mask from off his face, and rode with his cowl turned back, his sleek and sensuous face white in the sun. Tristan saw him smile often in a prophetic way, as though the pilgrimage were much to his liking. In a wallet at his saddle bow he had a flask of red wine, and the churchman’s lips were often puckered round the mouth of the flask.
As the day declined, they came to a wilder region, where pines grew thick and cranberries tufted half-hidden rocks. The track was a mere grass ride, two cubits broad, where Ogier and Tristan followed Jocelyn in single file. A desolate valley opened gradually before them, steeped on every side with the black umbrage of the woods. To the west a craggy peak smote the setting sun. In the lap of the valley lay a mere, an island rising black and dim above the silvered surface. Grassland gilded with asphodel dipped towards the water. Yellow flags grew in the shallows; there were lilies floating beyond the rushes.
The sun sank down behind the crag as the three crossed the grassland towards the water. Blood-red streamers streaked the sky; a golden mist ascended towards the woods. The island in the mere grew black as ebony, overarched by a canopy of scarlet clouds. Tristan could see a stone building rising from the island’s thickets, and the place breathed forth mystery towards the hastening night.
Ogier took a bugle horn that hung round his neck, and blew three blasts that set the wild woods ringing. At the sound a boat put out from the island and moved over the smooth water towards the bank. A strange babel of wild voices seemed to fall as from the sky. Cries came as from lost souls tortured in a burning pit. While Tristan listened with a frown on his face, the cries died down into the woodland silence.
The barge was rowed by an old man, with a beak of a nose, fierce, restless eyes, and a mouth like a flint. As the barge ran to the stage, the old man let a horse-board down. The barge could bear but one of them at a time. Tristan and the giant waited at the water’s edge while the boat bore Jocelyn over the water, to where the island rose sable as the night.
Tristan’s brows were knotted above his eyes. The mystery of the place had set him musing, casting about for Jocelyn’s reason in riding into such a wilderness. He questioned Ogier as they watched the barge.
“Where have we come?” he asked, with a keen stare into the giant’s face.
Ogier grinned and licked his lips.
“Men call it the Mad Mere,” he said. “Yonder house is a hospital for such as froth at the mouth when the moon is full.”
“And that clamour when you blew your horn?”
“The mad folk squealing. Old Nicholas chastens them often with his whip.”
Tristan still gazed at the island under his heavy brows.
“And my lord the Bishop?” he asked.
“My son,” quoth Ogier, with one of his grins, “if you are ambitious, keep your tongue from stealing the truth.”
“Have done with your damned riddles.”
“My son, Master Jocelyn refreshes himself after the dull services of sanctity. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. You shall behold how frail are the feet of the holy.”
“I grow wise—in time.”
“Ten thousand devils, man, you shall see such sights as shall make you grow green as an unripe fig. Keep your mouth shut in Agravale, and you will prosper.”
The barge drifted back to them, and Tristan took the next passage, waited by the landing stage while this grey Charon ferried Ogier and his white horse over. Tristan had cast rapid glances round him as he waited. The place was built of rough-hewn stone, walled in on every side, with narrow squints for windows. Cypresses and yews grew close about the walls. The gate was flanked by a stone tower, standing black and sullen against the sky. Ever and again an eerie whimper came from the place, or a wild medley of voices, more like the chattering of a band of apes. There were three more horses tethered in a roughly thatched hovel under a walnut tree. A man was asleep there on a pile of hay.
Ogier landed, dragged the white stallion from the barge by the bridle. The ferryman took the horses, when he had made the boat fast to a great stake by the stage. Ogier knew the ways of the madhouse well enough; Tristan gathered as much as they passed in together under the low arch of the gate. A narrow courtyard held the centre of the building, with barred windows opening upon it on every side. In the centre of the court stood a great whipping-post with iron wristlets dangling from a rusty chain. Tristan saw all these things as his eyes darted rapid glances hither and thither in the half gloom.
As they passed through the court, a sudden clamour arose at the narrow windows overhead, where white faces were pressed against the bars. The grated windows seemed filled with mad eyes and dishevelled hair. The beings mured there were as wild beasts starving in a cage. Their cries reverberated through the well of the court, dinning their frenzy into Tristan’s ears.
Ogier passed into a room opening by a short passage from the court. It looked like a species of guard-room or antechamber, leading by a flight of low steps to a larger room above. A door fitted with an iron grille closed the stairway at the top. In the lower room a fire burned upon the hearth; a meal had been spread on a rough table, and the place was lit by a single iron lamp hanging from the ceiling.
Ogier unbuckled his sword and flung it with a crash upon a wooden settle. He was hot and out of temper. Drawing a stool to the table, he began to eat like a hungry wolf.
“Fall to, my son,” he said, flourishing a pot in his right hand; “we shall be on guard all night. Come, keep up your courage.”
Tristan joined him. They ate in silence, listening to the vague and unhallowed sounds that echoed now and again through this habitation of the mad. Tristan was debating with himself as to what had become of Jocelyn the Bishop.
As they sat at meat, the sound of a melody played by a rebec and flute quivered down from the upper room. A thrill of laughter stirred in the air; streaks of yellow light poured betwixt the hinges and under the planking of the door. The music increased, as though some blithe company descended to a feast; while within, a man’s gruff voice broke forth into a song. The crabbed and grizzled ferryman came in from the court, and sat down on a stool before the fire.
Tristan leant over the table, laid a hand upon Ogier’s wrist.
“Are yonder folk mad—also?”
The giant grinned and held up a pot.
“Mad, my son, most mad,” he said; “when the wine flows, you will hear them cackling.”
A woman’s voice rose in discord to the music, a wild and abandoned scream of inarticulate laughter. Half a dozen tongues seemed to gather in a chorus. The laughter died down, rose again into a squeal of mirth.
“The Bishop and Black Benedict enjoy themselves,” said Ogier, licking his lips.
Tristan rose up, thrusting aside his stool.
“By God,” he said, “I will look through yonder grille.”
Ogier plunged forward and barred his way.
“Wait, my son,” he said, with a bending of the brows, “wait till they are drunk enough. Then, by my soul, you shall look at your leisure.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Tristan faced Ogier for the moment as though more than tempted to hold him in defiance. He remembered, however, that the giant was worth more to him as a friend than as an enemy; and making a laugh of the matter, he picked up the stool and returned to his supper. Old Nicholas by the fire had watched them with a dull grin on his ferocious and toad-like face. He poked the embers with a charred stake, winked at Ogier, and waxed witty over the strenuousness of youth.
“Young blood runs hot, sirs,” he said, “and prithee, what is this chivalry men prate about but youth gone mad.”
“Ha, old raven, we are all mad to you, since you are scourging lunatic folk all the days of your life. All creation’s moonstruck to an owl hooting in a chimney.”
“ ’Tis only like drink,” said the ferryman. “Some are quickly overset; others swim in wine—’tis their natural element. All men are mad in measure. These mad folk have more spirit than body; you, Messire Ogier, have more body than spirit. The flesh overbalanceth the spirit, and your fat paunch keeps out the vapours. It is good in season to make of one’s soul a toad under a stone.”
The old man sniggered, stretched himself, took a knotted whip from the wall, and passed out by a narrow door set back in the thickness of the wall. There was something so evil and repulsive about the creature that the room felt warmer to Tristan when he had gone. Ogier had stretched himself on a settle before the fire, for though it was summer, a cold mist rose from off the mere. Ogier, with his carcass propped before the glow, blinked and dozed after his superhuman meal.
Tristan, sitting by the table with his chin upon his fists, kept wide awake and listened. The fire flung huge shadows about the walls; the smoke-grimed roof was steeped in gloom. From the room beyond the closed and gridded door the mirth grew more boisterous as the night wore on. Music and mad laughter mingled in a riotous flux of sound, while ever and again a woman’s squeal would top the din. In that dark, firelit room Tristan’s manhood gathered fanaticism for the future, and he began to understand the more why Samson had blasphemed against the Church.
Ogier had fallen asleep upon the settle. Tristan saw the man’s stout chest heaving to and fro like a smith’s bellows. The sound of his snoring seemed to shake the room, as the breath rattled and bubbled in his throat. Ogier’s huge mouth was open, his fangs gleaming above his uncleanly beard.
Tristan rose from the table with his eyes on the sleeping man. Holding the scabbard of his sword, he climbed the stairway, pushed back the grille, looked through into the inner room. A stream of light gushed through the grating upon his face, with odours of wine and cooked meats and of scented garments. The scene within was more like some classic orgy than the breaking of bread by a Christian Bishop. Couches were spread upon the floor about a low table covered with flowers. Lamps hung from the roof, hooded with crimson cloth. Goblets and silver chargers bearing fruit and rich food stuff gleamed in the light of the lamps.
At the end of the room, half lying in a woman’s lap, was Jocelyn of Agravale with a garland of vine leaves about his forehead. His face was suffused, his eyes bright with the fumes of wine. The woman beside him was robed in scarlet, arms and shoulders bare and white, a wreath of roses over her raven hair. To the right of the Bishop sprawled Benedict of the Marches, a brown-eyed wench leaning on his shoulder and pouring wine over his head. There were three more women about the table, whose charms were sacred to Benedict’s two esquires.
Tristan, very grim about the mouth, closed the grille, and sprang down the stairs. He had seen enough to disgust his manhood, for, bred in the strong, clean lap of the sea, he had little understanding of such sins as these. Perhaps in his heart he had feared to find Rosamunde in that company of the saints. Not that he doubted her, for his faith was not feeble in the matter of her honour. Yet, with such holy rogues as Jocelyn ruling the land, some hideous tyranny might have brought her low.
Ogier was still snoring on the settle before the fire, and Tristan strode up and down with the ruddy glow playing and sparkling upon his hauberk. The laughter and bursts of music came more crazed and disjointed to his ears. His cheeks tingled, his hands quivered for the sword. What if Jocelyn, hypocritical sensualist that he was, had Rosamunde imprisoned and in his power? Perhaps she was under this very roof, mewed amid madmen and beings bereft of all cleanly and regenerating reason. Tristan could not suffer such thoughts as these. He glared at Ogier sleeping by the fire, as though ready to throttle him as he slept.
A distant clamour in the house stayed him in his stride for the moment, and Tristan heard blows given, a rough voice cursing as in furious wrath. Screams came ebbing from some cell or passage overhead. There was the rush of feet down stone stairs, a panting outcry, a scraping of fingers along the walls of a dark gallery. The door jerked open. A young girl with her hair tangled over her face ran into the room, stared round her like a hunted thing hounded into a trap. Her ragged gown reached only to her knees, and she pressed the rotten cloth over her bosom with both hands. Bloody weals showed on her bare shoulders; her eyes were wide and piteous with fear. Even as she stood there shivering like a reed, Nicholas the warden came in, his teeth agleam, his whip swinging in his hand. Breathing hard, he made at the girl, smote at her, once, twice, while she cowered beneath the lash, holding up her hands to break the blows. Tristan’s blood was up on the instant. He sprang on Nicholas, took him by the waist, hurled him heavily along the floor. The girl, with but half a glance at Tristan, turned and fled back through the door, while Ogier, waking with the din, scrambled up, rubbing his eyes with his hairy paws.
“A thousand curses! What are you at, lad?”
“Breaking that old wolf’s head.”
“Pah, he has no muscle for such as you. You’re drunk, I say.”
“Not I. The old cur was scourging a woman with a whip. That is not my fashion. I pitched him over into yonder corner.”
Ogier bent over Nicholas, raised his shoulders from the floor. The old man groaned a little, bled at the mouth, still held the whip clutched in his right hand. Ogier called for wine. Tristan, very grim, brought him the flask, but would not minister to Nicholas with his own hands.
“By Peter, my son,” said Ogier, from the floor, “you have come nigh breaking our grandfather’s neck. Hold up, gaffer; swallow some of this strong stuff. Take his heels, you dolt; we’ll lay him on the settle by the fire.”
Between them they carried Nicholas to the settle, dribbled wine between his teeth, saw his lids quiver as he began to recover from the throw. Tristan had taken the old man’s whip. He broke it like a reed, and threw the fragments into the fire. Ogier, rising from his knees beside the settle, scowled at him with his small flesh-hidden eyes.
“Go and cool your blood in the court, my son,” he said; “you are too ready with those hands of yours. Discipline is my creed. Mad folk must be kept in order.”
“With the whip?”
“How else, you soft pate? Old Nicholas must drive the devil out of them with whipcord, or they would tear him limb from limb. The man cannot tongue-tag with idiots. You will have to tan your heart leather better, friend Tristan, if you are to serve Jocelyn of Agravale.”
Tristan turned away with a great effort, and began to pace up and down the room. He could not trust himself to look at Ogier for the moment. The giant’s arrogance of bulk made Tristan’s arms tingle to come to a grip with him. Presently he passed out into the court, felt the cool breath of the night playing upon his face. The stars were shining overhead; only an occasional whimper came from the barred windows in the wall.
The whole sky rocked above his head, and he was as a man struggling in a whirlpool of opposing impulses. He was half moved to charge in, slay Ogier and Nicholas, put Jocelyn and Benedict to the sword. Yet even if he purged the place, what then? Would he be nearer Rosamunde or Columbe, his lost sister? As for these mad folk, they would be as ready to rend him in all likelihood as old Nicholas who handled the whip. Reasonless miserables that they were, they would but starve and turn upon each other like wolves loosed suddenly from a cage. And the women, these flowers of passion? They were Jocelyn’s creatures, content to work his will, and what was barren liberty to them? They would have mocked him as men mocked Noah.
Tristan’s brain cooled in the night air. There were the constant stars above him, the dim clouds sweeping pure athwart the sky. He would gain yet more by silence than by some outburst of physical protestation. What if he slew Ogier and Jocelyn also, would he be the wiser as to Rosamunde’s fate? The time of his patient apprenticeship had not yet elapsed, and the surest fortitude still lay in silence.
A shadow filled the doorway leading to the guard-room. Ogier stood there, stretching his arms heavenwards, yawning like a volcano. He saw Tristan, and called to him out of the gloom.
“Ha, my son, have you cooled your flesh by now? Your fingers itch too incontinently for other people’s weasands. Old Nicholas is himself again, save for a bruised face.”
Tristan conjured up a laugh and fell in with Ogier’s humour.
“It goes against the grain with me,” he said, “to see a girl flogged. God knows, she is mad, and the rod is the only argument.”
“Women, my son,” said Ogier, striding up like a great galleon, and buffeting Tristan’s shoulder, “women are like dogs, the better for a beating. They make fools of us, the wantons, but, by Jeremy, we have the heavier hand of them. Consider Master Jocelyn. Ha, I was forgetting. Did you look through that grille?”
Tristan, quick to comprehend his part, nudged Ogier significantly with his elbow. The giant broke into a chuckle, a sound that echoed through the court.
“See how our saints have feet of clay,” he said. “My faith, comrade, but the Bishop is a bigger fool than any of us. He would out-Solomon Solomon for a black eye and a red mouth. Tristan, my son, if you love peace, keep clear of petticoats.”
“Truth, truth,” said the disciple, with a laugh.
Ogier stretched himself again and yawned.
“Ah, my son, we are the ministers of love. To horse, and away at dawn. Such are our orders.”
“Jocelyn returns to Agravale?”
“Not so fast, sir. Do pigs eschew a clover rick? No, no; ’tis we who ride, and not the Bishop.”
“To Agravale?”
“To the devil, sir, with Agravale. There might be some sly wench there, by the way you seem to dote on the city. No, my son, we ride yet deeper into the woods.”
Tristan turned suddenly upon his heel, and stared Ogier full between the brows.
“More madhouses?” he asked.
Ogier chuckled, and smote him with his fist upon the chest.
“Remember, good lad,” he said, “that the dear Bishop rideth on a pastoral pilgrimage for the redemption of the afflicted. There is a certain comely heretic who needs his holy ministrations. Of her, more anon. We, sir, are good Jocelyn’s forerunners to prepare him a welcome. Come, I see a grin on the sky’s face. The dawn is rushing up. Let us go and eat, lad, before we sally.”