CHAPTER XXIX
It is the common fate of reformers that they inspire the enmity both of the ignorant and the self-seeking, and hence the larger portion of humanity is arrayed against them. Ruffian and blinded saint meet and kiss over the corpse of an innovator. Many a Prometheus is torn and rent by the insensate malice of the age. The fate of fools is to live; that of great spirits that they should be immolated by the savage present for the blessing of a fairer future. Each martyr lights a beacon fire that hurls light and splendour within the portals of the coming century.
Thus when Reynaud of Vanclure fell at midnight with five hundred men upon the heretics of Marvail, he butchered them with a good conscience, in the full belief of the efficacy of the deed. Samson’s men were caught asleep, snugly housed in the town. Half armed and dazed, they were hunted out and slaughtered in the streets. Samson himself was taken alive while fighting with his back against a wall; bound and pinioned, tied upon a horse, led from the town under the escort of a strong body of men-at-arms.
When the news was brought to Jocelyn at the fords of the Lorient, he gave the messenger a hundred silver pieces out of his own strong box, licked his lips, and ordered a triumphal service to be sung. In the woods under the great ilex trees and pines the soldiers mustered, while the hoarse chanting of the monks rose on the silent air. Through the ranks were carried the Sacred Banner and the Cross Processional, knights and warriors kneeling, kissing their naked swords. Samson the arch-heretic had fallen into their hands; God had greatly blessed the cause of Holy Church.
The day after the night attack, on Marvail, Count Reynaud marched south again to the Lorient, leaving two hundred men to garrison the town. He was eager to bear so precious and notorious a burden beyond the river, to deliver Samson to the mercies of the Church. The Heretic was brought bound upon a horse, Reynaud’s men massed round him, tauntingly exultant, flinging mud and mockery at his head.
The strong soul in Samson rose that day to meet the doom he knew must follow. There was no hope for him save in a rescue, and though a few scattered followers were dogging Count Reynaud’s march through the woods, they dared not ambuscade so powerful a force. Samson was in the hands of fanatics, nay, in the hands of usurers who extracted bribes from the souls of men. He had dealt too mightily with these hypocrites with his tongue to expect much mercy at their hands. He knew full well that the priests were as vultures, ready to rend and to destroy.
They forded the Lorient well before noon, their horses trampling the water, the men smiting spray at Samson with the shafts of their lances.
“Leper, be cleansed,” they cried, laughing and mocking him.
“Behold, here is Jordan; cleave a path for us, O saint.”
Samson took the taunts in silence, girding his spirit for this great trial of the flesh. He gazed at the river, believed that he would be dead before the water that they forded reached the sea. All hope lapsed as the Lorient rolled behind and as he neared the southern bank. The wooded slopes glittered with steel, for the soldiers of the Church had thronged down to see the Heretic brought back in bonds from Marvail. A fierce, mocking outcry rose from the thickets, a clamour as of wild beasts tongueing to the slaughter. The road to the ford seethed with men, a mass of squealing, frenzied beings, more like the brown savages of primitive ages than cleansed and baptised Christians. Even Samson on his death march pitied them with some measure of pure scorn. He rode unmoved through the mocking mob, with pale, calm face and steadfast eyes.
He knew this to be the end of all his struggles, of his strenuous preaching, his Heaven-inspired zeal. He had sought to seize the people from the grip of the priests, men who had traded and fattened on the frailties of mankind. Had he not pointed them heavenwards to the great All-Father, and to the Son who had redeemed the world with the passion of self-sacrifice? He had preached against those who had usurped the portals of heaven, who had blasphemed the Great Spirit by claiming their own bodies to be the sole channels of grace. He had cried that man stood face to face with his Maker, that the Holy of Holies was in the heart.
As Samson rode amid the railing mob that played around him on the road, his thoughts sped to Calvary and the crosses there. Should he flinch from what the Christ had suffered, and from what the martyrs had rejoiced to bear? The strain of heroism deepened in his soul, and a divine patience purged out wrath. It was the fate of prophets to seal with their blood the truths they expounded to mankind.
Had he laboured for nothing? No, the seed had been sown, and, like a good husbandman, he could go to his rest. There were strong men who would take up the challenge, and seize the torch from his dying hand. He remembered Tristan, that youthful Titan, who would preach with the sword what he had preached with the tongue. The Duchess Blanche had breathed the true spirit, and there were scores of heralds in the Seven Streams. Samson was strengthened by such thoughts as these. He feared not death, since death was not the end; they could slay the body, but not the soul.
Samson was brought before Jocelyn’s tent, torn from his horse, dragged before the chair where the Bishop sat. Helmets, wave on wave, swayed on the hillside; a thousand faces dwindled into the gloom of the woods. One heavy hand had buffeted the Heretic’s mouth, yet he stood before Jocelyn with pale, firm face, blood on his lips, his eyes unwavering.
There was a peculiar lustre in Jocelyn’s eyes. His face was suffused; his hands quivered as they gripped the carved rails of the chair.
“So, blasphemer, you have fallen to us at last.”
A divine patience showed on Samson’s face, also the melancholy of a man who grieved but did not fear. Now and again his dark eyes kindled; he stood unmoved by the menacing faces that hemmed him round.
“Bishop,” he said, “boast not thyself blessed because thou hast conquered dullards with a lie.”
“Infidel, what hast thou to plead?”
“That I have spoken the truth and served God. That I have not pandered to a greedy Church, nor cheated men by forged doctrines and by false decrees.”
A soldier sprang forward and spat in Samson’s face.
“Kneel, dog, to the Bishop.”
The Heretic turned to him with a smile.
“Friend, your taunts are brave enough since I am bound. I kneel to no man, only to God in Heaven.”
A mocking wave of laughter spread from rank to rank, for the jest sped home. The rough faces craning towards the Bishop’s tent were suffused and contorted with a savage zest.
“Make him kneel, by God!” cried a black-bearded Hercules with a flash of the sword.
The words echoed the will of the mob. Four men seized on Samson, bore him to his knees, threw him prostrate, so that his face was bathed in the trampled mire before the tent. Still his patience and his dignity withstood them. He knelt in silence, knowing that mere words were vain.
Jocelyn rose in his pontificals, stretched out a scornful hand towards the Heretic.
“Tell me, sirs, what shall be done with this poor anti-Christ?”
The men seemed to catch a wild and savage echo from the past.
“Crucify him! crucify him!” was the cry.
Jocelyn stood motionless a moment with folded hands, his eyes turned heavenwards as though in prayer. The crowd watched him, their glances wavering betwixt Samson and the Bishop’s face. It was a full minute before the churchman spoke again. Then the words fell like a sad condemnation wrung by duty from a merciful heart.
“God, Mother Virgin, and ye holy saints,” he said, “have pity, we beseech thee, on this sinner’s soul. In death and after death let him know well the God whom his proud lips have so blasphemed. Sons of the Church, I surrender this heretic into your hands.”
A great shout rolled up, billowing from the soldiery crowding from under the trees. The ranks swayed, broke, stood still a moment. Samson, with flashing eyes, and face with the calm of death thereon, had risen from his knees. He stood at his full height, as Paul before Festus, noble and undismayed. For one brief instant his voice rang through the woods.
“Ye men,” he cried, “if I have sinned, God see to it, and save my soul. I die in the strength of a holy life, fearing neither death nor the powers of hell. As for ye priests, never have I lusted after women nor grovelled after gold. God see to it, sirs, when the judgment comes, Samson the Heretic will meet Pope and Bishop undismayed.”
Jocelyn’s cross went up; there was hot anger on his face, and a dozen monks pushed forward through the crowd, calling on the soldiery to work their will. Samson was seized, thrown down, trampled upon, drawn savagely by the heels. Shouting and cursing, the pack drew him into the wood, while the monks, gathered in a company, raised a deep chant of thanksgiving over the slaying of such a sinner. Thus they crucified Samson on the hills above the Lorient, nailing him to a tree, naked and covered with wounds.
Yet the Heretic’s patience was as triumphant as their wrath, nor did his courage fail him in that hour, and his cry was the cry of a great spirit:
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Meanwhile, the tidings had passed to the heretics lurking in the woods, and one of their number had watched the martyrdom from the bosom of a great ilex tree. Fierce in their sorrow, they gathered and swam the river as the night came down, vowing vengeance for Samson’s death. Ten men took horse that same night, and rode north together into the province of the Seven Streams. They headed for Merdin, where Tristan and the Duchess were said to be.
It was in a valley wild with trees, dark as some valley of death, that the first of these ten riders found Tristan marching towards the south. Black crags towered above; a dark smoke of rain was rushing before the wind under a granite sky. The horseman, worn and mud-stained, drenched to the skin, met Tristan riding at the head of his men, grim with the weather and the working of his own heart.
“They have crucified Samson,” was the man’s cry, before he fell fainting with hunger and weariness from off his horse.
“Samson crucified!”
The cry rang through the rain-drenched ranks. As for Tristan, he said nothing, but frowned at the winter sky.
CHAPTER XXX
Sea spray was blown upon the rocks of Holy Guard, the grey sky raved, the trees rocked and moaned upon the hills. Rain whirled with the wind. The towers and walls shook; doors chattered; gallery and court were full of the storm.
At midnight there came the cry of a trumpet from the troubled darkness of the night. Armed men were climbing the causeway with rain beating upon their faces, moisture clinging to their beards. There came the rattle of a spear staff on the great gate of the abbey, and again the trumpet challenged the dark walls, like the cry of a sea-bird driven by the storm.
Twelve nuns and novices were in the chapel keeping a vigil with the Abbess Joan. For the rest, Holy Guard and all its sisterhood were plunged in darkness and in sleep. The porteress at the gate, nodding over her prayers in the guard cell, started at the trumpet cry, drew her gown round her, crept shivering to the grille.
“Who knocks?” she cried.
“Open in God’s name!”
The woman drew back the bolts, opened the wicket, peered out into the gloom. Men, rain-drenched and cloaked, scrambled in, black shadows pouring out of the night. Two soldiers seized on the porteress. A wet, hairy hand was over her mouth, stifling her cries; she was huddled into her cell, where a lamp flared with the draught through the gate.
Armed men still poured in, a tide that swirled from wall to wall. Rough voices rose amid the racket of the storm.
“Lights there; fire the torches.”
“Keep together.”
“The chapel, sirs. Follow me. Ten of you hold the gate.”
A tall figure led the way like an old grey wolf heading the hunt, while the pack poured up the passage-way betwixt the towering walls, finding no swords to stem their progress. They climbed the fifty steps that wound in the rock to the main mass above, scrambling, shouting, plucking at each other’s belts. Soon they were under the second arch and within the heart of Holy Guard.
In the chapel Joan the Abbess had been keeping the vigil of St. Margradel with six nuns and six novices. Two lamps hung from the wooden roof, flinging vague streams of light into the gloom. The Abbess knelt on the stone steps before the altar, with the women crouching in cramped reverence at her feet. A single taper burnt before the rough wooden cross whose beams were linked by a crown of thorns.
Overhead the wind screamed, and the rain drove in through the crazy latticing upon the floor. The tide was full below, and they could hear the thunder of the waves upon the rock. Holy Guard was overarched by darkness and all the turbulent passion-throes of the world.
The trumpet’s cry had passed unheard by those within the chapel: the rush of many feet had merged into the vaster clamour of the storm. A pikestaff smote the chapel door. The rusty latch clashed, the door swung in on its sea-rotted hinges, the arch of gloom was filled with hissing torches, smoke, and the gleaming bodies of armed men. Joan the Abbess started to her feet, stood with her back to the altar, her crucifix upraised. The nuns and novices, some standing, some crouching on their knees, huddled back towards her like fledgelings beneath a mother’s wing.
Silence held for a moment, save for the blustering of the wind and the hiss of the rain on the burning torches. Joan the Abbess was no coward; her eyes were fixed questioningly upon the armed men at the door. Since they made no sign of entering the chapel, she still held her cross on high and challenged them from the altar.
“Who are ye who break the peace of Holy Guard?”
There was some stir in the crowd without the door, and the torches plunged forward, their smoke rolling to the roof. A tall man in a green cloak, with a sable hood shadowing his face, had pushed through the soldiery with drawn sword. His men stood with crossed spears before the door, while he faced the Abbess under the flaring lamps.
The woman still held her cross on high.
“Who are ye who trouble Holy Guard?”
The man in the green cloak answered her.
“Woman, the noise of your misdeeds has filled all Christendom. The Holy Father has decreed the breaking of the abbey of Holy Guard.”
“These are false words.”
The man ignored the Abbess’s straining lips and upraised cross. His eyes were searching the faces of those who thronged the altar, white and mute, carven as out of stone.
“Rise, women, we command you.”
Some obeyed him, others hesitated. Joan the Abbess still stood before the altar with a few of the women huddling about her feet. The man in the green cloak pointed towards her with his sword.
“Take her hence, sirs,” he said. “Let her not cheat you with that cross of hers.”
There was some scuffling, some screaming, as in a dovecot where a hawk has entered. The Abbess calmed the scene by sudden surrender to the tyranny of the hour. She put the men from her, folded the crucifix over her breast, passed down from the altar towards the door. Her women gathered at her heels like sheep, thronging betwixt the line of torches and the glistening helms.
The man in the hood of sables suffered them to pass before him one by one, staring hard into each frightened face. At each motion of his sword the soldiers let a woman through, and they passed singly from the flare of the torches into the night.
The last woman had drawn her hood down over her face. She was taller than her fellows, and moved with more stateliness, a more youthful grace. At a sign one of the soldiers tossed back her hood and uncovered the face of Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, dead Ronan’s wife.
The man in the green cloak made a gesture with his sword. The soldiers herded to the entry, passed out from the chapel, and closed the creaking door. The torchlight flickered in through the lattices; vague cries pierced the clamour of the storm; the wind screamed, the sea surges thundered against the rock.
The man with the sword tossed back his hood. He and Rosamunde were alone together; the lamps flung their wavering light down upon his face. Rosamunde, knowing him in a moment, fell back and leant against a pillar. It was Jocelyn of Agravale, who had trapped her in Holy Guard.
CHAPTER XXXI
At Sanguelac the Tower of the Dead was lit with many cressets. Pierced with a hundred ruddy stars, it lifted its grey parapet to the sky, while the bells clashed in the belfry near. The men of the Seven Streams were mourning for Samson their leader; they wore black scarves over their hauberks, and had painted black bands athwart their shields. Tristan had set the bells of the town tolling, in memory of the great heart that beat no more. Samson’s mantle had fallen on Tristan’s shoulders; as for Blanche the Duchess, she was content to follow him.
It was night; and in the abbey in the town, whence such monks had long fled who had not turned heretics under Samson’s preaching, the Duchess Blanche was housed with her knights and nobles. Tristan was with her in the abbot’s parlour, also Lothaire, her chief captain, and the knights of her guard. They had framed their plans for the march on Marvail, where Jocelyn had left Count Reynaud encamped, while he, proud regenerator of the Seven Streams, had ridden towards Holy Guard to obey St. Pelinore. The Bishop had left Count Reynaud at Marvail, both to overawe the heretics and to preserve him in ignorance. So pious a knight might have used his honour to weigh the balance against Jocelyn’s romancing.
With the conference ended, Lothaire and his knights went to their quarters, leaving Tristan and the Duchess alone together, save for two women who had attended her from the north. The night was clear, and through the open window the winter stars were shining; beneath the abbey a hundred roofs gleamed down to the midnight of the woods. Blanche had drawn to the open window, and Tristan stood by her leaning on his sword. The two women were stitching a black cross in the midst of the Duchess’s banner, a cross that commemorated Samson’s death.
Blanche, in the rich autumn of her woman’s heart, had drawn nigh unto Tristan, even so as to renew the springtide of her youth. There was that fierce and uncompromising honour in him that made him doubly strong in a woman’s eyes. Moreover, he went heavily through life that winter season, yet with the grim fatefulness of a man possessed. Blanche’s heart had opened to his, half with a maiden’s love, half with a mother’s.
Tristan was morose that night as he stood beside her staring at the stars. On the morrow they were to march on Marvail, to smite those men who had crucified Samson beyond the river. Storm clouds were massing over the Seven Streams, and many a fierce soldier had sworn dire things to his own heart.
The Duchess Blanche was troubled for Tristan as they gazed at the bare woods dark under the stars. There was that strange tenderness upon the woman’s face that illumines the countenance of one who loves. Her eyes were kind under her silvery hair.
“Tristan,” she said, “must a man live for vanished days alone?”
He turned his eyes from the heavens, leant more heavily upon his sword.
“The past is ever with us,” he answered her; “the dead haunt me, stand round my bed at night. I see not flesh and blood alone, but the grey faces of those who cry to me for vengeance. They are not dead, these ghosts—Columbe, nor Samson, nor the martyrs of the Seven Streams.”
The woman leant her head upon her hand, and gazed out into the night, so that Tristan saw but the curves of her proud face and bended neck. There was pathos in her attitude, the pose of one who yearned for that which life had never fully given.
“You live for the dead,” she said again.
“Many whom I love are dead,” he answered her.
She threw a glance at him, her eyes bright with the wistfulness that she could not hide. Tristan was blind to that which was in her eyes. For the moment he thought only of Rosamunde, walled from the world in Holy Guard.
“Tristan,” she said.
“My lady.”
“Are all the loved ones dead?”
He caught a deep breath, did not answer her speedily and frankly as was his wont.
“As the heart goes,” he said; “the rest is nothingness.”
“Nothingness; there you belie your soul.”
His eyes gleamed suddenly, as though he heard some mocking trumpet cry and the trampling squadrons of his foes.
“Before God,” he said to her, lifting the weight of his body from off his sword, “he who has lost friends to death, finds no soft resting-place to ease his soul. A little while—some months ago, not more—I leapt like a boy into the storm and strife of life. My youth is past, my manhood forged beneath the mighty hammer of God’s fate. When dreams elapse, the strong man grips the sword.”
“Strange words,” she said, “for one who is not old.”
He leant his hands again upon the pommel, sighed, and retorted to her with the solemnity of one whose hopes were fierce, whose thoughts ran deep.
“There seems a season in man’s life,” he said, “when all is wrath, passion, and great pain. Youth passes in a year. The world grows full of storm winds, anguish, and huge travail. Battle breathes in the blood. A man must fight and labour, or grow mad.”
“And yet——”
“And yet,” he said, catching her very words, “my heart gives out at seasons, and I yearn, even I, to be once more a little child weeping my woes out on my mother’s knees.”
The Duchess turned to him from the mild stars, held out her hands, a woman whose heart was open as the sky.
“Ah, Tristan, is it a mother’s heart you need?”
He looked at her sadly, knelt down and kissed her hands.
“Come, let me comfort you,” she said.
Lifting his rough face to hers, he smiled, the smile of a man grateful yet not appeased.
“Winter is here,” he said; “as yet there is no peace upon the woods, no singing of birds, no white clouds in the heavens. For me—battle and tempest. I shall not rest till many deeds are done.”
On the morrow they marched from Sanguelac, with pennons tossing over hill and moor. Tristan bore a black dragon on a gilded shield, the device Dame Blanche had decreed to him after her sword had touched his shoulder. Three thousand spears, a strenuous van, pricked with him hotly through the winter wilds. Morose and fierce of face, Tristan held on towards the south, with Blanche the Duchess at his side. They were riding on Marvail to take it by surprise, fall suddenly upon Count Reynaud and his men.
It was well towards evening on the third day of Tristan’s sallying from Sanguelac that the watchers on the walls of Marvail saw scattered knots of horsemen cantering towards the town. The gates were thrown open to take them in. Even in the farther meadows on the rim of the woods the townsfolk could see the flash and glimmer of pursuing spears. Mud-stained, sullen-faced men rode in to Marvail, confessing defeat in every desperate gesture, some with wounded comrades laid across their saddles, their shields splintered, their lances lost. That morning Count Reynaud had sallied out to give the heretics battle. His scouts had found them marching south, and had misjudged their numbers, since Tristan and the Duchess had masked half their companies in the woods. Count Reynaud had cantered out with horns blowing, shields aglimmer, spears aglint. The men of Marvail had watched them sally, promising the Church more victims before the sun should set.
Two leagues from the town, on a hill amid the black billows of the woods, Tristan stood at the head of his main squadrons, gazing round over the place where their hot charge had left the wreckage of Reynaud’s arms stranded on the hillside. The west was afire above the pines, crimson swords smiting through the clouds. It had been a battle of horse, grim, swift, and furious. Tristan had ambushed a thousand spears under Lothaire in the woods. They had charged home on the Papists’ flank, crumpled their squadrons, hurled them back up the hill. Tristan and his men had come in like the sea. Sword and shield were witnesses to this.
Tristan stood amid the wreckage of the fight, with the Duchess beside him on her great white horse. The banner with the black cross drooped amid a grove of spears. Far to the south, through the dusky woods, Lothaire’s spears still flashed and smote at the flying foe. On all sides were the dead and the dying, piled in sheaves, the grim harvest of battle.
At Tristan’s feet lay the body of Count Reynaud thrust through with a spear. Before him among the slain stood some dozen monks guarded by men-at-arms. They had followed Count Reynaud from Marvail to bless his banner and to see the heretics put to the sword.
Tristan le Sauvage leant upon the long handle of his axe. A prisoner had been brought to him, an esquire of Reynaud’s who had been taken in the fight. Tristan’s eyes were fixed upon the man’s slashed face as he questioned him concerning Jocelyn and the main body of the southern host.
“Come, sir, let us have the truth.”
Several of the monks lifted up their hands, charging the man to seal his lips.
“Parley not with a heretic,” said one.
“Receive martyrdom,” cried another, “and be blessed in heaven.”
Tristan turned on them with a grim scorn. He was in no mood for argument; that priests were mischievous rogues was his honest conviction.
“These are they who slew Samson,” he said, pointing at them with his axe. “Guards, take and hang them in the woods. Every priest shall hang who falls to me in the Seven Streams.”
The men obeyed him with no mean zest, fierce to be avenged on Samson’s enemies. Twelve frocked figures were soon jerking and struggling under the trees. Tristan, stern about the eyes, turned once again to the man before him.
“Come, friend,” he said, “this is the fortune of war. We are rid of these skirted fools; as soldier to soldier I offer fair terms. Tell me of Jocelyn and the men of Agravale, or hang beside the monks on yonder trees.”
Reynaud’s squire was young and lusty, not ripe for death either in years or spirit, and Tristan’s challenge worked his conversion. He began to confess such things as Tristan had desired.
“The Bishop has marched on the west,” he said, “even, sir, because he was so guided by St. Pelinore in a vision at Agravale. He had some three thousand spears following the Sacred Banner of the Golden Keys.”
Tristan nodded and smiled the man on.
“The vision, friend, tell us that.”
Reynaud’s esquire was white and faint from the blood lost to him by his wounds. Tristan cheered him on, bade the two guards support his shoulders.
“Ten more words, man, and we will see to your wounds,” he said. “Whither has the Bishop marched with the spears of Agravale?”
“Sire, to the abbey of Holy Guard.”
“By God, for what purpose?”
“To destroy it, as he was bidden in his vision by St. Pelinore.”
The man fell forward fainting in the arms of his guards. They laid him down beside dead Reynaud, began to search his wounds and to pour wine between his lips. Blanche the Duchess was watching Tristan’s face. She saw his eyes flash and kindle, his mouth harden into a grim line. It was as the face of a man who heard of the dishonouring of one he loved. Tristan stood motionless, leaning on his axe, gazing far into the burning west, and once his lips moved as though he uttered a woman’s name.
CHAPTER XXXII
Samson the Heretic’s death had cast Tristan into savage gloom. He had loved the man, and had learnt to lean on him as on a spiritual father, by whose warm eloquence the heavens were opened. Samson had been as a great beacon fire lighting a dark land, startling with his fierce beams the night-ridden gates of the Church. The light was quenched, the mighty spirit sped, and Tristan mourned for him as for a father.
Then had come the news of Holy Guard, and the breaking of Rosamunde’s novitiate there. There was joy and sorrow commingled in the tale. In one great burst of bitterness, Tristan had opened his whole heart to the one soul on earth whose sympathy seemed as a silver cloud charged with kindly dew. Blanche had heard him to the end, wiped out the twisting pain from her own face, given him such comfort as a woman’s heart could give. Her gracious queenliness stood her in good stead, and Tristan did not guess the inward sacrifice.
But the man was a man again before one night had passed. Holy Guard had fallen; Jocelyn and his war-wolves were by the sea. Tristan swore by God and high Heaven that he would ride and fall upon him before the news of Reynaud’s slaying could reach the Bishop’s ears. The Papists had fled out of Marvail like Gadarene swine, and retreated over the river for fear of Tristan’s sword. As for the heretics, they sallied over, found Samson’s body hanging naked on a tree. They took him down and buried him in the woods, swore over his grave to rid the Seven Streams of Jocelyn’s power. Then they forded the Lorient once more, and leaving a strong garrison at Marvail, hastened by forced marches towards the sea.
“News, Sir Tristan, news, news.”
So cried the rider who came in from the west, on a muddy horse under the winter sky. The dawn had streaked the east with faint gold, and transient sun shafts had touched the woods. In a glade amid pines Tristan’s scout had found many horses cropping the coarse grass. Rough huts had been built of pine boughs piled against the trees, and many spears stood there with shields swinging in the wind.
Tristan heard the man’s tidings as he stood before the doorway of his lodge of pine boughs and laced the steel hood to the rim of his helmet. His knights were gathering in on every side, some girding on their swords, others tightening their shield straps as they came.
“The Pope’s men are three leagues away,” so ran the morning’s greeting.
Tristan ordered a single horn to sound the sally, while he passed to the great red tent of Blanche the Duchess to greet her and to persuade her to keep from the fight. The glade was full of stir and action. Companies were forming up shoulder to shoulder; spears danced and swayed; horses steamed in the brisk morning air. The banner of the Duchess stood unfurled before her tent; she had heard the news and the whistling wings of the eagles of war.
Blanche came out to meet him in her burnished casque, her dark eyes afire with the zest of action. She would have none of Tristan’s caution, but ordered her white war-horse forward, mounted from Tristan’s knee, received the shouts of her eager soldiery. The red tent sank down; the followers were packing the baggage. As the sun cleared the trees, the northern van rolled out from the woods into a stretch of open land that sloped towards the bold curves of a river.
That morning Tristan was merry as he swung his axe and felt his horse rise under his weight. He was full of joy, this rugged smiter, who had sprung from an adventurous quest into the marshalling of armies. The great heart of the world seemed to beat with his. Blanche the Duchess read his humour, joined with him in the zest of the hour.
“Tristan, you are merry,” she said.
“Merry indeed, for we fight to-day.”
“You smile once more.”
“I shall smile in that hour when Jocelyn crawls at my feet. Ha, it is good to be strong!”
Tristan’s riders were scouring ahead, keeping cover, scanning the horizon for Jocelyn’s march. By noon they had left the open land, plunged up hills covered thick with woods. Tristan’s squadrons sifted through, and he halted them in the woods under the brow of the hill, went forward with his captains to reconnoitre.
Below lay a broad valley running north and south, chequered with pine thickets and patches of brushwood. On a hill in the centre stood a ruined tower. Towards the south a broad loop of the river closed the valley, while all around on the misty hills shimmered the giants of the forest, mysterious and silent. Tristan’s outriders had fallen back and taken cover in the thickets. Down the valley could be seen a line of spears, glittering snake-like towards the tower on the hill. Companies of horse were crossing the river, pushing up the slopes, mass on mass. In the midst of the flickering shields and spears blew a great white banner streaked with gold.
It was Jocelyn and the southern barons, who had been on the march since dawn. They had thrown their advance guard across the river, and were straggling up the green slopes, while the main host crossed at the ford. On the instant Tristan did a cunning thing. He had brought from Marvail Count Reynaud’s banner, also the pennons of many of his knights slain on the field. These he sent forward in the van of a strong company, bidding them close within a hundred paces and then charge at the gallop.
The Papists fell to the trick even as Tristan had trusted. They straggled up to meet the men riding under Reynaud’s banner, only to discover spears rocking towards them at the cry of a trumpet, a line of plunging hoofs thundering down the slope. The woods belched steel. North, east, and west, company on company poured from the trees and raced full gallop for the disordered host. Jocelyn’s men were caught like sheep on a hillside. The hurtling spears were on their shields, they were hurled back down the valley upon the disordered masses who had crossed at the ford.
The knights of the north and the heretics of the Seven Streams went in at the gallop, and gave the southerners no space to breathe. “Remember Samson!” was the cry. Down towards the river the whirlwind played, with dust and clangour and the shriek of steel. Spears went down like trampled corn. The battle streamed down the bloody slope, for nothing could stem that furious charge.
The river shut the broken host in, for the ford was narrow, not easy of passage. From the north came the thundering ranks of horse, on the south the waters were calm and clear. Jocelyn’s squadrons, streaming like smoke blown from a fire by a boisterous wind, were hurled in rout upon the water. They were thrust down over the bank; slain in the shallows, drowned in struggling to cross at the ford. Some few hundreds reached the southern bank, and scattered fast for the sanctuary of the woods.
In less than half an hour from the first charge, Tristan’s heretics had won the day. They gave no quarter, slew all who stood. Of Jocelyn’s host some two thousand perished, many in the battle, many in the river. Tristan rode back up the hill, amid the cheers of his men. He had chosen three hundred spears to surround the Sacred Banner with the Golden Keys, trusting that the Bishop would be lodged near by. He had bidden his men take Jocelyn alive, and all such priests as had followed in his train. That Jocelyn had seized Rosamunde out of Holy Guard he guessed right well, and therefore he charged his men to deal gently with those about the Sacred Banner, to make prisoners, to slay but few.
Hence when Tristan rode up victorious from the ford, he saw the Pope’s banner flying by the ruined tower, with dead Ronan’s flag waving beside it. Tristan’s three hundred had taken the Bishop, thrown him straightway into the tower, and massed their ranks on the slopes of the hill. The prize was theirs, and they were eager to guard it. Some fifty priests had been taken also, but of Rosamunde of Holy Guard they had seen no sign.
Blanche herself rode down on her great white horse to greet Tristan and give him the victory. She had watched the battle from the cover of the woods, and had seen the Papists hurled into the river.
“Friend, God has blessed ye; the wolves have been hounded from the Seven Streams.”
Such was her greeting as she met Tristan before the tower.
“Madame, the victory is yours,” he said. “Without your aid we should have done but little.”
“Nay, it is Samson’s victory,” she answered sadly. “Behold, the dead conquer after death.”
Tristan dismounted and entered the ruined gateway of the tower. The men-at-arms, gathering round, shouted his name, “Tristan, Tristan!” The hoarse cheers echoed to the listening woods, waking the welkin, rolling towards the river.
Jocelyn, pacing to and fro within the round walls, heard these cries and bit his lip. He was at the mercy of the man who had slain Ogier, the man whose sister he had brought to the grave. The heretics had thrust the Bishop into the bottom-most chamber of the tower; the beams and roof above had rotted away, leaving the open sky racing above the battlements. Ferns, grasses, and gillyflowers grew upon the walls and in the crumbling recesses where the windows opened. The floor was strewn with rotting wood, overgrown with brambles and tall rank weeds. From this lower room three narrow windows looked out upon the woods, and ruin and decay seemed symbolised therein.
Soldier and churchman came face to face within the narrow compass of those walls. Tristan thrust back the rotting door, stood alone in the shadow, seeming the more grim and burly in the narrow space. The priest went to and fro like a caged cat, his eyes roving from Tristan’s face to the door and the spear points that gleamed on the stair.
Without, the listening soldiery heard the fierce thunder of a strong man’s voice, grim and terrible in the intensity of its wrath. Its echoes reverberated through the tower, pitiless and damning, cowing the thin tones that sounded in retort.
Tristan did not slay the man that day, for he had other tortures in his heart. With the cold steel before his eyes and a great hand upon his throat, Jocelyn jerked out the truth into Tristan’s face. Rosamunde had been sent by river into the Southern Marches to be housed at the madhouse in the mere. Tristan beat the pommel of his sword in Jocelyn’s face, hurled him against the wall, left him huddled white and terrified amid the weeds and rotting wood.
“Lie there, Satan,” he said. “Death can wait till I have worked my will.”
CHAPTER XXXIII
Over the madhouse in the mere the noon sun had travelled, drawing the grey mists up from the meadows, glistening upon the pinnacles of the wooded hills. No wind was moving—the withered sedges were silent in the shallows, and no ripples barred the water with dim gold.
From the island came a solitary cry, the scream of a living thing in pain, shrill, piteous, and discordant. All the dismal babels of the place seemed to wake at the cry like the screaming of birds when some savage spoiler haunts the woods. The impassive trees moved never a finger, though echo veiled among the hills.
In the court, with the grey stone walls and the barred windows rising round, Nicholas the keeper had betaken him to his whip. A girl, naked to the loins, stood chained by her wrists to the wooden post in the centre of the court. She was a mad creature, given to wild outbursts of delirious violence. Old Nicholas had taken her when exhausted after some such fit, had chained her to the post for the chastening of her temper. Though the red weals showed in the white skin, her outcry and her writhings availed her nothing. The whip was the old man’s one appeal to those contumacious creatures who needed discipline.
In a long, low-ceilinged chamber under the tiles sat Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, listening to the cries that came from the distant court. The room was richly garnished in its way with hangings and carved furniture, and lamps of bronze. The three windows opened on the western sky, the wild crags above, the woods and the calm water spread below.
The Lady Rosamunde was seated on a carved bench, gazing out on the woods steeped in the double mysteries of sunshine and of mist. Her hands were in her lap, her undressed hair falling in gold upon her shoulders. The look upon her face spoke of deep misery, of passionate degradation, and shame of soul. Her proud neck was bent like the stem of a sun-parched flower. She sat motionless in the shadow, gazing solemn-eyed upon the empty world.
Near her, throned on a scarlet cushion upon the floor, a pale-faced girl peered at herself in a small hand-mirror, while she combed her black hair with a silver comb. She was studious and deliberate in her toilet, perfecting it with a flippant airiness of gesture that told of a sensuous and cheerful vanity. Ever and again she would cast quick, bird-like glances at Rosamunde before the window, smile to herself with a world-wise pity in her hazel eyes.
“Hey, sister Rose, be merry, be merry. If I were an escaped nun, I should be laughing till the sun looked big as a great shield.”
There was a certain hollowness in the girl’s merriment, as though her tongue were blither than her heart. Rosamunde half turned to her with the air of one burdened with utter weariness of soul and body. Life had seemed a black dream since that wild night in Holy Guard when Jocelyn and his men had hounded the nuns into the wind and rain. The memory of that violent midnight lived with a vivid horror that haunted her soul. At dawn she had been taken through the wilds, brought to the river, thrust into a galley, and rowed upstream into the depths of the woods. For two days and a night she had heard the plash of oars, watched the banks swimming by under a dreary canopy of mist. Then the men had landed her, set her upon a horse, brought her through leagues of woodland to the madhouse in the mere.
The girl Miriam who shared her chamber with her was a little Jewess, volatile, passionate, and warm of heart. A child of misfortune, cursed with the bane of beauty, she had suffered many things at the world’s mercy. Yet under the mask of vice and ignominy, the passion and fervour of her race still burnt unquenched. At Rosamunde’s first coming she had taunted and gibed at her. Later, the utter misery in the elder woman’s eyes had disarmed her vanity and touched her heart. Different as gold and wax, the pair had become friends by common necessity in their prison chamber under the tiles.
“Sister Rose,” said the girl again, “I have never yet won a smile from your lips.”
“Who can smile, child, when one hears the cries of those in pain?”
“Ah, the mad folk, they suffer always; it is their curse.”
“And we, Miriam?”
“We only suffer when our souls are sad.”
Rosamunde had heard from the Papists of Samson’s death; the tidings had shocked her, yet not with the profundity she would have dreamt of months ago. He had been her spiritual father and the great regenerator of the Seven Streams. To Rosamunde those later months he had been more of a god than a mortal; Tristan, outshone at the first, had brought back her heart from a garden of impossible dreams. From Jocelyn and his men she had won no other news save that their spears were set against Tristan and his heretics. They had taunted her with the promise to bring a sackful of ears taken from the detestable degenerates who had defied the Church.
“My soul, but you are as sorrowful as Rachel,” said the black-haired girl, twisting near on her cushion and half resting against Rosamunde.
“I have been a poor fool,” said she, with one hand on Miriam’s head.
“We women are all fools; the men cheat us into bondage. Once I was clean and pure. Well, well, what if I have an old heart in a young body?”
Rosamunde held her peace for the moment. The cries had ceased in the court below; the babel of mad voices had given place to silence.
“Have you thought of death, Miriam?”
The Jewess started, stared up into Rosamunde’s face. It was white and hard, the eyes full of a passionate pessimism.
“Death, sister!”
“As a Roman woman would have died. Ah, my God, is it then a sin to end such shame?”
Miriam struggled to her knees, her arms thrust over Rosamunde’s shoulders. The warm Jewish blood in her had taken fire of a sudden. Her pale face looked into Rosamunde’s, her dark eyes glittered with an earnestness that was almost super-natural.
“Sister, what words are these?”
“Shame or death—I halt between the two.”
“Death, but how?”
“A steel point, a mere bodkin prick, and then the end.”
The younger woman clasped her arms about Rosamunde’s neck, looked steadily into her face.
“Sister, you frighten me. Why then should we die? Is there no hope left, no gleam of a new dawn?”
“There is hope in prayer, perhaps.”
“Ah, my fathers have prayed of old and have been answered. The Great God reigneth, though I, His daughter, have erred in the tents of men.”
The misery melted out of Rosamunde’s eyes for the moment. She touched Miriam’s hair with her fingers, drew a deep breath, inspired new courage. Her mouth softened; she kissed Miriam upon the lips.
“Forget, child,” she said; “it was a moment’s weakness with me, and it has passed.”
The little Jewess took the kiss, broke forth into sudden weeping. Her heart was warm yet under her gay gown; the faith of her fathers was not dead within her breast. The spirits of Ruth and of Rachel might have wakened echoes in her soul.
“Ah, I have felt such fearful thoughts of old,” she said, “when I was drawn down into the dust and men trampled on my honour. Yet hope revived, and I lived on. Often I have thought that shame has broken all my heart, that I am too sinful to look into the face of God.”
Rosamunde kissed Miriam’s lips a second time; it was her turn to comfort, and the instinct gave her courage. A long while she spoke to her, telling of the Christ, pleading as the saints had pleaded in the past. As for the girl, she threw her mirror and her silver comb away, plucked the bright brooch from off her breast, sat listening at Rosamunde’s knees till evening fell.
That night the Lady of Joyous Vale lay long awake, thinking of Tristan and his great love. Her heart cried out for a strong man’s chivalry, for the passionate tenderness of such a homage. Holy Guard and Jocelyn had broken her pride; she was as a child once more lifting her face to the lips of love. To be saved from shame, this was her prayer.
Lying awake in the moonless gloom, tossing under the coverlet with her hair spread around, she listened to Miriam’s quiet breathing. The casements showed grey in the wall before her. Feverish, she rose up from her bed, drew a cloak round her, knelt by one of the open windows. The night air played upon her face. Overhead a thousand stars were shining, while the silent lake glimmered beneath.
Rosamunde bowed herself over the sill, leant her head upon her arms, and wept from sheer pain and weariness of heart. Life seemed sealed against all hope. Violence and infamy hemmed her in; she was mewed in this island amid mad folk and worse, the idle sport of a worthless priest. She had become again as a little child, hungry for love, afraid of the dark. Her heart cried out for Tristan there, that rough face lit by its honest eyes, that strength that no single arm could stay. He was the one man who could win her soul, guard her from all terror and the world’s evil leer.
As she wept that night under the stars, she made a passionate prayer to Heaven.
“O God,” cried her heart, “send Tristan hither. Grant that he may love me as he loved of old. Hear this my prayer, O Father of heaven. For lo, I have broken the pride in my heart, and lo, I love Tristan, and would be his wife. Hear me, God, and save me from shame.”
She knelt a long while gazing up at the stars. The tears came no more to dim her eyes; a sudden wind stirred the trees in the garden. The sound seemed as a still voice answering her prayer, a voice that whispered—
“Peace, God has heard thee.”