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                                  THE
                             Seven Streams

                                   BY
                            WARWICK DEEPING

            _Author of “The Rust of Rome,” “The Red Saint,”_
                    _“Uther and Igraine,” etc. etc._

                      CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
                London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
                                 MCMXI

                          ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

                                   TO

                             My Dear Sister

                                KATHLEEN

                    This Dream Romance is Dedicated

     “Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
      Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.”
                                  Spenser, _The Faerie Queen_.

     “Dreams;
      Which are the children of an idle brain
      Begot of nothing but vain phantasy.”
                              Shakespeare, _Romeo and Juliet_.

                           THE SEVEN STREAMS

                               CHAPTER I

For a night and a day Tristan le Sauvage had watched his arms before the
high altar of the chapel of Purple Isle. For a night and a day he had
seen the long tapers glimmering towards their silver sockets, under the
painted roof. Dawn light and evening glow had shone through the latticed
casements east and west, dusting the stones with colour, carving deep
shadows from sculptured pillar and from moulded arch. Not a sound had
broken the silence of the tombs. Alone before the Great Cross, Tristan
had kept vigil, chastening his manhood for quest beyond the sea. Two
months had passed since a great ship with gleaming sails had swooped
like a falcon upon Purple Isle, and carried thence that white dove,
Columbe the Fair.

The sun had descended in a whorl of crimson flame when Tristan rose up
from before the altar, and passed out to his kinsfolk who had gathered
at sunset in the chapel court. The moon had climbed the starry port of
heaven. In the court lamps flickered, and white faces peered at him like
pale flowers out of the gloom. The delicate finials of many cypresses
were smitten with the moonlight; a thin perfume of spring quivered in
the air.

Before the chapel gate stood Father Madan of the Isle, clad in his Mass
robes, his white beard silvered by the light of the moon. Four acolytes
stood round him with bell and aspergil, ewer and book. Maidens in white
bore garlands of primrose and of violet on crosses of white wood. There
was a deep silence through all the court, as Tristan came out from the
inmost shadow, his head bowed over his broad chest.

Tristan le Sauvage was no lover of priests. Frocks and stoles were
women’s gear. It was with no great grace that he went on his knees on
the bare stones at Madan’s feet, while the old man stretched out his
thin white hands over him like a snowy Druid uttering incantations under
the stars.

“Son Tristan,” quoth the priest, with that innocent unction beloved of
women, “hath the good God chastened thee for this thy quest?”

Tristan hated parade with the great sinews of his heart. He was a surly
soul, a bad courtier at the crook of the knee.

“Son Tristan,” said the priest again, “the buckler of Faith awaits your
arm.”

“I have sharpened my sword, O Father,” said the man on the stones.

Madan knew well this unpolished rock, the granite that loved the
billow’s blow better than the honeyed voice of a lute. He forgave the
untamed temper of youth, and blessed him as he knelt at his feet.

His kinsfolk gathered under the long shadows of the cypresses. Dame
Joan, his mother, drew near, and kissed his lips. Her hands lay heavy
upon his shoulders; her face shone white under her pure grey hair.

“Tristan,” said she, “the good saints strengthen you. Thrice blessed am
I in the manhood of my son.”

“Mother,” he answered her simply enough, overshadowing her with his
great strength, “God by your love has given me a good schooling.
Therefore be comforted. Columbe, my sister, shall return to you again.”

When she had hung upon his bosom, Dame Joan kissed him, as did his sire
and Lavaine, his brother. They were brave folk, simple of heart,
open-souled towards Heaven. Love with them was as an eternal prayer
winging at dawn and eve to the throne of God. Girded from the great
world by the waste of waters, they lived their lives in the strong
purity of virgin faith.

The full moon gazed on them as they passed down from the chapel towards
the sea. A thousand pines thrust up their midnight spears towards the
stars. Deep to the confines of the dusky sky the far sea glimmered,
washing the island with a sheet of foam. Madan the monk led on the
company, acolytes, maidens, and young men chanting together under the
moon. Tristan walked at his mother’s side. With solemn song and the
faint pulsing of the chapel bell, they brought him slowly towards the
strand.

In a black inlet, bulwarked from the broad vigour of the sea, a galley
lay moored beside a rude stone quay. The water was scolloped all with
silver round the sable rocks. A great glistening highway stretched over
the ocean towards the east.

By the galley’s bulwarks Tristan took leave of his mother and his sire.
He sprang down behind the thwarts and took the tiller in his hand. The
black sail climbed the mast; the long sweeps smote silver from the
swirling pool. Madan stood forward and blessed him as the prow rose to
the waves. Thus Tristan le Sauvage put out from Purple Isle, and
followed the moon’s highway over the sea.

                               CHAPTER II

The tall hills of a strange land rose athwart the deepening azure of the
second dawn. Spears of light fell streaming towards the sea, glittering
upon the ever-tumbling waves that hurried onwards towards the west. The
stars sped back behind the veil. The faint moon grew frail as a great
silver net burdened with transient dew.

Tristan le Sauvage, steering the boat, sat with his eyes fixed upon the
misty heights touched with the golden glories of the dawn. Before him
the multitudinous waves leapt and tumbled, washing the bulwarks,
plashing against the prow with a moist unrest. A light breeze bellied
the black sail, set the cordage creaking and humming about the mast. The
world seemed full of the awakening day and the sinuous and solemn
splendour of the sea. The waves were troughed with opalescent light as
they swept and heaved about the boat. There was a salt zest in the
ocean’s breathing, a deep intake of strength into its panting heart.

The men at the benches watched Tristan le Sauvage as they dipped their
sweeps. The dawn light shone upon his rugged face and the links of his
hauberk. There was no uglier man in Purple Isle than Tristan le Sauvage.
Nature had juggled with him from his earliest years. Of no great
stature, he was like a tough oak, cumbrous, huge of trunk, and gnarled
of limb. The long arms showed their great muscles even under the sleeves
of his hauberk. His chest was as the front of some great rock; his heavy
head seemed sunk betwixt his shoulders; his legs bowed as by the massive
strength above. A pair of dusky eyes peered out with honest faith from a
craggy, hairless countenance. The broad mouth was pursed up half
morosely over the strong white teeth.

Such was the pilgrim who plied the tiller, helming the boat towards the
broadening day. Tristan spoke seldom, crying now and again to Rolf the
pilot, as the boat heaved and rolled over the waves. His eyes were fixed
on the hills that rose above the waste of waters. Black cliffs, craggy
and solemn, began to frown upon the sea. The far heights bristled with
woodland, shimmering with magic mystery under the rising sun. The moist
surge of the sea cheered on the galley towards the shore.

Tristan stood to the tiller, and scanned the strange coast under his
hand. The wind freshened, the sail bellied from the mast, the toilers
drew in their oars, and watched the coast-line rising from the foam.
Like battlements of black marble, the cliffs towered above the blue
shallows, with rocky pinnacle and forest spire smitten from the east
with a glamour of gold. Precipice and wooded height were solitary as the
sea itself. No tower crowned the headlands, no town lurked in the green
shadows of the placid bays.

Rolf, old senator of the seas, stood forward in the prow, gazing at the
line of heights. Straight to the east a narrow valley thrust upwards
from the sea, walled on either hand with cliff and forest slope. Rolf
hailed Tristan to the prow, and pointed with knotted finger to the
shore.

“The Land of the Seven Streams, sir,” he said to him. “I know these
cliffs of old. See yonder valley; the Silver Snake runs therein, a great
river and a strong. The stars have steered us well. Hold for the opening
in the cliffs; we can ride in over the bar.”

Running fast on the backs of the billows, they came to where a counter
current beat upon the prow, fretting the sea into contending streams. It
was where the river charged the tide. The galley swerved and faltered;
the sail flapped against the mast.

“Out sweeps,” came Rolf’s hail from the prow. “Pull, lads; ware rocks to
the north. The passage lies ahead.”

With the sail lowered and much straining of oars, they swung in past the
rocky barriers where the waves chafed and broke in foam. The great
cliffs towered upon either hand, solemn and stupendous, tufted with
dwarf oaks, topped with pines. Once within the inlet, the galley ran
smoothly on the broad bosom of the river, whose curves smote landwards
into forest gloom.

The men rested on their oars while Tristan climbed into the prow and
stood beside Rolf the seaman, looking forth over crag and forest. No
plume of smoke ascended to the sky, no roofs shone out amid the green.
The place was steeped in the grandeur of solitude, and there was no
sound to break the silence save the perpetual plaining of the sea.

Tristan questioned the old man at his side; he had grown grey under many
winter skies over stormy seas; his beard was as the foam below the bluff
beak of a ship.

“Whence comes this river?” he asked him.

“Sir,” he answered, “this great river feeds upon the Seven Streams, and
like a vast snake, takes them all into its belly. We have entered in at
the sea gate of the land.”

“Who are its rulers?”

“Sir, there are many lords in the land, holding their fiefs direct from
the King. Southwards lies the duchy of La Marche Montagne, northwards
the duchy of Blanche the Bold.”

Tristan pondered his words, as the river sped past them to the sea.

“Hold on,” he said, “and bear me higher into the heart of the land. What
better path for us than this broad stream?”

As they passed on that day the heights descended, spreading eastwards
into wooded hills. The land grew milder and more green of face. Ancient
trees sentinelled the river; broad valleys swept from it under the
sapphire sky. Hills grey with olives, dusky with cypresses and firs,
rose from green meadows, sleek and brilliant under the sun.

About noon, they rounded a rocky point, where myrtles clambered up the
bluff brow of the hill. In the northern shallows they saw a boat moored
and a peasant fishing. As the galley drew near with a steady pulse of
oars, Tristan stood in the prow and hailed the man over the water. The
fisherman fingered his line, and sat staring none too trustfully at the
galley sliding towards him with ripples prattling at its prow. Strange
ships sailed seldom into those quiet waters; the bloody deeds of Norse
pirates still lived in the heart of the peasantry.

Tristan, seeing the man’s distrust, tossed him a piece of silver from
the leather purse at his girdle. The fisher groped for it amid the
cordage at the bottom of the boat. Questioned, he told them of the
knights and barons of those parts, of the castles and hamlets therein,
of the roads and forest ways. His lord was a certain Sir Parsival, who
held a tower perched upon a neighbouring hill. Lastly, he described the
region known as La Vallée Joyeuse, a rich and pleasant pasture land,
where vineyards purpled the hills, and Sir Ronan the Peaceful had his
home.

Tristan, leaning on his sword, bade his men pole in towards the northern
bank, where a stretch of meadowland swept to the myrtle thickets that
hid the rocks. The water lay still as glass in the shallows. The woods
cast purple shadows athwart the stream, and the meads stood thick with
many flowers. The galley ran aground in a little inlet where reeds and
rushes bearded the bank. Tristan leapt from the prow, found sure
footing, and turned with a smile to face his men.

“Good voyage and a clean sea to you,” he said.

They crowded to the bulwarks with many rough and rugged prayers, holding
up their caps to him, proffering their service. Grizzled sea-dogs that
they were, they loved, him, even because he was strong and generous, and
a giant in arms. Like Homeric mariners gathering round Ulysses at the
entry to Hades, they prayed him to share with them the perils of the
unknown. Tristan put them off with bluff but unbending gratitude. They
would have hindered him, sea-dragons that they were. Such a pilgrimage
as his required but a single sword.

“Good men that you are,” he said, buckling his shield over his
shoulders, “you ride the waves better than the back of a horse. When I
have need of brown sails and a strong keel, I will send to Purple Isle
and call you over. To my sire and to Dame Joan, my mother, commend me.”

They tossed their rough blessings on him as he climbed the bank, rattled
the sweeps in the rowlocks, waved their fur-lined caps. Tristan saluted
them with his drawn sword, a warm colour on his ugly face. They were
still watching him and waving their brown fists when he disappeared from
their sight into the woods.

There was a strenuous tone in the man’s stout heart that day. The world
lay open at his feet, like a broad and glorious plain, unfolding its
many phases to his ken. Tristan, great boyish Titan, with a heart of
gold, welcomed the sun as it smote through branches upon his face. He
was glad of the woods and of their solemn liberty, glad of the hills,
and the broad, beaming valleys. Purple Isle had held him overlong in its
girdle of foam. The wide world smiled on him; the beacon of romance
burnt red upon the hills.

He followed the path that morning that the peasant had described to him,
a path that wound over uplands under the shadows of ancient trees. The
woods were virgin to Tristan’s heart. There were no such
broad-shouldered giants in Purple Isle with its waving pines and stunted
myrtles. The great oaks stood to him for sinew and strength. Their
gnarled loins spoke of the sap of centuries, their limbs of a hundred
battles with the wind. Youth ran riot in him that April day. He was as a
Bacchanal intoxicated with the wine of being. He smote the great trees
as he passed, bluff, open-handed buffets that would have shaken a
Hercules. Once, in the joy of strength, he grappled an oak sapling as he
would have grappled a python, wrestled with it, bent it beneath the
might of his broad back till the stem splintered and surrendered to his
grip. He tossed the broken tree aside with the smile of a conqueror,
strode on through the woods, singing as he went.

He had come to the brim of a valley, and had halted to gaze over the
meadows with their dark knolls of trees, when a shrill cry stirred him
like a wail of a hostile trumpet. Wild and inarticulate, it eddied
through the woods, terror breathing in the cry, as of life struggling in
the toils of death. The voice grew and gathered, died again into an
eerie whimper. Tristan, stiff as a wooden image, heard it with quickened
pulses and a sudden solemnity that overspread his countenance like a
cloud.

Pushing through a thicket of hollies, he came to a great break in the
woods, where the forest gloom gave place to an open valley, a golden
bowl brimming with sunlight. In green meadows a castle stood amid the
windings of a stream. Peace seemed throned above the olive thickets, the
shimmering water, and the gilded meadows. Yet from a stone bridge that
linked the sandy highway where it crossed the stream, there rose other
voices to denounce the dream.

Tristan, standing under the woodshawe, beheld a knot of figures swaying
to and fro over the keystone of the bridge. Swords were tossing, men
struggling together betwixt the parapets. The few seemed caught and
trampled by the many. Even as he watched, a horseman broke from the pool
of grappling, foining figures, and galloped northwards up the sandy
road. An archer, standing on the parapet of the bridge, loosed a shaft
at the fugitive, a shaft that found its billet in the rider’s back.
Tristan saw him thrust his arms to the sky, twist in the saddle, and
fall heavily to earth. His horse, whinnying with fear, left the high
road, and cantered over the fields towards the thicket where Tristan
stood.

Tristan was not a youth given to the subtle balancing of thought. Being
barren of all fear, save the fear of God, he obeyed without debate the
prick of impulse. Leaving the thicket, he hallooed to the riderless
brute trotting towards him over the meadows. The horse halted, tossed up
his head with ears agog, pawed the earth as he cast about from side to
side. It was a superb beast, black as a raven, with a single white star
on the forehead. Tristan called to him, advancing step by step. There
was a magic in the man that made all wild things trust him and obey. The
great beast suffered him to approach over the grass. Tristan’s hand
touched the sleek, foam-flecked muzzle. He caressed the brute’s ears,
took firm hold of the bridle, mounted at one spring, knew himself the
master.

“God helps him who helps himself,” he said, with a certain quaint
sententiousness, running his fingers through the long black mane.

Being imbued, despite his strenuous vigour, with some hard-headedness of
discretion, he ignored the blood-spilling in the valley, content to
shepherd the prize to his own good cause. Turning back into the woods,
he rode southwards from the place, keeping diligent watch, however, lest
any hot-handed gentleman should be following on his heels. Seemingly
they were busied with the purging of their own pastures, for Tristan saw
no more of them that day.

Tristan le Sauvage slept that night in the woods. He had discovered a
flask of wine and a well-stocked wallet slung to the horse’s saddle, an
added boon to the day’s capture. The air lay mild that night as a June
kiss on the earth’s round cheek. Tristan, with his saddle propped
against a tree, and the stars glittering above the forest, fell asleep
thinking of Purple Isle and the far faces of his kinsfolk.

With the first pulse of dawn in the east, he was up and astir with the
zest of the hour. The woods were full of golden vapour, of dew and the
chanting of birds. A stream sang under the boughs, purling and foaming
over a broad ledge of stone into a misty pool. A blue sky glimmered
above the glistening tree-tops; the dwindling woodways quivered with the
multitudinous madrigals of the dawn.

Tristan went down and sprang into the pool. He tossed and turned, smote
wheels of spray with his great arms, ploughed and furrowed the quaking
water. The blood leapt in him at the cold kisses of the pool. Ruddy and
buoyant, he clambered out into the sunlight, his naked strength
glistening with the clean dew gotten of his swim. The muscles rippled
under the gleaming skin. Tossing his great arms, expanding his deep
chest, he ran barefooted over the mossy grass. A drooping bough swept
low to tempt his fingers. He twisted the limb from the trunk, tossed it
like a lance from hand to hand, leaping and glorying in the splendour of
his strength.

Anon, he armed himself, knelt down beside his horse to pray. A quaint
calm fell instant upon his shoulders; the boisterous temper of his mood
sank like a sea beneath the benediction of a god. It was in solitude, by
sea or forest, that such a man as Tristan opened his heart to Heaven.
His was not a soul that bartered through carved screens for penitence
and peace. His face caught a radiance from the vaultings of the trees.
St. Cyprienne, with her dusky eyes and martyr’s crown, received the
woman’s portion of his prayer.

When he had broken fast and watered his horse at the pool, he sallied
from the thickets with the breath of the dawn beating upon his mouth.
Around him ran wooded hills, streams, and pastures dusted thick with
flowers. The odours of spring burdened the breeze. In the distance the
purple of the heights that circled La Vallée Joyeuse clove the azure of
the sky.

As Tristan rode through the wilds that day, following a grass-grown
track that marked the grave of a Roman road, he came to a little stone
shrine, standing by the wayside under the arms of a granite cross. A
larch thicket hedged the place with a thin gloom. A fountain bubbled
near, oozing away amid green rushes and mossy grass.

At the foot of the stone cross squatted a man in a grey cloak, with a
bell at his girdle and a bag of undressed ox hide in his lap. Tristan
stared with unstinted but momentary disrelish at the figure beside the
shrine. The man was a leper, and hideous even in the grip of a more than
hideous disease. His swollen and distorted face was grotesque as some
evil head carved by a mason’s chisel. The brows were swollen over the
watery eyes, the mouth disfigured, the skin, mined by many sores. Even
the hands were cankered and deformed; the man was as grim an image as
misfortune could display.

Tristan, out of sheer pity of heart, drew rein to gaze at this outcast
with furrowed brows. Though the tide of youth ran strong in his body, he
was not the slave of that selfish health that ignores despair and
comprehends not pain. The man by the cross held up his bag with a mute
gesture of appeal. Tristan, fumbling in the depths of his purse, drew
forth alms with a flash of pity.

The leper, keen to scent honour upon the thorny track of life, gathered
the tokens of charity from the grass with hideous hands. He lifted up a
cracked and husky voice, blessed Tristan, and wished him God-speed.

“The holy saints defend you, messire,” he said. “It is long since a
Christian took pity on my soul.”

Tristan, ignorant of all leprous lore, and the unsavoury nature of such
a wanderer, questioned him concerning La Vallée Joyeuse, and the length
of the road that led that way. This Lazarus was very human under his
thickened skin. Alms alone did not dazzle his vision. The sick are ever
hungry for sympathy, the instinctive pity that shines from the soul. The
leper had as long a tongue as most men, though the weapon had grown
rusty for lack of use.

“I tread the road towards La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said, rising from
before the cross; “if a friend will suffer my infirmities, I can play
the guide for a league or more.”

Tristan climbed from the horse with a smile on his face. There was no
reflective pride within his heart.

“Mount up, friend,” he said; “my legs are lustier than yours, I wager.”

Scorning debate in his masterful way, he held the stirrup and heeled the
man up. The black horse snorted and tossed his mane, as though despising
so ragged a burden. Tristan ruled him with hand and voice. If the master
chose chivalry, the beast could obey.

In this fashion they set out together, the leper straddling the
soldier’s horse, Tristan walking like a groom at his side. They were
soon accorded in spirit and speech, for a smile on the lips makes the
whole world kin. The leper had lived as a merchant in his day, till
disease had beggared him and left him an outcast. He had turned pilgrim,
so he said, to visit a certain holy well, whose waters were magical to
recover the sick. The shrine lay by the northern seas. Many great
miracles had been wrought at this well, and pious folk cleansed of many
a malady. Of the Land of the Seven Streams the leper had much to tell;
he had gathered shrewd gossip, as he travelled north.

“Good friend,” he said, when Tristan questioned him, “I know neither the
temper nor the colour of your sword. If you carry a white heart and
travel for peace, I would pray you to beware of La Vallée Joyeuse.”

Tristan, frank soul, unfolded without fear the purpose of his quest. He
told the man of Columbe his sister, and of the vow he had sworn to
recover her body.

“Where the waves run white,” he said, “there may the voyager find the
wrecked ones who have fallen in stormy waters. If this same valley is a
perilous region, who knows but that I may win some news of my quest.”

“Friend,” said the leper, with his hand on his bell, “you misread the
riddle. Listen, and I will explain.”

With honest despatch he uncovered to Tristan the tone and temper of the
Seven Streams. As he told his tale that green spring day, his hoarse
raven’s croak made the theme more sombre, prophetic of the clouds that
shadowed the land.

“You have given me courtesy, messire,” he said; “I return you good
counsel, a rare commodity when properly handled. The lords and peasant
folk of this same land have denied their faith to our Great Father the
Pope. They have taken heresy into their hearts; have denied in the
Sacrameant the flesh and blood of our Lord. Even in his wrath, the Pope
was merciful, deeming them ignorant and seduced by pride. He sent out
his legate and his missionaries into the land, but the rude folk here
would have none of their preaching. So a crusade has been called against
the province, and swords are shining in the Southern Marches.”

Tristan, rebel at heart, questioned the justice of such a crusade.

“By God’s light,” he said, “these priests are over meddlesome with the
souls of others. Tell it not in Gath, my friend, but I have no great
love for men in petticoats.”

The leper grimaced at him with his misshapen mouth.

“Heresy or no heresy, messire,” he said, “they have spilt holy blood
here. I had the news on this road this morning. The deed was done but
yesterday.”

“Ha!” quoth Tristan, staring in the man’s face.

“They have slain the Pope’s legate. God have mercy on them, for the
Church knows little of that virtue.”

Tristan remembered the wild cry in the woods, the fight by the bridge,
the slain man whose horse he had taken. There was new significance in
the scene to him. He questioned the leper as to the churchman’s end.

“The old tale,” he said. “The priest trifled with a certain knight’s
daughter, whose tower stands westwards towards the sea. There was quick
vengeance afoot. The knight and his men followed fast after the legate’s
company, ambuscaded them, and put the whole rout to the sword.”

“By God,” said Tristan, smiling in his eyes, “they were well served for
the deed. I would have slain the Pope for a less dishonour.”

They had passed a league or more in company, and were crossing a heath
open and bleak to wind and sky. The leper reined in the horse on a
sudden, climbed from the saddle, gave the bridle into Tristan’s hand. He
drew his cowl down over his distorted face, and trudged on wearily, like
one whose feet were weighted with despair.

“Therefore, messire,” he said, “you may gather that there is like to be
fire and sword in La Vallée Joyeuse. As for me, my lamp burns dim; I
must cherish it that the good God may trim the flame at St. Ursuline’s
Well. Pray for one, messire, who is often sad and heavy of heart.”

“Friend,” said Tristan, “my prayers are yours for what they are worth.
Doubt not that if strength could cleanse you, you should be fresh and
clean as a new-budded rose.”

They had come to the rim of the sandy heath, where the ground broke
abruptly into rocky slopes, plunging downwards under thickets of arbutus
and of pine. Four roads crossed at a spot where a great wooden crucifix
stretched out its painted arms athwart the sky. The leper climbed a
little knoll rising from a pool of golden broom, and pointed Tristan
southwards over the scene.

At their feet lay a great valley, a broad bowl brimming with golden
light. Its depths were chequered with woods and meadows, pools set like
lapis lazuli in an emerald throne. A lake lay under the shadow of the
hills. Heights girded the valley on every hand, save where a river like
a giant’s sword clove a deep defile through the hills.

Tristan stood silent in the sun, and gazed at the valley under his hand.
It was as a new world to him; this rich cup of the earth, brimming with
the wine of beauty, sparkled with many colours in the hand of Romance.
The tall heights, the blown cloud banners overhead, the dusky woods
smiling and frowning alternate under the sun, these were as strange
music to him, melting with many tones into the purple distance of the
south.

The leper stood at his side in silence. He had been watching Tristan’s
face, with the bloom of youth thereon, pondering the while on the misery
of his own hard lot. The world and the splendour thereof mocked his
shrivelled and repulsive skin. As for Tristan, he seemed like a young
god destined to trample down fate with the serene calm of a fearless
fortune. The leper turned from the warm south with the bitterness of a
man who beholds life’s pathway curling towards the grave.

“Yonder, messire, is La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said. “The saints defend
you. As for me, I wander on towards death.”

They took leave of each other there; the leper hobbling away with eyes
down-turned, his bell jangling at his thigh. Tristan, full of a
great-hearted pity, watched him with a smile upon his mouth. He felt his
own hale body warm to the wind, his face fresh as dew-washed grass. The
man with his sores and his lonely despair loomed like a dark cloud over
the sun.

Tristan cast a last glance at him over his shoulder as he descended the
road. The leper had drawn to the great cross where it towered solitary
under the open sky. He had fallen on his knees at the foot thereof, and
clasped the beam with his arms. He was kneeling thus when Tristan left
him, clinging like a wrecked voyager to the feet of the Christ.

                               CHAPTER IV

Tristan rode on down the sandy road, pondering what the leper had told
him that morning concerning Joyous Vale, how the valley lay in peril of
the sword. These priests, he vowed in his own heart, were too given to
meddling with the souls of others. For a few subtilties twisted from a
theologian’s tongue, they would let war loose upon an innocent province,
and teach with violence what they could not teach with truth. Tristan
was not a man who needed the superfluous unction of a priest’s pardon.

Rounding a great rock that overhung the road, he saw Sir Ronan’s hold
smile up at him from beside the lake. About the walls and terraces rose
many roofs, the ruddy hoods of many houses gathered about their giant
sire. The place looked peaceful as a child asleep, bowered round with
green, touched by the waters of the lake. Pastures pillared with poplars
and aspens stretched towards the darker confines of the woods.

Tristan, glad in his heart of the beauty of it all, followed the road
where it plunged abruptly into a thicket of pines. There was a patient
gloom under the sweeper boughs. Squirrels ran ruddy-coated up the trees,
peering black-eyed at him as he passed, and gorse ringed the dark aisles
with gold.

As Tristan rode through the pine wood that day, he heard the sound of
singing coming down to him upon the breeze. It was a woman’s voice that
sounded through the woods, so richly that the tall trees listened and
smiled under the noon sun. Tristan drew rein on the grass by the road.
He had never heard such a voice before, a voice that set the welkin
quivering as with vibrations of tremulous light.

Riding on again with a smile on his face, he saw the woodland break away
before the meadows of the town. The sky grew broad above the trees, and
still the rich voice sounded through, now hushed, now rising like a lark
towards the clouds. Tristan could catch the words of the song as he
walked his horse over the spongy turf.

Rounding a bank of furze in bloom, he saw under the shade of a cedar
tree a ruined shrine grown round with thorns. Many flowers were a-bloom
in the grass, and a rivulet went splashing down towards the great lake
in the valley. A gradual slope heaved away from the wood, and by the
shrine in the long grass a woman sat on a fallen stone, with her face
turned towards the town.

Tristan dismounted, and, having tethered his horse, he stood under cover
of the bank of furze and watched the woman by the shrine. She had ceased
her singing, like one whose thoughts were too deep and solemn for
further song. She was sitting with her chin upon her palms, staring into
the distant south. Tristan saw the curve of her neck, white and clear as
the moon’s rim, the amber of her netted hair, the rich folds of her
green gown.

Now Tristan was not a woman’s man, and in Purple Isle his ugly face had
won him little favour among the girls. He remembered how Grizzel, the
fishwife’s child, black of eye and red of face, had mocked and taunted
him on the moors, with her bare-legged wenches at her back. He
remembered how he had wished them men for the sake of the clods they had
thrown at his head. Yet though the woman by the shrine was as none of
these, he wavered a moment behind the bank, as though half in awe of her
because she was fair.

Hearing his footsteps in the grass, she turned—and saw him, and rose up
from the stone. She was as tall as Tristan, and older than he was both
in face and years and in knowledge of life. Her golden hair was knotted
up in a caul, her green gown dusted with violets and bordered with blue.

She seemed to shake the thoughts out of her heart as she rose up and
looked Tristan over. Yet there was no aloofness in her eyes, nay, her
very soul seemed to shine therein as she stood considering his face. She
smiled a little as she saw the bronzed, uncomely countenance somewhat
abashed and sullen before her.

“Would you speak with me?” she asked.

Tristan was mute for the moment, like one whose words stumbled one
against each other.

“We are strangers,” she added, still smiling at him out of her great
eyes; “is my speech foreign to your ears?”

Perhaps it was her complete fearlessness of manner that smote Tristan
from the first moment that she spoke to him. An atmosphere of
stateliness seemed to surround her, an intangible magic that held him
despite his strength. Though he could crush the brow of an ox with his
fist, he seemed half in awe of the woman whose face, with all its
fairness, showed no fear.

“Madame,” he said, squaring his shoulders, “though a stranger here, your
words are my words. Tristan le Sauvage is my name, and I have come from
Purple Isle, over the sea. For the rest, I have a quest upon me, and I
carry a sword.”

There was a species of defiance in his voice, as though he viewed the
subtler sex with a boy’s suspicions. Nor was the meaning of his mood
lost upon the woman.

Matching frankness with simplicity, she gave him welcome to the Land of
the Seven Streams.

“Friend,” she said, very openly, “welcome to Joyous Vale, you and your
sword. I, Rosamunde, am the lady of this valley; you may see my
husband’s tower yonder, amid the trees. Our guest table waits for
strangers—who would tarry for a season.”

Tristan thanked her, and turned towards his horse.

“I am beholden to you,” he said, with that rough shyness which gave to
his face a certain charm, “for in the Seven Streams I know no man and am
known of none.”

So, when he had taken his horse, and joined her by the ruined shrine,
they passed down together over the meadows towards the town.

                               CHAPTER V

Tristan grew the more bewitched by the woman’s face as they passed on
towards the lake together. The lips were thin, tinged slightly with
scorn, yet very tender when she smiled. The eyes were large and of a
greenish blue. There was a rich, round beauty, upon the face, the rose
tint of the skin warm and sensuous as the bloom upon fruit. She was very
slim where the girdle ran, but big of bosom and long of limb.

Nor was it the beauty alone that made Tristan marvel. A sadness hovered
there, a hidden meaning, that his unlettered senses failed to fathom.
Mystery! Such the impress she gave to his mind, like the tragic tone of
some antique woe. She seemed a woman to whom life should prove sweet.
Yet she had tasted of bitterness, so Tristan thought.

The meadows rippled like golden cloth spread under the trees for a queen
to tread. A thousand aspens shivered in the sunlight, their fluttering
melancholy chilling the air as with the sound of rain. Poplars towered
towards the blue. By the lake stood a thicket of gnarled figs, their
broad leaves dappled over with gold.

Rosamunde, Lady of La Vallée Joyeuse, drew Tristan’s tale from him as
they walked the meadows. Her swift simplicity was as a magic mirror,
wherein all creatures showed her their thoughts. Tristan could but
confess to her straight from his soul as he looked into the unwavering
depths of her eyes. Not being burdened with the reflective sense, he
flung his words in the welkin’s face, with the candour of one who had no
shame to fear.

“We are but woodlanders here,” she said at the end. “As for the wide
world, we are walled from its ken. This quest of yours troubles my
knowledge. To me, it is like seeking a solitary flower in a trackless
wild.”

“The darker the way, madame,” he answered her, “the more splendid the
quest.”

She smiled suddenly, and her fine mouth softened.

“You have the heart of youth in you,” she said, “the heart that never
tires on the road.”

“I am strong, madame,” he said, very simply.

“We women love strength.”

“And youth?”

“To me, youth is strength,” she answered, “age—weakness. Only those are
strong who keep their hearts young. As for rusty age, it is the season
of discretion, of puling sapience, and unkindling courage.”

She seemed to talk beyond the present, as though her thoughts were high
in the heavens. Tristan could not tell what was in her heart, save that
she seemed sad, full of unrest. It was as though her words were not for
him, but for some other soul in a far-off land.

“My life is my sister’s,” he said, with an air of strength. “Though my
hair grows grey, madame, I shall seek her out.”

“Happy sister,” she said, with a smile.

“Happy brother,” he retorted, running his hand over the horse’s black
mane.

“Ah, Tristan,” she said, with strange motherliness in voice and mood,
“there will come a day when some woman will be happy with a heart such
as yours. If for a sister you will dare so much, what will your faith be
to one dearer than all the sisters who tread the world?”

They had come to the town, sunk deep in gardens beside the lake. Its
roofs were ruddy as an autumn orchard, its highways paved with white
stones; peace seemed to cover it, and great content. No battlements
frowned black-browed over the meadows. Beauty and simple truth sat
throned in its calm heart.

As for Rosamunde, she was queen therein; Tristan gathered as much before
they had gone fifty paces of the grey, white stones. Her empire lay with
the people’s hearts. She was mother, lady, friend to all. Children ran
to her when they saw her face. She had a kiss, a smile, an outstretched
hand for each. Some brought her flowers, posies of red and white, which
Tristan, taking, laid within his shield. The women beamed from doorways
as she passed. The peasants louted to her, warm homage on their
sun-tanned faces. She had a word, a smile of sympathy for all. That they
loved her, Tristan could reason well.

“To-day, Samson comes to us,” she said to those she passed, “to-night,
friends, gather to the castle. Samson will speak to us there. Bring with
you your children. They must share the truth.”

Tristan, forgetful of the mild eyes that stared at him, a stranger in
Joyous Vale, wondered in his heart who Samson was. Perhaps a priest, a
minstrel, an arch-heretic. If these good folk were apostates, he could
praise their heresy. Sin, poverty, and shame had little heritage in
Joyous Vale. He saw no beggars in the streets, no rags, no misery, no
unclean thing. The faces round him were as fresh as May, serene and
simple, harbingers of good. If this same Samson had wrought all this,
surely of all men he could be counted happy.

In this wise, leading his black horse by the bridle, Tristan came with
Rosamunde to her husband’s home. Tristan was not unloth to see this
Ronan, whose wife she was. One truth he had gathered well: Columbe, his
sister, was not in Joyous Vale.

                               CHAPTER VI

Many a year had passed since the rough folk of the Seven Streams had
first murmured against the sleek and masterful priests whose god seemed
the god of wine-bibbing and of greed. Arrogance and luxury and all
manner of uncleanness had spread through the abbeys of the land,
staining the robes of the Church with scarlet, tainting every holy
place. Charity had become as naught; lust and avarice had walked hand in
hand; tyranny and violence had reigned together.

Thus through many long years there had been a great sundering of the
sympathies of the people from the tall towers and gorgeous palaces of
the Church. Not openly had the slow change come, but with stealth, even
as the earth’s crust is mined by the tunnelling of subterranean streams.
Celibacy, that perilous plant, had cast its unclean tendrils over the
land, bearing dark fruit in many a solemn haunt, making vain show,
hiding the bane beneath. Slowly all reverence had elapsed, and fear had
been swallowed up in hate. From the broad lands and the dark forests
teeming with wild beasts, murmurings, like the moanings of the wind, had
spread and gathered through the Seven Streams.

Then Samson had come, like some tall demigod out of the dark unknown.
Was it not told that all the wisdom of the East had been hoarded and
stored within his brain? The philosophic lore of Greece was his. The
sages of Egypt and the grey fathers of the Church had poured their
mystic learning into his soul. Plotinus and Augustine, philosopher and
Christian patriarch, had mingled in him their spiritual zeal. Half
priest, half poet, half soldier, and half seer, he had lifted his voice
in the Seven Streams, preaching Christ crucified, even as the Galileans
had preached of old.

To him the rude instincts of the peasantry had risen, eager and
passionate, hungering for the truth. Serf and lord had mingled in one
cause. Many a good married priest, condemned because his heart was a
father’s heart, had come to Samson, zealous for the faith. Then the deep
thunder of the Great Pontificate had echoed over the streams and
mountains. Synod and council had dared the strife; church and grave had
been sealed up fast; anathema and interdict had followed on. The dead
had been buried in unhallowed ground; the bread and wine had been denied
the land. Still Samson had preached, so that the province followed him,
even till the great abbeys were empty and in ruins, the shrines and
churches given to the dust. So fierce and turbulent had waxed the storm
that monk and priest had fled to the far south, fearing the people and
the people’s enmity.

That same evening when Tristan came to Joyous Vale there was a gathering
of the peasantry on the castle terrace to hear Samson the Heretic hold
forth. He had ridden in towards vespers, a big man, cowled and cloaked,
on a gaunt grey mare. By custom, a room had been set apart for him in
Ronan’s tower, to serve as an oratory and cell. Here he could retreat
like a hermit to his cave, and refresh in solitude both the flesh and
the spirit, like the reasonable Christian that he was.

Above the terrace, the grey walls of the tower, crusted with lichen,
rose towards the azure of the evening sky. A great silence covered the
valley, save for the bleating of sheep in the meadows, the cry of the
lapwing from the marshes. Distance purpled the far horizon; the woods
stood wondrous green and fair. Peace prevailed over garden and garth; as
yet there was no muttering of war beyond the hills.

Rosamunde sat in a great carved chair, draped at the back with scarlet
cloth. Ronan her husband stood at her side. He was a lean man, with
prominent shoulders, shallow eyes, and a cold mouth. The peasant folk
sat on the benches before them. Rosamunde’s women were at her feet.

Tristan had throned himself on the wall where cactuses grew in urns of
stone and gillyflowers flourished, yellow and red. He was watching
Rosamunde and Ronan her lord. The man by the chair pleased Tristan
little. The hollow chest, the sullen eye promised nothing virile in the
matter of arms. It puzzled Tristan how he had won such a wife, for they
were as a rose and a mandrake bound up together.

His cogitations were ended by the opening of a door. Samson in his black
robe came out on the terrace. A wooden cross hung at his girdle; he wore
leather sandals and an iron chain round his neck. Waving the peasant
folk back as they thronged him, he took a stool of cedar wood that stood
by the wall. Putting back the cowl from off his face, he gazed round on
those who awaited his words.

Though a seeming monk, he wore no tonsure; the black hair was cropped
close to the massive head. Seated there in the western glow, he looked
like a Homeric hero with the face of a Jove. The eyes were black, bright
as polished stone. The long jaw curved prominently under the thin,
straight mouth. The brows met in a black line over the nose. A mass of
passion and virile power, he faced the peasantry like a prophet of God.

As Tristan watched him, he began to speak, moving his hands to time his
words. His voice bewitched from the first sound, and the simple folk
before him were as still as stones. Even Tristan forgot Dame Rosamunde’s
face.

Samson’s theme was simple and strong, yet grand in its bold simplicity.
He expounded the pure spirit of the Christian creed, brushed aside
dogmas, denounced outward forms. His convictions were great, his scorn
as powerful. Greed in high places, luxury and lust, pride and simony,
these were his victims. Casting Christ’s ideals against the pomp of the
Church, he mined the rotten fabric with his tongue.

“People of La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said, “clean hearts avail with Heaven,
clean souls, clean lives. Labour in the fields is a prayer to God. Live
that you may not fear death; live that your lives may demand entry into
Heaven. Actions build the stairway up to God, good deeds, pure thoughts.
Believe not those who promise you salvation with hired prayers and the
melting of much wax. Gold cannot bribe God. The Church’s wings cannot
waft you into paradise if you are weighted with the iron girdle of your
sins. Pardons, penitences, the ringing of bells, these are but mummeries
to deceive your souls. Serve God in your hearts, and you will have no
need of a Pope.”

Tristan’s eyes had wandered from the preacher to Rosamunde’s face. Its
expression stirred him, even as a falling star smites the vision of one
watching the night sky. The woman’s eyes were fixed on Samson’s face,
with a certain passionate intentness that made Tristan wonder. The
half-petulant curve had vanished from her mouth. A warm radiance seemed
to burn upon her cheeks; her eyes were more bright than the stones at
her throat.

By sudden instinct Tristan glanced at Ronan, who stood beside Rosamunde,
leaning on her chair. The man’s narrow face was half in shadow. He was
watching his wife with a curious stare, fingering his chin, his thin
lips working. He appeared to be studying the play of thought on her
face, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. More than once he cast a
rapid glance at the preacher, like the glance a jealous hound casts at a
rival.

To Tristan there was a strange underchant to the song, a secret movement
he could not catch. Samson’s eyes were on the people before him,
Rosamunde’s eyes on Samson’s face, Lord Ronan’s on the face of his wife.
Tristan watched the three with his instincts groping in the dusk. He
listened no more to the preacher’s words, but watched in silence the
play before him.

The sun had ridden low upon the hills. In the gardens and thickets
beneath the terrace a hundred birds made their vesper song. Shadows,
purple and gold, increased on the lake. In the west, the moon was
heaving up a broad shoulder above the world. A great silence descended
like dew out of the heavens. Odours of rose and myrtle flooded the air.

From his vigil, Tristan woke to find the peasantry moving, Samson
standing alone by the wall. The man had drawn down his cowl and
re-knotted his girdle. He passed back slowly towards the door, walking
gravely with his chin on his chest. Tristan was watching Rosamunde’s
face. He saw her take a deep breath under her robe, her hands hanging
limp over the carved rails of her chair. Her head seemed to droop on the
scarlet cushion, as she watched Samson under half-closed lids. The town
showed dim in the green gloom beneath, like white coral glimmering under
the sea. An hour passed, and found Tristan on the terrace. Far beneath
the lake shimmered, touched by the rising light of the moon. The cry of
wild duck came from the shallows. In the thickets a choir of
nightingales had broken the silence together.

On the terrace, Tristan had drawn beneath the shade of a cypress, that
rose like a spire from the garden beneath. He was leaning his chin on
his crossed forearms, staring out over the scene. The valley was as a
battleground betwixt moonlight and gloom. The hill-tops led the silver
host on, the water gleamed with the beat of their feet. In the deeps of
the woods and the hollows of the hills the gloom kept the banners of the
night unfurled.

There was a rough melancholy in Tristan’s mood. Samson’s words were as
the noise of swords dinning perpetually within his brain. A vigorous
zest breathed in the creed, a flash of the green woods, a scent of the
sea. The bold truths of the man’s harangue were woven in his thought
like a crown round Rosamunde’s brow. Her large eyes haunted him, wistful
and brave. He remembered also her husband’s face, with its lack-lustre
malice, its cold distrust. There was some romance in this heretical
crown with the great stones set in its band, the treacherous opal
scowling yellow and green, the sapphire blue and bold in the sun, the
ruby red with its passionate fire.

Two voices came to Tristan out of the gloom, as he loitered on the
terrace under the stars. Hunching his shoulders, he drew towards the
tree. The voices came from the garden below, where there was a yew walk
by the wall.

The first voice was Rosamunde’s; Tristan caught the mellow tones out of
the dark. Anger flooded it, to judge by its temper. A second voice
echoed the woman’s, a cold drawl, vain yet bitter. It was the Lord of
Vallée Joyeuse who walked with her under the yews.

“Madame, I may claim some reverence from you,” came the taunt. “God
knows, I am only your husband; a poor reason, it seems. This braggart
preacher bulks too large in our house.”

“He is a man, messire. You are jealous, eh?”

“You suggest, madame wife, that there is cause for the passion.”

Silence held a moment, a pause as for breath. Tristan’s mouth hardened.
It was the woman’s voice that sounded next, a ringing scorn in it that
made Tristan’s eyes glitter.

“Is marriage a surety for insolence?” it said.

“Insolence! Is the truth insolent?”

“Shall I suffer this, though I am your wife?”

“Husbands, madame, suffer no tricking of their honour, save when they
are blind bats and fools.”

There was again a pause. Rosamunde’s words came clear and passionate as
the notes of a well-tuned harp.

“Man, you have said enough to me, though you are my mate.”

“Regret it, madame, as much as you will.”

“Ha!”

“But beware of trickery.”

“These lies, I’ll not brook them——”

“Cultivate discretion.”

“Silence! I am no puppet, though you have wedded me.”

The voices passed westwards under the yews, growing faint as the angle
of the terrace came between. Tristan stood up, and spread his broad
shoulders. There was an ugly look in his eyes, a firm closing of his
iron mouth. He tightened his sword belt, passed from under the stars to
the hall, spoke little as he sat at supper with Ronan’s men.

                              CHAPTER VII

Seven days had passed, and Tristan was still lodged under Rosamunde’s
roof. Of his sister Columbe he had won no word, yet he tarried in Joyous
Vale in Rosamunde’s service. The woman had need of a loyal sword.
Tristan had learnt to serve her there with the quick instinct of a
great-hearted dog. There was much of the mother in her mood towards the
man; nor did she dower his face with any deeper passion.

Shadows had deepened round Joyous Vale, and vague rumours had come from
the south, whisperings of sword and torch and the march of armed men. A
shepherd had seen dim sails upon the sea. As to what summer would bring
to them, prophecy stood silent. Rosamunde’s state was no easy one, as
Tristan had gathered, for she was watched and spied upon by her
husband’s men. Ronan’s jealousy was as a snake coiled in the grass,
ready to dart and flesh its fangs. She could no more trust him than she
could trust a priest. Moreover, his malice hindered her cause, barred
her from plotting to save her people. Samson alone could help her in
this, and Ronan’s jealousy kept the two apart.

It was the morning of Tristan’s second Sabbath there. He was on the
terrace burnishing his arms, when Isabel, Rosamunde’s woman, crept out
to him from the tower. He was to take horse and follow her lady that
morning. She had need of him, and trusted his honour.

Tristan, having saddled and bridled his horse, rode out and met
Rosamunde at the gate. She was mounted on a white palfrey, her woman
Isabel beside her on a mule. Tristan saluted them, a silent discretion
in his deep-set eyes. To him Rosamunde’s beauty was as the breath of
June.

They rode out down the slope of the hill, where the gardens amid the
thickets were ablaze under the noon sun. Rosamunde was clad in a green
robe, with a girdle of red leather shaped to her figure. She rode on
before Tristan and the woman Isabel, as though not sorry of solitude and
freedom from stone walls. There was a calm unapproachableness about her,
which, when she so willed it, became as a wall of glimmering ice. Her
words, often imperious and curt, would have suggested insolence on the
lips of one less fair. Tristan had seen her angered but once. There had
been something of the splendour of a stormy sunset about the mood, a red
rush of passion that had bewitched him more than smiles.

As they left the town behind a screen of poplars, Rosamunde called
Tristan to her, but gestured Isabel to remain behind. Her lips had much
scorn on them that day, scorn for her husband, jejune and jealous pedant
that he was. Of the red wine of her love Lord Ronan had tasted little.
She was unsmirched as a rose, pure as an ivory palace conceived in some
deep dream.

Tristan eyed her over his massive shoulder, wondering much what was in
her heart. A mask of thought covered her face, as she gazed ahead into
the deeps of the woods. True, there was much in her heart to breed
unrest, yet Tristan was as a child in a temple, ignorant of the many and
manifold visions stirring within her brain. La Vallée Joyeuse stretched
out before her, like a calm sea untouched by the wind. Yet beyond the
mountains the black banners of war gathered. Fanaticism was streaming
like fire to purge and to destroy. Had not the Pope armed the southern
nobles against the land? Had not Sir Parsival put his legate to the
sword?

Rosamunde, great lady that she was, feared not for herself the peril of
a zealot’s war. The people of La Vallée Joyeuse were to her as children.
She was their lady, and they loved her, even because she was gracious
and merciful, a friend set above them like an altared saint. It was her
spirit that had opened their rude hearts to Samson’s heresy. She, the
first convert in mind and soul, had drawn them after her, as a
shepherdess draws her sheep.

As for the lords and barons of the Seven Streams, they were scattered
wide amid their woods and hills. Samson had preached and they had
listened. Mewed in their mountains and their forest gloom, they were
deaf to the thunder of ecclesiastic wrath. Ronan of Joyous Vale, first
lord of the province, was mere selfish clay, careless of his people,
jealous of his wife. His very malice made her mute to him. On Samson,
rugged Titan piling mountains against the Papal Jove, rested the one
ambition of the land.

Drawing Tristan to her that day, Rosamunde unbosomed something of her
care to him. There was a serene stateliness in all her words, a tender
dignity as of one who stoops, from love, not pride. The man seemed
nothing but a casual friend, cast in her path by the hand of
circumstance. She trusted him, had trusted from the first, because his
face was ugly and his words came slow.

Tristan gathered the truth from her as they rode through the meadows.
There was much shrewdness in his turbulent brain. Moreover, Rosamunde
had taken hold upon his heart. Sympathies are warm where love treads
fast; comprehension kindles when the torch burns bright.

“Lady,” he said to her, in his curt, calm way, “of the burden you
bear—I am wise—in measure. Our cross bulks the heavier when the
shoulder is chafed.”

“Ah,” she said, with a flash of the eye, “these valley folk are as
children to me. I have no babe of my own, so the burden is honest.”

Tristan recalled such war lore as he had learnt from the rough mariners
of Purple Isle. He would have served her more gladly with his sword than
with his tongue. She had tempted his counsel; he bent his brows and
played the philosopher.

“Madame,” he said, “I have heard men say that our fears are like
hillocks seen through mist, bulking like mountains through the fog. I
have found billows less big when I have breasted them. As for this land
of yours, it is a maze of mountains and of woods. You can baulk your
enemies, as King David baulked Saul.”

She plucked the strategy from the speech like a gem out of a casket, and
played with it to her own good comfort.

“To leave our homes,” she said, “and take to the wilds. There is wisdom
in the plan, and yet——”

Tristan attempted more stoical counsel.

“Better let your homes burn than your bodies,” he said. “Scattered and
in hiding, you will provide no martyrs for these holy ravagers. They
will return empty by their own tracks. Ten men are worth a hundred in
the mountains.”

“Ah,” she said, with sudden passionate scorn, “if I could but trust my
husband!”

“Trust yourself, madame,” quoth the man on the black horse.

“One staunch friend perhaps. What then?”

Tristan, full of the ready zeal of youth, set forth his faith to her
with a gesture of the hand. He went red under his black brows, as though
half ashamed of such an outburst of passion.

“Madame,” he said to her, “here is one sword more. I am young—you
smile, by God—I have the strength of three. No man in Joyous Vale shall
laugh twice in my face.”

“Ah, Tristan,” she said with deepened colour, “I trust you well. Why
should I burden you with another’s yoke? What is Joyous Vale to you?”

“Madame,” he said very simply, “my shoulders are broad; try them.”

“To-day, I trust you,” she retorted slowly. “We meet Samson in yonder
wood.”

Lines ran across Tristan’s broad forehead; his mouth hardened. He was as
a man who felt himself outfaced, disarmed. There was no guile towards
him in the woman’s heart, and yet his youth recoiled from her with
jealous spleen.

“Madame,” he said half sullenly, looking no longer on her face, “I have
promised faith to you. It is enough.”

Before them rose a great barrier of trees, a larch wood set upon the
green bosom of a hill, whose slopes fell away towards a vague wilderness
of pines. Many flowers and herbs were in bloom upon the hillside.
Tristan, sullen of face, drew apart from Rosamunde as they mounted the
slope and entered the alleys of the deepening wood. The sun poured
through, streaking and ribbing the gloom with gold. Rosamunde’s green
gown gleamed richly above her palfrey’s white flanks.

Deeper and deeper they threaded the shade, the grass track growing less
green, dusted with cones and the fallen wind wrack of the trees.
Whortleberry and heather grew there, with great pools of gorse. The
silence increased, hanging like a purple pall, the sunlight plashing
fitfully over the multitudinous boughs.

Deep in a dwindling aisle, they saw a man in a black robe seated upon a
fallen tree. He rose, came towards them, when he marked the white brow
of Rosamunde’s horse. Tristan, watching the woman’s face, a half-jealous
gleam deep in his eyes, saw the colour increase the rose-white richness
of her skin. She breathed more rapidly, held her head higher, watched
Samson keenly as he came towards her under the trees.

Drawing near, he put his cowl back from his face, kissed the hand she
stretched to him, held her stirrup while she dismounted. She cast her
bridle over Tristan’s wrist, threw a rapid glance at him as he sat
hunched and sullen upon his horse.

“Wait,” she said with an imperious tone tinging her voice, “watch, keep
guard.”

Tristan, turning with a word, took the white palfrey and his own black
horse, tethered them to a tree on the eastern side of the ride. Isabel
had joined him on her mule, a smile on her broad mouth as she noted the
man’s sour face. Samson and Rosamunde were pacing the grass together,
looking in each other’s eyes as they talked. There was much on either
tongue, question and counter-question, words as to the war and the
gathering in the south.

The woman Isabel had slipped lightly from her mule. She was a plump,
yellow-skinned wench, with roguish eyes and a red patch of colour over
either cheek-bone. Her tongue was equal to her temper. Tristan, leaning
against the trunk of a tree, paid no heed to her as he stared at Samson
and the lady. The man’s stride spoke of his power; he gesticulated as he
talked, and his words flowed fast. Rosamunde’s green gown swept the
grass in stately fashion. She walked with arched neck and supple waist,
her hair glimmering under its golden net, her red-slippered feet gliding
glibly over the turf. Tristan gazed at her and marvelled. For the moment
he half hated her for her loveliness and for the calm pride that kept
him chained.

He awoke to find the woman Isabel at his elbow, peering with parted lips
into his face. She smiled in her eyes as they met his, touched her mouth
with a fat white hand, moved nearer to him with a little rustle of a
sigh like a summer breeze through orange bloom.

“Coz, we are well sorted,” she said with a titter. “A silver cross for
your thoughts, boy. Why so sour of face?”

Tristan scowled at her betwixt the brows, and unbent nothing to her
coquetry.

“Ha, cousin,” he said, “men find the moon dull when the sun is away.”

“Sun!” she retorted, “you ugly stump! Keep your eyes wide. I am too
bright for such as you.”

“Shine hard,” he said to her with a smile. “I shall have no need of a
shield.”

She tightened her girdle, smoothed her gown, and eyed Tristan under
drooping lids.

“Samson is a handsome fellow,” she said.

Tristan pursed up his mouth and answered her nothing. Rosamunde and the
preacher had passed deeper into the wood, and were out of sight and
hearing. Tristan would have given much to have known what passed between
them under the trees.

“Samson,” said the girl at his elbow, “Samson, sirrah, has the wit to be
courteous to a lady. He has no tongue like a tag of undressed leather,
nor a face like a dinted buckler red with rust.”

Tristan played with the buckle of his sword belt and wished the woman
Isabel a man.

“Ha, cousin,” she ran on, “I have heard of a horse-boy stealing a pair
of red shoes, because they had covered a lady’s toes. As for her heart,
it was a pearl, a great white pearl, sirrah, not to be breathed upon and
handled by grooms. Hark! holy saints, what’s amiss in the wood?”

Isabel had started from her malice like a woman who sees a snake
twisting at her feet. She stood rigid, with eyes dilating, her lips
apart, the colour gone from her face. Through the alleys of the wood had
come a sudden outcry, the loud voice of a man challenging a foe, the
passionate declaiming of an angry woman. Tristan, with his back taut as
the straining mast of a ship, stood snuffing the air, his muscles
quivering, his broad chest spread. In the flash of a second he had
plunged down the grass ride at a run, unbuckling his sword as he ran,
flinging aside belt and scabbard. Voices, passionate and clamorous, were
playing through the trees. They winged on Tristan’s heels, as he sped
with tight mouth and kindling eyes under sun and shadow.

Coming upon a narrow glade in the wood, he saw the scene spread out
before him. With her back to a tree stood Rosamunde, her eyes ablaze,
her head held high. Before her, with uplifted knife, his robe gathered
as a buckler in his left hand, stood Samson the Heretic, fronting four
armed men who crouched round him like hounds about a boar. Even as
Tristan came, they sprang together upon the monk, dragging him down in a
moiling heap upon the grass. The fourth snatched out at Rosamunde,
caught the neckband of her gown, rent it to the girdle as she strained
from him with both hands set upon his face.

Tristan leapt in as though his blood had changed to fire. The man who
had seized on Rosamunde sprang away with a red throat and an empty doom.
Turning, Tristan plunged upon the three, who struggled and writhed over
the powerful figure of the priest. Plucking the uppermost by the girdle,
even as he would have plucked a beetle from a stone, Tristan threw him
full against the stem of a tree. The man’s breath groaned out of him; he
twitched and lay still. Samson, bleeding in the brow, had risen upon the
others with a hand on either throat. Tristan, dodging round, ran his
sword through the body of the taller man. Samson, bleeding and
breathless, rose from the carcass of the other, and made way for
Tristan’s blow.

Sudden silence fell upon the pool of death. Rosamunde stood with Tristan
and the monk, staring at the brief havoc their hands had wrought. The
grass was stained with red. Samson, shaking the blood out of his eyes,
turned to Tristan with outstretched hand. Their manhood seemed to meet
in that one strong grip. Rosamunde, tearing cloth from the border of her
gown, came forward and caught Samson by the sleeve.

The monk knelt to her while she bound the green cloth about his
forehead. Tristan stood apart from them, his eyes still ablaze, his
great chest rising and falling beneath his hauberk. Jealousy, quenched
for the moment, rose again in the hot blood that played about his brain.
Turning upon his heel with a last glance at the man lying against the
tree, he strode away towards the horses, where the woman Isabel stood
with a face white as swan’s-down. To her querulous terror he gave no
heed, for there was still bitterness gnawing at his heart. If he had
been the wounded one, would Rosamunde have rent her gown?

Some minutes passed before she came towards them under the trees. She
came alone, pale and distraught, yet cold outwardly as stone. Samson had
parted from her in the woods; their words had been brief, significant as
silence. She said nothing to the two who waited; pointed them to their
saddles, and neither dared to question her, so imperious and clouded was
her face. Then they mounted, rode out, and headed homewards over the
fields.

                              CHAPTER VIII

Rosamunde, pale and silent, rode through the thickets that clothed the
castle hill. Not a word had she spoken either to Tristan or to Isabel
since she had parted with Samson in the wood. Her face seemed frozen
into an unnatural calm, as though she strove to mask the passions that
worked within. There was a deeper significance in the adventure than
either Isabel or Tristan had imagined.

They wound through the gardens where the sunlight slept upon the lawns,
and came through a myrtle thicket to the great gate. The place was
deserted, steeped in the noon silence. Tristan, clattering in at a word
from Rosamunde, woke a groom sleeping on a bench in the stable court,
and sent the man out to take the horses. Rosamunde stood under the
shadow of the gate. There was an angry calm upon her face, a statuesque
scorn that seemed to prophesy of what should follow.

“Come with me—be silent, both.”

These were her only words to them as she turned towards the terrace,
white above the green gardens spread below. At the entry of the passage
leading to the great hall and the tower she turned on Tristan and Isabel
with a rapid stare from her unwavering eyes. There was deep meaning in
that glance of hers. Tristan felt it, even as a bolt piercing his
hauberk. With it she challenged his faith, his loyalty towards her as a
woman. Laying a finger on her lip, she beckoned them to follow.

Following in silence, they passed the gallery, climbed a short stair,
found themselves in a dark entry set back in the thickness of the wall.
A streak of light showed where a door stood. Rosamunde, lifting the
latch, peered in and entered. Tristan and the woman followed her. They
could hear nothing else save each other’s breathing.

A long room stretched with lessening shadow towards a tall window
opening on the south, and hangings, green and gold, covered the walls.
Eight carved pillars ascended towards the dark vault above. At a table
near the window sat a man with his back turned towards the door; the
table was littered with fragments of glass, colours, brushes, and
illumined scrolls. The man by the window was bending over a glass panel,
enamelling a red rose thereon with unsteady hand. He seemed oblivious of
the three who watched him from the doorway.

Rosamunde, with her torn robe gathered in her hand, moved into the room,
with a glance thrown at Tristan over her shoulder. Following, he stood
behind her in the shadow, watching her every movement. She gestured to
him to strike one of the pillars with the scabbard of his sword. As the
clangour sounded through the room, the man by the table twisted on his
chair, sprang up and stared at them, dropping his brush on the stone
paving at his feet.

There was a significance in the scene, tinged as it was with the love
feud of these two. Rosamunde, tall as a white lily, stared the man down
with an imperious scorn that betrayed the truth. Tristan, watching the
Lord of Joyous Vale as he would have watched a wolf, saw him pale under
his brown hair before the damning figure of his wife. His eyes wavered,
his jaw fell. He seemed to stoop, to contract, as a tree shrivels before
the breath of a forest fire.

Rosamunde, still gazing on his face, advanced towards him across the
room. The man would have fallen back before her had not the table barred
his way. Her splendid height, her towering courage, seemed to cast into
contrast his cringing guilt.

“Sir, thanks to Heaven, we have returned.”

There was so suggestive a scorn in her voice that the high roof seemed
to quiver at the sound. Ronan, moistening his dry lips, frowned and
found no answer. The poor smile that he conjured up was as a moonbeam
flitting over ice. His blood ran cold; he was afraid, and showed his
fear.

“Sir, we have returned,” she said with the slow torture of an unpitying
tongue. “For your good welcome, husband, we give you thanks.”

The man bowed to her stiffly, clumsily, like a wooden doll jointed at
the hips.

“Madame is ever welcome,” he said; “her prerogative demands it. Need I
emphasise the truth?”

She laughed at his words, a laugh that seemed as foreign to her beauty
as the cracked cackle of some shrivelled hag.

“Sir, your courtesy bribes me to silence. I see we but hinder you;
trifle with such lordly cares as befit your temper. Pick up your brush,
sir. Playing with crafty colours upon brittle glass, the pastime pleases
you. I would commend it to a man of courage.”

His eyes flashed for the moment, grew dull again like treacherous water.
He reached for the brush, to hide his face from her. Rosamunde,
gathering her green gown, swept by him with scorn. At the door she
turned and cast a last taunt at him over her shoulder.

“Samson the Heretic is well,” she said. “He sends you, sir, his great
good will.”

All that noontide Tristan stood on guard at the door of Dame Rosamunde’s
room. She was as a white bird in the nest of a snake, and for all his
jealousy Tristan’s blood ran loyal in her service. They were Ronan’s men
who had fallen upon Samson and Rosamunde in the wood that day. The Lord
of Joyous Vale was no open and courageous smiter, for poison suited his
senses better than an honest blow. That Rosamunde was in great peril
Tristan le Sauvage knew right well. It seemed that his one buckler
covered her from the world, nor was he sorry to sustain the feud.

Tristan, keeping guard before the door, watched the sun sinking towards
the western hills. The light smote through the narrow casement in the
rough stone wall, played and gleamed upon the laced rings of his
hauberk. There were warring instincts in the man’s heart. Jealousy still
stirred in him. Yet over his finer self there shone that luminous
reverence for a woman’s name. Tristan, half savage, half Christian in
his untempered youth, strove with his deepening manhood towards the
finer faith.

As the gold mellowed in the west, the woman Isabel came out to him from
her lady’s room. The morning’s adventure had sobered the wench’s mood;
she had dropped her coquetry at her mistress’s feet. Drawing Tristan in,
she barred the door, stood by it listening, pointed the man into an
inner room. He noted the great bed with its rich hangings, the carved
panels, the coloured cloths about the walls. There was a rich and
mysterious savour in the air; even the flowers upon the casement ledge
seemed brighter than their fellows in the fields below. To Tristan the
place was as some rare shrine, whose odours and gleaming dyes breathed
about the face of Love.

Rosamunde sat at the open window looking towards the lake. A bank of
gillyflowers bloomed upon the sill. There was still the same proud
pallor upon the woman’s face; solitude had not bribed her to salve her
care with tears. Hers were not eyes that wept at the first kiss of anger
or of pain.

Turning, she looked long at Tristan, like one who would be sure of the
faith she needed. The man’s shoulders were broad; they might bear her
honour. Woman that she was, she was the more eager for his comradeship,
since jealousy had snatched at the red jewel over her heart. No doubt
she thought it easy for the man to serve her, seeing that she imagined
no bitterness upon his ugly face.

“Tristan,” she said, looking deep into his eyes.

He met the glance squarely, like one sure of his own honour.

“Tristan, to-day I have trusted you,” she said; “this morning you
promised faith to me. I would try you further. Am I wise in this?”

“Madame,” he said with blunt simplicity, “you are apt at making
servants. I obey you still.”

She rose, stood at the window, pointed him to the lake. Tristan drew to
her side, gazed out as she told him of her charge.

“See, there is an island yonder, covered with trees.”

Tristan bent his head.

“There are boats on the strand below the town; go alone and ferry over.
On the island there is a ruined chapel. By the altar, under the ambry in
the right-hand wall, you will see a stone marked with a trefoil in the
floor. Under the stone there lies a casket of black oak. Take the
casket; sink it in the deeps of the lake.”

They gazed into each other’s eyes questioningly, like two mutes over a
grave. Rosamunde was the first to break the silence.

“Tristan, you will take oath to me?” she said.

“By my sword, madame.”

“The casket goes unopened to the deeps?”

“I swear that.”

“Then, I am content.”

She stood forward suddenly, and stooping a little, kissed him upon the
brow. It was done in a moment, but the shaft had sped. Tristan, red to
the lips, went back from her with a strange light in his eyes. He was
hers from that moment, body and soul.

The sinking sun had built a golden highway over the water when Tristan
came to the lake’s rim. The woods stood wondrous green against the
sombre purple of the hills, and the reeds and rushes glittered like
silver wire. Water-fowl winged from out the shallows as he unmoored a
boat that lay half grounded by a stone stage. Thrusting out and setting
the water spinning at the prow, he was soon deep in the golden pathway
towards the west. Two furlongs away the island cast its gloom upon the
lake. The water lay black and deep about its rocks; the stunted trees
were bannered with crimson and gold. Tristan was soon under their
shadows, where he ran the boat aground in a small inlet, clambered out,
and sought the chapel.

The place stood ruinous, plunged deep in weeds, festooned with ivy and
many lusty plants, choked thick with brambles. A fallen pine tree lay
across the roofless porch. Briers and nettles cumbered the floor.
Tristan, struggling through in the half gloom, had to draw his sword
where the chancel began. A great thorn tree flourished betwixt the
roofless walls. Tristan clove a pathway through the prickly mass,
trampled the nettles, climbed the low steps towards the altar.
Crouching, he sought for Rosamunde’s stone. It was some while before he
tore the rank herbage aside, and found the trefoil carved beneath. The
slab had been glued by damp and moss. It was smooth and heavy, giving no
vantage to his fingers. Working with the sword point, he prised up the
stone, thrust in his hand, and drew the casket out.

Night had fallen and the west drew dim. Hardly had he huddled the casket
into his bosom, turned back the stone over the hole, when an uprush of
gruff voices rose as from the dark thickets of the place. Tristan,
starting up with twitching sword, fell back against the altar, alert and
grim. The plash of churned water broke on the evening silence, the
creaking of sweeps in the rowlocks. Scrambling out towards the gate,
Tristan saw the tall mast of a ship stride black across the sky. It
skirted the island, towering over the trees, a scarlet streamer afloat
from its gilded vane. Like a great finger it seemed to stretch towards
the sky, held aloft as in silent warning.

Threading the thickets with the oaken casket under his arm, Tristan came
to the island’s rim. He looked over the water towards the west, and saw
that the lake seemed peopled with shadowy ships, striding solemn and
silent out of the night. A thousand oars seemed to churn the water.
Bulwarks glimmered, armour shone. Like giant ghosts the ships crept on,
sable and strange against the fading west.

Sudden out of the gloom leapt the cry of a horn, its voice echoing from
the hills. A vague clamour came from the shore. In the town, torches
were gleaming like red moths in a garden. From the castle the alarm bell
boomed and clashed, for the Papal fleet had descended on Joyous Vale.

                               CHAPTER IX

Tristan, made his way back to the boat, poled out from the island,
keeping its black shadows betwixt him and the nearest galley. He rowed
eastwards into the open cavern of the night, his eyes roving from the
distant town to the great ships stealing over the water. Their tall
masts rose against the last gleaming cranny in the west. Beyond them the
mountains towered solemn and stupendous, fringed with aureoles of
transient fire. Even in the half gloom Tristan could see a vague
glittering movement on the slopes behind the castle, a glitter that told
of armed men marching from the hills. It grew plain to Tristan, as his
broad back swung with the oars, that the Pope’s men had come by sea from
the Southern Marches, sailed up the great river, landed troops in the
woods, struck a sudden blow at the chief lord of the province of the
Seven Streams. While Ronan had grown drunk with the strong wine of
jealousy, Death had descended upon Joyous Vale, and sprinkled the Cross
with the blood of sacrifice.

There was a swirl of thought in Tristan’s brain. Rosamunde of Joyous
Vale had his mind in thrall, and his first duty to her was easy in its
consummation. Leaning his chest upon his oars, he reached for the casket
where it lay on the plankings at his feet. The thing was bound with
iron, its wood black and ponderous with age. Tristan balanced it in the
hollow of his hand, wondering whether it would sink or swim. The
feminine temptation to force the lid never thrust a suggestion into his
brain. Tossing the casket over the gunwale, he saw it sink in a wavering
circle of light. For fully a minute he watched the place, that he might
be assured of the casket’s burial. With the vow to Rosamunde fulfilled,
he turned both his thoughts and his boat towards the shore.

The ships had lighted flares upon their prows, a crescent of fire that
deepened towards the town. Many of the galleys had touched the shore;
Tristan could hear the crews shouting and plashing in the shallows, as
they disembarked to attack the town. Behind the poops of the ships deep
gloom prevailed, while a cresset glared on the castle tower, a red tuft
of flame gemming the night. The bell still tolled. It ceased of a
sudden; the silence was more sinister than its clangour.

Tristan pulled for the bank where a thicket of larches rose near the
water. Climbing out, he splashed through the shallows, moored the boat
to the stump of a tree. Strenuous stanzas were astir in his brain. What
of Rosamunde in her husband’s tower? Swords were yelping about the
place, torches tossing, spears aslant. Could Samson the Heretic save her
now? It was the sword’s turn, and Tristan rejoiced.

Leaving the wood, he crossed the meadows that ran to the dark roofs of
the town. There was no wall or ditch about the place; the streets could
be swept by a charge of horse. A whimpering uproar rose towards the
stars; there was fighting afoot. Tristan soon gathered as much. Going at
a trot over the meadows, he blundered suddenly on a knot of armed men, a
Papal picket guarding the road. So intent were they on watching the town
that Tristan fell flat, and escaped unseen. The men wore white crosses
over their hauberks, a blazoning adopted to distinguish their cause.
Tristan, plunging on into the gloom, won a stretch of garden ground that
dipped towards the meadows. Flowers bloomed pale-faced in the dusk. The
scent of thyme and roses burdened the air.

The Papal levies had ended the tussle as Tristan gained the fringe of
the streets. Houses were ablaze in the western quarter, flinging a red
canopy over the town. Swords and pikestaffs swirled in the streets.
Bronzed, sweaty bravos were looting the houses, letting lust loose in
attic and cellar. Now and again a quick scream wavered from some
darkened house, a scream followed by oaths and unclean laughter. Women
and children in their nightgear ran headlong into the streets, to be
hounded down and taken, or driven away into the woods. Now and again
there was a scuffle, as men met and fought out the death feud in doorway
and in garden.

Tristan, passing up an alley under the deep shadow of a wall, ran full
face into the arms of a soldier who came stumbling out of a hovel with a
wine skin under his arm. Seeing the white cross on the man’s chest,
Tristan seized so kindly a chance. His great arms went round the man
like the coils of a python. The wine skin burst under their feet as they
struggled by the wall. Tristan lifted the soldier shoulder high, dashed
him down on the cobbled path, where the man rolled on his side, lay
still in the shadow. Tristan, kneeling down, unlaced his surcoat,
stripped it off, and tumbled it over his own head. The white cross would
serve him as well as his sword.

The road towards the castle teemed with steel, and torches flared
through the thickets. The castle walls started pale and fitful out of
the gloom, their battlements gleaming above the gardens dark under the
stars. A hot burst of cheering came down into the town. The troops
thronging the road shouted in answer, as they pressed on to share in the
sacking of the place. Clarions blew a triumphant fanfare. The strident
chant of a company of white monks rose from the market square. They were
singing a “Gloria” as they wound in procession through the town, a great
cross and a silver reliquary borne in state before them.

Tristan had joined himself to a company of archers who followed a knight
in a green surcoat, bearing a scarlet leopard on his shield. They came
by the black thickets and the silvery lawns to the broad entry of Sir
Ronan’s hold. A bunch of pikemen held the gate, where broken beams told
of the late assault. Three dead men lay by the guard-room door, slain
there when the gate had crashed down. Tristan shouldered in with the
rest, unquestioned since he wore the white cross on his breast.

The great court was packed from wall to wall. The Papists had dragged a
horse-block into the midst, and were beheading such of the garrison as
had escaped unscathed in the fight. Tristan saw a mere boy dragged
forward by the wrists, forced down on the block despite his screaming.
The fair hair was soon dabbled in blood. Near by stood a tall ruffian
with a severed head on his spear. Even in the torchlight Tristan knew
the face, for it was Ronan’s head on the soldier’s lance.

Shuddering still at the thought of the lad’s screams, he pushed on
towards the terrace with the green knight’s men. His massive shoulders
gave him the van. There was a great press in the gallery to the hall, as
those on the terrace jostled in towards the door. Cries of “Back, sirs,
back! reverence for the Lord Bishop,” echoed under the low-pitched roof.
Tristan, putting brute force to good use, thrust his neighbours to the
wall, the men’s oaths falling like water from his broad back.

Within, the hall was lit by flambeaux, borne by the guards about the
wall. Grim, iron-shirted men packed the place, their surcoats turned up
over their girdles, their swords bare to the red flare of the torches.
In the waist of the hall a grove of spears tapered towards the
smoke-wrapped rafters, their points like dim stars seen through clouds.
Before the daïs had gathered a great company of knights and captains,
ranged in long ranks against the walls. The many painted shields, azure,
green, and red, shone in a rich array under the gloom-filled roof.

On the daïs in dead Ronan’s chair sat a man in a robe of black velvet, a
gold cross hanging by a chain about his neck. He wore a cap of purple
silk over his tonsured scalp. There were jewelled rings upon his plump
white fingers; he had a belaced and perfumed diaper in his lap. At his
right hand sat a burly lord with a black beard and a face of iron,
Benedict, Warden of the Southern Marches, debauchée and despot, whose
very winepresses ran blood. Christopher, Canon of Agravale, the
episcopal secretary, was pointing his quill on the Bishop’s left.

Tristan, leaning against a stone pillar by the door, stared hard at the
man seated in dead Ronan’s chair. The Lord Bishop of Agravale was a
comely cleric, black of chin and bright of eye. A broad beak of a nose
overhung a pair of full red lips. There was a sensual and feline smirk
upon the face, an opulent and unctuous pride that shone from curved
nostril and twitching mouth. His face was the face of a man who lived
rather for his loins than for his soul. An affected dignity served to
impress the mob with the ascetic sanctity of the episcopal honour.

Bishop Jocelyn and Benedict of the Marches sat cheek by jowl, debating
together over a state letter to the Pope. At intervals the Bishop cast a
rapid sentence into the ear of the Canon at his elbow, a pearl of
sapience that the discreet cleric hoarded on the parchment under his
hand. A silver bell tinkled from the Bishop’s table. Silence descended
on those assembled. The throng of armed men parted, giving way before
two guards who brought forward a man with his hands bound behind his
back.

Tristan knew the fellow for a smith and armourer in the town, a rugged,
cross-grained ranter, a stout follower of Samson in the path of heresy.
The man had a bloody cloth bound about his head and his yellow beard
bristled under his sullen face.

Bishop Jocelyn, lolling in his chair, considered the prisoner at his
leisure, under drooping lids. He tilted his carnivorous nose with the
air of a vulture, sniffed, and spoke with a high-pitched and priestly
drawl, throating forth his words as though they came from his Mass Book.
Tristan mistrusted the voice as a watch-dog mistrusts the persuasive
cajolings of a thief.

“Friend,” said the Bishop, moistening his lips, “God prevent you from
being damned to eternal torment. The Mother Church is merciful even to
those who rebel against her care. Tell us, good son, why the people of
Joyous Vale have rebelled against our Father the Pope.”

The man before the daïs was no panderer to the power of prosperity. He
was as stubborn rock, quarried out of the very mountains that circled
Joyous Vale. Moreover, he was sustained by pride in the primitive faith
for which he was ready to stake all the tangible benefits of existence.
From sheer native obstinacy of soul he was ordained a martyr.

“Priest,” he said, with blunt disrespect, “put off your gold chain and
the rings from your fingers. Wash the hypocrisy from your face. Then I
will speak with you as man to man.”

The churchman flushed a little under his smooth skin, pursed up his
mouth, made a sign of the cross before him in the air.

“My son,” he said, with superb pity, “we are not here for obscenity and
abuse, but for the controverting and purging of error. God pardon me if
I am as iron with a froward flock. I will put such questions to you as
will prove your heart.”

“Prove what you will,” said the smith with a frown; “you would damn the
Christ, were He set here in my place.”

Certain of the rough men about the walls laughed at the retort. They
loved courage and an insolent spirit even though their swords were to
quench the same. The Bishop heightened his beneficent pity, towering
from his pedestal of piety with the superb and unconscious egotism of
the cleric.

“My son,” he said, “will you obey our Father the Pope?”

“I obey no Pope,” came the echo.

“Will you revere the Sacraments?”

“I claim the wine for all.”

“Blasphemy, my son. Should the Holy Blood touch your tainted lips? I
trow not. As for confession and the remittance of sins——”

“God defend us from such lying ordinances.”

“Man——”

“None can remit sins save God.”

Bishop Jocelyn smiled like a Stephen, lifted up his face to the reeking
roof, laid his hand on the silver bell.

“Hence,” he said, “we must purge this acre. God have pity on these
fools; they know not what they do.”

Strong hands swept the man away; he disappeared into the press like a
fallen tree dragged down by the eddies of a stream in flood. A knot of
armed men charged out by the door, bearing an honest martyr in their
midst. The floor before the Bishop’s chair was empty. A hush fell upon
the hall. Tristan, keen as a hawk, waited for what should follow.

An odour of violets breathed sudden upon his face. The perfume recalled
to him a woman’s room, burdened with odours, smothered with colours and
fair flowers. The scent seemed to fall as from the richly embroidered
bosom of a woman’s gown. Turning, he saw, with a leap of the heart,
Rosamunde standing under the arch of the doorway, the woman Isabel
shivering at her heels. The men gave back from her as from before a
queen. The Lady of La Vallée Joyeuse carried her pride like an ivory
coronet upon her brow. Tristan saw no fear upon her face, no tremor upon
her lips. She moved towards the daïs, her green gown sweeping the
stones, her long hair streaking her shoulders. She looked neither to the
right hand nor the left. Her eyes were fixed upon the red banner
blazoned with a yellow cross that hung above dead Ronan’s chair.

A great silence held the hall. The rough men of the sword stared mutely
at the woman’s face, as she stood, a living emblem of tragedy, pale yet
unfrightened, strong in her own strength. A slight colour played upon
her face as she sustained the insolent gapings of those around her. Man
muttered to man. Some jeered and grinned, elbowed each other, croaked
like birds of prey. As for Tristan, the hot blood rose to his brain; he
set his teeth, took a deep breath, bided his time.

Bishop Jocelyn was staring Rosamunde over with an appreciative loosening
of the mouth that was in no way platonic. His eyes had a glassy
brilliance under the finely arched brows. He played with the silver
clapper of the bell, rose to his feet with an exaggerated display of
courtesy, spoke to Rosamunde as she stood before the daïs.

“Madame,” he said, letting his glances rove over her full bosom and
splendid throat, “we of the Church hold you accused of treachery and
treason to our Holy Father the Pope. You and your people have set his
ordinances at defiance. For this reason were we bidden to gather the
armed sons of the Church, and make war upon such heretics as blasphemed
the Creed. Yet, madame, it is given us to promise mercy to those whose
hearts remain not froward towards the truth. God has dealt hardly with
you and your home to-night. There is yet time for Mother Church to
receive you once more into her bosom.”

Tristan, rugged rebel, would have laughed at the priest’s words had the
chance been less momentous. God’s justice, forsooth! Mercy from the
intolerable tyranny of the Church! The stout sense in him jeered and
mocked at the pharisaical verbiage. Straining from the pillar, peering
over the shoulder of the man in front of him, he waited with a frown for
Rosamunde’s answer. He was forewarned in his heart what her words would
be. Her back was towards him, yet there shone clear defiance from every
line of her tall frame.

“Priest,” she said at last, casting out her words so that they seemed to
smite the wall, “do you blaspheme God by working iniquities in His name?
Is it Christ’s ordinance to spill blood—to dishonour women? Out upon
you, mummers and jugglers that you are! Burn me to-night if the deed
suits your religion.”

Her words rang like the blows of a sword in Tristan’s brain. Heavens!
she had courage! The man exulted even in the temerity of her scorn. He
mouthed her words over to himself with a grim and strenuous relish. Here
were home-thrusts for the gamblers with God. Bishop Jocelyn still stood
behind the table, a sleek worldliness warming his shaven face.

“Madame,” he said slowly, “your tongue out-runs your reason.”

“And your charity perhaps,” she answered him.

Jocelyn spoke on.

“You have been unstrung by the terrors of the night,” he said. “Calm
yourself, return to your room, wait for the day. Commune with faith;
pray, pray that the Holy Virgin may cleanse the heresy from your heart.
On the morrow, madame, you shall speak with me again.”

“Bishop,” she said, with face upturned, “words will not serve you to
change my heart.”

“Let the future prove,” he answered, “your blood runs hot to-night. Let
me counsel you to ponder your peril in solitude.”

“I have considered all,” she said.

“According to the poverty of your faith,” he retorted; “on the morrow,
madame, we will sift your doubts together.”

He rang the bell, while his eyes remained fixed on Rosamunde’s face. The
guards came forward to take her from the hall. Setting herself between
them without a word, she turned and walked steady and erect towards the
door. The tongues of those assembled seemed loosed on the instant. A
babel of laughter echoed under the roof amid the swirling smoke of the
flambeaux; a wave of colour swept along the painted shields. Above the
uproar came the insistent tinkling of the Bishop’s bell.

Before the doorway, Rosamunde came to a sudden halt, like one smitten on
the face. She had seen Tristan standing by the wall, and their eyes had
met, flashed, held in one swift stare. Scorn was on the woman’s lips, a
sudden pallor upon her forehead. Tristan read “traitor” in that glance
of hers. The white cross seemed to burn his bosom, for even as he stood
speechless she passed out and was gone.

                               CHAPTER X

Tristan, strong man that he was, blundered out from the hall much as
Peter fled from before the face of Christ. The thrust was perhaps the
more bitter seeing that he was innocent, nay, brimming with ardent
faith. The night breeze played upon his face as he reached the terrace;
the stars were bright in the heavens, the moon streaming up through
mountainous clouds. Pools of gloom lay between the fields of silvery
vapour. Houses were burning in the town below, a red haze of smoke and
light pouring from the place as from a pit.

Tristan, stung with shame, hurried out through the bloodstained court to
the gardens fathoms deep in gloom. A sudden frost seemed to have fallen
upon his heart, though his face still burnt with the blaze of
Rosamunde’s scorn. The last look from her eyes seemed colder to him than
the glances of the stars. Great passionate boy that he was, the wrong
stung him like the hatred of a lost friend. Had not Rosamunde kissed him
on the forehead that very day? He threw himself down on a grass bank and
wept, and the damp grass licked his face as he rolled restlessly from
side to side.

The newly inspired chivalry sank before the spear of rebellious pride.
As for Rosamunde, had he not served her well? Martyrs and saints! was he
deserving of such infidelity at her hands? The woman was a fool, had no
wit in her to read the true cunning of a man’s endeavours. She was
fickle as moonlight, quick to mistrust at the first mutterings of doubt.
Moreover, he had wept over the injustice, he, Tristan the iron-faced,
who had never puled since he left the cradle. Ha! if this was gratitude
and faith, he would think no more of Joyous Vale, and this proud-lipped
dame who conceived all men to have been born her lackeys.

Full of such callow spite as this, Tristan floundered up, tightened his
sword belt, brushed the moisture from his face, passed on towards the
town. Soldiers were returning from the castle, cursing and shouting
under the trees. Rough horseplay ruled the road. Men were riding on each
other’s shoulders, singing, scuffling, quarrelling as they went.
Tristan, shy of such company for the moment, kept to the dark and the
paths through the thickets. He strode on morosely, eating his own heart,
letting his temper rage with the uncontrolled sincerity of youth.

Entering the town by a narrow by-lane, he bore for the market-place,
where the waves of riot ran high. The Papal troops were as wild beasts
let loose in an arena, and mere human flesh seemed an insignificant
sacrifice for their savage zeal. Men were even hewing down the houses
with axe and hammer, as though to leave no stone or beam unbroken in the
place. Children were tossed from the attic windows on the bristling
spears beneath. The wild pirates from the old pagan north had never
worked more savagely than these children of the Cross.

Tristan’s anger began to cool apace before he had gone far through the
streets of the town. No such tortures had been known in Purple Isle as
were perpetrated here under the benediction of the Church. Men put
indiscriminately to the sword, women dishonoured, children thrown from
the flaming houses. The streets were full of death and despair; the very
town was a great slaughter-house. Horror descended like a cloud on
Tristan’s brain. He was weak as a frightened child for the moment amid
the devastation of the night. The anger oozed from him like wine from a
cracked jar. Only a great and empty pity remained in its stead.

Coming to the market square, he stood as one dazed by the terrific
action of a dream. The place was packed with drunken men, wearing indeed
the livery of the Church, yet appearing with their flaming torches more
as the acolytes of hell. Great stakes had been set in the midst of the
square, faggots and the timbering of ravaged houses piled around. Even
as Tristan watched from under the low eaves of a house, a knot of
soldiers passed him, bearing on their shoulders the figure of a man. He
was so swathed in cordage as to look like an encased mummy. Setting the
victim against a stake, they chained him there, buffeting and spitting
in his face, as he had been the Christ. Torches licked at the faggots,
and deep ululations ran through the square with the strident psalming of
the monks for an underchant. The flames writhed like golden snakes;
smoke blackened out the faces of the stars. Tristan saw the figure
chained to the post jerk and strain from the rising flames. The man’s
hands came free. He clutched the beam above his head, strove with great
throes of agony to climb above the fire. Soon the smoke throttled him;
the flames played the part of a shroud.

Tristan, sick with the sight, turned back down the street with his brain
a-swimming. Would they set Dame Rosamunde in the market square and burn
her there as they had burnt the smith? A great faintness gathered round;
the reek of charred wood was in his nostrils. The flare of the flames
died over the houses and the din and clamour grew less and less.
Stumbling on, he reached the outskirts of the town, where the meadows
ran white under the moon. The clean breath of the night beat on his
face, and the scent of the pine woods rolled down from the hills.

A limb of the lake gleamed in the meadows. Tristan went down to the
water’s brim, knelt in the weeds, and drank from his palms. He dashed up
water in his face, let it run down his chest, cold and clean, rose up
again with his heart more steady. The town still flickered and yelped
under the stars. He turned his back on it and made towards the woods.

The scenes in Ronan’s town still played on his thoughts. Had he been
zealous in the pay of the Church, his faith would have quailed before
the deeds done that night. Moloch could have hungered for no bloodier
work than this. Tristan remembered Ronan’s town as he had first seen it
from the hills, glimmering peacefully in silver and green. He remembered
the children playing in its streets, the red, comely women drawing water
at its wells, the sturdy peasants labouring in the fields. If such a
brutal doom as this had fallen upon Purple Isle? His sire slain, his
mother—God forbid the thought. He grew grim and savage as his courage
kindled; the petulant weakness of an hour had passed.

As for Rosamunde, her proud face was above him once again, clear as the
moon, overtopping his manhood. The passionate spite had melted away, for
he comprehended now the scorn in her heart. She was wiser, older, less
selfish than he. Rosamunde had forecasted the savage zeal that had
scorched the valley and those whom she loved, while his imagined
falseness had embittered the truth. Tristan cursed his own hot wrath.
What was he that he should resent her doubts! How else could she have
read the cross on his breast?

The woods descended upon the meadows and the hills seemed to stretch
their great arms to him out of the night. Tristan, full of a simple
devotion, a sudden strong passion of chivalrous pity, knelt down under a
tree and tore the white cross from his breast. The moonlight played upon
his face as he knelt with arms folded, and made his short prayer openly
in the eyes of Heaven.

“Great God and Father,” ran the words, “Thou who avengest all things,
strengthen Thou my heart. Let honour prevail against those who blaspheme
Thy mercy. Thou who didst gird King David against the pagans, give to
Thy servant a strong arm and an unblunted sword. Here—now—I pledge my
faith to these two women, even to Rosamunde and to Columbe my sister.
Holy Jesu, shine Thou upon my shield.”

Even as Tristan prayed the stars seemed to brighten in the heavens, as
at the touch of some high seraph’s hand. The man knelt a long while in
the grass, thinking of Rosamunde, how she believed him a traitor. His
heart was strengthened against her fate. He swore that night that he
would prove his faith to her, even though it brought him to the gate of
death.

                               CHAPTER XI

Rosamunde, standing at her window high in the tower of Joyous Vale,
watched the dawn cleanse the sombre east. Over the hills the golden
chariots flew. In the valleys, the shadows, like giant snakes, writhed
and darted from the rush of the dawn. The heavens had taken the colour
of June. Gold, azure, and rose were woven together as by the might of
invisible hands.

Rosamunde, with dark shadows under her eyes, watched the burnt town rise
out of the gloom. No glimmering casements flashed up to the dawn, no
spirelets glittered, no red roofs shone. Smoke veiled the air beyond the
gardens and the sleek green meadows, where tottering walls shook like
palsied patriarchs, shaking their heads over this deed of shame. Charred
beams stood black beneath the sky. The reeking ruin of the place rose up
to Rosamunde from the dewy love-lap of the dawn.

On the lake the great ships lay at anchor, their white wings folded,
standards and streamers afloat from their masts. Their prows were
blazoned with many shields. The water, a silver sheet, lay spread about
them, calm and clear. In the meadows the host had pitched camp for the
night, and there were many pavilions ranged over the grass, red and
purple, white and blue. A grove of spears stood round Benedict’s tent,
with many shields swinging to the breeze. Horses were picketed on the
outskirts of the woods. A company of men-at-arms stood to their lances
without the great gate of the castle.

Rosamunde, leaning on the sill, put back her hair from off her forehead,
and met the truth with a bitter calm. The burnt town betrayed the
terrors of the night. A great silence covered the ruins; only the
meadows spoke of life. From the tower she could look into the market
square, where the charred posts still stood amid the steaming ashes.

Her loneliness grew the more apparent as Rosamunde looked out over the
lake and the hills rising purple against the blue. Yesterday, necessity
had stirred her courage and peopled a province with her cares. Her quick
sympathies had created comrades. To-day all was changed. Death had
claimed the allegiance of her people. Outlanders held her home, fed
within her hall, lounged and jested in her courts. They had even taken
the woman Isabel from her for the night, for the Bishop had ordained
that she should be left alone with her own soul.

As she stood at the window, she thought of Tristan, traitor, as she
believed. If she had ever trusted a man, she had trusted him, with his
blunt tongue and his ugly face. None the less, his eyes must have lied
to her again and again. Truly, he had played his part with a cunning
mask of ingenuous passion. He had let the Pope’s men in. Spy and
hireling that he was, he had blinded her well as to what should follow.

She hated Tristan with an immoderate hate as she stood at her window
that golden day in June, for the burnt town seemed to stand as a grim
witness to his dishonour. Why had he saved Samson from the sword? That
he might blind her the more with professions of faith. She had trusted
her heart in his great hands, and he had stood to mock her before them
all.

The bar was withdrawn suddenly from her door, and the woman Isabel
thrust into the room by those without. There was a clanging to and fro
of harness in the galleries. Isabel had orders to prepare her lady for a
second meeting with the Bishop. Rosamunde suffered the woman’s prattle
with the listless silence of one whose thoughts flow deep. The army was
to march southwards along the lake, so ran the report. Holy Chrysostom!
the night had been red with blood! Would madame wear her grey gown with
the blue sleeves? Yes. ’Twas very comely. And the girdle of beaten
steel, with the poniard fastened thereto? Ah, yes, they had searched the
place, and taken away the knife. Bishop Jocelyn was a courtly prelate,
so men said. One of his servants was bringing up wine and meat on a
silver tray. What? Madame had no taste for food? One must live, though
men made war.

Rosamunde broke in upon her patter, desirous of hearing other news.

“Have they taken Samson?” she asked.

Isabel shook her head.

“Thank the Lord, no.”

“What of Tristan?”

“Madame, I have not seen the man.”

Rosamunde kept her countenance under the woman’s stare, and though her
face felt hot she did not colour.

“The fellow had a hot heart and too ready a hand. He is slain, perhaps.
God rest his soul.”

Rosamunde told nothing of the imagined truth, and of the beginning of
her hate. Isabel had not seen Tristan in the hall.

Anon, robed, and fed by the Bishop’s clemency, she was taken by
Christopher the Canon past the iron-coated sentry at the door. As a
prisoner she passed through her own home, where the galleries were
empty, the chambers void. The Bishop’s men had looted the place; they
were carrying the plunder to the ships. The champion of the Church was
worthy of his hire; many a cherished relic saluted Rosamunde’s eyes no
more. The hall itself seemed grey and empty despite the streaming
sunlight through the narrow windows set high up in the wall.

Bishop Jocelyn awaited her, sleek, polished, buxom of face, a most
creditable sympathy pervading his mood. The heretic pleased, if the
heresy offended. He bade Canon Christopher set Rosamunde a stool, thrust
a silver mug aside with his hand, spread his tablets, crossed himself,
and began.

“Madame,” he said, “I have given you audience alone, that we may talk
the better. Mark you—how the sun shines, and that June is with us. The
blood of the earth runs brisk and warm. It is my purpose here to
persuade you to live.”

There was a suggestive comfort on the complacent face. The man’s
philosophy smacked of compromise. That he was not unloth to pardon her,
Rosamunde could see full well, yet she mistrusted his voice, strident
with sanctimony, his soft, mobile mouth, his glittering eyes.

“Whether it is better to lie than to die,” she answered him, “out of the
abundance of your righteousness, you can tell me, Lord Bishop.”

“Daughter,” he said, mouthing his words with an air of relish, “surely
it is better to procrastinate for a month, than to be damned instantly
and for ever.”

“Your charity foredooms me—thus.”

“Madame, St. Peter has the keys of heaven, and we are St. Peter’s
ministers.”

The retort was such a one as Samson the Heretic would have rent with the
splendid sincerity of his scorn. To Rosamunde, numb and lonely as she
was, there yet appeared a grim pharisaical humour in the perfumed piety
of this complacent prelate, decreeing the eternal fate of God-given
souls. Could this lapwing, this piping swan, so far deceive himself and
others as to claim the power of final pardon or of endless punishment?
Rosamunde awoke at the thought with an echo of Samson’s strenuous
eloquence in her memory.

“Priest,” she said very calmly, “we of La Vallée Joyeuse have been
taught that a man’s soul speaks face to face with the Living God. Here
we have hired no spiritual chapmen to trade and barter with our prayers.
I claim my daughtership before Christ our Lord. Sure am I, that even as
Mary of Bethany sat before God’s face, so may I serve Him without
bribing the hirelings of a degenerate Church.”

Bishop Jocelyn set his finger tips together, elevated his eyebrows,
suffered a slight smile to play upon his lips.

“Madame,” he said to her, “it is easy for me to know that you have been
deceived by plausible and disastrous doctrines. It is easy to impose on
women, seeing that they catch the reflection of any bold man’s mind.
They answer men, as tides the moon.”

“There you are in error,” she retorted. “My conscience stands upon the
mountain-top, and shuns not the light. I believe what I believe. I know
my own heart.”

“Ah,” he said, with something of a sigh, “you are obdurate, my daughter,
obdurate to the point of death. I fear there is but little hope for you.
Well, well, I have played my part.”

He rang his silver hand bell, and a captain in full chain harness came
in through a side door with a company of archers at his back. The men
stood to their arms. Such were the justiciaries employed by the Church.

“Madame,” said Jocelyn with vigour, changing instantly his persuasive
pose, “recant your heresy, or the stake awaits you. Come. Are you
prepared to burn?”

She looked at him mutely, doubtingly, pale to the lips. The heavy
breathing of the guards fanned the stagnant air. Above her hung the
churchman’s face, contending passions playing thereon, like a red sunset
through a cloud. The loneliness and despair cried out in her; the flesh
rose up against the spirit.

“Is this your mercy?” she asked him, breathing fast.

“Madame, I am sent to prevent blasphemy, to restore the truth.”

“Ha! can you convert us by burning our bodies?”

“If you burn not now, woman, you will burn in hell hereafter.”

She stood back two steps from him, staring at the floor. In imagination,
she heard the hiss of the green faggots, the grim purr of the gathering
flames, felt their scorching breath upon her face. Was there no
salvation save in this stark death? Was a heart full of convictions
worth such torture? Great helplessness fell like a fog about her brain.
Life, ruddy and eager, cried out for pity; the lust to live grew quick
and violent in her blood.

“You tempt me to the death,” she said, with head thrown back.

“Not so, my sister.”

“To the death.”

“Nay, nay, to life. Lift up your face to the Church’s bosom. It is warm
and fragrant to the faithful. Come, sister, come.”

She swayed forward like one about to faint, clutched at the table,
steadied herself upon her straining arms.

“I surrender,” she said hoarsely. “What else is there for me to do?”

The man leant forward, touched her forehead, marked with his finger an
invisible cross thereon. He smiled and laid his hand upon her shoulder.

“Trust in the Church, my sister,” he said; “it is enough. By God’s grace
we shall cure you of the canker of heresy.”

                              CHAPTER XII

The Bishop’s men had plucked up their tents from about the blackened
ruins of Ronan’s town, and marched southwards from La Vallée Joyeuse,
burning and plundering as they went. They found few to poise the spear
and trim the shield against them in those green wilds. The folk of the
Seven Streams were scattered amid their moors and forests, nor had they
banded together any great company of men-at-arms. Sometimes a lonely
tower stood forth upon the hills, to start into scarlet flower when
menaced by the Holy Truncheon of the Church. The peasant folk had fled
to the mountains and the deep gloom of the woods, for these crusaders
marched to purge the land, and torch and sword claimed an eloquent
apostleship in that rough age.

The southern fleet had set its sails, and sailed out by the river
towards the sea. The waters of Joyous Vale were left to the grebe and
the heron, to the wild duck’s cry and the dull note of the bittern.
Ronan’s tower stood a haunt for owls to perch in; bats played under the
rafters in the twilight; spiders webbed the walls. Soon there would be
grass and shaggy weeds in court and terrace. Briers would ravish the
shrubs in the garden, docks and nettles destroy the flowers. The vines
would fall from their rotting poles, the olives ripen and receive no
care.

Rosamunde, Dame of Joyous Vale, had been set within a horse litter, a
litter with painted panels and a canopy of purple cloth. The litter was
Bishop Jocelyn’s, but he had surrendered it to her service, and mounted
his white mule instead. A guard of twenty men marched about Rosamunde on
the road, ten on foot and ten on horse. They were bearing her southwards
towards the mountainous marches, over hills and through valleys foreign
to her ken. All day she heard the trumpets whimper, saw pennons float
and flicker through the woods. At night she would mark a glare in the
dark sky, the glare of watchfires, or the flaming crown of a martyred
town. At times they would let her walk beside the litter. No one spoke
with her save Bishop Jocelyn, for her woman Isabel had turned wanton,
and trudged the road with the servants of Christopher, Canon of
Agravale.

As for Jocelyn, proud patron of the Faith, his theology had taken the
wings of Mercury, and flown fast for temporal favours. He appeared
zealous to convince Dame Rosamunde of the infallible nature of his
doctrine. For the time being, there was no hinting at faggots and the
ordeal of fire. He rode often beside the litter on his white mule,
casting his subtleties at the woman lying within. He called her
daughter, sister, child, as the unction stirred in him, while sanctity
bubbled on his lips like wine out of a leaking cask. It had a more
classic odour than Heaven might have desired. Since Bishop Jocelyn could
conjure with Peter’s keys, he did not hesitate to tamper with the lock
of honour.

As for Tristan le Sauvage, the burning of Ronan’s town had set him full
face before his own strong manhood. The mere boisterous days of youth
were behind him as a sunny sea, for he had seen death and had met
distrust. Sterner, bolder blood played through the red cavities of his
heart. To rebel against arrogance and tyranny was to live. To shatter
injustice, to overthrow hypocrites, in such effort lay a strong man’s
paradise.

Hidden in a thicket, he had seen Rosamunde set forth from Ronan’s tower
in Bishop Jocelyn’s litter, the churchman riding beside her on his white
mule. They had not burnt the woman yet, the fairest heretic in the land
of the Seven Streams. Whether she had recanted or no, he could not tell,
but Tristan, remembering the Bishop’s face, prophesied no such fate for
her from so sensuous a source.

He had found food the first morning in a deserted cottage, yet his great
need was a horse, for the beast he had taken in the valley by the sea
had been converted once again to the service of the Church. Following
the Papists through the woods on foot, he bided his time till night
should fall. The Bishop’s men camped under the shadow of a hill, and
Tristan, crawling down in the dark through the grass, found the place
where the horses were tethered. His temerity prospered as it deserved.
He escaped untouched from the Bishop’s ground, with a horse and food to
reward the venture.

Next day he followed the army through the wild, waiting his chance for a
swoop from the woods. What though twenty men marched round Rosamunde’s
litter? With her eyes to watch him, he would break the steel wall, pluck
the white rose out of the midst. That would be man’s work, worthy of a
sword. He would set her behind him on the saddle, ride for the woods,
escape. What then? First he would say to her with a noble air, “Madame,
declare, am I a traitor or no?” Perhaps she would kiss him, even as she
had kissed him in Ronan’s tower.

The chance came to Tristan one still evening when the mists were rising
in the valleys and the sky was veiled with gold. The mounted men of
Rosamunde’s guard had lagged behind to water their horses at a spring.
They had loitered there, jesting and swearing as a stone bottle passed
from hand to hand. Benedict’s men-at-arms were a good five furlongs to
the south, while the rear guard marched by a track that ran westwards on
the far flank of a low hill.

Tristan closed in, keeping cover behind the trees. The horses bearing
the litter were plodding slowly, with heads hanging, ears adroop. The
purple curtains were open towards the east, and Tristan could catch the
white glimmer of a face within. All around them were tall hills deluged
with green woods. A stream glittered through the flats under elms and
drooping willows.

Tristan, with nostrils wide and every sinew taut as steel, trotted on
through a grove of birches whose filmy foliage arabesqued the heavens. A
glade opened to the road below, the purple litter shining like an
amethyst set in green grass. The guards were slouching in twos and
threes about the horses, their pikes and axes at the trail. Even as
Tristan watched, a white hand drew the curtain, a mimic night drowning
the day.

Tristan, twisting tight the strapping of his shield, whipped out his
sword, pushed his horse to a gathering gallop down the glade. He shot
like a hurled spear out of the gloom. Hurtling fast from the trees, he
was on the men before they knew him for a foe. “Holy Cross, Holy Cross!”
was his cry, as they scattered from him like pence from an almoner’s
palm. Swerving right and left, his sword played grimly on their pates.
Pike, staff, helmet, buckler, he hewed through all, as a woodman lops
hazels with his bill. Five out of the half score were down in the dust;
the rest scurried like winged partridges over the grass.

He was out of the saddle and beside the litter, bridle in hand.
Rosamunde had jerked the curtains open at the first sound of the
scuffle. It was no moment for vapourings. Tristan, hot with his sword
work, played the master for once with a rough chivalry that suited his
fibre.

“Come, madame, out with you. I keep faith to you, though you doubted me
in Ronan’s hall. Fast! We must make for the woods.”

“Tristan!” was all she said.

He seized her suddenly in his eagerness, set her upon the horse, climbed
up before her. Her arms girdled his body. She was silent and half
ashamed, as though shaken out of the injustice of her hate.

“The casket?” she asked him, as they made towards the woods.

“Lies fathoms deep in the lake,” he said.

“Ah, Tristan, you have served me well.”

“I should have served you better, madame,” he said simply, “if I had
been in Ronan’s tower before the Bishop.”

She mouthed a sudden “hist” into his ear, her arms tightening so that he
could feel the rising and falling of her bosom. The warm perfume of her
breath rose about his face. Half a score of mounted men had rounded the
angle of the road. They sighted Tristan and Rosamunde on the rim of the
wood, saw the deserted litter, the dead men in the road. They were at
full gallop instanter over the grass, swords agleam, lances pricking the
blue, while the hot babel of their tongueing echoed through the valley.
Tristan, with a grim twist of the mouth, heeled on his horse and took to
the woods.

The great trees overarched the pair, and beams of gold came slanting
through. The grass was a deep green under the purple shadows. Through
the silence came the dull thunder of hoofs, as the men racketed on,
swerving and blundering through the trees. They rode faster than Tristan
with his delectable burden, and the distance dwindled betwixt the pack
and the chase.

Rosamunde was looking back over her shoulder, her hair shimmering and
leaping with the breeze. The black boughs hurried over her head; the
trunks seemed to gallop in the gloom. She could see steel flashing
through the wood, like meteorites plunging through a cloud. Her fear was
for Tristan as they threaded on, and she tightened her arms round him,
spoke in his ear.

“Tristan,” she said, with her chin on his shoulder.

He hardly so much as turned his head, for his eyes were piercing the
shadows before him.

“Tristan, set me down,” she said. “They will take us both; better one
than two.”

“Hold fast, or you will fall,” was all he retorted.

“Leave me, Tristan,” she said again. “You can outpace them alone; I am
their prize. They are ten to one; what can you do against ten men?”

“We shall see,” he said through his set teeth.

She surrendered for the moment, and clung to his shoulders. An open
glade broadened sudden towards the east, a great star shining splendid
in the eastern sky. Rosamunde, clinging fast to Tristan as they swayed
along, heard a great trampling of hoofs in the wood. The nearest
galloper swung out from the gloom. He was leaning over the neck of his
horse, his lips parted over his teeth, his sword poised from his
outstretched arm.

“Halt!”

Tristan glanced at him as they rode cheek by jowl, their horses plunging
down the glade.

“Hold off!” he shouted.

“Halt, or I strike the woman first!”

“Be damned for a dastard, if you dare!”

The sword circled above Rosamunde’s head, its whistling breath fanning
her hair. She cowered a little and loosened her hold. Tristan swerved of
a sudden, drew up his horse on sluthering hoofs.

“Off—off!” he roared.

Rosamunde broke away and left him free. He charged on, caught the man
cross-counter as he reined round to front him. The knight toppled down
beneath the great swoop of the sword. Tristan clutched at the swinging
bridle, gestured to Rosamunde with his shield.

“Mount, mount! By God! we will fool them yet.”

The wood grew alive with shouting and the noise of hoofs. Rosamunde’s
guards had heard the clangour of Tristan’s blow as he smote the first
man from the saddle. A second rider plunged from the trees, where
Tristan met him, horse to horse. Their swords whimpered, screamed, and
clashed. Tristan’s blade struck the man’s throat through.

Rosamunde had not mounted her horse, for the brute had grown restive and
broken away. She stood by a tree and watched the fight.

“Guard, Tristan, guard——”

He caught a third sword on his upreared shield, smote out from under it,
maimed his man. Two more blundered out of the gloom, while Rosamunde’s
voice rang out under the trees:

“Guard, Tristan, guard! They are at your back.”

The cry came too late to the struggling knot of steel, for two more
riders had come from the wood. One set his lance for the thrust, and
smote Tristan between the shoulders. The man gave a roar like a wounded
leopard, fought on awhile, meeting their swords like a sea-girt rock. A
second lance-thrust pierced his side. His horse, overweighted, stumbled
and rolled down. Tristan fell free, but did not move. The men trampled
him underfoot, and turned on Rosamunde, who stood by a tree.

In an hour she was lying in the litter again, with the faint moon
peering in through the hangings. Her eyes were dusky as the heavens
above, her face pale, her lips adroop. She was thinking of Tristan slain
in the woods, for he had proved his faith to her even in death.

                              CHAPTER XIII

Under the shade of a beech tree on the slope of a hill a man sat with a
bare sword laid across his knees. On the hill-top above, half-hidden by
pines, the walls of a ruined house rose against the unclouded sky. A
deep valley dwindled beneath, choked with woodland and cleft in twain by
a white band where a torrent thundered. Far to the south mountains
towered against the gold of the evening sky.

It was Tristan le Sauvage who sat with his sword laid across his knees,
watching the valley and the darkening hillside. Near by, an iron pot
steamed over a wood fire, the smoke thereof ascending straight into the
heavens. By the gate of the ruin a cistus was in bloom, its petals
falling upon the long grass and the broken stones.

Tristan had been busy burnishing his sword, handling it lovingly, even
as a miser fingers gold. Shield, helmet, and hauberk lay in the grass at
his feet. His face was less boyish than of old, though but a month had
passed since he had been left stricken and bleeding in the woods. He had
been near death, and the staunch struggle to escape the grave had set a
maturer forethought on his face. Moreover, he had suffered in heart as
well as body, and the brisk youth in him moved to a sadder tune.

As he sat there under the shadow of the beech tree, burnishing his sword
and parleying with the thoughts within his heart, a horn called to him
from out the woods. The shrill echoes clamoured amid the hills.

“Tristan, Tristan,” they seemed to cry, like ghost voices stealing out
of the night.

The man rose up from under the shade of the tree, and looked out down