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 Pa
pal 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 disap
peared 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.
The Seven Streams Page 5