The Seven Streams

by Warwick Deeping

  “Lift it,” was all the giant said.

  Tristan unstrapped his shield from betwixt his shoulders, ungirded his sword, gave them Ogier to hold. He spread his feet, tilted the stone, got his fingers under the edge, held his breath, heaved the mass over his head. The block splintered a flagstone at Ogier’s feet. The giant blundered back against the wall with an oath.

  “God’s truth, man!” he said. “Have a care of my toes.”

  “What now?” said Tristan, breathing hard.

  Ogier grinned and gripped his hand.

  “You are the man,” he laughed, cracking Tristan’s bones in his paw. “We will set you on Percival, the Duchess’s lion. By my bones, you will break the man over your knee.”

  Tristan, lodged within the gates of the Bishop’s palace, used eye and ear to gain some glint of Rosamunde’s fair head, some breathing of her name. Like a mirror he had to receive what passed before him, silent and unstirred. Caution bridled him, and he played his part like the dogged adventurer that he was; had an open hand for every man, scullion or squire, a smile for the womenfolk who came out into the stable court to giggle and gossip with the grooms and men-at-arms. Ogier had taken him with some pride to Bishop Jocelyn in his state closet. The churchman had felt Tristan’s limbs with his soft, womanly hands, and smiled over a strength that was as prodigious as his own conceit. He was a champion who should give Dame Lilias’s men the lie.

  Of that proud woman, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, whom the Papists had snatched from him in the gloom of the woods, Tristan won no word or whisper. The men-at-arms of the palace spoke often of their march through the province of the Seven Streams. Many of the ruffians had carried torches in the sacking of Ronan’s tower, yet of Rosamunde and her fate the world seemed to have no care. Tristan, with his ugly face inscrutable as the face of a sphinx, watched and listened, bided his time. If Rosamunde was in Agravale, he would carry the gates of her prison off their hinges, and set her free. Once again he would look into those deep, wistful eyes, upon that face whose petulant splendour haunted him night and noon.

  There was great love in his heart for Rosamunde. It had grown and fed upon the stoutest fibres of his heart. Her very name had taken root about him, even as a red rose clambers about a grave. Tristan was no visionary, no melancholy worshipper of the stars. Life to him was action, a bluff buffeting of waves, a gallop with the wind. He was alive and lusty from the iron sinews of his ankles to the corded muscles of his throat. Superbly young, yet older in passion than of yore, he took life cheerfully, knew no defeat.

  As for Rosamunde, he loved her, and was not ashamed of this same love. It was no enigma to him, no subtle riddle begotten of a poet’s brain, for to Tristan this love was as natural as life itself. He loved the woods with their mysterious shadows, the sea for its hoarse splendour, the flowers—even because they were fair of face. In the same spontaneous fashion he loved this woman, whose face was beauty and whose lips were life. Above and beyond this impulse towards joy, the deeper truths were mellowing Tristan’s soul. He began to find new glories in his strength, to cherish his manhood, to build fast his honour. Since Rosamunde was Rosamunde, should he not consecrate his manhood to her?

  The moon had not changed her scimitar for a silver shield before Tristan was proven both in arms and faith. The women of Agravale were bounteous beings, buxom and boisterous, red fruit to be plucked from the tree of virtue. A red gown trailed more than once round Tristan’s feet, and youth had tempted him to merge youth in youth. Yet he had shut his mouth, stiffened his head on his massive neck, for Rosamunde’s face shone high in the heavens.

  As for his courage, that was another matter. Tristan could thrash a man, if he would not kiss a woman, and Ogier took him often through Agravale with half a score bravos at their back. They swaggered through the streets, loitered in the taverns, ogled such women as came their way. More than once they met the Duchess’s men, and shouldered them roughly to the wall. Ogier, the butcher’s son, had a tussle in view, and Percival of the Red Beard was to be brought to his knees.

  From the square before the ducal palace, with its pomegranates studded with golden fruit, its rose trees and its acacias, ran a narrow passage-way leading to the gardens of the abbey of St. Pelinore. It was a shadowy place, flanked by high walls of stone, arched above by the dense foliage of chestnuts and great cedars. The path gave the shortest track to such of the Duchess’s men who returned from the lower city to the palace. Ogier had watched this “run” of late, eager to catch Knight Percival in a lane where there was no turning.

  It was near the vesper hour one evening, when Ogier and Tristan turned from the palace square into this stone-walled walk. A knot of the Bishop’s men-at-arms had passed in before them; their voices and footsteps echoed with a metallic resonance betwixt the walls. Of a sudden there was a clangour of arms at the far end of the passage. Hoods and helmets hid the entry; a pike or two bobbed and shimmered under the trees. Ogier loosened his sword in its scabbard, warned Tristan with a wink of the eye.

  Ogier’s men had met the ducal company in the midst of the passage. There was a tossing up of challenges that reverberated in the narrow throat of the place.

  “Out, dogs, make way for the Duchess.”

  “Hold, sirs, you shall take the wall of us.”

  “Be damned, then, stand aside.”

  There was a brief scrimmage, a swaying to and fro from wall to wall. A sword shone out in the gleam from the west. A tall man in a trellised hauberk, with a red tunic showing beneath, broke through the press, and came striding on with his chin in the air, his red moustachios curling up like the tusks of a boar. He twirled his sword, while his tawny eyes flashed rapid glances over Ogier’s face.

  Ogier spread his great arms from wall to wall, thrust one foot forward, and barred the way. Percival of the Red Beard made a sweeping gesture with his sword.

  “Out of the path, wine skin,” he said, “or I will set you leaking over the stones.”

  “Church before State, my friend,” said the giant, standing firm.

  “Out, dogs, the Duchess is at hand.”

  “Devil take her,” was Ogier’s retort.

  There was a blow from sword, a blow that Ogier caught upon his shield. Tristan, stooping, dodged under the giant’s arm, sprang at Knight Percival before he could gain his guard. He had his bear’s grip on the man’s body. A heave of the chest, and the Knight of the Red Beard was off his feet. An impotent waving of a sword, a dropped shield, a straining of sinews, and Percival crashed over Tristan’s head. His face struck the stones; he squirmed over and lay still.

  Ogier brandished the rest of them back.

  “Room for the Duchess,” he roared. “Come, madame, we are the Bishop’s men; though we fight your fellows, we serve the Duke.”

  Tristan, standing over Percival’s body, saw a short, plump woman move through the lane of armed men. Two young girls carried the train of her purple gown. She had a round, pallid face, eyes of greyish green, somewhat protuberant, but very liquid. The eyebrows sloped outwards over the eyes. The nose was broad, with nostrils wide apart; the mouth large, with lustful lips. Her neck had a peculiar silken brilliancy; her bust was full, her hips very broad. It was Lilias herself, Duchess of Agravale.

  Ogier saluted her, and lowered his point. Two of the men-at-arms had raised Percival up; he was bleeding about the face, for the fall had stunned him. Lilias’s eyes were on Tristan’s face.

  “Ogier,” she said, speaking very rapidly, as was her wont, with much working of the lips, “you of the Bishop’s household are for ever picking quarrels with my gentlemen. See to it, Sir Butcher; you shall hear more of this.”

  Ogier, ignoring her taunt against his origin, covered his heart with his hairy paw, turned back her wrath with a suave and ponderous unction.

  “Ah, madame,” he said, “your men persecute us, have beaten us often, methinks, because your gracious self lives in the heart of each of your knights. If I served such a lady as the Duchess Lilias, by Go
d and the prophets, I could thrash the world.”

  The woman smiled a little, the smile of one to whom flattery was never gross. Even a great dolt such as Ogier could fool her with a few honeyed antics of the tongue.

  “What of my poor Percival?” she said, stooping and looking in the fallen man’s face. “Pah, how a red nose spoils a man!”

  “He would have split my poor carcass,” said Ogier, standing at her side, “had not my new Hercules pitched him like a sack of flour over his head.”

  Lilias turned, stood at her full height, and looked Tristan over. She was a woman who loved muscle and strength in a man, and that flippant insolence that makes for pleasure. Tristan’s ugly face had a peculiar charm, a virile fascination in its uncomely vigour. Lilias smiled at him with her glassy eyes, gathered her gown close about her hips. She expected homage, but found not a flash of it. Tristan met her look for look, a frown on his face, his arms folded firmly over his chest.

  CHAPTER XVI

  It was but two days after his breaking of Sir Percival, that Tristan, idling through Agravale, saw before him the open door of the great church St. Pelinore. From the gloom within came the scent of incense and the sound of the chanting of the Mass. Tristan could see tapers shining on the high altar in the choir. Women were passing in and out, and two blind beggars sat at the gate.

  Tristan, moved more by curiosity than by the desire for worship, entered in and uncovered his head. The rounded vault was painted vermilion and gold; the huge pillars of white stone were banded with silver and inlaid with stones. The basins for holy water were of black marble, their dark pools gleaming with the colours of the roof. Many chapels opened on either hand, dim sanctuaries steeped in vapour of gold and of rose.

  Tristan, rugged islander, had never looked upon the like before. The place was full of that subtle beauty conceived and wrought by the mind of man. A strange idealism had sanctified the saints and dowered each relic with a magic mystery. The splendour of the place touched Tristan’s soul. Nothing in Joyous Vale had equalled this in pomp and magnificence, in form and colour. And yet the afterthought dethroned the spell. Was not Rosamunde’s gracious body fairer far than this great church?

  Tristan took his stand by one of the great pillars, and setting his back to it, looked round the place. In the nave there was a stone pattern wrought in the floor, known in Agravale as the Penitent’s Rosary. There were some ten women moving round and round, halting over each great bead to breathe a prayer through silent lips. Tristan watched them as they circled round with bowed heads and folded hands, moving where the sunlight streamed from the tall windows overhead.

  He was conscious suddenly that one of these dames was not wholly absorbed in prayer under her hood. A round white chin was tilted significantly under a pouting mouth, and two watchful eyes considered him with a suggestiveness that no man could mistake. As the woman circled over the stones, walking slowly in her grey mantle that but half hid the richer stuffs beneath, Tristan felt that her eyes held his, and that her thoughts were very far from heaven. The truth came to him as he watched her glide over the stones of the great rosary. It was Lilias herself who did penance there, penance with her feet, but not with her heart.

  In due season the Duchess had ended her pilgrimage, and stood with her hood turned back, looking at Tristan across the church. Her women had gathered about her, and outside the gates Tristan saw the spear points of her guard. Turning, with a glance cast at him over her shoulder, she swept in state out of St. Pelinore’s, her women following her, save one young girl who loitered at the door.

  Tristan, with his broad back resting against the pillar, stood thinking of the woman’s face tinted by the light reflected from the crimson lining of her hood. Her eyes had challenged him even as they had done in that narrow passage when Percival lay senseless in the dust. They puzzled Tristan—these same eyes; for they had no depth to harbour pity, and their shallow glances spoke of no high mood. Different was Rosamunde from this pale, sensuous dame whose scented garments perfumed the very church.

  Tristan was roused out of his reverie by a small hand plucking at his sleeve. By the pillar stood a dark-eyed girl, half child, half woman, thin, and a little sad. There was a timid smirk on her childish face as she looked at Tristan and gave her message.

  “Follow my mistress,” were her words.

  Tristan stared down at her, his ugly face bathed in the sunlight that streamed from above.

  “Whom do you serve, child?” he said slowly.

  “Lilias the Duchess,” came the answer.

  “What would your lady ask of me?”

  The girl tittered and coloured before him, shamed, as it were, by the man’s straight stare.

  “You are Tristan of the Bishop’s guard?”

  “I am Tristan,” he answered her simply.

  “You are to come with me,” she persisted, touching his arm.

  The man’s mouth hardened as he considered her message, still leaning his weight against the pillar. What was Tristan to Lilias, or Lilias to Tristan? She was a woman, and a bad one, so he had gathered since he had sojourned in the city. Yet she ruled Agravale, and in her ruling was wise in the secrets of the south. In some vague way he even imagined that he might win news of her whom he sought.

  Thus Tristan followed the girl from the church, and crossing the great court that lay without, entered the gardens of St. Pelinore. Mulberry trees towered above the lawns, studded thick with ripening fruit. Weeping ashes glittered there, and figs and cedars cast their shade over broad beds of mint and thyme.

  The girl watched Tristan as she walked beside him, holding a little apart, with one hand to her cheek. She was a sharp wench enough, and Agravale had taught her to take the measure of a man. Therefore she studied Tristan’s face, that she might read his strength or weakness therein by the dogged set of the strong jaw, the keen eyes, the firm, clean mouth. She began to speak to him as they crossed the gardens with a coy simplicity that was well assumed.

  “You are strange to Agravale?” she said.

  Tristan looked at her slantwise over his shoulder, for she seemed but a child untouched by guile. Her glances wandered over the great trees, and the flowers that grew in the short grass.

  “You would prosper?” she asked him tentatively, casting about in her mind how she might win his trust.

  “I have begun passably,” said Tristan, with a smile.

  “For you humbled Percival. Ah, how strong you must be! I am almost afraid, sir, when I look at your great arms.”

  Her mild eyes trembled up innocently to Tristan’s. The flattery seemed so spontaneous in her words that it would have puzzled a young man to have uncovered her cunning. Nor was Tristan unwilling to seem strong to her, for youth takes pride in its great strength. For the moment he was half tempted to question her concerning Rosamunde of the Seven Streams.

  “You may be a great knight in Agravale,” the girl said to him, with a shy smile.

  “How so, sister?”

  “Ah, sir, are you blind? Know you not that a woman loves not a beaten man?”

  “So.”

  “You trampled down Percival. The Duchess would have you serve her in his stead.”

  “That is not possible.”

  The girl stared at him, and for the moment lost her mask of innocence.

  “Are you not ambitious?” she asked.

  “I am young, good sister.”

  “And a mighty man, though young.”

  “You seem zealous for me.”

  “I serve my lady. Why, it will be all plain for you. Is it so strange a thing to serve a woman?”

  They had left the gardens and come to a high stone wall that skirted the precincts of Lilias’s palace. Cypresses and bays showed above the stone, while a great cedar cast a broad shadow there. In the wall there was a little door studded over with iron nails. The girl took a key that hung at her girdle, unlocked the door, and pointed Tristan in.

  “Enter, sir,” she said, with a glib smile and a sli
ght bending of her body.

  Tristan stood and looked through under the lintel. He could see a garden spread within, the grass sleek under the noonday sun, beds of flowers, purple and red. At the end of a lawn stood an orange thicket, and under the trees a woman walked, clad in crimson, with her white arms bare. She wore sandals of gold stuff on her naked feet and her hair hung loose about her neck.

  But Tristan turned back from the door and looked full into the girl’s dark eyes. She coloured a little under his gaze, as though half guessing what was in his heart, and that he knew the part she played. Nor was he slow to read the truth that shone for him on her thin, pale face.

  “You will speak to my lady for me,” he said to her, casting a swift glance into the garden.

  The girl looked at him, but did not stir.

  “What, sir, shall I say?” she asked.

  “That I will not enter yonder place.”

  “Not.”

  “No, for the youth in me will not serve.”

  Her face changed suddenly like a fickle sky, and she began to mock him as he stood before her, thrusting her tongue out and beating her hands. To Tristan she seemed like some sly elf changed from a child to an evil imp, as he turned and left her by the wall with a grim frown on his ugly face.

  CHAPTER XVII

  When Tristan returned to the Bishop’s palace, he found two horses standing saddled and bridled in the inner court. One of them was Tristan’s, a raw-boned roan with one white foot and a white muzzle. A man-at-arms, half asleep on a bench at the bottom of the guard-room stair, scrambled up when he saw Tristan, and opened a great mouth with the gusto of a news-teller.

  “Hallo, laggard! Ogier has been calling for you this hour or more, blaspheming you till the stones blushed. Above with you, if you would hear good downright cursing.”

  Tristan passed through the guard-room, found Ogier striding to and fro in his closet, armed for riding, the froth from a tankard still on his beard. He unbosomed himself when Tristan entered, like a volcano to whom periodic outbursts were the natural vent of much accumulated spleen. Tristan let the giant’s cursing pass over him like water. He gained time by sitting down before Ogier’s table and finishing the remnants of that gentleman’s dinner.