The Seven Streams

by Warwick Deeping

  Tristan scrambled down the bank and plunged into the torrent. It was shallow yet treacherous. The water foamed about his knees; pebbles and boulders rolled under his feet. Reaching the farther bank, he found the rocky wall rising fifteen feet above his head. He swung himself up by the roots of a stunted fir that clung to the bank by gnarled and contorted talons, and swarmed up the trunk till he reached the boughs. Below, the torrent foamed in the sun, burdening the air with a hoarse swirl of sound. Tristan’s head came level with the summit of the wall. Craning his neck and keeping well within the bosom of the tree, he peered over into the space beyond.

  Without lay the wild woods, the torrent, and the unknown; within all the sumptuous colour of the south seemed engirdled by that circle of grey stone. Smooth lawns, emerald bright, gleamed betwixt massed banks of flowers. Fragrant herbs perfumed the air. Pomegranates grew there hung thick with fruit, oleanders with red coronets burned beside the slim and dusky cypresses. Apricots gleamed from lush eaves of green, and vines with their purple clusters were growing about the house.

  Even as Tristan watched he saw colour moving within a tunnel of close-clipped box, the gleam of a blue kirtle, the glimmer of golden hair. He hung in the tree and waited, for there was no sound in his ears save the roaring of the stream. Anon, the figure came out from the box thicket into the sun, where a bed of balsams coloured the grass. Tristan well-nigh lost his hold of the tree, for it was Rosamunde herself who walked in the garden.

  Tristan coloured like a great boy at the very sight of her face. It was months since he had looked on it, and his stout heart hurried. How fair she was, how tall and slender! The very flowers seemed graceless at her feet! Tristan felt the old strange awe of her rise up within his heart. With the stars and the moon she was throned above the world, and as she walked the lawns with her stately air he had more fear of her than of twenty Ogiers.

  Tristan watched her, wondered what thoughts were in her heart. There was a slight drooping of the queenly head, a limpness of the hands as they shone white against her blue kirtle. Would she be glad of the liberty he brought to her, to lay with his sword and shield before her feet? Cared she for Jocelyn, with his sleek, shaven face? God, no; such fawning apes were fit but for Lilias and Agravale, that city of sin.

  Rosamunde, turning suddenly from the sunlit lawn before him, passed down a terrace-way built above an offshoot of the stream, where oleanders grew in great stone jars. Water plashed beneath on ferns and moss-green stones. Tristan, while her back was turned, swung along a bough and straddled the wall. It was smooth on the inner face, giving no foothold, no vantage to the fingers. Tristan jumped for it, landed in a bed of pinks, rolled over, and scrambled up with earthy hands. The soft loam and the plants had deadened his fall. He crossed a stretch of grass, rounded a clump of bays, found Rosamunde leaning on the balustrade of a little bridge.

  “Tristan!”

  The name was mouthed in a half-credulous whisper, as she turned on him, sudden colour surging to her cheeks. She grew pale again, yet her eyes were full of a strange brightness, her face turned slightly heavenwards, with the red lips parted above the strong white chin.

  “Tristan!”

  The man was redder than Rosamunde. Her beauty silenced him, and he could gaze, nothing more.

  “Tristan, I thought you dead.”

  “Dead, God be thanked, no,” he said, going on his knees as one who remembered tales of courtesy. “Ah, Madame Rosamunde, I have kept my faith. I have searched and found you. Behold, I bring liberty.”

  She stood back as the man did her homage stiffly, yet with a rugged dignity that showed his temper. There was vast earnestness upon Rosamunde’s face. The baser passions of the world had hemmed her in these many months, and dread of their animal strength had made her eye all men askance. Even Tristan was not trusted yet. A woman jealous of her womanhood, she conned his face as though to read his humour.

  “Tristan, I thought you dead.”

  It was as though she parleyed with him that she might judge him the more.

  “See, am I dust, madame?” he answered her.

  “How came you here?”

  Tristan felt some cloud between him and her eyes. Her grave and watchful temper puzzled him, nor had he foreshadowed such cold gratitude as this.

  “Madame Rosamunde,” he said, “Samson the Heretic saved me from death; you shall hear the tale anon, if you should wish for it. My life was yours, and Columbe my sister’s. I had vowed faith to you both, and so came to Agravale. The Bishop’s captain hired my sword. Yet though I served him with a traitorous heart, I won no word of you till yesterday.”

  She went nearer to him again, still gazing on his face, and her eyes were on Tristan’s, nor did he waver. So cold did she seem that he felt great shame growing within his heart, for it flashed on him in a moment that she despised this faith of his.

  “Tristan,” she said, very solemnly, as though plotting to challenge his honour.

  He rose up and faced her with folded arms.

  “Tristan,” and there was more passion in her voice, “I have borne much, suffered many things from the evil men have conceived against my soul. Ah, God! I have lived in hell these many weeks. I am a woman, and I am alone. By your manhood, swear to me you will not trick my trust.”

  He frowned a little and his mouth hardened.

  “Have I not proved my faith?” he said.

  “Not yet, not yet.”

  “I have dared much. Tell me, have I failed you ever?”

  “No, Tristan, no.”

  “If you mistrust me, I can return.”

  There was so deep a bitterness in his strong voice that she read his honour, and went near to him with her face upturned.

  “Tristan, I am half ashamed,” she said.

  “Ah, madame, I shall never shame you.”

  “No, no.”

  “Try me,” he said.

  The man was breathing deeply, and she stooped of a sudden and kissed him on the lips. A red wave rushed over Tristan’s face. He stood stiff as a rock, with her hands upon his shoulders, looked in her eyes, and moved not a muscle.

  “Madame, I take your gratitude and ask no more.”

  “No more?”

  “As there is honour in me, I will serve you, and ask no return.”

  “Tristan,” she said, with an uprushing of faith, “I can trust at last.”

  “God guard us both, madame,” he said very simply. “For your sake, I have been tempted, yet my heart is clean.”

  She stood back from him, and covered her eyes for a moment with her arm. At the very gesture a silver circlet upon her wrist caught Tristan’s eye, a coiled snake of tarnished silver, curiously wrought, with emeralds for eyes. Tristan thrust out a hand towards Rosamunde with a strange cry.

  “That bracelet!”

  She stared in his face, and twisted the thing from off her wrist. Tristan snatched at the circlet of silver, handled it almost with the greed of a miser gloating over some splendid gem.

  “Whence had you this?”

  His words came sharp and savage as the blows of an armourer’s hammer upon steel.

  “Speak,” he said, with a strong gesture of the hand.

  “The bracelet I found in a room they gave me here,” she said, “hid in a chest with other stuffs. What is it to you, Tristan, that you pull so wry a face?”

  “Madame,” he said, with great passion in his eyes, “I saw this last upon my sister’s arm.”

  “Tristan——”

  “My God, then, Ogier spoke the truth.”

  Rosamunde’s expression changed, like one who hears the stealthy step of an enemy on the grass. Her eyes dilated, her face paled. She thrust out a hand and pointed Tristan to a thicket.

  “Pandart comes. Quick, hide.”

  “Who is Pandart?”

  “My jailer.”

  “Then God deliver him,” said Tristan, with his mouth like iron.

  CHAPTER XXI

  A stout and ungainly being appeared r
ound a thicket of bay trees, like some stout god Pan footing it in Arcady. It was the figure of a little man with a toad-like face, protruding blue eyes, and a great slit of a mouth. A double chin flapped to and fro under his ugly but good-tempered countenance, and his legs were bowed like the staves of a cask.

  Pandart, good soul, was a mild man, a man of milk, who feared the Bishop and Ogier his knight. Slow of wit, he took life calmly, and was amazed at nothing so long as he had food. He stopped short when he saw Tristan standing by the White Heretic of the Seven Streams, and blinked his eyes under their penthouses of fat.

  The salutation that was accorded him hardly tallied with the good man’s temper. Waddling over the grass like a fat and amiable dog, he was taken of a sudden by the throat and hurled flat upon his back. A whirlwind seemed to fill the place. Above him lowered a pale, set face, while a sword’s point rested over his heart.

  Pandart, shrewdly scared and beaten for breath, lay and blinked at the man who held the sword. His shoulder had been disjointed in the fall, his arm lying twisted under his body; yet, despite the pain of it, he dared not stir, seeing that the bare steel weighed on his ribs. The silver circlet was thrust into his face. Pandart’s eyes seemed bewitched by the thing, while Tristan watched him as a dog watches a dog.

  Slowly he forced the truth from the man concerning Columbe, whom he had sought from over the sea. Under the point of Tristan’s sword, Pandart told what had passed in the hermitage, Columbe’s coming and her shaming there, and, last, how she had died by Ogier’s hand, to make way for Rosamunde of the Seven Streams. It was a grim tale for a brother’s ears, but Tristan heard it to the end.

  Then it was that Rosamunde, who watched him, saw his face become as the face of a devil. He reared up his sword over Pandart’s carcass, heeding not his whimpering nor his outstretched hand. Rosamunde, waking as from a dream, sprang forward and seized on Tristan’s arm.

  “Slay him not,” she said. “Shall the man suffer for the master’s sin?”

  Tristan flashed round on her.

  “Betwixt them they have slain my sister,” he cried. “Am I a woman to snivel and forgive?”

  Without flinching, she met the anger in his eyes, keeping her hold upon his powerful arm.

  “Has not Ogier perished at your hand?”

  “God did deliver him——”

  “Not against this old man can you lift your sword.”

  Pandart had slipped aside from under Tristan’s feet. He struggled to his knees and knelt there in the grass, his right arm hanging helpless from the shoulder. Tristan, looking at the grey head and the wrinkled face, relented somewhat, remembering his own sire.

  “You shall judge,” he said to Rosamunde, giving her the sword.

  She took it and set the point upon the grass.

  “Speak with him yet further,” she said. “Have pity on his grey hairs, for the old man has been kind to me.”

  She left them there together, while Pandart rose up from the grass and stood before Tristan, holding his maimed arm at the elbow. The anger was melting out of Tristan’s heart, and grief gathered in him as he thought of Columbe’s golden head lying tarnished under the sods.

  “Show me the grave,” was all he said.

  Pandart, wincing as he walked, led Tristan amid the flowers and fruit trees to where a great cedar stood, and a low green mound received the sunlight streaming through the boughs. Tall cypresses were crowded near, like mutes standing about a grave, while the great cedar’s vaulted gloom made the place solemn as a shrine.

  When Tristan had looked long on the green mound in silence, he questioned Pandart further, and received the truth. Ogier had slain Columbe at the Bishop’s bidding, even to make room for Rosamunde, whom they had brought from Agravale. They had buried Columbe there under the light of the moon, with the red rose of death over her heart. Tristan said hardly a word, but suffered Pandart to pass back to the house, where his dame, a thin woman with a querulous face, cringed and waited for him behind the door. Pandart went in and bade her swathe his arm.

  Meanwhile Rosamunde walked alone on the terrace-way where the oleanders bloomed in their stone jars. She was a strange woman, this Lady of the Seven Streams, devout yet passionate, gracious yet ever too enamoured of her pride. Perverse and incomprehensible, half shrew, half saint, beautiful even in her perversity, she was destined to pain those who gave her love. Jealous of her liberty, she would go shackled by a whim, provided the whim was of her own forging. Tristan she had believed dead these many months, and Tristan loved her. As a woman, she knew that well. Yet she had ordained it in her heart that Tristan’s love was mere summer madness, a boy’s love, beneath her pride.

  Columbe his sister, then, was dead. Of the white-faced child from Purple Isle Rosamunde had had no knowledge. She had often gazed at the fresh-tufted mound under the cedar, but Pandart had kept silence and betrayed nothing. She felt a woman’s pity for this blue-eyed child reft from her home, bruised by the passions of a ruffian crew, done to death in this wild hermitage. The truth revealed to her her own real peril and the grim depths of Jocelyn’s perfidy.

  Anon, she left the terrace and passed towards the cedar. Infinite thought dwelt in her large eyes, a beautiful wistfulness upon her mouth. Coming to the cypresses, she stood to listen. A sound, deep and significant, quickened the look of pity on her face. She stood open-mouthed, listening to the sound of a strong man weeping. There was an almost godly pathos in those tears. The truth thrilled Rosamunde to the core of her red heart, made her lips quiver, her eyes grow hot.

  Tristan weeping! This great warm-hearted creature broken down by the touch of death! She listened with tingling ears, half ashamed of prying upon such sorrow, for the sound awed her utterly, dethroned the pride from out her soul. All the deep instincts of her womanhood awoke, tremulous and tender, poignant with another’s pain.

  By sudden impulse she pushed past the cypresses, stood under the huge shadows of the cedar. Tristan was lying full length upon the grave, his face hidden within his arms. She saw his shoulders rise and fall, and he still had the silver circlet gripped in his right hand. Rosamunde stood impotent, hesitating to violate such grief as this.

  Presently the man grew calmer, and the passion seemed to pass like a storm over the sea. Perhaps some spirit voice stilled the deep waters, the cry of the Christ to foaming Galilee. Rosamunde, moving over the grass, stooped, touched Tristan’s shoulder with her hand.

  He twisted round like one smitten with a hot iron, and there was a shadow as of anger on his face. It was shame to a strong man such as Tristan to be caught with tears upon his cheeks. He rose up and knelt beside the grave, propping himself upon one arm. Rosamunde’s hand was still upon his shoulder; his other arm he held before his eyes.

  “Madame,” he said sullenly, “must you stare upon my weakness thus?”

  “Tristan——”

  “Leave me.”

  “Ah, may I not share your sorrow?”

  She knelt down suddenly at his side, even like a mother, and drew the arm from before his face. He did not resist her, though he frowned a little.

  “Tristan, you have been noble towards me in your faith,” she said; “may I not show a woman’s gratitude? Is there shame in receiving this?”

  He looked in her eyes, but did not look for long, for there was still some bitterness within his heart. Was it not for Rosamunde that Columbe his sister had been done to death?

  “Rosamunde,” he said, speaking slowly her name, “the wounded bear must lick his wounds and growl out his fury in some lonely den.”

  “Ah,” she pleaded, “you grudge my gratitude to you for all.”

  “Madame, I cannot parcel out my grief.”

  “What of your vengeance—can I not share in that?”

  It was a lash of the tongue suited to rouse such a man as Tristan. The speech was quick and swiftly sped. Tristan sprang from the grass like one who heard a faint voice calling from the grave.

  “Vengeance—God hear me—yes!” he
cried.

  He stood there above Rosamunde and the grave, breathing heavily, the muscles showing in his powerful neck, his face transfigured for the moment. Taking the snake of silver, he wound it about his wrist, made a great vow with his hands uplifted to high Heaven.

  “Never shall this poor relic leave this arm,” he said, “till it has hurled down Agravale into the dust.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  Evening descended, and the green valley was full of golden light. Afar on the hills the great trees dreamed, dome on dome, touching the transient scarlet of the west. Ilex and cedar stood like sombre giants in a shimmering sea. The eastern slopes gleamed in the sun, a cataract of leaves plunging into gloom. The forest was full of shadows and mysterious streams of gold, and a great silence shrouded the wilderness save for the restless thunder of the stream.

  Tristan had gone to bring the horses to a thicket on the western bank near the island. Moreover, he had played the Samaritan to Pandart, had twisted the disjointed head of the bone back into the socket, even as he had learnt the trick from a smith in Purple Isle. With the calm of the declining day, some measure of peace had fallen upon Tristan’s soul. He was a sanguine being, brave in a rallying, quick to recover heart. Columbe was dead, and he had wept for her. Vengeance was to be thenceforth his life’s purpose.

  And Rosamunde? Tristan had discovered comfort in her presence there, for love takes beauty as a balm into its breast. He had great hopes and passionate prophecies in his heart. Rosamunde had knelt by him; her hand had touched his hand. God, how his lips still thrilled to the magic of her kiss! And those eyes, were they not wonderful, passing the burnished stars in the dark firmament? There was great awe of her in Tristan’s heart, great joy in her rich beauty, faith to defend her against man and beast.

  As he came from watering his horses at the stream, he heard the sound of a woman singing, for Rosamunde walked in the garden amid the vines and pomegranates, chanting some sorrowful legend of lost love. Pandart had shown Tristan a rough bridge across the stream, where giant boulders had been set as stepping-stones betwixt the western grassland and the island. There was a narrow postern giving entry through the wall. Tristan stood at the gate and listened. Above the thunder of the foaming stream the rich voice clambered, strong and clear. Even the great golden vault of heaven seemed full of the echoes of that passionate song.