The Seven Streams

by Warwick Deeping

  Silence held for a moment, save for the blustering of the wind and the hiss of the rain on the burning torches. Joan the Abbess was no coward; her eyes were fixed questioningly upon the armed men at the door. Since they made no sign of entering the chapel, she still held her cross on high and challenged them from the altar.

  “Who are ye who break the peace of Holy Guard?”

  There was some stir in the crowd without the door, and the torches plunged forward, their smoke rolling to the roof. A tall man in a green cloak, with a sable hood shadowing his face, had pushed through the soldiery with drawn sword. His men stood with crossed spears before the door, while he faced the Abbess under the flaring lamps.

  The woman still held her cross on high.

  “Who are ye who trouble Holy Guard?”

  The man in the green cloak answered her.

  “Woman, the noise of your misdeeds has filled all Christendom. The Holy Father has decreed the breaking of the abbey of Holy Guard.”

  “These are false words.”

  The man ignored the Abbess’s straining lips and upraised cross. His eyes were searching the faces of those who thronged the altar, white and mute, carven as out of stone.

  “Rise, women, we command you.”

  Some obeyed him, others hesitated. Joan the Abbess still stood before the altar with a few of the women huddling about her feet. The man in the green cloak pointed towards her with his sword.

  “Take her hence, sirs,” he said. “Let her not cheat you with that cross of hers.”

  There was some scuffling, some screaming, as in a dovecot where a hawk has entered. The Abbess calmed the scene by sudden surrender to the tyranny of the hour. She put the men from her, folded the crucifix over her breast, passed down from the altar towards the door. Her women gathered at her heels like sheep, thronging betwixt the line of torches and the glistening helms.

  The man in the hood of sables suffered them to pass before him one by one, staring hard into each frightened face. At each motion of his sword the soldiers let a woman through, and they passed singly from the flare of the torches into the night.

  The last woman had drawn her hood down over her face. She was taller than her fellows, and moved with more stateliness, a more youthful grace. At a sign one of the soldiers tossed back her hood and uncovered the face of Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, dead Ronan’s wife.

  The man in the green cloak made a gesture with his sword. The soldiers herded to the entry, passed out from the chapel, and closed the creaking door. The torchlight flickered in through the lattices; vague cries pierced the clamour of the storm; the wind screamed, the sea surges thundered against the rock.

  The man with the sword tossed back his hood. He and Rosamunde were alone together; the lamps flung their wavering light down upon his face. Rosamunde, knowing him in a moment, fell back and leant against a pillar. It was Jocelyn of Agravale, who had trapped her in Holy Guard.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  At Sanguelac the Tower of the Dead was lit with many cressets. Pierced with a hundred ruddy stars, it lifted its grey parapet to the sky, while the bells clashed in the belfry near. The men of the Seven Streams were mourning for Samson their leader; they wore black scarves over their hauberks, and had painted black bands athwart their shields. Tristan had set the bells of the town tolling, in memory of the great heart that beat no more. Samson’s mantle had fallen on Tristan’s shoulders; as for Blanche the Duchess, she was content to follow him.

  It was night; and in the abbey in the town, whence such monks had long fled who had not turned heretics under Samson’s preaching, the Duchess Blanche was housed with her knights and nobles. Tristan was with her in the abbot’s parlour, also Lothaire, her chief captain, and the knights of her guard. They had framed their plans for the march on Marvail, where Jocelyn had left Count Reynaud encamped, while he, proud regenerator of the Seven Streams, had ridden towards Holy Guard to obey St. Pelinore. The Bishop had left Count Reynaud at Marvail, both to overawe the heretics and to preserve him in ignorance. So pious a knight might have used his honour to weigh the balance against Jocelyn’s romancing.

  With the conference ended, Lothaire and his knights went to their quarters, leaving Tristan and the Duchess alone together, save for two women who had attended her from the north. The night was clear, and through the open window the winter stars were shining; beneath the abbey a hundred roofs gleamed down to the midnight of the woods. Blanche had drawn to the open window, and Tristan stood by her leaning on his sword. The two women were stitching a black cross in the midst of the Duchess’s banner, a cross that commemorated Samson’s death.

  Blanche, in the rich autumn of her woman’s heart, had drawn nigh unto Tristan, even so as to renew the springtide of her youth. There was that fierce and uncompromising honour in him that made him doubly strong in a woman’s eyes. Moreover, he went heavily through life that winter season, yet with the grim fatefulness of a man possessed. Blanche’s heart had opened to his, half with a maiden’s love, half with a mother’s.

  Tristan was morose that night as he stood beside her staring at the stars. On the morrow they were to march on Marvail, to smite those men who had crucified Samson beyond the river. Storm clouds were massing over the Seven Streams, and many a fierce soldier had sworn dire things to his own heart.

  The Duchess Blanche was troubled for Tristan as they gazed at the bare woods dark under the stars. There was that strange tenderness upon the woman’s face that illumines the countenance of one who loves. Her eyes were kind under her silvery hair.

  “Tristan,” she said, “must a man live for vanished days alone?”

  He turned his eyes from the heavens, leant more heavily upon his sword.

  “The past is ever with us,” he answered her; “the dead haunt me, stand round my bed at night. I see not flesh and blood alone, but the grey faces of those who cry to me for vengeance. They are not dead, these ghosts—Columbe, nor Samson, nor the martyrs of the Seven Streams.”

  The woman leant her head upon her hand, and gazed out into the night, so that Tristan saw but the curves of her proud face and bended neck. There was pathos in her attitude, the pose of one who yearned for that which life had never fully given.

  “You live for the dead,” she said again.

  “Many whom I love are dead,” he answered her.

  She threw a glance at him, her eyes bright with the wistfulness that she could not hide. Tristan was blind to that which was in her eyes. For the moment he thought only of Rosamunde, walled from the world in Holy Guard.

  “Tristan,” she said.

  “My lady.”

  “Are all the loved ones dead?”

  He caught a deep breath, did not answer her speedily and frankly as was his wont.

  “As the heart goes,” he said; “the rest is nothingness.”

  “Nothingness; there you belie your soul.”

  His eyes gleamed suddenly, as though he heard some mocking trumpet cry and the trampling squadrons of his foes.

  “Before God,” he said to her, lifting the weight of his body from off his sword, “he who has lost friends to death, finds no soft resting-place to ease his soul. A little while—some months ago, not more—I leapt like a boy into the storm and strife of life. My youth is past, my manhood forged beneath the mighty hammer of God’s fate. When dreams elapse, the strong man grips the sword.”

  “Strange words,” she said, “for one who is not old.”

  He leant his hands again upon the pommel, sighed, and retorted to her with the solemnity of one whose hopes were fierce, whose thoughts ran deep.

  “There seems a season in man’s life,” he said, “when all is wrath, passion, and great pain. Youth passes in a year. The world grows full of storm winds, anguish, and huge travail. Battle breathes in the blood. A man must fight and labour, or grow mad.”

  “And yet——”

  “And yet,” he said, catching her very words, “my heart gives out at seasons, and I yearn, even I, to be once more a littl
e child weeping my woes out on my mother’s knees.”

  The Duchess turned to him from the mild stars, held out her hands, a woman whose heart was open as the sky.

  “Ah, Tristan, is it a mother’s heart you need?”

  He looked at her sadly, knelt down and kissed her hands.

  “Come, let me comfort you,” she said.

  Lifting his rough face to hers, he smiled, the smile of a man grateful yet not appeased.

  “Winter is here,” he said; “as yet there is no peace upon the woods, no singing of birds, no white clouds in the heavens. For me—battle and tempest. I shall not rest till many deeds are done.”

  On the morrow they marched from Sanguelac, with pennons tossing over hill and moor. Tristan bore a black dragon on a gilded shield, the device Dame Blanche had decreed to him after her sword had touched his shoulder. Three thousand spears, a strenuous van, pricked with him hotly through the winter wilds. Morose and fierce of face, Tristan held on towards the south, with Blanche the Duchess at his side. They were riding on Marvail to take it by surprise, fall suddenly upon Count Reynaud and his men.

  It was well towards evening on the third day of Tristan’s sallying from Sanguelac that the watchers on the walls of Marvail saw scattered knots of horsemen cantering towards the town. The gates were thrown open to take them in. Even in the farther meadows on the rim of the woods the townsfolk could see the flash and glimmer of pursuing spears. Mud-stained, sullen-faced men rode in to Marvail, confessing defeat in every desperate gesture, some with wounded comrades laid across their saddles, their shields splintered, their lances lost. That morning Count Reynaud had sallied out to give the heretics battle. His scouts had found them marching south, and had misjudged their numbers, since Tristan and the Duchess had masked half their companies in the woods. Count Reynaud had cantered out with horns blowing, shields aglimmer, spears aglint. The men of Marvail had watched them sally, promising the Church more victims before the sun should set.

  Two leagues from the town, on a hill amid the black billows of the woods, Tristan stood at the head of his main squadrons, gazing round over the place where their hot charge had left the wreckage of Reynaud’s arms stranded on the hillside. The west was afire above the pines, crimson swords smiting through the clouds. It had been a battle of horse, grim, swift, and furious. Tristan had ambushed a thousand spears under Lothaire in the woods. They had charged home on the Papists’ flank, crumpled their squadrons, hurled them back up the hill. Tristan and his men had come in like the sea. Sword and shield were witnesses to this.

  Tristan stood amid the wreckage of the fight, with the Duchess beside him on her great white horse. The banner with the black cross drooped amid a grove of spears. Far to the south, through the dusky woods, Lothaire’s spears still flashed and smote at the flying foe. On all sides were the dead and the dying, piled in sheaves, the grim harvest of battle.

  At Tristan’s feet lay the body of Count Reynaud thrust through with a spear. Before him among the slain stood some dozen monks guarded by men-at-arms. They had followed Count Reynaud from Marvail to bless his banner and to see the heretics put to the sword.

  Tristan le Sauvage leant upon the long handle of his axe. A prisoner had been brought to him, an esquire of Reynaud’s who had been taken in the fight. Tristan’s eyes were fixed upon the man’s slashed face as he questioned him concerning Jocelyn and the main body of the southern host.

  “Come, sir, let us have the truth.”

  Several of the monks lifted up their hands, charging the man to seal his lips.

  “Parley not with a heretic,” said one.

  “Receive martyrdom,” cried another, “and be blessed in heaven.”

  Tristan turned on them with a grim scorn. He was in no mood for argument; that priests were mischievous rogues was his honest conviction.

  “These are they who slew Samson,” he said, pointing at them with his axe. “Guards, take and hang them in the woods. Every priest shall hang who falls to me in the Seven Streams.”

  The men obeyed him with no mean zest, fierce to be avenged on Samson’s enemies. Twelve frocked figures were soon jerking and struggling under the trees. Tristan, stern about the eyes, turned once again to the man before him.

  “Come, friend,” he said, “this is the fortune of war. We are rid of these skirted fools; as soldier to soldier I offer fair terms. Tell me of Jocelyn and the men of Agravale, or hang beside the monks on yonder trees.”

  Reynaud’s squire was young and lusty, not ripe for death either in years or spirit, and Tristan’s challenge worked his conversion. He began to confess such things as Tristan had desired.

  “The Bishop has marched on the west,” he said, “even, sir, because he was so guided by St. Pelinore in a vision at Agravale. He had some three thousand spears following the Sacred Banner of the Golden Keys.”

  Tristan nodded and smiled the man on.

  “The vision, friend, tell us that.”

  Reynaud’s esquire was white and faint from the blood lost to him by his wounds. Tristan cheered him on, bade the two guards support his shoulders.

  “Ten more words, man, and we will see to your wounds,” he said. “Whither has the Bishop marched with the spears of Agravale?”

  “Sire, to the abbey of Holy Guard.”

  “By God, for what purpose?”

  “To destroy it, as he was bidden in his vision by St. Pelinore.”

  The man fell forward fainting in the arms of his guards. They laid him down beside dead Reynaud, began to search his wounds and to pour wine between his lips. Blanche the Duchess was watching Tristan’s face. She saw his eyes flash and kindle, his mouth harden into a grim line. It was as the face of a man who heard of the dishonouring of one he loved. Tristan stood motionless, leaning on his axe, gazing far into the burning west, and once his lips moved as though he uttered a woman’s name.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  Samson the Heretic’s death had cast Tristan into savage gloom. He had loved the man, and had learnt to lean on him as on a spiritual father, by whose warm eloquence the heavens were opened. Samson had been as a great beacon fire lighting a dark land, startling with his fierce beams the night-ridden gates of the Church. The light was quenched, the mighty spirit sped, and Tristan mourned for him as for a father.

  Then had come the news of Holy Guard, and the breaking of Rosamunde’s novitiate there. There was joy and sorrow commingled in the tale. In one great burst of bitterness, Tristan had opened his whole heart to the one soul on earth whose sympathy seemed as a silver cloud charged with kindly dew. Blanche had heard him to the end, wiped out the twisting pain from her own face, given him such comfort as a woman’s heart could give. Her gracious queenliness stood her in good stead, and Tristan did not guess the inward sacrifice.

  But the man was a man again before one night had passed. Holy Guard had fallen; Jocelyn and his war-wolves were by the sea. Tristan swore by God and high Heaven that he would ride and fall upon him before the news of Reynaud’s slaying could reach the Bishop’s ears. The Papists had fled out of Marvail like Gadarene swine, and retreated over the river for fear of Tristan’s sword. As for the heretics, they sallied over, found Samson’s body hanging naked on a tree. They took him down and buried him in the woods, swore over his grave to rid the Seven Streams of Jocelyn’s power. Then they forded the Lorient once more, and leaving a strong garrison at Marvail, hastened by forced marches towards the sea.

  “News, Sir Tristan, news, news.”

  So cried the rider who came in from the west, on a muddy horse under the winter sky. The dawn had streaked the east with faint gold, and transient sun shafts had touched the woods. In a glade amid pines Tristan’s scout had found many horses cropping the coarse grass. Rough huts had been built of pine boughs piled against the trees, and many spears stood there with shields swinging in the wind.

  Tristan heard the man’s tidings as he stood before the doorway of his lodge of pine boughs and laced the steel hood to the rim of his helmet. His knigh
ts were gathering in on every side, some girding on their swords, others tightening their shield straps as they came.

  “The Pope’s men are three leagues away,” so ran the morning’s greeting.

  Tristan ordered a single horn to sound the sally, while he passed to the great red tent of Blanche the Duchess to greet her and to persuade her to keep from the fight. The glade was full of stir and action. Companies were forming up shoulder to shoulder; spears danced and swayed; horses steamed in the brisk morning air. The banner of the Duchess stood unfurled before her tent; she had heard the news and the whistling wings of the eagles of war.

  Blanche came out to meet him in her burnished casque, her dark eyes afire with the zest of action. She would have none of Tristan’s caution, but ordered her white war-horse forward, mounted from Tristan’s knee, received the shouts of her eager soldiery. The red tent sank down; the followers were packing the baggage. As the sun cleared the trees, the northern van rolled out from the woods into a stretch of open land that sloped towards the bold curves of a river.

  That morning Tristan was merry as he swung his axe and felt his horse rise under his weight. He was full of joy, this rugged smiter, who had sprung from an adventurous quest into the marshalling of armies. The great heart of the world seemed to beat with his. Blanche the Duchess read his humour, joined with him in the zest of the hour.

  “Tristan, you are merry,” she said.

  “Merry indeed, for we fight to-day.”

  “You smile once more.”

  “I shall smile in that hour when Jocelyn crawls at my feet. Ha, it is good to be strong!”

  Tristan’s riders were scouring ahead, keeping cover, scanning the horizon for Jocelyn’s march. By noon they had left the open land, plunged up hills covered thick with woods. Tristan’s squadrons sifted through, and he halted them in the woods under the brow of the hill, went forward with his captains to reconnoitre.