The Seven Streams

by Warwick Deeping

Below lay a broad valley running north and south, chequered with pine thickets and patches of brushwood. On a hill in the centre stood a ruined tower. Towards the south a broad loop of the river closed the valley, while all around on the misty hills shimmered the giants of the forest, mysterious and silent. Tristan’s outriders had fallen back and taken cover in the thickets. Down the valley could be seen a line of spears, glittering snake-like towards the tower on the hill. Companies of horse were crossing the river, pushing up the slopes, mass on mass. In the midst of the flickering shields and spears blew a great white banner streaked with gold.

  It was Jocelyn and the southern barons, who had been on the march since dawn. They had thrown their advance guard across the river, and were straggling up the green slopes, while the main host crossed at the ford. On the instant Tristan did a cunning thing. He had brought from Marvail Count Reynaud’s banner, also the pennons of many of his knights slain on the field. These he sent forward in the van of a strong company, bidding them close within a hundred paces and then charge at the gallop.

  The Papists fell to the trick even as Tristan had trusted. They straggled up to meet the men riding under Reynaud’s banner, only to discover spears rocking towards them at the cry of a trumpet, a line of plunging hoofs thundering down the slope. The woods belched steel. North, east, and west, company on company poured from the trees and raced full gallop for the disordered host. Jocelyn’s men were caught like sheep on a hillside. The hurtling spears were on their shields, they were hurled back down the valley upon the disordered masses who had crossed at the ford.

  The knights of the north and the heretics of the Seven Streams went in at the gallop, and gave the southerners no space to breathe. “Remember Samson!” was the cry. Down towards the river the whirlwind played, with dust and clangour and the shriek of steel. Spears went down like trampled corn. The battle streamed down the bloody slope, for nothing could stem that furious charge.

  The river shut the broken host in, for the ford was narrow, not easy of passage. From the north came the thundering ranks of horse, on the south the waters were calm and clear. Jocelyn’s squadrons, streaming like smoke blown from a fire by a boisterous wind, were hurled in rout upon the water. They were thrust down over the bank; slain in the shallows, drowned in struggling to cross at the ford. Some few hundreds reached the southern bank, and scattered fast for the sanctuary of the woods.

  In less than half an hour from the first charge, Tristan’s heretics had won the day. They gave no quarter, slew all who stood. Of Jocelyn’s host some two thousand perished, many in the battle, many in the river. Tristan rode back up the hill, amid the cheers of his men. He had chosen three hundred spears to surround the Sacred Banner with the Golden Keys, trusting that the Bishop would be lodged near by. He had bidden his men take Jocelyn alive, and all such priests as had followed in his train. That Jocelyn had seized Rosamunde out of Holy Guard he guessed right well, and therefore he charged his men to deal gently with those about the Sacred Banner, to make prisoners, to slay but few.

  Hence when Tristan rode up victorious from the ford, he saw the Pope’s banner flying by the ruined tower, with dead Ronan’s flag waving beside it. Tristan’s three hundred had taken the Bishop, thrown him straightway into the tower, and massed their ranks on the slopes of the hill. The prize was theirs, and they were eager to guard it. Some fifty priests had been taken also, but of Rosamunde of Holy Guard they had seen no sign.

  Blanche herself rode down on her great white horse to greet Tristan and give him the victory. She had watched the battle from the cover of the woods, and had seen the Papists hurled into the river.

  “Friend, God has blessed ye; the wolves have been hounded from the Seven Streams.”

  Such was her greeting as she met Tristan before the tower.

  “Madame, the victory is yours,” he said. “Without your aid we should have done but little.”

  “Nay, it is Samson’s victory,” she answered sadly. “Behold, the dead conquer after death.”

  Tristan dismounted and entered the ruined gateway of the tower. The men-at-arms, gathering round, shouted his name, “Tristan, Tristan!” The hoarse cheers echoed to the listening woods, waking the welkin, rolling towards the river.

  Jocelyn, pacing to and fro within the round walls, heard these cries and bit his lip. He was at the mercy of the man who had slain Ogier, the man whose sister he had brought to the grave. The heretics had thrust the Bishop into the bottom-most chamber of the tower; the beams and roof above had rotted away, leaving the open sky racing above the battlements. Ferns, grasses, and gillyflowers grew upon the walls and in the crumbling recesses where the windows opened. The floor was strewn with rotting wood, overgrown with brambles and tall rank weeds. From this lower room three narrow windows looked out upon the woods, and ruin and decay seemed symbolised therein.

  Soldier and churchman came face to face within the narrow compass of those walls. Tristan thrust back the rotting door, stood alone in the shadow, seeming the more grim and burly in the narrow space. The priest went to and fro like a caged cat, his eyes roving from Tristan’s face to the door and the spear points that gleamed on the stair.

  Without, the listening soldiery heard the fierce thunder of a strong man’s voice, grim and terrible in the intensity of its wrath. Its echoes reverberated through the tower, pitiless and damning, cowing the thin tones that sounded in retort.

  Tristan did not slay the man that day, for he had other tortures in his heart. With the cold steel before his eyes and a great hand upon his throat, Jocelyn jerked out the truth into Tristan’s face. Rosamunde had been sent by river into the Southern Marches to be housed at the madhouse in the mere. Tristan beat the pommel of his sword in Jocelyn’s face, hurled him against the wall, left him huddled white and terrified amid the weeds and rotting wood.

  “Lie there, Satan,” he said. “Death can wait till I have worked my will.”

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  Over the madhouse in the mere the noon sun had travelled, drawing the grey mists up from the meadows, glistening upon the pinnacles of the wooded hills. No wind was moving—the withered sedges were silent in the shallows, and no ripples barred the water with dim gold.

  From the island came a solitary cry, the scream of a living thing in pain, shrill, piteous, and discordant. All the dismal babels of the place seemed to wake at the cry like the screaming of birds when some savage spoiler haunts the woods. The impassive trees moved never a finger, though echo veiled among the hills.

  In the court, with the grey stone walls and the barred windows rising round, Nicholas the keeper had betaken him to his whip. A girl, naked to the loins, stood chained by her wrists to the wooden post in the centre of the court. She was a mad creature, given to wild outbursts of delirious violence. Old Nicholas had taken her when exhausted after some such fit, had chained her to the post for the chastening of her temper. Though the red weals showed in the white skin, her outcry and her writhings availed her nothing. The whip was the old man’s one appeal to those contumacious creatures who needed discipline.

  In a long, low-ceilinged chamber under the tiles sat Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, listening to the cries that came from the distant court. The room was richly garnished in its way with hangings and carved furniture, and lamps of bronze. The three windows opened on the western sky, the wild crags above, the woods and the calm water spread below.

  The Lady Rosamunde was seated on a carved bench, gazing out on the woods steeped in the double mysteries of sunshine and of mist. Her hands were in her lap, her undressed hair falling in gold upon her shoulders. The look upon her face spoke of deep misery, of passionate degradation, and shame of soul. Her proud neck was bent like the stem of a sun-parched flower. She sat motionless in the shadow, gazing solemn-eyed upon the empty world.

  Near her, throned on a scarlet cushion upon the floor, a pale-faced girl peered at herself in a small hand-mirror, while she combed her black hair with a silver comb. She was studious and deliberate in her toilet
, perfecting it with a flippant airiness of gesture that told of a sensuous and cheerful vanity. Ever and again she would cast quick, bird-like glances at Rosamunde before the window, smile to herself with a world-wise pity in her hazel eyes.

  “Hey, sister Rose, be merry, be merry. If I were an escaped nun, I should be laughing till the sun looked big as a great shield.”

  There was a certain hollowness in the girl’s merriment, as though her tongue were blither than her heart. Rosamunde half turned to her with the air of one burdened with utter weariness of soul and body. Life had seemed a black dream since that wild night in Holy Guard when Jocelyn and his men had hounded the nuns into the wind and rain. The memory of that violent midnight lived with a vivid horror that haunted her soul. At dawn she had been taken through the wilds, brought to the river, thrust into a galley, and rowed upstream into the depths of the woods. For two days and a night she had heard the plash of oars, watched the banks swimming by under a dreary canopy of mist. Then the men had landed her, set her upon a horse, brought her through leagues of woodland to the madhouse in the mere.

  The girl Miriam who shared her chamber with her was a little Jewess, volatile, passionate, and warm of heart. A child of misfortune, cursed with the bane of beauty, she had suffered many things at the world’s mercy. Yet under the mask of vice and ignominy, the passion and fervour of her race still burnt unquenched. At Rosamunde’s first coming she had taunted and gibed at her. Later, the utter misery in the elder woman’s eyes had disarmed her vanity and touched her heart. Different as gold and wax, the pair had become friends by common necessity in their prison chamber under the tiles.

  “Sister Rose,” said the girl again, “I have never yet won a smile from your lips.”

  “Who can smile, child, when one hears the cries of those in pain?”

  “Ah, the mad folk, they suffer always; it is their curse.”

  “And we, Miriam?”

  “We only suffer when our souls are sad.”

  Rosamunde had heard from the Papists of Samson’s death; the tidings had shocked her, yet not with the profundity she would have dreamt of months ago. He had been her spiritual father and the great regenerator of the Seven Streams. To Rosamunde those later months he had been more of a god than a mortal; Tristan, outshone at the first, had brought back her heart from a garden of impossible dreams. From Jocelyn and his men she had won no other news save that their spears were set against Tristan and his heretics. They had taunted her with the promise to bring a sackful of ears taken from the detestable degenerates who had defied the Church.

  “My soul, but you are as sorrowful as Rachel,” said the black-haired girl, twisting near on her cushion and half resting against Rosamunde.

  “I have been a poor fool,” said she, with one hand on Miriam’s head.

  “We women are all fools; the men cheat us into bondage. Once I was clean and pure. Well, well, what if I have an old heart in a young body?”

  Rosamunde held her peace for the moment. The cries had ceased in the court below; the babel of mad voices had given place to silence.

  “Have you thought of death, Miriam?”

  The Jewess started, stared up into Rosamunde’s face. It was white and hard, the eyes full of a passionate pessimism.

  “Death, sister!”

  “As a Roman woman would have died. Ah, my God, is it then a sin to end such shame?”

  Miriam struggled to her knees, her arms thrust over Rosamunde’s shoulders. The warm Jewish blood in her had taken fire of a sudden. Her pale face looked into Rosamunde’s, her dark eyes glittered with an earnestness that was almost super-natural.

  “Sister, what words are these?”

  “Shame or death—I halt between the two.”

  “Death, but how?”

  “A steel point, a mere bodkin prick, and then the end.”

  The younger woman clasped her arms about Rosamunde’s neck, looked steadily into her face.

  “Sister, you frighten me. Why then should we die? Is there no hope left, no gleam of a new dawn?”

  “There is hope in prayer, perhaps.”

  “Ah, my fathers have prayed of old and have been answered. The Great God reigneth, though I, His daughter, have erred in the tents of men.”

  The misery melted out of Rosamunde’s eyes for the moment. She touched Miriam’s hair with her fingers, drew a deep breath, inspired new courage. Her mouth softened; she kissed Miriam upon the lips.

  “Forget, child,” she said; “it was a moment’s weakness with me, and it has passed.”

  The little Jewess took the kiss, broke forth into sudden weeping. Her heart was warm yet under her gay gown; the faith of her fathers was not dead within her breast. The spirits of Ruth and of Rachel might have wakened echoes in her soul.

  “Ah, I have felt such fearful thoughts of old,” she said, “when I was drawn down into the dust and men trampled on my honour. Yet hope revived, and I lived on. Often I have thought that shame has broken all my heart, that I am too sinful to look into the face of God.”

  Rosamunde kissed Miriam’s lips a second time; it was her turn to comfort, and the instinct gave her courage. A long while she spoke to her, telling of the Christ, pleading as the saints had pleaded in the past. As for the girl, she threw her mirror and her silver comb away, plucked the bright brooch from off her breast, sat listening at Rosamunde’s knees till evening fell.

  That night the Lady of Joyous Vale lay long awake, thinking of Tristan and his great love. Her heart cried out for a strong man’s chivalry, for the passionate tenderness of such a homage. Holy Guard and Jocelyn had broken her pride; she was as a child once more lifting her face to the lips of love. To be saved from shame, this was her prayer.

  Lying awake in the moonless gloom, tossing under the coverlet with her hair spread around, she listened to Miriam’s quiet breathing. The casements showed grey in the wall before her. Feverish, she rose up from her bed, drew a cloak round her, knelt by one of the open windows. The night air played upon her face. Overhead a thousand stars were shining, while the silent lake glimmered beneath.

  Rosamunde bowed herself over the sill, leant her head upon her arms, and wept from sheer pain and weariness of heart. Life seemed sealed against all hope. Violence and infamy hemmed her in; she was mewed in this island amid mad folk and worse, the idle sport of a worthless priest. She had become again as a little child, hungry for love, afraid of the dark. Her heart cried out for Tristan there, that rough face lit by its honest eyes, that strength that no single arm could stay. He was the one man who could win her soul, guard her from all terror and the world’s evil leer.

  As she wept that night under the stars, she made a passionate prayer to Heaven.

  “O God,” cried her heart, “send Tristan hither. Grant that he may love me as he loved of old. Hear this my prayer, O Father of heaven. For lo, I have broken the pride in my heart, and lo, I love Tristan, and would be his wife. Hear me, God, and save me from shame.”

  She knelt a long while gazing up at the stars. The tears came no more to dim her eyes; a sudden wind stirred the trees in the garden. The sound seemed as a still voice answering her prayer, a voice that whispered—

  “Peace, God has heard thee.”

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  While Rosamunde was held a prisoner in the madhouse in the mere, Tristan and the Duchess had turned back from the west and marched again on Marvail and the fords of the Lorient. Having dealt with Jocelyn and dispersed his people, they were ready to revenge them for Samson’s death, and for the ruin wrought in the Seven Streams. They had sworn together, they and their nobles, to humble Agravale and to end the crusades that the priests had preached in that same city.

  At Marvail Tristan had set craftsmen at work upon two coffins of seasoned wood. The larger was framed for Jocelyn the Bishop; Tristan had him laid alive therein, and the lid fastened over him with thongs of leather. Two holes were left in the lid over Jocelyn’s face, so that he might breathe and take his food. Imprisoned thus, he was c
arried on a litter pole on the march, while beside him was borne the empty coffin covered with the Sacred Banner blessed by the Pope.

  Late that winter Tristan and the Duchess crossed the Lorient and encamped near to Samson’s grave. They set their men to raise a great mound over the place, and having cut down the tree on which Samson had been crucified, they fashioned from it a great cross. This they set on the summit of the mound as a trophy to him who had conquered in death.

  Between the fords of the Lorient and the city of Agravale lay some twenty leagues of forest land, more dark and rugged than the province of the Seven Streams. Here and there were villages hid in the deep gloom of the woods. A few abbeys and religious houses slept grey and solemn in the wilderness, their fish ponds glimmering amid the green. Many strange beasts lurked within its shadows and many barbarous folk but half claimed by the Church. From the fords of the Lorient even to the cliffs of Agravale a squirrel might have journeyed from tree to tree.

  Into this wild region Benedict of the Mountains had plunged with the few hundred men who had escaped from the slaughter in the west. Hither also had gathered the remnant of those who had fled from Marvail after Count Reynaud’s death. They had gathered their scattered companies on the way to Agravale, and were arming the rude peasantry to march once more on the Seven Streams.

  By Samson’s grave Tristan and the Duchess took counsel together with all the nobles of the north. Samson’s mantle had descended on Tristan, and though he had not the Heretic’s tongue, he had sufficient ardour to serve the cause. Even the older men suffered his youth, for he had given proof of his great strength, and was honest enough to be advised when in need.

  “To Agravale,” he said, “that, sirs, I take it, is our common cry. Since we have Jocelyn in our hands, we cannot leave our work half done.”

  “Destroy the lair,” quoth Lothaire of the Isles, “and the bear will rear no more cubs within. We men of the north are ready to follow.”