The Seven Streams

by Warwick Deeping

  The light in the west still wavered through the gloom. To the north rose the dome of the great cedar, its green boughs sweeping even to the ground. It stood like a green temple built by Nature for the kindly shading of a woodland grave. Tristan kissed the Duchess’s hand, and chose ten of Samson’s men who had served him of old in the Seven Streams.

  Hid by the cypresses that closed the hollow, they passed with two torches under the cedar. By the dark trunk stood Jocelyn of Agravale, clad in his pontificals as Tristan had ordered. The men went to work on the grass mound. Near by lay the two coffins side by side, the Banner of the Golden Keys covering the larger. While five men opened Columbe’s grave, the rest dug a fresh trench under the cedar.

  Tristan stood by the mound and watched their labours, the torchlight playing upon his face, wreathing grim shadows about his figure. There was a terrible calm in the eyes that never wavered under the arch of the casque. Soon the soiled fold of a gown came to light, then a little hand, frail and wasted. Soon they had taken Columbe from the grave, after covering the face that Tristan might not see it. The man shaded his eyes with his great forearm as they laid the body in the coffin, and bade one of the soldiers cut from her head a long lock of her golden hair. Soiled with earth as it was, he laid the lock upon his lips, knotted it with hand and teeth about his arm. He had taken the silver snake from off his wrist and tossed the bracelet into the coffin, which he bade the men cover with Rosamunde’s robe.

  Not one of those who laboured had spoken. In silence the whole host stood to arms as the moon came up over the blackened hills. Yet when Columbe was borne from under the cedar, a hundred trumpets challenged the night, their wild clamour echoing amid the woods.

  When the second grave lay deep under the tree, Tristan, striding to the trunk of the cedar, ordered the torches to be brought near.

  “Bishop,” he said, “chant your own death Mass, even a Mass for her whom Ogier slew.”

  No mercy did they show to Jocelyn that night. When they had made an end, they laid him in the coffin, covered it with the Sacred Banner, and lowered the whole into the open grave.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  When Tristan had kept the vow he had sworn in the past over Columbe’s grave, he was as a man who had battled at night through a stormy sea, to behold once more the calm and broadening splendour of the dawn. Jocelyn his arch-enemy was dead. The clouds had lightened about Tristan’s soul; his heart hungered for Rosamunde, and for that golden head bowed down beneath the pathos of the past.

  Tristan rose at daybreak and took leave of Blanche, who walked early in the island garden. There was a sadness on the woman’s face, the noble fortitude of one whose heart was hungry and whose dreams were dead. Yet she could play the mother to Tristan in his love, even as a good woman who imprisons herself seeks joy in the joy of others, contentment in their content. Her eyes grew full of light as Tristan came to her and commended Columbe’s body to her care.

  “God-speed ye, Tristan,” she said, with her deep voice, “in the good quest that fires your heart to-day.”

  “Madame,” he answered, ignorant of her full sacrifice, “the night that Samson’s death was told us in the wilds, did I not show you all that my heart held sacred? We have avenged him and my sister here. By your good grace, and my great gratitude, we meet again before the walls of Agravale.”

  “Even so,” she said, stretching out her hand, “may your quest prosper. As for a grandam like myself, I regain my youth in the youth of others. Your little ones shall clamber at my knees anon; her children, shall I not love them for their father’s sake?”

  Thus Tristan took his leave of her, and rode for the Mad Mere with a hundred men. Rosamunde, Rosamunde, Rosamunde! Spring was in the wind, though the blackened forest would spread no more its green canopies against the moonlight. All the old memories awoke in Tristan’s heart with a great uprushing of tenderness. He remembered Rosamunde in a hundred scenes: moving through Ronan’s town with the children at her heels, bending to kiss him in her castle bower, sleeping in the woods on the way to Holy Guard. Her deep eyes haunted him; her rich voice pealed through all the avenues of thought. Tristan’s heart rejoiced in its passionate and rekindled youth. He prayed to God that he might look on Rosamunde’s face again.

  He rode at the head of his men that day with a fine light playing in his deep-set eyes. His very soul seemed enhaloed about his face; his voice rang clear as a trumpet cry as he gave his orders and cheered on his men. As the reeking ashes smoked under their horses’ hoofs, the bronzed veterans jested together, bartered their rough gibes, caught their captain’s spirit. They loved Tristan for his fiery strength, his huge activity, his undaunted zeal. The story of the Lady of Joyous Vale had gone round the camp fires on many a night.

  Tristan was guided by the distant hills, for he had noted their shape that summer day when he rode with Ogier to the Forest Hermitage. To the south, gaunt crags rose above the trees, three towering pinnacles, huge, natural obelisks cleaving the blue. Tristan kept to the higher ground. It was well past noon before he saw water glimmering in a blackened hollow, the island swimming fresh and green in the glassy waters of the mere.

  A great silence wrapped the valley, and there was no smoke rising from the house, no boat moving over the lake. The ruinous woods were dark and still. Yet as they rode down through the trees, Tristan’s man, a youth whose kinsfolk had been slain in the province of the Seven Streams, held up a hand, with a warning cry. A long, low howl came pealing over the water, a note in keeping with the desolation of the scene.

  “Sire, a wolf’s howl!”

  Tristan drew rein, and scanned the island under his hand. A swift shadow had fallen upon his face, wiping out the radiance, dimming the light in the eyes. His men halted around him, their spears towards the sky, their shields shining in the sun.

  “Sire, look yonder.”

  A brown thing trotted out from a small thicket on the island, stopped with nose in air with one paw up, and broke into a wild howling that woke the hills. Wolves, brown and grey, came hustling out from the yawn of the great gate. They cast about from side to side, snarling and snapping at each other, filling the valley with their uncouth clamour.

  “Wolves, in truth,” said Tristan, looking grim.

  He shook his bridle and, shouting to his men, cantered off over the scorched meadowland towards the water. The brutes upon the island, catching sight of him, gave tongue more fiercely, and howled in chorus. Tristan’s horse pricked up its ears, snorted, swerved, and would not go forward. He slipped out of the saddle, and, stopping his men with uplifted sword, bade them tether their horses.

  They passed down to the mere on foot, and took counsel there, for old Nicholas’s boat was moored fast by the wooden stage that ran out from the island into the water. Tristan’s eyes searched the silent house. Of a sudden he pointed with his sword to a window overlooking the garden, where a white cloth waved under the red tiles.

  What boots it to tell how Tristan swam the mere, and brought back the boat over the water? It was sword and spear for the brown beasts of the forest. Only when Tristan’s men entered the great gate did the unhallowed horror of the place give them the challenge. A few wolves still lurked amid the dead, the shredded relics of that night of slaughter. Tristan had the gates clapped to after they had put these last beasts to the sword, for fire alone could purge such a charnel house.

  In the wall of the garden there was a little postern, its lock and bolts glued by the rust of years. Tristan broke the gate down with an axe, and, pushing in over the broken wood, found the garden within calm and green, unsullied by death or by the beasts of the forest.

  His men had remained without the gate, prompted by a rough chivalry that gave Tristan honour. On the top step of the stair that led from the upper room stood a woman clad in a black robe, her hair loose upon her shoulders. There were deep shadows under her eyes, and her face was white as the face of the moon.

  Tristan stood at the foot of the stairway with the axe stil
l gripped in his great brown hands. It was not the Tristan who had served of old, but rather a man whose neck was stubborn, a man whose pride would suffer no yoke. The eyes that searched the woman’s face were sterner than those she had known of yore.

  “Madame,” he said to her almost roughly, “you are free once more to go where you will. By God’s good providence, I have cheated death for you.”

  She swayed a little where she stood as she looked down on him and watched his face.

  “I am ever your debtor,” she said slowly.

  “I claim no usury,” he answered her, with a queer smile; “what is duty to me comes as a mere command.”

  “Tristan——”

  “Madame——”

  “Have you no better words for me than these?”

  She swayed forward suddenly, and Tristan saw that she was faint. He threw down the axe, sprang up the stairway, and stretched out his hands to her with sudden pity. Hunger and fear had done their work. He bore her back like a child into the room, and laid her on the bed where Miriam the Jewess knelt in prayer. Then, going out, he left the women alone together.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII

  A strange yet beautiful timidity had fallen upon Rosamunde when Tristan next darkened the doorway of the room. He had left her to Miriam’s care, and, after sending in wine and food from his sumpter mules, had contented himself with giving the hapless dead fit burial. With Telamon, his man, at his heels, he had passed through all the vaults, chambers, and galleries of the place, that he might rest assured that no starving wretches were left therein. In one damp cell he found an old man dead. Between them they carried him out into the sun, buried him apart from the grim gatherings of the court.

  When the west grew red over the hills, Tristan passed alone into the garden and climbed the stairway to Rosamunde’s room. The Lady of Joyous Vale was seated on a carved oak settle, her hair uncoifed, falling in rich folds upon her neck. The strange timidity upon her face was the more eloquent by reason of her old-time pride. Miriam crept out and left the two together; in the garden she found Telamon, and since the youth coloured when she spoke to him, she was not afraid of letting her eyes grow bright.

  Tristan le Sauvage stood before Rosamunde, a great tenderness lighting his gaunt face so that it seemed transfigured in the woman’s eyes. It was not the Tristan she had known of old, the sullen and over-strenuous boy, who blushed and stammered with his tongue. The man who stood before her was in his mighty prime, terrible in wrath, tender to weak things, fearless as a god. This Tristan had passed through deep waters, had faced death and defeated despair. The soul in him was greater than of yore, even because he had known sorrow and climbed to the summit of a more tragic strength.

  Rosamunde, pale, penitent, discovered the great parable of life eloquent against herself. It was she who had ruled Tristan in the days that had passed away. Love and the deep passion-throes of life had changed the charm, strengthening the man, mellowing the woman. She conceived strange awe of Tristan as she gazed on his face that night, and saw the deep lines sorrow and pain had marked thereon.

  Half timidly she beckoned him to the carved bench, even with the shyness of one who was half ashamed.

  “Tristan,” she said, “we are more silent than of old.”

  The man seemed sunk in thought for the moment as he gazed upon her face.

  “We learn to be silent,” he answered her, “by reason of the rough realities of life. Am I the rude boy, Rosamunde, whom you pitied and helped of yore?”

  She coloured, and her eyes grew deep with shadows. There was some bitterness in Tristan’s voice, even as though the memory of her own mere pity still weighed upon his soul. She grew meek before him with a simplicity that surprised even her own heart. In the old days her pride would have tinged her lips with scorn. Yet now that love had come and opened her whole heart, the petty prides of life had shrivelled and decayed.

  “Tristan,” she said, “God knows, you are much changed to me. Sit here beside me. Must I then ask you twice?”

  Tristan obeyed her in silence, resting one great arm on the carved back of the settle. The two were half turned towards each other, casting questioning glances into each other’s eyes; for as yet neither had fathomed the depths of the other’s heart.

  It was Rosamunde who first set pride aside with much of the innocence of a little child.

  “Tristan,” she said, with the look of one whose heart beat hurriedly, “am I to be forgiven?”

  “Forgiven!” he echoed her.

  “For the ingratitude I gave to you of old. I was a proud fool in those dead days. Tristan, I am wiser now.”

  He caught a deep breath, bent slightly towards her, gazing in her face.

  “I remember no ingratitude,” he said.

  “You cannot cheat me into loving my old self.”

  He still looked into her eyes, doubtingly, like a man half disbelieving a dawning truth.

  “Rosamunde,” he said, “in those days I was but a rough and impetuous boy. God knows, I served you, even as a rude soldier would have served one throned above him in the hearts of many. What then was Tristan, that he should lift his eyes to yours?”

  She coloured and bowed down her head. Her hands were folded upon her bosom; she swayed slightly, even as a woman needing the strength of a strong man’s arm.

  “Nay, Tristan,” she said, stammering over the words, “the fault was mine, and I, proud fool, have learnt my lesson. All the horror and heaviness of life have made me wise. What was Rosamunde that she should refuse a heart of gold?”

  Tristan stretched out a hand, stooped, and looked into her face.

  “Rosamunde,” he said.

  “Have I not seen misery enough?”

  “The truth, the truth!”

  “Before God, Tristan, take and guard me from the world.”

  His hands held hers; she crept close to him, and hid her face upon his shoulder. Her bright hair bathed his face; his great arms compassed her, drew fast about her body. Presently she lifted up her face to his, a dim glory thereon, her eyes swimming with unshed tears.

  “Kiss me, Tristan,” she said to him.

  He touched her lips with his.

  “At last—peace,” she said, with a great sigh.

  “Peace,” he answered her, as though his whole manhood stooped over her in prayer.

  Thus did Tristan of Purple Isle win Rosamunde for his lady, after much pain and peril, travail and grim endeavour. A good sword and a stout heart had won him knighthood in strange lands, honour of all men, and the gold crown of love. To Tristan and Rosamunde their joy was full, tinged with the strangeness that breathes in all beauty, either in faith or desire, or in the mysterious deeps of Nature. Perhaps the woman was happier than the man, in that sorrow burdened him, and in the lightening of such sorrow lay a woman’s gladness. That night in the madhouse they talked much of Columbe and of Samson the Heretic. The dear dead were with them in the full life of love.

  On the morrow, a golden morrow, they took horse for Agravale, Rosamunde riding on a white mule that Tristan had taken at Marvail. Young Telamon bore Miriam behind him on his horse; the flaxen poll and the black curls were well accorded. Tristan and Rosamunde watched the by-play, riding close together and smiling into each other’s eyes.

  It was past noon before they saw the far towers of Agravale smite athwart the tranquil blue. Once more the woods were green and generous, for the fire had been stayed by the broad valleys that clove deep into the dusky woods. At a roadside cross Tristan fell in with a company of the Duchess’s men who were on the watch for him at the edge of the forest. They had staunch news for Tristan, the last triumph-cry of the heretics’ war, for but yesterday Lothaire had surprised Benedict of the Mountains in the open land to the west of Agravale.

  Black Benedict and the southern barons, flying before the forest fire, had retreated on Agravale to throw themselves therein. Lothaire, coming up by forced marches from the west, had thrust himself between the southrons and the city. There
had been a fierce battle of horse on the outskirts of the forest. In the midst of the tussle Blanche and her columns had plunged upon the scene and turned the battle into a rout. Benedict and the great part of his ruffians had been hemmed in and slain fighting to a finish amid the glooms of the forest.

  That evening Tristan and his company came from the woods, and saw before the walls of Agravale all the chivalry of the north and of the Seven Streams ranged under arms in the meadows about the banner of the Duchess. In the centre, raised upon a mound of earth, stood Columbe’s coffin, covered with purple cloth. Beyond the thousand spears the towers and battlements of Agravale gleamed white above the woods. Far to the south the great mountains stood, purple and gold, coroneted with snow, crimsoned by the setting sun.

  That evening before the walls of Agravale Blanche rode down alone on her great white horse to greet Tristan and Rosamunde the Lady of Joyous Vale. The Duchess had tuned her heart to a noble strain. Setting pride and passion behind her back, she rode down like the splendid woman that she was, to rejoice with those whose hearts were glad.

  Tristan and Rosamunde dismounted before her, went to her like children, hand in hand, two pilgrims who had knelt at a common shrine. Blanche descended from off her horse, Tristan holding the stirrup, giving her his hand. He did not guess how heavy was her heart.

  “Old friend,” she said, smiling half sadly in his face, “is not your joy mine, though my hair is grey?”

  She went to Rosamunde, held her hands, kissed her upon the forehead, as though she had been her daughter.

  “Child,” she said, “God has blessed thee in this. A good man’s love is worth much travail. Has he not come through much peril towards your face? For when the heart is noble the truth comes first.”

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  The Duchess Lilias, white sinner that she was, had fled from Agravale and taken horse for the East Lands with all her men. Great fear had seized upon those in the city when the northern sky had gleamed with the fringes of the fire. Under cover of night they had fled in a panic out of Agravale, men, women, and children, the monk and the merchant, the great lady and the hag. Unreasoning fear had seized on every heart, for they remembered the sacking of Ronan’s town, and the foul deeds done by their soldiery in the province of the Seven Streams. Rumour had mouthed the report in Agravale that the heretics and the men of the north would sack the city in revenge for the harrying of the Seven Streams. When news was brought of Benedict’s overthrow, there was much wailing through all the city. In their panic the whole population fled out of Agravale, after gathering such valuables as they could carry—gold cups, precious stones, money bags, bales of silk. Many of the aged and the sick were left within the walls, abandoned in the fierce terror of the moment. As for the priests, they were the first to be gone, having a jealous reverence for the ecclesiastical sanctity.