Great was the temptation that assailed Tristan that night to take Rosamunde his love and to ride from Agravale, leaving the Southern Marches to their fate. He could overtake the Duchess in a day, and leave the future to her and the King. If Serjabil and his Saracens crossed the mountains, the King could gather his great vassals and give them battle in due season. Had he not done enough with his single sword?
But as great hearts rise to great needs, so Tristan cast the tempter out of his soul, and grew strong in the strength of heroic manhood. The shade of Samson seemed to walk at his side, Samson who had been crucified for Christ and the Cross, and who had met death, a living sacrifice. Should he not save these helpless peasant folk from the Saracen scimitars and the false creed of their Prophet? He would stand shamed before God when the villages flamed and the smoke of their burning ascended to heaven.
Tristan knelt down in the grass and prayed, with the deserted city silent under the moon and the great stars shining overhead.
“Lord Jesus,” he said, “I pray Thee pardon these weak thoughts that rose in my heart against my manhood and Thee. Grant me Thy grace to this good end that I may save these helpless ones who have sought my sword. Give me Thy strength against the heathen that I may quit myself as a Christian should.”
At midnight he went out from Lilias’s garden to the great hall where his men were gathered. Some were asleep on the rush-strewn floor, others were watching and talking together.
“Sirs,” he said, “how many will stand with me for the Holy Cross, and hold the passes till the Duchess comes?”
Every hand was stretched towards him; nor did they fail him, these iron men, who had followed Samson through the Seven Streams.
“God bless you all!” he cried, with a smile on his face. “Percival, take horse and ride after the Duchess. Tell her the Saracens are marching for the mountains, that we go to hold St. Isidore’s Gate. Ride, man, as though the devil rode at your heels. The Duchess will turn and give us succour.”
With the dawn came the great trial of Tristan’s strength, for Rosamunde was ignorant of what had passed, and it lay with Tristan to tell her the truth. Moreover, she had lived amid dreams since she had been brought from the Mad Mere into Agravale. For her life’s woes were at an end; she had forgotten that death still walked the earth.
She came to Tristan that morning in the garden, and found him pacing under the trees, fully harnessed, his sword at his side. There was that same grim earnestness upon his face that she had known of old when he had taken her to Holy Guard through the woods. As she came with her stately step over the grass betwixt the beds of balsams and the thickets of fruit trees her eyes grew dark under the sweep of her golden hair.
“Tristan,” she said, “you seem grim to-day. Should we be sad at leaving the south?”
He winced a little and looked into her eyes, solemnly and sadly, like a man who suffered. His earnest face awoke vague fears in her, sudden dread of some fresh misfortune. She held out her hands to him with a questioning smile.
“Tristan,” she said, “why are you silent?”
“I am thinking,” he answered her, “of how our lives change even in one setting of the sun.”
“Speak,” she said, “for I am no child to be kept carefully in the dark.”
“Rosamunde,” he answered, squaring his shoulders and stiffening his great neck, “I thought the sea had grown calm at last, and that no more storms would come between us. Yet how frail are the hopes of men. Once more the sword must leave the sheath.”
She reached out her arms to him with a sudden cry and the mute look of a frightened child. Tristan’s hands were upon her shoulders. There was a divine tenderness upon his face as he looked in her eyes and told her the truth.
“Take courage,” he said to her, “for if ever a man needed love, I, Tristan, am that man to-day. Serjabil and his Saracens are marching for the mountains, thinking to have an easy victory over Christians weakened by their feuds. It is God’s will that we should take the sword and save the innocent from further shame.”
She hung in his arms, looking up like one dazed into his face.
“Ah, Tristan, what must follow?”
His voice shook a little as he answered her words, holding her very close to him, like one who knew not what the days might bring.
“Rosamunde,” he said, “I go to hold the mountain passes till Blanche and her men can send me succour.”
“But you have so few with you——”
“We are enough,” he said; “and if not enough, where lies the shame?”
She turned her head upon his shoulder with a gesture of impatience, a pouting of the mouth that did not escape him.
“Tristan, you are mad,” she pleaded, “to risk so much for those who have injured us.”
“God knows, I fought not against the poor,” he said, “but against the evil in high places. Now comes the hour when I may save the weak.”
Rosamunde broke away from him suddenly and stood apart, like one whose pride takes umbrage at a threat. Her eyes grew bright with the impatience of the moment, for, believing all storm clouds to have passed from the sky, she had drifted dreamily towards a haven of rest. The sudden revulsion made her rebel against an enterprise that to her seemed mad.
“Tristan,” she said, “you shall not go. Are my wishes nothing in this?”
The man’s face appeared wreathed in shadows. He looked at her sadly out of his dark eyes, as though baffled by a mood that he had not foreseen.
“Would you love a man,” he answered her, “who played the coward and fled from fighting for Christ and the Cross?”
“You are no coward,” she retorted hotly. “I, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, can swear to that. But as for this madness, I will not praise it; you can play the hero without being a fool.”
“It is not folly,” he said very patiently.
“But why tempt death,” she cried again, “because your hot courage spurs you on? Wait till the King and the Duchess come, till the Southern Marches teem with steel and a thousand banners blow to the wind.”
“By then,” he said, shaking his head, “Serjabil and his men will have crossed the mountains and given the countryside over to rapine.”
“What of the countryside?” she retorted, growing less generous as her impatience increased. “Who set the torch to the great forests, and burnt homes and hamlets in the cause of God?”
Tristan started and caught his breath, as though she had turned a sword against his heart.
“Why taunt me,” he said, “because I fought for you and Samson and the Seven Streams? It was against the ruffians of the Church that I fired the forest. God judge me if I did ill. The greater be my duty now to guard the weak against the strong.”
“Not so,” she said, with a flood of bitterness; “the sword is more to you than a woman’s heart. It is your glory that you love, your strength and your great fame. I, a mere woman, must give way to honour. For you are afraid, Tristan, lest men should jeer.”
Tristan clung by patience even though her taunts were the more bitter by reason of their ingratitude. Though he had imagined that Rosamunde would have sped him with brave words, even to death if God so willed it, he took her anger more as the anger of a child than the strong purpose of a grown woman. Therefore he stood out before her, convinced of honour, and sure in his own heart that she would turn to him when the impetuous mood had passed.
“Not for glory,” he said, “shall I leave you here. It is not easy to run from love.”
“Why go, then?” she cried, turning away her head, her hands playing with the rich girdle about her body. “Is duty the sorry nag that bears you hence? Before Heaven, Tristan, if you refuse me this, I will return to Holy Guard and live among ruins.”
His dark eyes followed her as she drifted to and fro in her blue gown over the brilliant grass. She was very lovely even in her anger, with her warm cheeks and her eager eyes. Yet Tristan, having a will more strong than her wrath, determined to take her at her wo
rd.
“So be it,” he said, solemnly enough; “I will send Telamon with you and twenty men. The Gloire will bear you straight to the sea; Lilias’s barge is moored in the shallows. Man can promise no safer place than Holy Guard; if the worst comes to the worst, you can sail for the north.”
Rosamunde looked at him, sudden wistfulness shining through the mask of wrath, as though she half doubted the truth of his words. There was no wavering of Tristan’s eyes, no loosening of the determined mouth. Her pride waxed in her as she gazed on his face, perhaps because she felt that she had earned his pity, in that she had failed him when he needed her love.
“So be it, then,” she said, turning away under the trees. “I shall be ready for Telamon before the sun is at noon.”
CHAPTER XLII
Like a proud star, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale had set in the far west, over the wilds and the deep woods that stretched towards the sea. Lilias’s forsaken barge had borne her away down the silver curves of the mighty Gloire, with Telamon at the helm and ten men toiling at the oars. From a tower on the walls of Agravale Tristan had watched the gilded poop disappear into the gloom of the woods. In anger Rosamunde had parted from him, because he had set his duty before her love and had dared to deny her the tyranny of tears. Tristan wondered, as he watched from the tower, whether he would behold her face again.
“To horse, to horse!”
Such was the trumpet’s cry that noon. Tristan and his men tightened up the girths, rode out from Agravale under the sun at its zenith, wound down the steep road towards the river, crossed the stone bridge, and held for the south. Their horses’ hoofs rang on the old Roman road that stretched over the meadows like a great beam. They had taken certain of the peasant folk with them as guides, men who knew all the mountain passes and the narrow defiles of St. Isidore’s Gate.
So the sun climbed, descended, and set in the west, beating on the distant peaks with vapours of crimson and gold. Knight Tristan rode at the head of his men, his eyes fixed on the far mountains, the purple slopes that rose from the plain, the icy glimmer of the snow-white heights. He rode as a man who considered death, to whom the unknown stretched out like an unsailed sea. There was great loneliness upon Tristan’s soul that evening, for all the love seemed to have left his life, and all his battlings to have ended in bitterness. In the hour of trial Rosamunde had failed him, had hid her face from him behind the mask of pride. Nor cared he greatly what might befall from that hour, since death would honour him when hope stood apart.
Night came with a round moon swimming in a sky of dusky azure studded with the faces of many stars. Tristan halted his men to rest them and their horses on the march, for though the hours were precious, he would not deny them the sleep that they needed. They off-saddled at a little shrine by the roadside, a shrine dedicated to St. Geneviève by some good matron dead and gone. Roses clambered about the walls and slim cypresses streaked the misty grass where a little pool caught the light of the moon. A grove of poplars stood near in a broad meadow, the night breeze playing in their mighty tops.
As for Tristan, he had no hope of sleep, for there were thoughts moving in his brain, tramping like restless sentinels to and fro. The night seemed full of ghostly voices, crying to him out of the dark. He heard his mother’s voice, even as he had heard it as a little child when his hands clung to the folds of her gown. Also he listened to Columbe weeping, as she had wept once in Purple Isle long ago. Yet Rosamunde’s clear tones topped them all. He remembered the songs he had heard her sing in distant Joyous Vale to the women and children of Ronan’s town. For him, perhaps, she would sing no more. Tristan found himself wondering in his heart whether she would weep if he died in the mountains. Perhaps her anger would melt away when she learnt that she had lost his love for ever.
Tristan passed the night alone under the stars, pacing to and fro on the white road, with the wind playing in the poplar tops. Often he stood leaning upon his spear, gazing towards the mountains whose snowy peaks gleamed like white marble in the distant south. Yonder in the yawning passes and under the huge and savage crags he would meet Serjabil and his men, rear up his shield against their lances. There was much of the soldier’s joy in the thought that his sword would be measured against the scimitar.
Soon the dawn came, a golden haze rising in the east. The poplars caught the streaming light; in the meadows silvery mists smoked up; the far woods glistened, seemed to tongue forth flame.
From the gloom of the north a faint sound shivered on the wind. Tristan heard it and stood erect, peering along the empty road that ran so straight under the tall trees. The sound seemed to grow with the rising dawn, to swell into the thunder of many hoofs, the clash and clangour of hurrying steel. Vague lightnings came flashing from the gloom, shield and helmet mimicking the east. Huge mist-wrapped figures loomed out of the north, mailed phantoms pressing through the vapoury dawn along the white road betwixt the trees. A trumpet sounded beside the shrine. Tristan’s men came crowding up through the long grass amid the burning cypresses.
A trumpet’s scream answered Tristan’s challenge. Along the road rolled a hundred spears behind Blanche the Duchess on her great white horse, the Banner of the Bleeding Heart blowing above. They came to a halt before the shrine amid an eddying cloud of dust. Tristan and his men ran to meet the Duchess, cheering her mightily with great good will.
Blanche, big-hearted woman that she was, had straightway turned when Percival had ridden in with Tristan’s message concerning the Saracens. She had sent a rider to overtake Lothaire, bidding him march south again with all his men. Not waiting for him to join her, she had used whip and spur in her gallant haste to bring Tristan succour. Only her bodyguard, some hundred spears, had followed her past Agravale towards the mountains.
Blanche climbed down from her jaded horse and met Tristan face to face on the dusty road. The soldiers on either side stood back out of rough respect to these two great ones whose hands were clasped in the cause of the Cross. Though Blanche was weary with hard riding, her splendid spirit seemed unquenched, her courage fresh as the broadening dawn. Her eyes were very bright as they gazed on Tristan’s: she smiled at him dearly, held out her hands.
“Old friend,” she said, “we meet again.”
Tristan went down on one knee in the road and kissed the hands that were stretched towards him. Was she not a woman to serve and honour, a woman who could strengthen a soldier’s heart and give him help in the hour of need? She had seen no madness in this ride of his, but rather the desire of an heroic heart to bear the brunt against heavy odds.
“Madame,” he said to her, still kneeling in the dust, “Heaven wills it, it seems, that Tristan le Sauvage should be your debtor.”
She drew her hands away from his, as though half unwilling to see him kneel to her.
“Rise up, Tristan,” she said; “it is my good fortune that gives me the privilege. Where is Rosamunde? Will you not lead me to her?”
As for Tristan, when he heard her speak Rosamunde’s name he went both red and white under his tanned skin. He was jealous for Rosamunde, yet half ashamed at having to justify her before the Duchess. He would not have confessed, even under torture, that Rosamunde had failed him in her love.
“Madame,” he said, rising up from his knees and squaring his great shoulders against the truth, “Rosamunde have I sent to Holy Guard, that she might be safe there against all mischance.”
Blanche had been watching Tristan’s face, the shifting thought clouds that played over his eyes, nor had his answer wholly deceived her.
“How?” she said. “Rosamunde at Holy Guard? Was it her will that you should go alone to this great venture, whence none may return?”
Tristan was silent for one brief moment. Yet Blanche had discovered much of the truth in that short silence that held him mute.
“I planned for the best,” he made haste to answer her. “Who knows what may happen to us in the mountains? Should I drag love into the van of battle, and cast such a pearl into Ser
jabil’s treasury? Nay, Madame Blanche, give me but fifty of your men, and I will hold the passes till Lothaire comes south.”
On Blanche’s face there was a mysterious light, as though she rejoiced over some heaven-sent boon. Her dark eyes shone under her silvery hair; her voice rang deep as she gave Tristan her answer.
“Not fifty, but a hundred shall you have,” she said, “and I, Blanche, will stand at your side.”
Tristan’s eyes met hers in one long look.
“Nay,” he said, “you are too noble a soul to be risked against Serjabil’s sword.”
“I am a woman,” she answered him very simply, “a woman who loves to stand by those who do not flinch when the wind blows keen. Am I better than my men, who give their blood for Christ and the Cross? No, I trow not. Who fears death when those most dear are on the brink of the grave?”
Tristan answered her not a word, for he was glad at heart of her great courage. He could have blessed God for such a woman. Did not a deep voice cry within him, “If only Rosamunde had spoken thus!”
CHAPTER XLIII
All that day and the next Tristan and the Duchess rode south from St. Geneviève’s shrine, through the woods and meadows, rich with the magic of many flowers. The tall grass seemed as a rare robe shot through with threads of diverse colours. In the woods the ilex and the beech lifted their broad domes towards the blue, and in the pastures a myriad aspens shivered in the breeze.
Towards the noon of the second day the lowlands stretched back towards the north. Tristan and his men came to a wilder region, where the woods grew dark beneath the shadows of the mountains. Through a multitude of poplars whistling in the wind, amid fields spread with poppies, yellow and red, the road curled through dense thickets of chestnut and of beech. Higher still, under the deepening darkness of the trees, the road dwindled to a grass-grown track, so that the armed men rode in single file, a silvery snake that wavered through the green. Higher still, the spruce and larch fretted the blue dome of the sky, and heavenwards towered the silver firs and great pines, sombre and huge of girth.
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