THE

Seven Streams

BY

WARWICK DEEPING

Author of “The Rust of Rome,” “The Red Saint,”

“Uther and Igraine,” etc. etc.

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED

London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

MCMXI

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO

My Dear Sister

KATHLEEN

This Dream Romance is Dedicated

“Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,

Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please.”

Spenser, The Faerie Queen.

“Dreams;

Which are the children of an idle brain

Begot of nothing but vain phantasy.”

Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet.

THE SEVEN STREAMS

CHAPTER I

For a night and a day Tristan le Sauvage had watched his arms before the high altar of the chapel of Purple Isle. For a night and a day he had seen the long tapers glimmering towards their silver sockets, under the painted roof. Dawn light and evening glow had shone through the latticed casements east and west, dusting the stones with colour, carving deep shadows from sculptured pillar and from moulded arch. Not a sound had broken the silence of the tombs. Alone before the Great Cross, Tristan had kept vigil, chastening his manhood for quest beyond the sea. Two months had passed since a great ship with gleaming sails had swooped like a falcon upon Purple Isle, and carried thence that white dove, Columbe the Fair.

The sun had descended in a whorl of crimson flame when Tristan rose up from before the altar, and passed out to his kinsfolk who had gathered at sunset in the chapel court. The moon had climbed the starry port of heaven. In the court lamps flickered, and white faces peered at him like pale flowers out of the gloom. The delicate finials of many cypresses were smitten with the moonlight; a thin perfume of spring quivered in the air.

Before the chapel gate stood Father Madan of the Isle, clad in his Mass robes, his white beard silvered by the light of the moon. Four acolytes stood round him with bell and aspergil, ewer and book. Maidens in white bore garlands of primrose and of violet on crosses of white wood. There was a deep silence through all the court, as Tristan came out from the inmost shadow, his head bowed over his broad chest.

Tristan le Sauvage was no lover of priests. Frocks and stoles were women’s gear. It was with no great grace that he went on his knees on the bare stones at Madan’s feet, while the old man stretched out his thin white hands over him like a snowy Druid uttering incantations under the stars.

“Son Tristan,” quoth the priest, with that innocent unction beloved of women, “hath the good God chastened thee for this thy quest?”

Tristan hated parade with the great sinews of his heart. He was a surly soul, a bad courtier at the crook of the knee.

“Son Tristan,” said the priest again, “the buckler of Faith awaits your arm.”

“I have sharpened my sword, O Father,” said the man on the stones.

Madan knew well this unpolished rock, the granite that loved the billow’s blow better than the honeyed voice of a lute. He forgave the untamed temper of youth, and blessed him as he knelt at his feet.

His kinsfolk gathered under the long shadows of the cypresses. Dame Joan, his mother, drew near, and kissed his lips. Her hands lay heavy upon his shoulders; her face shone white under her pure grey hair.

“Tristan,” said she, “the good saints strengthen you. Thrice blessed am I in the manhood of my son.”

“Mother,” he answered her simply enough, overshadowing her with his great strength, “God by your love has given me a good schooling. Therefore be comforted. Columbe, my sister, shall return to you again.”

When she had hung upon his bosom, Dame Joan kissed him, as did his sire and Lavaine, his brother. They were brave folk, simple of heart, open-souled towards Heaven. Love with them was as an eternal prayer winging at dawn and eve to the throne of God. Girded from the great world by the waste of waters, they lived their lives in the strong purity of virgin faith.

The full moon gazed on them as they passed down from the chapel towards the sea. A thousand pines thrust up their midnight spears towards the stars. Deep to the confines of the dusky sky the far sea glimmered, washing the island with a sheet of foam. Madan the monk led on the company, acolytes, maidens, and young men chanting together under the moon. Tristan walked at his mother’s side. With solemn song and the faint pulsing of the chapel bell, they brought him slowly towards the strand.

In a black inlet, bulwarked from the broad vigour of the sea, a galley lay moored beside a rude stone quay. The water was scolloped all with silver round the sable rocks. A great glistening highway stretched over the ocean towards the east.

By the galley’s bulwarks Tristan took leave of his mother and his sire. He sprang down behind the thwarts and took the tiller in his hand. The black sail climbed the mast; the long sweeps smote silver from the swirling pool. Madan stood forward and blessed him as the prow rose to the waves. Thus Tristan le Sauvage put out from Purple Isle, and followed the moon’s highway over the sea.

CHAPTER II

The tall hills of a strange land rose athwart the deepening azure of the second dawn. Spears of light fell streaming towards the sea, glittering upon the ever-tumbling waves that hurried onwards towards the west. The stars sped back behind the veil. The faint moon grew frail as a great silver net burdened with transient dew.

Tristan le Sauvage, steering the boat, sat with his eyes fixed upon the misty heights touched with the golden glories of the dawn. Before him the multitudinous waves leapt and tumbled, washing the bulwarks, plashing against the prow with a moist unrest. A light breeze bellied the black sail, set the cordage creaking and humming about the mast. The world seemed full of the awakening day and the sinuous and solemn splendour of the sea. The waves were troughed with opalescent light as they swept and heaved about the boat. There was a salt zest in the ocean’s breathing, a deep intake of strength into its panting heart.

The men at the benches watched Tristan le Sauvage as they dipped their sweeps. The dawn light shone upon his rugged face and the links of his hauberk. There was no uglier man in Purple Isle than Tristan le Sauvage. Nature had juggled with him from his earliest years. Of no great stature, he was like a tough oak, cumbrous, huge of trunk, and gnarled of limb. The long arms showed their great muscles even under the sleeves of his hauberk. His chest was as the front of some great rock; his heavy head seemed sunk betwixt his shoulders; his legs bowed as by the massive strength above. A pair of dusky eyes peered out with honest faith from a craggy, hairless countenance. The broad mouth was pursed up half morosely over the strong white teeth.

Such was the pilgrim who plied the tiller, helming the boat towards the broadening day. Tristan spoke seldom, crying now and again to Rolf the pilot, as the boat heaved and rolled over the waves. His eyes were fixed on the hills that rose above the waste of waters. Black cliffs, craggy and solemn, began to frown upon the sea. The far heights bristled with woodland, shimmering with magic mystery under the rising sun. The moist surge of the sea cheered on the galley towards the shore.

Tristan stood to the tiller, and scanned the strange coast under his hand. The wind freshened, the sail bellied from the mast, the toilers drew in their oars, and watched the coast-line rising from the foam. Like battlements of black marble, the cliffs towered above the blue shallows, with rocky pinnacle and forest spire smitten from the east with a glamour of gold. Precipice and wooded height were solitary as the sea itself. No tower crowned the headlands, no town lurked in the green shadows of the placid bays.

Rolf, old senator of the seas, stood forward in the prow, gazing at the line of heights. Straight to the east a narrow valley thrust upwards from the sea, walled on either hand with cliff and forest slope. Rolf hailed Tristan to the prow, and pointed with knotted finger to the shore.

“The Land of the Seven Streams, sir,” he said to him. “I know these cliffs of old. See yonder valley; the Silver Snake runs therein, a great river and a strong. The stars have steered us well. Hold for the opening in the cliffs; we can ride in over the bar.”

Running fast on the backs of the billows, they came to where a counter current beat upon the prow, fretting the sea into contending streams. It was where the river charged the tide. The galley swerved and faltered; the sail flapped against the mast.

“Out sweeps,” came Rolf’s hail from the prow. “Pull, lads; ware rocks to the north. The passage lies ahead.”

With the sail lowered and much straining of oars, they swung in past the rocky barriers where the waves chafed and broke in foam. The great cliffs towered upon either hand, solemn and stupendous, tufted with dwarf oaks, topped with pines. Once within the inlet, the galley ran smoothly on the broad bosom of the river, whose curves smote landwards into forest gloom.

The men rested on their oars while Tristan climbed into the prow and stood beside Rolf the seaman, looking forth over crag and forest. No plume of smoke ascended to the sky, no roofs shone out amid the green. The place was steeped in the grandeur of solitude, and there was no sound to break the silence save the perpetual plaining of the sea.

Tristan questioned the old man at his side; he had grown grey under many winter skies over stormy seas; his beard was as the foam below the bluff beak of a ship.

“Whence comes this river?” he asked him.

“Sir,” he answered, “this great river feeds upon the Seven Streams, and like a vast snake, takes them all into its belly. We have entered in at the sea gate of the land.”

“Who are its rulers?”

“Sir, there are many lords in the land, holding their fiefs direct from the King. Southwards lies the duchy of La Marche Montagne, northwards the duchy of Blanche the Bold.”

Tristan pondered his words, as the river sped past them to the sea.

“Hold on,” he said, “and bear me higher into the heart of the land. What better path for us than this broad stream?”

As they passed on that day the heights descended, spreading eastwards into wooded hills. The land grew milder and more green of face. Ancient trees sentinelled the river; broad valleys swept from it under the sapphire sky. Hills grey with olives, dusky with cypresses and firs, rose from green meadows, sleek and brilliant under the sun.

About noon, they rounded a rocky point, where myrtles clambered up the bluff brow of the hill. In the northern shallows they saw a boat moored and a peasant fishing. As the galley drew near with a steady pulse of oars, Tristan stood in the prow and hailed the man over the water. The fisherman fingered his line, and sat staring none too trustfully at the galley sliding towards him with ripples prattling at its prow. Strange ships sailed seldom into those quiet waters; the bloody deeds of Norse pirates still lived in the heart of the peasantry.

Tristan, seeing the man’s distrust, tossed him a piece of silver from the leather purse at his girdle. The fisher groped for it amid the cordage at the bottom of the boat. Questioned, he told them of the knights and barons of those parts, of the castles and hamlets therein, of the roads and forest ways. His lord was a certain Sir Parsival, who held a tower perched upon a neighbouring hill. Lastly, he described the region known as La Vallée Joyeuse, a rich and pleasant pasture land, where vineyards purpled the hills, and Sir Ronan the Peaceful had his home.

Tristan, leaning on his sword, bade his men pole in towards the northern bank, where a stretch of meadowland swept to the myrtle thickets that hid the rocks. The water lay still as glass in the shallows. The woods cast purple shadows athwart the stream, and the meads stood thick with many flowers. The galley ran aground in a little inlet where reeds and rushes bearded the bank. Tristan leapt from the prow, found sure footing, and turned with a smile to face his men.

“Good voyage and a clean sea to you,” he said.

They crowded to the bulwarks with many rough and rugged prayers, holding up their caps to him, proffering their service. Grizzled sea-dogs that they were, they loved, him, even because he was strong and generous, and a giant in arms. Like Homeric mariners gathering round Ulysses at the entry to Hades, they prayed him to share with them the perils of the unknown. Tristan put them off with bluff but unbending gratitude. They would have hindered him, sea-dragons that they were. Such a pilgrimage as his required but a single sword.

“Good men that you are,” he said, buckling his shield over his shoulders, “you ride the waves better than the back of a horse. When I have need of brown sails and a strong keel, I will send to Purple Isle and call you over. To my sire and to Dame Joan, my mother, commend me.”

They tossed their rough blessings on him as he climbed the bank, rattled the sweeps in the rowlocks, waved their fur-lined caps. Tristan saluted them with his drawn sword, a warm colour on his ugly face. They were still watching him and waving their brown fists when he disappeared from their sight into the woods.

There was a strenuous tone in the man’s stout heart that day. The world lay open at his feet, like a broad and glorious plain, unfolding its many phases to his ken. Tristan, great boyish Titan, with a heart of gold, welcomed the sun as it smote through branches upon his face. He was glad of the woods and of their solemn liberty, glad of the hills, and the broad, beaming valleys. Purple Isle had held him overlong in its girdle of foam. The wide world smiled on him; the beacon of romance burnt red upon the hills.

He followed the path that morning that the peasant had described to him, a path that wound over uplands under the shadows of ancient trees. The woods were virgin to Tristan’s heart. There were no such broad-shouldered giants in Purple Isle with its waving pines and stunted myrtles. The great oaks stood to him for sinew and strength. Their gnarled loins spoke of the sap of centuries, their limbs of a hundred battles with the wind. Youth ran riot in him that April day. He was as a Bacchanal intoxicated with the wine of being. He smote the great trees as he passed, bluff, open-handed buffets that would have shaken a Hercules. Once, in the joy of strength, he grappled an oak sapling as he would have grappled a python, wrestled with it, bent it beneath the might of his broad back till the stem splintered and surrendered to his grip. He tossed the broken tree aside with the smile of a conqueror, strode on through the woods, singing as he went.

He had come to the brim of a valley, and had halted to gaze over the meadows with their dark knolls of trees, when a shrill cry stirred him like a wail of a hostile trumpet. Wild and inarticulate, it eddied through the woods, terror breathing in the cry, as of life struggling in the toils of death. The voice grew and gathered, died again into an eerie whimper. Tristan, stiff as a wooden image, heard it with quickened pulses and a sudden solemnity that overspread his countenance like a cloud.

Pushing through a thicket of hollies, he came to a great break in the woods, where the forest gloom gave place to an open valley, a golden bowl brimming with sunlight. In green meadows a castle stood amid the windings of a stream. Peace seemed throned above the olive thickets, the shimmering water, and the gilded meadows. Yet from a stone bridge that linked the sandy highway where it crossed the stream, there rose other voices to denounce the dream.

Tristan, standing under the woodshawe, beheld a knot of figures swaying to and fro over the keystone of the bridge. Swords were tossing, men struggling together betwixt the parapets. The few seemed caught and trampled by the many. Even as he watched, a horseman broke from the pool of grappling, foining figures, and galloped northwards up the sandy road. An archer, standing on the parapet of the bridge, loosed a shaft at the fugitive, a shaft that found its billet in the rider’s back. Tristan saw him thrust his arms to the sky, twist in the saddle, and fall heavily to earth. His horse, whinnying with fear, left the high road, and cantered over the fields towards the thicket where Tristan stood.

Tristan was not a youth given to the subtle balancing of thought. Being barren of all fear, save the fear of God, he obeyed without debate the prick of impulse. Leaving the thicket, he hallooed to the riderless brute trotting towards him over the meadows. The horse halted, tossed up his head with ears agog, pawed the earth as he cast about from side to side. It was a superb beast, black as a raven, with a single white star on the forehead. Tristan called to him, advancing step by step. There was a magic in the man that made all wild things trust him and obey. The great beast suffered him to approach over the grass. Tristan’s hand touched the sleek, foam-flecked muzzle. He caressed the brute’s ears, took firm hold of the bridle, mounted at one spring, knew himself the master.

“God helps him who helps himself,” he said, with a certain quaint sententiousness, running his fingers through the long black mane.

Being imbued, despite his strenuous vigour, with some hard-headedness of discretion, he ignored the blood-spilling in the valley, content to shepherd the prize to his own good cause. Turning back into the woods, he rode southwards from the place, keeping diligent watch, however, lest any hot-handed gentleman should be following on his heels. Seemingly they were busied with the purging of their own pastures, for Tristan saw no more of them that day.

CHAPTER III

Tristan le Sauvage slept that night in the woods. He had discovered a flask of wine and a well-stocked wallet slung to the horse’s saddle, an added boon to the day’s capture. The air lay mild that night as a June kiss on the earth’s round cheek. Tristan, with his saddle propped against a tree, and the stars glittering above the forest, fell asleep thinking of Purple Isle and the far faces of his kinsfolk.

With the first pulse of dawn in the east, he was up and astir with the zest of the hour. The woods were full of golden vapour, of dew and the chanting of birds. A stream sang under the boughs, purling and foaming over a broad ledge of stone into a misty pool. A blue sky glimmered above the glistening tree-tops; the dwindling woodways quivered with the multitudinous madrigals of the dawn.

Tristan went down and sprang into the pool. He tossed and turned, smote wheels of spray with his great arms, ploughed and furrowed the quaking water. The blood leapt in him at the cold kisses of the pool. Ruddy and buoyant, he clambered out into the sunlight, his naked strength glistening with the clean dew gotten of his swim. The muscles rippled under the gleaming skin. Tossing his great arms, expanding his deep chest, he ran barefooted over the mossy grass. A drooping bough swept low to tempt his fingers. He twisted the limb from the trunk, tossed it like a lance from hand to hand, leaping and glorying in the splendour of his strength.

Anon, he armed himself, knelt down beside his horse to pray. A quaint calm fell instant upon his shoulders; the boisterous temper of his mood sank like a sea beneath the benediction of a god. It was in solitude, by sea or forest, that such a man as Tristan opened his heart to Heaven. His was not a soul that bartered through carved screens for penitence and peace. His face caught a radiance from the vaultings of the trees. St. Cyprienne, with her dusky eyes and martyr’s crown, received the woman’s portion of his prayer.

When he had broken fast and watered his horse at the pool, he sallied from the thickets with the breath of the dawn beating upon his mouth. Around him ran wooded hills, streams, and pastures dusted thick with flowers. The odours of spring burdened the breeze. In the distance the purple of the heights that circled La Vallée Joyeuse clove the azure of the sky.

As Tristan rode through the wilds that day, following a grass-grown track that marked the grave of a Roman road, he came to a little stone shrine, standing by the wayside under the arms of a granite cross. A larch thicket hedged the place with a thin gloom. A fountain bubbled near, oozing away amid green rushes and mossy grass.

At the foot of the stone cross squatted a man in a grey cloak, with a bell at his girdle and a bag of undressed ox hide in his lap. Tristan stared with unstinted but momentary disrelish at the figure beside the shrine. The man was a leper, and hideous even in the grip of a more than hideous disease. His swollen and distorted face was grotesque as some evil head carved by a mason’s chisel. The brows were swollen over the watery eyes, the mouth disfigured, the skin, mined by many sores. Even the hands were cankered and deformed; the man was as grim an image as misfortune could display.

Tristan, out of sheer pity of heart, drew rein to gaze at this outcast with furrowed brows. Though the tide of youth ran strong in his body, he was not the slave of that selfish health that ignores despair and comprehends not pain. The man by the cross held up his bag with a mute gesture of appeal. Tristan, fumbling in the depths of his purse, drew forth alms with a flash of pity.

The leper, keen to scent honour upon the thorny track of life, gathered the tokens of charity from the grass with hideous hands. He lifted up a cracked and husky voice, blessed Tristan, and wished him God-speed.

“The holy saints defend you, messire,” he said. “It is long since a Christian took pity on my soul.”

Tristan, ignorant of all leprous lore, and the unsavoury nature of such a wanderer, questioned him concerning La Vallée Joyeuse, and the length of the road that led that way. This Lazarus was very human under his thickened skin. Alms alone did not dazzle his vision. The sick are ever hungry for sympathy, the instinctive pity that shines from the soul. The leper had as long a tongue as most men, though the weapon had grown rusty for lack of use.

“I tread the road towards La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said, rising from before the cross; “if a friend will suffer my infirmities, I can play the guide for a league or more.”

Tristan climbed from the horse with a smile on his face. There was no reflective pride within his heart.

“Mount up, friend,” he said; “my legs are lustier than yours, I wager.”

Scorning debate in his masterful way, he held the stirrup and heeled the man up. The black horse snorted and tossed his mane, as though despising so ragged a burden. Tristan ruled him with hand and voice. If the master chose chivalry, the beast could obey.

In this fashion they set out together, the leper straddling the soldier’s horse, Tristan walking like a groom at his side. They were soon accorded in spirit and speech, for a smile on the lips makes the whole world kin. The leper had lived as a merchant in his day, till disease had beggared him and left him an outcast. He had turned pilgrim, so he said, to visit a certain holy well, whose waters were magical to recover the sick. The shrine lay by the northern seas. Many great miracles had been wrought at this well, and pious folk cleansed of many a malady. Of the Land of the Seven Streams the leper had much to tell; he had gathered shrewd gossip, as he travelled north.

“Good friend,” he said, when Tristan questioned him, “I know neither the temper nor the colour of your sword. If you carry a white heart and travel for peace, I would pray you to beware of La Vallée Joyeuse.”

Tristan, frank soul, unfolded without fear the purpose of his quest. He told the man of Columbe his sister, and of the vow he had sworn to recover her body.

“Where the waves run white,” he said, “there may the voyager find the wrecked ones who have fallen in stormy waters. If this same valley is a perilous region, who knows but that I may win some news of my quest.”

“Friend,” said the leper, with his hand on his bell, “you misread the riddle. Listen, and I will explain.”

With honest despatch he uncovered to Tristan the tone and temper of the Seven Streams. As he told his tale that green spring day, his hoarse raven’s croak made the theme more sombre, prophetic of the clouds that shadowed the land.

“You have given me courtesy, messire,” he said; “I return you good counsel, a rare commodity when properly handled. The lords and peasant folk of this same land have denied their faith to our Great Father the Pope. They have taken heresy into their hearts; have denied in the Sacrameant the flesh and blood of our Lord. Even in his wrath, the Pope was merciful, deeming them ignorant and seduced by pride. He sent out his legate and his missionaries into the land, but the rude folk here would have none of their preaching. So a crusade has been called against the province, and swords are shining in the Southern Marches.”

Tristan, rebel at heart, questioned the justice of such a crusade.

“By God’s light,” he said, “these priests are over meddlesome with the souls of others. Tell it not in Gath, my friend, but I have no great love for men in petticoats.”

The leper grimaced at him with his misshapen mouth.

“Heresy or no heresy, messire,” he said, “they have spilt holy blood here. I had the news on this road this morning. The deed was done but yesterday.”

“Ha!” quoth Tristan, staring in the man’s face.

“They have slain the Pope’s legate. God have mercy on them, for the Church knows little of that virtue.”

Tristan remembered the wild cry in the woods, the fight by the bridge, the slain man whose horse he had taken. There was new significance in the scene to him. He questioned the leper as to the churchman’s end.

“The old tale,” he said. “The priest trifled with a certain knight’s daughter, whose tower stands westwards towards the sea. There was quick vengeance afoot. The knight and his men followed fast after the legate’s company, ambuscaded them, and put the whole rout to the sword.”

“By God,” said Tristan, smiling in his eyes, “they were well served for the deed. I would have slain the Pope for a less dishonour.”

They had passed a league or more in company, and were crossing a heath open and bleak to wind and sky. The leper reined in the horse on a sudden, climbed from the saddle, gave the bridle into Tristan’s hand. He drew his cowl down over his distorted face, and trudged on wearily, like one whose feet were weighted with despair.

“Therefore, messire,” he said, “you may gather that there is like to be fire and sword in La Vallée Joyeuse. As for me, my lamp burns dim; I must cherish it that the good God may trim the flame at St. Ursuline’s Well. Pray for one, messire, who is often sad and heavy of heart.”

“Friend,” said Tristan, “my prayers are yours for what they are worth. Doubt not that if strength could cleanse you, you should be fresh and clean as a new-budded rose.”

They had come to the rim of the sandy heath, where the ground broke abruptly into rocky slopes, plunging downwards under thickets of arbutus and of pine. Four roads crossed at a spot where a great wooden crucifix stretched out its painted arms athwart the sky. The leper climbed a little knoll rising from a pool of golden broom, and pointed Tristan southwards over the scene.

At their feet lay a great valley, a broad bowl brimming with golden light. Its depths were chequered with woods and meadows, pools set like lapis lazuli in an emerald throne. A lake lay under the shadow of the hills. Heights girded the valley on every hand, save where a river like a giant’s sword clove a deep defile through the hills.

Tristan stood silent in the sun, and gazed at the valley under his hand. It was as a new world to him; this rich cup of the earth, brimming with the wine of beauty, sparkled with many colours in the hand of Romance. The tall heights, the blown cloud banners overhead, the dusky woods smiling and frowning alternate under the sun, these were as strange music to him, melting with many tones into the purple distance of the south.

The leper stood at his side in silence. He had been watching Tristan’s face, with the bloom of youth thereon, pondering the while on the misery of his own hard lot. The world and the splendour thereof mocked his shrivelled and repulsive skin. As for Tristan, he seemed like a young god destined to trample down fate with the serene calm of a fearless fortune. The leper turned from the warm south with the bitterness of a man who beholds life’s pathway curling towards the grave.

“Yonder, messire, is La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said. “The saints defend you. As for me, I wander on towards death.”

They took leave of each other there; the leper hobbling away with eyes down-turned, his bell jangling at his thigh. Tristan, full of a great-hearted pity, watched him with a smile upon his mouth. He felt his own hale body warm to the wind, his face fresh as dew-washed grass. The man with his sores and his lonely despair loomed like a dark cloud over the sun.

Tristan cast a last glance at him over his shoulder as he descended the road. The leper had drawn to the great cross where it towered solitary under the open sky. He had fallen on his knees at the foot thereof, and clasped the beam with his arms. He was kneeling thus when Tristan left him, clinging like a wrecked voyager to the feet of the Christ.

CHAPTER IV

Tristan rode on down the sandy road, pondering what the leper had told him that morning concerning Joyous Vale, how the valley lay in peril of the sword. These priests, he vowed in his own heart, were too given to meddling with the souls of others. For a few subtilties twisted from a theologian’s tongue, they would let war loose upon an innocent province, and teach with violence what they could not teach with truth. Tristan was not a man who needed the superfluous unction of a priest’s pardon.

Rounding a great rock that overhung the road, he saw Sir Ronan’s hold smile up at him from beside the lake. About the walls and terraces rose many roofs, the ruddy hoods of many houses gathered about their giant sire. The place looked peaceful as a child asleep, bowered round with green, touched by the waters of the lake. Pastures pillared with poplars and aspens stretched towards the darker confines of the woods.

Tristan, glad in his heart of the beauty of it all, followed the road where it plunged abruptly into a thicket of pines. There was a patient gloom under the sweeper boughs. Squirrels ran ruddy-coated up the trees, peering black-eyed at him as he passed, and gorse ringed the dark aisles with gold.

As Tristan rode through the pine wood that day, he heard the sound of singing coming down to him upon the breeze. It was a woman’s voice that sounded through the woods, so richly that the tall trees listened and smiled under the noon sun. Tristan drew rein on the grass by the road. He had never heard such a voice before, a voice that set the welkin quivering as with vibrations of tremulous light.

Riding on again with a smile on his face, he saw the woodland break away before the meadows of the town. The sky grew broad above the trees, and still the rich voice sounded through, now hushed, now rising like a lark towards the clouds. Tristan could catch the words of the song as he walked his horse over the spongy turf.

Rounding a bank of furze in bloom, he saw under the shade of a cedar tree a ruined shrine grown round with thorns. Many flowers were a-bloom in the grass, and a rivulet went splashing down towards the great lake in the valley. A gradual slope heaved away from the wood, and by the shrine in the long grass a woman sat on a fallen stone, with her face turned towards the town.

Tristan dismounted, and, having tethered his horse, he stood under cover of the bank of furze and watched the woman by the shrine. She had ceased her singing, like one whose thoughts were too deep and solemn for further song. She was sitting with her chin upon her palms, staring into the distant south. Tristan saw the curve of her neck, white and clear as the moon’s rim, the amber of her netted hair, the rich folds of her green gown.

Now Tristan was not a woman’s man, and in Purple Isle his ugly face had won him little favour among the girls. He remembered how Grizzel, the fishwife’s child, black of eye and red of face, had mocked and taunted him on the moors, with her bare-legged wenches at her back. He remembered how he had wished them men for the sake of the clods they had thrown at his head. Yet though the woman by the shrine was as none of these, he wavered a moment behind the bank, as though half in awe of her because she was fair.

Hearing his footsteps in the grass, she turned—and saw him, and rose up from the stone. She was as tall as Tristan, and older than he was both in face and years and in knowledge of life. Her golden hair was knotted up in a caul, her green gown dusted with violets and bordered with blue.

She seemed to shake the thoughts out of her heart as she rose up and looked Tristan over. Yet there was no aloofness in her eyes, nay, her very soul seemed to shine therein as she stood considering his face. She smiled a little as she saw the bronzed, uncomely countenance somewhat abashed and sullen before her.

“Would you speak with me?” she asked.

Tristan was mute for the moment, like one whose words stumbled one against each other.

“We are strangers,” she added, still smiling at him out of her great eyes; “is my speech foreign to your ears?”

Perhaps it was her complete fearlessness of manner that smote Tristan from the first moment that she spoke to him. An atmosphere of stateliness seemed to surround her, an intangible magic that held him despite his strength. Though he could crush the brow of an ox with his fist, he seemed half in awe of the woman whose face, with all its fairness, showed no fear.

“Madame,” he said, squaring his shoulders, “though a stranger here, your words are my words. Tristan le Sauvage is my name, and I have come from Purple Isle, over the sea. For the rest, I have a quest upon me, and I carry a sword.”

There was a species of defiance in his voice, as though he viewed the subtler sex with a boy’s suspicions. Nor was the meaning of his mood lost upon the woman.

Matching frankness with simplicity, she gave him welcome to the Land of the Seven Streams.

“Friend,” she said, very openly, “welcome to Joyous Vale, you and your sword. I, Rosamunde, am the lady of this valley; you may see my husband’s tower yonder, amid the trees. Our guest table waits for strangers—who would tarry for a season.”

Tristan thanked her, and turned towards his horse.

“I am beholden to you,” he said, with that rough shyness which gave to his face a certain charm, “for in the Seven Streams I know no man and am known of none.”

So, when he had taken his horse, and joined her by the ruined shrine, they passed down together over the meadows towards the town.

CHAPTER V

Tristan grew the more bewitched by the woman’s face as they passed on towards the lake together. The lips were thin, tinged slightly with scorn, yet very tender when she smiled. The eyes were large and of a greenish blue. There was a rich, round beauty, upon the face, the rose tint of the skin warm and sensuous as the bloom upon fruit. She was very slim where the girdle ran, but big of bosom and long of limb.

Nor was it the beauty alone that made Tristan marvel. A sadness hovered there, a hidden meaning, that his unlettered senses failed to fathom. Mystery! Such the impress she gave to his mind, like the tragic tone of some antique woe. She seemed a woman to whom life should prove sweet. Yet she had tasted of bitterness, so Tristan thought.

The meadows rippled like golden cloth spread under the trees for a queen to tread. A thousand aspens shivered in the sunlight, their fluttering melancholy chilling the air as with the sound of rain. Poplars towered towards the blue. By the lake stood a thicket of gnarled figs, their broad leaves dappled over with gold.

Rosamunde, Lady of La Vallée Joyeuse, drew Tristan’s tale from him as they walked the meadows. Her swift simplicity was as a magic mirror, wherein all creatures showed her their thoughts. Tristan could but confess to her straight from his soul as he looked into the unwavering depths of her eyes. Not being burdened with the reflective sense, he flung his words in the welkin’s face, with the candour of one who had no shame to fear.

“We are but woodlanders here,” she said at the end. “As for the wide world, we are walled from its ken. This quest of yours troubles my knowledge. To me, it is like seeking a solitary flower in a trackless wild.”

“The darker the way, madame,” he answered her, “the more splendid the quest.”

She smiled suddenly, and her fine mouth softened.

“You have the heart of youth in you,” she said, “the heart that never tires on the road.”

“I am strong, madame,” he said, very simply.

“We women love strength.”

“And youth?”

“To me, youth is strength,” she answered, “age—weakness. Only those are strong who keep their hearts young. As for rusty age, it is the season of discretion, of puling sapience, and unkindling courage.”

She seemed to talk beyond the present, as though her thoughts were high in the heavens. Tristan could not tell what was in her heart, save that she seemed sad, full of unrest. It was as though her words were not for him, but for some other soul in a far-off land.

“My life is my sister’s,” he said, with an air of strength. “Though my hair grows grey, madame, I shall seek her out.”

“Happy sister,” she said, with a smile.

“Happy brother,” he retorted, running his hand over the horse’s black mane.

“Ah, Tristan,” she said, with strange motherliness in voice and mood, “there will come a day when some woman will be happy with a heart such as yours. If for a sister you will dare so much, what will your faith be to one dearer than all the sisters who tread the world?”

They had come to the town, sunk deep in gardens beside the lake. Its roofs were ruddy as an autumn orchard, its highways paved with white stones; peace seemed to cover it, and great content. No battlements frowned black-browed over the meadows. Beauty and simple truth sat throned in its calm heart.

As for Rosamunde, she was queen therein; Tristan gathered as much before they had gone fifty paces of the grey, white stones. Her empire lay with the people’s hearts. She was mother, lady, friend to all. Children ran to her when they saw her face. She had a kiss, a smile, an outstretched hand for each. Some brought her flowers, posies of red and white, which Tristan, taking, laid within his shield. The women beamed from doorways as she passed. The peasants louted to her, warm homage on their sun-tanned faces. She had a word, a smile of sympathy for all. That they loved her, Tristan could reason well.

“To-day, Samson comes to us,” she said to those she passed, “to-night, friends, gather to the castle. Samson will speak to us there. Bring with you your children. They must share the truth.”

Tristan, forgetful of the mild eyes that stared at him, a stranger in Joyous Vale, wondered in his heart who Samson was. Perhaps a priest, a minstrel, an arch-heretic. If these good folk were apostates, he could praise their heresy. Sin, poverty, and shame had little heritage in Joyous Vale. He saw no beggars in the streets, no rags, no misery, no unclean thing. The faces round him were as fresh as May, serene and simple, harbingers of good. If this same Samson had wrought all this, surely of all men he could be counted happy.

In this wise, leading his black horse by the bridle, Tristan came with Rosamunde to her husband’s home. Tristan was not unloth to see this Ronan, whose wife she was. One truth he had gathered well: Columbe, his sister, was not in Joyous Vale.

CHAPTER VI

Many a year had passed since the rough folk of the Seven Streams had first murmured against the sleek and masterful priests whose god seemed the god of wine-bibbing and of greed. Arrogance and luxury and all manner of uncleanness had spread through the abbeys of the land, staining the robes of the Church with scarlet, tainting every holy place. Charity had become as naught; lust and avarice had walked hand in hand; tyranny and violence had reigned together.

Thus through many long years there had been a great sundering of the sympathies of the people from the tall towers and gorgeous palaces of the Church. Not openly had the slow change come, but with stealth, even as the earth’s crust is mined by the tunnelling of subterranean streams. Celibacy, that perilous plant, had cast its unclean tendrils over the land, bearing dark fruit in many a solemn haunt, making vain show, hiding the bane beneath. Slowly all reverence had elapsed, and fear had been swallowed up in hate. From the broad lands and the dark forests teeming with wild beasts, murmurings, like the moanings of the wind, had spread and gathered through the Seven Streams.

Then Samson had come, like some tall demigod out of the dark unknown. Was it not told that all the wisdom of the East had been hoarded and stored within his brain? The philosophic lore of Greece was his. The sages of Egypt and the grey fathers of the Church had poured their mystic learning into his soul. Plotinus and Augustine, philosopher and Christian patriarch, had mingled in him their spiritual zeal. Half priest, half poet, half soldier, and half seer, he had lifted his voice in the Seven Streams, preaching Christ crucified, even as the Galileans had preached of old.

To him the rude instincts of the peasantry had risen, eager and passionate, hungering for the truth. Serf and lord had mingled in one cause. Many a good married priest, condemned because his heart was a father’s heart, had come to Samson, zealous for the faith. Then the deep thunder of the Great Pontificate had echoed over the streams and mountains. Synod and council had dared the strife; church and grave had been sealed up fast; anathema and interdict had followed on. The dead had been buried in unhallowed ground; the bread and wine had been denied the land. Still Samson had preached, so that the province followed him, even till the great abbeys were empty and in ruins, the shrines and churches given to the dust. So fierce and turbulent had waxed the storm that monk and priest had fled to the far south, fearing the people and the people’s enmity.

That same evening when Tristan came to Joyous Vale there was a gathering of the peasantry on the castle terrace to hear Samson the Heretic hold forth. He had ridden in towards vespers, a big man, cowled and cloaked, on a gaunt grey mare. By custom, a room had been set apart for him in Ronan’s tower, to serve as an oratory and cell. Here he could retreat like a hermit to his cave, and refresh in solitude both the flesh and the spirit, like the reasonable Christian that he was.

Above the terrace, the grey walls of the tower, crusted with lichen, rose towards the azure of the evening sky. A great silence covered the valley, save for the bleating of sheep in the meadows, the cry of the lapwing from the marshes. Distance purpled the far horizon; the woods stood wondrous green and fair. Peace prevailed over garden and garth; as yet there was no muttering of war beyond the hills.

Rosamunde sat in a great carved chair, draped at the back with scarlet cloth. Ronan her husband stood at her side. He was a lean man, with prominent shoulders, shallow eyes, and a cold mouth. The peasant folk sat on the benches before them. Rosamunde’s women were at her feet.

Tristan had throned himself on the wall where cactuses grew in urns of stone and gillyflowers flourished, yellow and red. He was watching Rosamunde and Ronan her lord. The man by the chair pleased Tristan little. The hollow chest, the sullen eye promised nothing virile in the matter of arms. It puzzled Tristan how he had won such a wife, for they were as a rose and a mandrake bound up together.

His cogitations were ended by the opening of a door. Samson in his black robe came out on the terrace. A wooden cross hung at his girdle; he wore leather sandals and an iron chain round his neck. Waving the peasant folk back as they thronged him, he took a stool of cedar wood that stood by the wall. Putting back the cowl from off his face, he gazed round on those who awaited his words.

Though a seeming monk, he wore no tonsure; the black hair was cropped close to the massive head. Seated there in the western glow, he looked like a Homeric hero with the face of a Jove. The eyes were black, bright as polished stone. The long jaw curved prominently under the thin, straight mouth. The brows met in a black line over the nose. A mass of passion and virile power, he faced the peasantry like a prophet of God.

As Tristan watched him, he began to speak, moving his hands to time his words. His voice bewitched from the first sound, and the simple folk before him were as still as stones. Even Tristan forgot Dame Rosamunde’s face.

Samson’s theme was simple and strong, yet grand in its bold simplicity. He expounded the pure spirit of the Christian creed, brushed aside dogmas, denounced outward forms. His convictions were great, his scorn as powerful. Greed in high places, luxury and lust, pride and simony, these were his victims. Casting Christ’s ideals against the pomp of the Church, he mined the rotten fabric with his tongue.

“People of La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said, “clean hearts avail with Heaven, clean souls, clean lives. Labour in the fields is a prayer to God. Live that you may not fear death; live that your lives may demand entry into Heaven. Actions build the stairway up to God, good deeds, pure thoughts. Believe not those who promise you salvation with hired prayers and the melting of much wax. Gold cannot bribe God. The Church’s wings cannot waft you into paradise if you are weighted with the iron girdle of your sins. Pardons, penitences, the ringing of bells, these are but mummeries to deceive your souls. Serve God in your hearts, and you will have no need of a Pope.”

Tristan’s eyes had wandered from the preacher to Rosamunde’s face. Its expression stirred him, even as a falling star smites the vision of one watching the night sky. The woman’s eyes were fixed on Samson’s face, with a certain passionate intentness that made Tristan wonder. The half-petulant curve had vanished from her mouth. A warm radiance seemed to burn upon her cheeks; her eyes were more bright than the stones at her throat.

By sudden instinct Tristan glanced at Ronan, who stood beside Rosamunde, leaning on her chair. The man’s narrow face was half in shadow. He was watching his wife with a curious stare, fingering his chin, his thin lips working. He appeared to be studying the play of thought on her face, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. More than once he cast a rapid glance at the preacher, like the glance a jealous hound casts at a rival.

To Tristan there was a strange underchant to the song, a secret movement he could not catch. Samson’s eyes were on the people before him, Rosamunde’s eyes on Samson’s face, Lord Ronan’s on the face of his wife. Tristan watched the three with his instincts groping in the dusk. He listened no more to the preacher’s words, but watched in silence the play before him.

The sun had ridden low upon the hills. In the gardens and thickets beneath the terrace a hundred birds made their vesper song. Shadows, purple and gold, increased on the lake. In the west, the moon was heaving up a broad shoulder above the world. A great silence descended like dew out of the heavens. Odours of rose and myrtle flooded the air.

From his vigil, Tristan woke to find the peasantry moving, Samson standing alone by the wall. The man had drawn down his cowl and re-knotted his girdle. He passed back slowly towards the door, walking gravely with his chin on his chest. Tristan was watching Rosamunde’s face. He saw her take a deep breath under her robe, her hands hanging limp over the carved rails of her chair. Her head seemed to droop on the scarlet cushion, as she watched Samson under half-closed lids. The town showed dim in the green gloom beneath, like white coral glimmering under the sea. An hour passed, and found Tristan on the terrace. Far beneath the lake shimmered, touched by the rising light of the moon. The cry of wild duck came from the shallows. In the thickets a choir of nightingales had broken the silence together.

On the terrace, Tristan had drawn beneath the shade of a cypress, that rose like a spire from the garden beneath. He was leaning his chin on his crossed forearms, staring out over the scene. The valley was as a battleground betwixt moonlight and gloom. The hill-tops led the silver host on, the water gleamed with the beat of their feet. In the deeps of the woods and the hollows of the hills the gloom kept the banners of the night unfurled.

There was a rough melancholy in Tristan’s mood. Samson’s words were as the noise of swords dinning perpetually within his brain. A vigorous zest breathed in the creed, a flash of the green woods, a scent of the sea. The bold truths of the man’s harangue were woven in his thought like a crown round Rosamunde’s brow. Her large eyes haunted him, wistful and brave. He remembered also her husband’s face, with its lack-lustre malice, its cold distrust. There was some romance in this heretical crown with the great stones set in its band, the treacherous opal scowling yellow and green, the sapphire blue and bold in the sun, the ruby red with its passionate fire.

Two voices came to Tristan out of the gloom, as he loitered on the terrace under the stars. Hunching his shoulders, he drew towards the tree. The voices came from the garden below, where there was a yew walk by the wall.

The first voice was Rosamunde’s; Tristan caught the mellow tones out of the dark. Anger flooded it, to judge by its temper. A second voice echoed the woman’s, a cold drawl, vain yet bitter. It was the Lord of Vallée Joyeuse who walked with her under the yews.

“Madame, I may claim some reverence from you,” came the taunt. “God knows, I am only your husband; a poor reason, it seems. This braggart preacher bulks too large in our house.”

“He is a man, messire. You are jealous, eh?”

“You suggest, madame wife, that there is cause for the passion.”

Silence held a moment, a pause as for breath. Tristan’s mouth hardened. It was the woman’s voice that sounded next, a ringing scorn in it that made Tristan’s eyes glitter.

“Is marriage a surety for insolence?” it said.

“Insolence! Is the truth insolent?”

“Shall I suffer this, though I am your wife?”

“Husbands, madame, suffer no tricking of their honour, save when they are blind bats and fools.”

There was again a pause. Rosamunde’s words came clear and passionate as the notes of a well-tuned harp.

“Man, you have said enough to me, though you are my mate.”

“Regret it, madame, as much as you will.”

“Ha!”

“But beware of trickery.”

“These lies, I’ll not brook them——”

“Cultivate discretion.”

“Silence! I am no puppet, though you have wedded me.”

The voices passed westwards under the yews, growing faint as the angle of the terrace came between. Tristan stood up, and spread his broad shoulders. There was an ugly look in his eyes, a firm closing of his iron mouth. He tightened his sword belt, passed from under the stars to the hall, spoke little as he sat at supper with Ronan’s men.

CHAPTER VII

Seven days had passed, and Tristan was still lodged under Rosamunde’s roof. Of his sister Columbe he had won no word, yet he tarried in Joyous Vale in Rosamunde’s service. The woman had need of a loyal sword. Tristan had learnt to serve her there with the quick instinct of a great-hearted dog. There was much of the mother in her mood towards the man; nor did she dower his face with any deeper passion.

Shadows had deepened round Joyous Vale, and vague rumours had come from the south, whisperings of sword and torch and the march of armed men. A shepherd had seen dim sails upon the sea. As to what summer would bring to them, prophecy stood silent. Rosamunde’s state was no easy one, as Tristan had gathered, for she was watched and spied upon by her husband’s men. Ronan’s jealousy was as a snake coiled in the grass, ready to dart and flesh its fangs. She could no more trust him than she could trust a priest. Moreover, his malice hindered her cause, barred her from plotting to save her people. Samson alone could help her in this, and Ronan’s jealousy kept the two apart.

It was the morning of Tristan’s second Sabbath there. He was on the terrace burnishing his arms, when Isabel, Rosamunde’s woman, crept out to him from the tower. He was to take horse and follow her lady that morning. She had need of him, and trusted his honour.

Tristan, having saddled and bridled his horse, rode out and met Rosamunde at the gate. She was mounted on a white palfrey, her woman Isabel beside her on a mule. Tristan saluted them, a silent discretion in his deep-set eyes. To him Rosamunde’s beauty was as the breath of June.

They rode out down the slope of the hill, where the gardens amid the thickets were ablaze under the noon sun. Rosamunde was clad in a green robe, with a girdle of red leather shaped to her figure. She rode on before Tristan and the woman Isabel, as though not sorry of solitude and freedom from stone walls. There was a calm unapproachableness about her, which, when she so willed it, became as a wall of glimmering ice. Her words, often imperious and curt, would have suggested insolence on the lips of one less fair. Tristan had seen her angered but once. There had been something of the splendour of a stormy sunset about the mood, a red rush of passion that had bewitched him more than smiles.

As they left the town behind a screen of poplars, Rosamunde called Tristan to her, but gestured Isabel to remain behind. Her lips had much scorn on them that day, scorn for her husband, jejune and jealous pedant that he was. Of the red wine of her love Lord Ronan had tasted little. She was unsmirched as a rose, pure as an ivory palace conceived in some deep dream.

Tristan eyed her over his massive shoulder, wondering much what was in her heart. A mask of thought covered her face, as she gazed ahead into the deeps of the woods. True, there was much in her heart to breed unrest, yet Tristan was as a child in a temple, ignorant of the many and manifold visions stirring within her brain. La Vallée Joyeuse stretched out before her, like a calm sea untouched by the wind. Yet beyond the mountains the black banners of war gathered. Fanaticism was streaming like fire to purge and to destroy. Had not the Pope armed the southern nobles against the land? Had not Sir Parsival put his legate to the sword?

Rosamunde, great lady that she was, feared not for herself the peril of a zealot’s war. The people of La Vallée Joyeuse were to her as children. She was their lady, and they loved her, even because she was gracious and merciful, a friend set above them like an altared saint. It was her spirit that had opened their rude hearts to Samson’s heresy. She, the first convert in mind and soul, had drawn them after her, as a shepherdess draws her sheep.

As for the lords and barons of the Seven Streams, they were scattered wide amid their woods and hills. Samson had preached and they had listened. Mewed in their mountains and their forest gloom, they were deaf to the thunder of ecclesiastic wrath. Ronan of Joyous Vale, first lord of the province, was mere selfish clay, careless of his people, jealous of his wife. His very malice made her mute to him. On Samson, rugged Titan piling mountains against the Papal Jove, rested the one ambition of the land.

Drawing Tristan to her that day, Rosamunde unbosomed something of her care to him. There was a serene stateliness in all her words, a tender dignity as of one who stoops, from love, not pride. The man seemed nothing but a casual friend, cast in her path by the hand of circumstance. She trusted him, had trusted from the first, because his face was ugly and his words came slow.

Tristan gathered the truth from her as they rode through the meadows. There was much shrewdness in his turbulent brain. Moreover, Rosamunde had taken hold upon his heart. Sympathies are warm where love treads fast; comprehension kindles when the torch burns bright.

“Lady,” he said to her, in his curt, calm way, “of the burden you bear—I am wise—in measure. Our cross bulks the heavier when the shoulder is chafed.”

“Ah,” she said, with a flash of the eye, “these valley folk are as children to me. I have no babe of my own, so the burden is honest.”

Tristan recalled such war lore as he had learnt from the rough mariners of Purple Isle. He would have served her more gladly with his sword than with his tongue. She had tempted his counsel; he bent his brows and played the philosopher.

“Madame,” he said, “I have heard men say that our fears are like hillocks seen through mist, bulking like mountains through the fog. I have found billows less big when I have breasted them. As for this land of yours, it is a maze of mountains and of woods. You can baulk your enemies, as King David baulked Saul.”

She plucked the strategy from the speech like a gem out of a casket, and played with it to her own good comfort.

“To leave our homes,” she said, “and take to the wilds. There is wisdom in the plan, and yet——”

Tristan attempted more stoical counsel.

“Better let your homes burn than your bodies,” he said. “Scattered and in hiding, you will provide no martyrs for these holy ravagers. They will return empty by their own tracks. Ten men are worth a hundred in the mountains.”

“Ah,” she said, with sudden passionate scorn, “if I could but trust my husband!”

“Trust yourself, madame,” quoth the man on the black horse.

“One staunch friend perhaps. What then?”

Tristan, full of the ready zeal of youth, set forth his faith to her with a gesture of the hand. He went red under his black brows, as though half ashamed of such an outburst of passion.

“Madame,” he said to her, “here is one sword more. I am young—you smile, by God—I have the strength of three. No man in Joyous Vale shall laugh twice in my face.”

“Ah, Tristan,” she said with deepened colour, “I trust you well. Why should I burden you with another’s yoke? What is Joyous Vale to you?”

“Madame,” he said very simply, “my shoulders are broad; try them.”

“To-day, I trust you,” she retorted slowly. “We meet Samson in yonder wood.”

Lines ran across Tristan’s broad forehead; his mouth hardened. He was as a man who felt himself outfaced, disarmed. There was no guile towards him in the woman’s heart, and yet his youth recoiled from her with jealous spleen.

“Madame,” he said half sullenly, looking no longer on her face, “I have promised faith to you. It is enough.”

Before them rose a great barrier of trees, a larch wood set upon the green bosom of a hill, whose slopes fell away towards a vague wilderness of pines. Many flowers and herbs were in bloom upon the hillside. Tristan, sullen of face, drew apart from Rosamunde as they mounted the slope and entered the alleys of the deepening wood. The sun poured through, streaking and ribbing the gloom with gold. Rosamunde’s green gown gleamed richly above her palfrey’s white flanks.

Deeper and deeper they threaded the shade, the grass track growing less green, dusted with cones and the fallen wind wrack of the trees. Whortleberry and heather grew there, with great pools of gorse. The silence increased, hanging like a purple pall, the sunlight plashing fitfully over the multitudinous boughs.

Deep in a dwindling aisle, they saw a man in a black robe seated upon a fallen tree. He rose, came towards them, when he marked the white brow of Rosamunde’s horse. Tristan, watching the woman’s face, a half-jealous gleam deep in his eyes, saw the colour increase the rose-white richness of her skin. She breathed more rapidly, held her head higher, watched Samson keenly as he came towards her under the trees.

Drawing near, he put his cowl back from his face, kissed the hand she stretched to him, held her stirrup while she dismounted. She cast her bridle over Tristan’s wrist, threw a rapid glance at him as he sat hunched and sullen upon his horse.

“Wait,” she said with an imperious tone tinging her voice, “watch, keep guard.”

Tristan, turning with a word, took the white palfrey and his own black horse, tethered them to a tree on the eastern side of the ride. Isabel had joined him on her mule, a smile on her broad mouth as she noted the man’s sour face. Samson and Rosamunde were pacing the grass together, looking in each other’s eyes as they talked. There was much on either tongue, question and counter-question, words as to the war and the gathering in the south.

The woman Isabel had slipped lightly from her mule. She was a plump, yellow-skinned wench, with roguish eyes and a red patch of colour over either cheek-bone. Her tongue was equal to her temper. Tristan, leaning against the trunk of a tree, paid no heed to her as he stared at Samson and the lady. The man’s stride spoke of his power; he gesticulated as he talked, and his words flowed fast. Rosamunde’s green gown swept the grass in stately fashion. She walked with arched neck and supple waist, her hair glimmering under its golden net, her red-slippered feet gliding glibly over the turf. Tristan gazed at her and marvelled. For the moment he half hated her for her loveliness and for the calm pride that kept him chained.

He awoke to find the woman Isabel at his elbow, peering with parted lips into his face. She smiled in her eyes as they met his, touched her mouth with a fat white hand, moved nearer to him with a little rustle of a sigh like a summer breeze through orange bloom.

“Coz, we are well sorted,” she said with a titter. “A silver cross for your thoughts, boy. Why so sour of face?”

Tristan scowled at her betwixt the brows, and unbent nothing to her coquetry.

“Ha, cousin,” he said, “men find the moon dull when the sun is away.”

“Sun!” she retorted, “you ugly stump! Keep your eyes wide. I am too bright for such as you.”

“Shine hard,” he said to her with a smile. “I shall have no need of a shield.”

She tightened her girdle, smoothed her gown, and eyed Tristan under drooping lids.

“Samson is a handsome fellow,” she said.

Tristan pursed up his mouth and answered her nothing. Rosamunde and the preacher had passed deeper into the wood, and were out of sight and hearing. Tristan would have given much to have known what passed between them under the trees.

“Samson,” said the girl at his elbow, “Samson, sirrah, has the wit to be courteous to a lady. He has no tongue like a tag of undressed leather, nor a face like a dinted buckler red with rust.”

Tristan played with the buckle of his sword belt and wished the woman Isabel a man.

“Ha, cousin,” she ran on, “I have heard of a horse-boy stealing a pair of red shoes, because they had covered a lady’s toes. As for her heart, it was a pearl, a great white pearl, sirrah, not to be breathed upon and handled by grooms. Hark! holy saints, what’s amiss in the wood?”

Isabel had started from her malice like a woman who sees a snake twisting at her feet. She stood rigid, with eyes dilating, her lips apart, the colour gone from her face. Through the alleys of the wood had come a sudden outcry, the loud voice of a man challenging a foe, the passionate declaiming of an angry woman. Tristan, with his back taut as the straining mast of a ship, stood snuffing the air, his muscles quivering, his broad chest spread. In the flash of a second he had plunged down the grass ride at a run, unbuckling his sword as he ran, flinging aside belt and scabbard. Voices, passionate and clamorous, were playing through the trees. They winged on Tristan’s heels, as he sped with tight mouth and kindling eyes under sun and shadow.

Coming upon a narrow glade in the wood, he saw the scene spread out before him. With her back to a tree stood Rosamunde, her eyes ablaze, her head held high. Before her, with uplifted knife, his robe gathered as a buckler in his left hand, stood Samson the Heretic, fronting four armed men who crouched round him like hounds about a boar. Even as Tristan came, they sprang together upon the monk, dragging him down in a moiling heap upon the grass. The fourth snatched out at Rosamunde, caught the neckband of her gown, rent it to the girdle as she strained from him with both hands set upon his face.

Tristan leapt in as though his blood had changed to fire. The man who had seized on Rosamunde sprang away with a red throat and an empty doom. Turning, Tristan plunged upon the three, who struggled and writhed over the powerful figure of the priest. Plucking the uppermost by the girdle, even as he would have plucked a beetle from a stone, Tristan threw him full against the stem of a tree. The man’s breath groaned out of him; he twitched and lay still. Samson, bleeding in the brow, had risen upon the others with a hand on either throat. Tristan, dodging round, ran his sword through the body of the taller man. Samson, bleeding and breathless, rose from the carcass of the other, and made way for Tristan’s blow.

Sudden silence fell upon the pool of death. Rosamunde stood with Tristan and the monk, staring at the brief havoc their hands had wrought. The grass was stained with red. Samson, shaking the blood out of his eyes, turned to Tristan with outstretched hand. Their manhood seemed to meet in that one strong grip. Rosamunde, tearing cloth from the border of her gown, came forward and caught Samson by the sleeve.

The monk knelt to her while she bound the green cloth about his forehead. Tristan stood apart from them, his eyes still ablaze, his great chest rising and falling beneath his hauberk. Jealousy, quenched for the moment, rose again in the hot blood that played about his brain. Turning upon his heel with a last glance at the man lying against the tree, he strode away towards the horses, where the woman Isabel stood with a face white as swan’s-down. To her querulous terror he gave no heed, for there was still bitterness gnawing at his heart. If he had been the wounded one, would Rosamunde have rent her gown?

Some minutes passed before she came towards them under the trees. She came alone, pale and distraught, yet cold outwardly as stone. Samson had parted from her in the woods; their words had been brief, significant as silence. She said nothing to the two who waited; pointed them to their saddles, and neither dared to question her, so imperious and clouded was her face. Then they mounted, rode out, and headed homewards over the fields.

CHAPTER VIII

Rosamunde, pale and silent, rode through the thickets that clothed the castle hill. Not a word had she spoken either to Tristan or to Isabel since she had parted with Samson in the wood. Her face seemed frozen into an unnatural calm, as though she strove to mask the passions that worked within. There was a deeper significance in the adventure than either Isabel or Tristan had imagined.

They wound through the gardens where the sunlight slept upon the lawns, and came through a myrtle thicket to the great gate. The place was deserted, steeped in the noon silence. Tristan, clattering in at a word from Rosamunde, woke a groom sleeping on a bench in the stable court, and sent the man out to take the horses. Rosamunde stood under the shadow of the gate. There was an angry calm upon her face, a statuesque scorn that seemed to prophesy of what should follow.

“Come with me—be silent, both.”

These were her only words to them as she turned towards the terrace, white above the green gardens spread below. At the entry of the passage leading to the great hall and the tower she turned on Tristan and Isabel with a rapid stare from her unwavering eyes. There was deep meaning in that glance of hers. Tristan felt it, even as a bolt piercing his hauberk. With it she challenged his faith, his loyalty towards her as a woman. Laying a finger on her lip, she beckoned them to follow.

Following in silence, they passed the gallery, climbed a short stair, found themselves in a dark entry set back in the thickness of the wall. A streak of light showed where a door stood. Rosamunde, lifting the latch, peered in and entered. Tristan and the woman followed her. They could hear nothing else save each other’s breathing.

A long room stretched with lessening shadow towards a tall window opening on the south, and hangings, green and gold, covered the walls. Eight carved pillars ascended towards the dark vault above. At a table near the window sat a man with his back turned towards the door; the table was littered with fragments of glass, colours, brushes, and illumined scrolls. The man by the window was bending over a glass panel, enamelling a red rose thereon with unsteady hand. He seemed oblivious of the three who watched him from the doorway.

Rosamunde, with her torn robe gathered in her hand, moved into the room, with a glance thrown at Tristan over her shoulder. Following, he stood behind her in the shadow, watching her every movement. She gestured to him to strike one of the pillars with the scabbard of his sword. As the clangour sounded through the room, the man by the table twisted on his chair, sprang up and stared at them, dropping his brush on the stone paving at his feet.

There was a significance in the scene, tinged as it was with the love feud of these two. Rosamunde, tall as a white lily, stared the man down with an imperious scorn that betrayed the truth. Tristan, watching the Lord of Joyous Vale as he would have watched a wolf, saw him pale under his brown hair before the damning figure of his wife. His eyes wavered, his jaw fell. He seemed to stoop, to contract, as a tree shrivels before the breath of a forest fire.

Rosamunde, still gazing on his face, advanced towards him across the room. The man would have fallen back before her had not the table barred his way. Her splendid height, her towering courage, seemed to cast into contrast his cringing guilt.

“Sir, thanks to Heaven, we have returned.”

There was so suggestive a scorn in her voice that the high roof seemed to quiver at the sound. Ronan, moistening his dry lips, frowned and found no answer. The poor smile that he conjured up was as a moonbeam flitting over ice. His blood ran cold; he was afraid, and showed his fear.

“Sir, we have returned,” she said with the slow torture of an unpitying tongue. “For your good welcome, husband, we give you thanks.”

The man bowed to her stiffly, clumsily, like a wooden doll jointed at the hips.

“Madame is ever welcome,” he said; “her prerogative demands it. Need I emphasise the truth?”

She laughed at his words, a laugh that seemed as foreign to her beauty as the cracked cackle of some shrivelled hag.

“Sir, your courtesy bribes me to silence. I see we but hinder you; trifle with such lordly cares as befit your temper. Pick up your brush, sir. Playing with crafty colours upon brittle glass, the pastime pleases you. I would commend it to a man of courage.”

His eyes flashed for the moment, grew dull again like treacherous water. He reached for the brush, to hide his face from her. Rosamunde, gathering her green gown, swept by him with scorn. At the door she turned and cast a last taunt at him over her shoulder.

“Samson the Heretic is well,” she said. “He sends you, sir, his great good will.”

All that noontide Tristan stood on guard at the door of Dame Rosamunde’s room. She was as a white bird in the nest of a snake, and for all his jealousy Tristan’s blood ran loyal in her service. They were Ronan’s men who had fallen upon Samson and Rosamunde in the wood that day. The Lord of Joyous Vale was no open and courageous smiter, for poison suited his senses better than an honest blow. That Rosamunde was in great peril Tristan le Sauvage knew right well. It seemed that his one buckler covered her from the world, nor was he sorry to sustain the feud.

Tristan, keeping guard before the door, watched the sun sinking towards the western hills. The light smote through the narrow casement in the rough stone wall, played and gleamed upon the laced rings of his hauberk. There were warring instincts in the man’s heart. Jealousy still stirred in him. Yet over his finer self there shone that luminous reverence for a woman’s name. Tristan, half savage, half Christian in his untempered youth, strove with his deepening manhood towards the finer faith.

As the gold mellowed in the west, the woman Isabel came out to him from her lady’s room. The morning’s adventure had sobered the wench’s mood; she had dropped her coquetry at her mistress’s feet. Drawing Tristan in, she barred the door, stood by it listening, pointed the man into an inner room. He noted the great bed with its rich hangings, the carved panels, the coloured cloths about the walls. There was a rich and mysterious savour in the air; even the flowers upon the casement ledge seemed brighter than their fellows in the fields below. To Tristan the place was as some rare shrine, whose odours and gleaming dyes breathed about the face of Love.

Rosamunde sat at the open window looking towards the lake. A bank of gillyflowers bloomed upon the sill. There was still the same proud pallor upon the woman’s face; solitude had not bribed her to salve her care with tears. Hers were not eyes that wept at the first kiss of anger or of pain.

Turning, she looked long at Tristan, like one who would be sure of the faith she needed. The man’s shoulders were broad; they might bear her honour. Woman that she was, she was the more eager for his comradeship, since jealousy had snatched at the red jewel over her heart. No doubt she thought it easy for the man to serve her, seeing that she imagined no bitterness upon his ugly face.

“Tristan,” she said, looking deep into his eyes.

He met the glance squarely, like one sure of his own honour.

“Tristan, to-day I have trusted you,” she said; “this morning you promised faith to me. I would try you further. Am I wise in this?”

“Madame,” he said with blunt simplicity, “you are apt at making servants. I obey you still.”

She rose, stood at the window, pointed him to the lake. Tristan drew to her side, gazed out as she told him of her charge.

“See, there is an island yonder, covered with trees.”

Tristan bent his head.

“There are boats on the strand below the town; go alone and ferry over. On the island there is a ruined chapel. By the altar, under the ambry in the right-hand wall, you will see a stone marked with a trefoil in the floor. Under the stone there lies a casket of black oak. Take the casket; sink it in the deeps of the lake.”

They gazed into each other’s eyes questioningly, like two mutes over a grave. Rosamunde was the first to break the silence.

“Tristan, you will take oath to me?” she said.

“By my sword, madame.”

“The casket goes unopened to the deeps?”

“I swear that.”

“Then, I am content.”