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.