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.