Under the shade of a beech tree on the slope of a hill a man sat with a
bare sword laid across his knees. On the hill-top above, half-hidden by
pines, the walls of a ruined house rose against the unclouded sky. A
deep valley dwindled beneath, choked with woodland and cleft in twain by
a white band where a torrent thundered. Far to the south mountains
towered against the gold of the evening sky.
It was Tristan le Sauvage who sat with his sword laid across his knees,
watching the valley and the darkening hillside. Near by, an iron pot
steamed over a wood fire, the smoke thereof ascending straight into the
heavens. By the gate of the ruin a cistus was in bloom, its petals
falling upon the long grass and the broken stones.
Tristan had been busy burnishing his sword, handling it lovingly, even
as a miser fingers gold. Shield, helmet, and hauberk lay in the grass at
his feet. His face was less boyish than of old, though but a month had
passed since he had been left stricken and bleeding in the woods. He had
been near death, and the staunch struggle to escape the grave had set a
maturer forethought on his face. Moreover, he had suffered in heart as
well as body, and the brisk youth in him moved to a sadder tune.
As he sat there under the shadow of the beech tree, burnishing his sword
and parleying with the thoughts within his heart, a horn called to him
from out the woods. The shrill echoes clamoured amid the hills.
“Tristan, Tristan,” they seemed to cry, like ghost voices stealing out
of the night.
The man rose up from under the shade of the tree, and looked out down
the hillside under his hand. Betimes, a figure mounted on a shaggy horse
drew from the woods, and climbed the slope towards the ruin. The man was
clad in chain mail that rippled in the sunlight, and he carried neither
shield nor spear. At his back he bore a stout yew bow, and the body of a
deer was slung before him on the saddle.
Tristan went out from under the tree, his bronzed face beaming in the
sun. It was Samson the Heretic, returned from hunting in the woods,
Samson, who had taken Tristan for dead where the Bishop’s men had left
him, and recalled him to life amid the grey walls of the old ruin. The
Heretic had followed Rosamunde from Joyous Vale, and lurked in the woods
to cheat the Papists of their prey. Skulking with a few followers in the
thickets, he had seen Tristan swoop from out the woods and seize on
Rosamunde from the litter. Thus it had fallen out that Samson had found
Tristan bleeding under the trees where he had been outmatched by
Jocelyn’s men. Samson had taken him upon his horse, abandoning Rosamunde
for Tristan’s sake, and in this old sanctuary had wrought his cure.
The men met with that heartiness of hand and voice that bespeaks
brotherhood, that linking up of faith with straight looks and fearless
words. Tristan, still smiling, took the body of the deer from the
Heretic’s saddle bow. The shaft had flown straight to the poor beast’s
heart. Tristan marked it, as he slung the deer to a bough of the beech
tree, building analogies in his brain.
“Were this Jocelyn,” he said, “I should envy you, brother, to the point
of death.”
“That murderous hand of yours——”
“Ha, Samson, shall I not pluck out the heart of that man, even as he
plucked the Lady Rosamunde out of Ronan’s tower? What is youth but
battle? and I am young, methinks, young enough to fly for the Southern
Marches.”
Samson was unsaddling his horse. He stayed with his fingers on the
buckle, and half stooping, looked somewhat sadly into Tristan’s face.
“Beware,” he said, “lest you open the old wounds again.”
Tristan spread his arms.
“I have bled,” he said, “and shall bleed again, methinks, or be called
coward by every pledge of my good youth.”
Samson lifted the saddle to the grass, and stood up, fingering his beard
and looking Tristan over.
“The men murmur for the sword,” he said. “I met Malan in the woods
to-day, after I had slain this beast with a long flight. They clamour to
be led against those who have harried and sacked the Seven Streams.”
“Let them murmur; I echo them.”
“Your wounds?”
“Are tough as leather. Shall we not take the sword?”
“It is God’s will.”
“Never had men better cause than we.”
The Heretic had not been idle while he played the Samaritan to Tristan
in the ruin amid the woods. Even as in the wake of a great ship the
waters seethe and foam, so the rude peasant folk of the Seven Streams
had risen in the track of the Bishop’s host. Burnt hamlets and ruined
towers, these were their witnesses, their solemn oracles. They had
flocked to Samson, these homeless men whose kinsfolk had fallen to
Jocelyn’s swords. Samson had preached to them more fiercely than of old.
They were as tinder to a torch, these woodlanders; they were ready to
burn for him in the quitting of revenge.
That evening Tristan and the Heretic watched the sun go down behind the
hills, and spoke together of what might chance to them in the unknown.
Far to the south towered the great mountains, like sable pyramids
fringed with fire. The stream clamoured in the woods beneath, as though
it voiced the turbulence of the age. They spoke together, these two men,
of Rosamunde, of Joyous Vale, and the Bishop’s war.
Tristan, lifting his sword, pointed it to a star that shone solitary in
the southern sky.
“Let us remember Ronan’s town,” he said.
There was a strange smile on Samson’s face as he laid his hand on
Tristan’s shoulder.
“Whatever life may give,” he said, “some joy, much pain, travail, and
discontent, I trow there is no better quest in life than such a one as
hangs upon your sword.”
“You speak in riddles,” quoth the younger.
“This star, what a riddle lives therein.”
“Your tongue plays with me.”
“Not so, brother; have I not said enough?”
The two men looked into each other’s eyes. On Samson’s face there was
that goodly light that streams up from a generous heart, brave and
bounteous, man’s love for man. In the Heretic there were no ignoble
moods, and, like Paul of old, he esteemed himself little.
“Brother,” he said, “the fight for the truth gives its own guerdon. That
you are with us, I know full well; moreover, I mind me that a man’s
heart reaches through human love into heaven. A fair face, two trustful
eyes, the waving of a woman’s hair. How many a pure spell is wrought
with these!”
Tristan stood leaning on his sword, looking not at Samson, but towards
the south.
“Are you so old?” he asked him suddenly.
“I—brother?”
“You followed also through the woods. And had the eyes no spell for
you?”
Samson leant his arm over Tristan’s shoulders, even like an elder
brother, who banishes self.
“For me,” he said, “are no such songs as men make at sunset when the
heavens are red.”
“And Rosamunde?”
“Can one bound to God, even as I am bound, turn to look on a woman’s
face? Nay, Tristan, my brother, the dream is thine, a dream to set thy
young blood stirring.”
Tristan looked long into the Heretic’s eyes.
“You love her?” he said.
“I have loved her,” Samson made answer, “even as others have loved her,
because one cannot look on her unmoved. It is her privilege to be loved,
yet may not my eyes confess the truth. Yours is the hand that must seize
the torch, yours the sword that shall cleave the spell.”
“And you——”
“I am Christ’s man, brother. What I do, I do with my whole heart.”