The ducal city of Agravale queened it in the south amid the gloom of her
ilex woods and the perfumes of her pines. The city stood on the verge of
a great precipice that plunged to the sweeping waters of the river
Gloire. Southwards from this line of precipices, crowned in the centre
by the towers of Agravale, stretched a broad valley spreading many
leagues to the great mountains that closed the Marches from the nether
south. The plain was a vine-clad Arcady, rich in olives, painted thick
with flowers. Purple and green and gold, it swept to the sombre bosoms
of the mountains, whose snowy peaks smote like moonlight through the
clouds.
On the north a wilderness of woods covered the plateau that ended in the
great precipice above the river. Black was the tincture of this wild, a
gloomy green like the sullen depths of some unsailed sea. Here the ilex
made midnight in the valleys, and the stone pine lifted its beseeching
palms towards the sky. Holly and cedar, cypress, oak, and yew, a
torrential wilderness of trees choked up the valleys and concealed the
hills. Here the wolf hunted and the wild boar rooted in the glades. Only
the wind made music, while the shadows danced and quivered on the grass.
Agravale, proud city of the south, lay pale and luxurious under the
southern sky. Its white walls stretched like marble veins into the
sombre green-stone of the woods. It was an opulent city, sleek, sinful,
and magnificent. Colour enriched its many gardens, where vines clustered
and roses revelled. The pomegranate thrust up its ruddy blooms, and
glowed with the gilded roundness of its fruit. The orange burdened its
green canopies with gold. The arbutus bled; the oleander blushed against
the blue. Like wine poured from heaven were the sunsets upon the white
pinnacles of the mountains. Northwards flowed the woods, beating with
leafy billows on the walls.
Agravale, rich city, possessed a duke in those times, Raymond the
Simple, a puppet prince whose instincts were monastic, save in his
obedience to his wife. The Duchess Lilias kept her husband like a
half-tamed ape, mewed up in the palace with baubles to trick his temper.
He was as weak of wit as he was feeble of limb, while Lilias, proud
Semiramis that she was, queened it through all the Southern Marches. She
was a greedy dame, loose of mouth and loose of life. Bishop Jocelyn was
her confessor and her confidant. The pair pandered to the passionate
temper of the city of Agravale, and were very obedient to their Father
the Pope.
The Bishop and his companies had marched back from the Seven Streams
with much plunder and honour, and the holy praise of Mother Church. They
had martyred and massacred, laid waste the province, dangled their
dogmas on the points of their lances. There had been much rejoicing at
Agravale, much opening of wine casks. Triumphant Masses had been sung in
the great cathedral of St. Pelinore. A tourney had been held without the
walls, for there was good cause for pride and pleasure in Agravale. The
children of the south had upheld the Roman Faith; their swords had shone
in the cause of truth.
The great inspiration of the city was a certain passionate rivalry that
existed between Bishop Jocelyn and Lilias the Duchess. The pair diced
with gold, gambled with extravagance, for the edification of the saints
and the good people of Agravale. When Dame Lilias laid out new gardens
with marble fountains and towers therein, the Bishop out-gardened her by
the magnificence of three acres. When Jocelyn feasted all the beggars of
the city, the Duchess out-charitied him with much silver and good cloth
taken from her coffers and her presses. The pair kept Agravale a-bubble
with their vanities. The Bishop would have hired the angels out of
heaven to out-dance the wantons who tripped at the bidding of Lilias the
Duchess.
The rivalry between the pair had been exaggerated the more by the
swaggering quarrels of their knights and mercenaries. Like hired
gladiators, they were ever ready to rend each other’s throats in the
cause of chivalry. It had so happened that the Bishop’s champions had
been worsted by Lilias’s men in a late passage of arms without the
walls. Percival, captain of the ducal guards, had unhorsed some dozen of
the Bishop’s paladins with his single spear. There had been great wrath
thereat in the episcopal palace.
One August morning, a bronzed, iron-faced man entered the forecourt of
the Bishop’s palace, threaded his way through the loungers by the stair
leading to the inner gate. A guard met him with crossed pike on the top
step, bearing the episcopal badge on the breast of his tunic, a golden
key in a mailed hand. Tristan, turning a deaf ear to sundry witty
gentlemen who were sitting on the benches in the sun, told the guard his
business.
“Friend, I would see your captain of the horse. Tell him a stranger has
tramped leagues to serve under him. Tristan le Sauvage is my name.”
The guard grounded his pike and stared Tristan over.
“Sir Ogier is at dinner,” quoth he.
“He can listen the better, being so wholesomely occupied. Come, friend,
lead on.”
The man took Tristan to a small room that was joined to the guards’ hall
by a winding stair. At a table, with a page boy at his elbow, sat a
giant with a great hairy jowl, gigantic hands, and a heavy paunch. He
was gnawing a mutton bone like a huge ogre, and had a tankard of ale at
his right hand. He stared Tristan over with his small, close-set eyes,
showed his teeth when he heard his business. Ogier had been born a
butcher’s son in the distant north, and had carved out his fortune by
the sheer weight of his arm.
“So, lad,” he said, smacking his lips and tossing the bare bone upon the
table, “you would serve the Bishop and drink his beer? Good, very good.
Can you pay for your stomach?”
Tristan showed the girth of his arm, the knotted muscles swelling under
the sleeve. Ogier rose up, towering like a poplar over Tristan’s head;
his belt would have girded two common men’s loins.
“My child,” he said, setting a hairy hand on Tristan’s shoulder, and
leaning his great weight thereon, “stand fast now; let me feel my prop.”
Tristan never budged; he was like a stone buttress against the flank of
a tower, yet he rocked a little as the giant bore on him. Ogier grinned,
puffed out his lips.
“Short men stand stiff,” he said. “Come, my troll, we will try you
further.”
“What you will,” was Tristan’s retort.
Ogier thudded down by the winding stair, his broad body shutting out the
light. There was a tilting yard joining the Bishop’s stables, and in the
yard stood a horse-block of solid stone.
“Lift it,” was all the giant said.
Tristan unstrapped his shield from betwixt his shoulders, ungirded his
sword, gave them Ogier to hold. He spread his feet, tilted the stone,
got his fingers under the edge, held his breath, heaved the mass over
his head. The block splintered a flagstone at Ogier’s feet. The giant
blundered back against the wall with an oath.
“God’s truth, man!” he said. “Have a care of my toes.”
“What now?” said Tristan, breathing hard.
Ogier grinned and gripped his hand.
“You are the man,” he laughed, cracking Tristan’s bones in his paw. “We
will set you on Percival, the Duchess’s lion. By my bones, you will
break the man over your knee.”
Tristan, lodged within the gates of the Bishop’s palace, used eye and
ear to gain some glint of Rosamunde’s fair head, some breathing of her
name. Like a mirror he had to receive what passed before him, silent and
unstirred. Caution bridled him, and he played his part like the dogged
adventurer that he was; had an open hand for every man, scullion or
squire, a smile for the womenfolk who came out into the stable court to
giggle and gossip with the grooms and men-at-arms. Ogier had taken him
with some pride to Bishop Jocelyn in his state closet. The churchman had
felt Tristan’s limbs with his soft, womanly hands, and smiled over a
strength that was as prodigious as his own conceit. He was a champion
who should give Dame Lilias’s men the lie.
Of that proud woman, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, whom the Papists had
snatched from him in the gloom of the woods, Tristan won no word or
whisper. The men-at-arms of the palace spoke often of their march
through the province of the Seven Streams. Many of the ruffians had
carried torches in the sacking of Ronan’s tower, yet of Rosamunde and
her fate the world seemed to have no care. Tristan, with his ugly face
inscrutable as the face of a sphinx, watched and listened, bided his
time. If Rosamunde was in Agravale, he would carry the gates of her
prison off their hinges, and set her free. Once again he would look into
those deep, wistful eyes, upon that face whose petulant splendour
haunted him night and noon.
There was great love in his heart for Rosamunde. It had grown and fed
upon the stoutest fibres of his heart. Her very name had taken root
about him, even as a red rose clambers about a grave. Tristan was no
visionary, no melancholy worshipper of the stars. Life to him was
action, a bluff buffeting of waves, a gallop with the wind. He was alive
and lusty from the iron sinews of his ankles to the corded muscles of
his throat. Superbly young, yet older in passion than of yore, he took
life cheerfully, knew no defeat.
As for Rosamunde, he loved her, and was not ashamed of this same love.
It was no enigma to him, no subtle riddle begotten of a poet’s brain,
for to Tristan this love was as natural as life itself. He loved the
woods with their mysterious shadows, the sea for its hoarse splendour,
the flowers—even because they were fair of face. In the same
spontaneous fashion he loved this woman, whose face was beauty and whose
lips were life. Above and beyond this impulse towards joy, the deeper
truths were mellowing Tristan’s soul. He began to find new glories in
his strength, to cherish his manhood, to build fast his honour. Since
Rosamunde was Rosamunde, should he not consecrate his manhood to her?
The moon had not changed her scimitar for a silver shield before Tristan
was proven both in arms and faith. The women of Agravale were bounteous
beings, buxom and boisterous, red fruit to be plucked from the tree of
virtue. A red gown trailed more than once round Tristan’s feet, and
youth had tempted him to merge youth in youth. Yet he had shut his
mouth, stiffened his head on his massive neck, for Rosamunde’s face
shone high in the heavens.
As for his courage, that was another matter. Tristan could thrash a man,
if he would not kiss a woman, and Ogier took him often through Agravale
with half a score bravos at their back. They swaggered through the
streets, loitered in the taverns, ogled such women as came their way.
More than once they met the Duchess’s men, and shouldered them roughly
to the wall. Ogier, the butcher’s son, had a tussle in view, and
Percival of the Red Beard was to be brought to his knees.
From the square before the ducal palace, with its pomegranates studded
with golden fruit, its rose trees and its acacias, ran a narrow
passage-way leading to the gardens of the abbey of St. Pelinore. It was
a shadowy place, flanked by high walls of stone, arched above by the
dense foliage of chestnuts and great cedars. The path gave the shortest
track to such of the Duchess’s men who returned from the lower city to
the palace. Ogier had watched this “run” of late, eager to catch Knight
Percival in a lane where there was no turning.
It was near the vesper hour one evening, when Ogier and Tristan turned
from the palace square into this stone-walled walk. A knot of the
Bishop’s men-at-arms had passed in before them; their voices and
footsteps echoed with a metallic resonance betwixt the walls. Of a
sudden there was a clangour of arms at the far end of the passage. Hoods
and helmets hid the entry; a pike or two bobbed and shimmered under the
trees. Ogier loosened his sword in its scabbard, warned Tristan with a
wink of the eye.
Ogier’s men had met the ducal company in the midst of the passage. There
was a tossing up of challenges that reverberated in the narrow throat of
the place.
“Out, dogs, make way for the Duchess.”
“Hold, sirs, you shall take the wall of us.”
“Be damned, then, stand aside.”
There was a brief scrimmage, a swaying to and fro from wall to wall. A
sword shone out in the gleam from the west. A tall man in a trellised
hauberk, with a red tunic showing beneath, broke through the press, and
came striding on with his chin in the air, his red moustachios curling
up like the tusks of a boar. He twirled his sword, while his tawny eyes
flashed rapid glances over Ogier’s face.
Ogier spread his great arms from wall to wall, thrust one foot forward,
and barred the way. Percival of the Red Beard made a sweeping gesture
with his sword.
“Out of the path, wine skin,” he said, “or I will set you leaking over
the stones.”
“Church before State, my friend,” said the giant, standing firm.
“Out, dogs, the Duchess is at hand.”
“Devil take her,” was Ogier’s retort.
There was a blow from sword, a blow that Ogier caught upon his shield.
Tristan, stooping, dodged under the giant’s arm, sprang at Knight
Percival before he could gain his guard. He had his bear’s grip on the
man’s body. A heave of the chest, and the Knight of the Red Beard was
off his feet. An impotent waving of a sword, a dropped shield, a
straining of sinews, and Percival crashed over Tristan’s head. His face
struck the stones; he squirmed over and lay still.
Ogier brandished the rest of them back.
“Room for the Duchess,” he roared. “Come, madame, we are the Bishop’s
men; though we fight your fellows, we serve the Duke.”
Tristan, standing over Percival’s body, saw a short, plump woman move
through the lane of armed men. Two young girls carried the train of her
purple gown. She had a round, pallid face, eyes of greyish green,
somewhat protuberant, but very liquid. The eyebrows sloped outwards over
the eyes. The nose was broad, with nostrils wide apart; the mouth large,
with lustful lips. Her neck had a peculiar silken brilliancy; her bust
was full, her hips very broad. It was Lilias herself, Duchess of
Agravale.
Ogier saluted her, and lowered his point. Two of the men-at-arms had
raised Percival up; he was bleeding about the face, for the fall had
stunned him. Lilias’s eyes were on Tristan’s face.
“Ogier,” she said, speaking very rapidly, as was her wont, with much
working of the lips, “you of the Bishop’s household are for ever picking
quarrels with my gentlemen. See to it, Sir Butcher; you shall hear more
of this.”
Ogier, ignoring her taunt against his origin, covered his heart with his
hairy paw, turned back her wrath with a suave and ponderous unction.
“Ah, madame,” he said, “your men persecute us, have beaten us often,
methinks, because your gracious self lives in the heart of each of your
knights. If I served such a lady as the Duchess Lilias, by God and the
prophets, I could thrash the world.”
The woman smiled a little, the smile of one to whom flattery was never
gross. Even a great dolt such as Ogier could fool her with a few honeyed
antics of the tongue.
“What of my poor Percival?” she said, stooping and looking in the fallen
man’s face. “Pah, how a red nose spoils a man!”
“He would have split my poor carcass,” said Ogier, standing at her side,
“had not my new Hercules pitched him like a sack of flour over his
head.”
Lilias turned, stood at her full height, and looked Tristan over. She
was a woman who loved muscle and strength in a man, and that flippant
insolence that makes for pleasure. Tristan’s ugly face had a peculiar
charm, a virile fascination in its uncomely vigour. Lilias smiled at him
with her glassy eyes, gathered her gown close about her hips. She
expected homage, but found not a flash of it. Tristan met her look for
look, a frown on his face, his arms folded firmly over his chest.