It was but two days after his breaking of Sir Percival, that Tristan,
idling through Agravale, saw before him the open door of the great
church St. Pelinore. From the gloom within came the scent of incense and
the sound of the chanting of the Mass. Tristan could see tapers shining
on the high altar in the choir. Women were passing in and out, and two
blind beggars sat at the gate.
Tristan, moved more by curiosity than by the desire for worship, entered
in and uncovered his head. The rounded vault was painted vermilion and
gold; the huge pillars of white stone were banded with silver and inlaid
with stones. The basins for holy water were of black marble, their dark
pools gleaming with the colours of the roof. Many chapels opened on
either hand, dim sanctuaries steeped in vapour of gold and of rose.
Tristan, rugged islander, had never looked upon the like before. The
place was full of that subtle beauty conceived and wrought by the mind
of man. A strange idealism had sanctified the saints and dowered each
relic with a magic mystery. The splendour of the place touched Tristan’s
soul. Nothing in Joyous Vale had equalled this in pomp and magnificence,
in form and colour. And yet the afterthought dethroned the spell. Was
not Rosamunde’s gracious body fairer far than this great church?
Tristan took his stand by one of the great pillars, and setting his back
to it, looked round the place. In the nave there was a stone pattern
wrought in the floor, known in Agravale as the Penitent’s Rosary. There
were some ten women moving round and round, halting over each great bead
to breathe a prayer through silent lips. Tristan watched them as they
circled round with bowed heads and folded hands, moving where the
sunlight streamed from the tall windows overhead.
He was conscious suddenly that one of these dames was not wholly
absorbed in prayer under her hood. A round white chin was tilted
significantly under a pouting mouth, and two watchful eyes considered
him with a suggestiveness that no man could mistake. As the woman
circled over the stones, walking slowly in her grey mantle that but half
hid the richer stuffs beneath, Tristan felt that her eyes held his, and
that her thoughts were very far from heaven. The truth came to him as he
watched her glide over the stones of the great rosary. It was Lilias
herself who did penance there, penance with her feet, but not with her
heart.
In due season the Duchess had ended her pilgrimage, and stood with her
hood turned back, looking at Tristan across the church. Her women had
gathered about her, and outside the gates Tristan saw the spear points
of her guard. Turning, with a glance cast at him over her shoulder, she
swept in state out of St. Pelinore’s, her women following her, save one
young girl who loitered at the door.
Tristan, with his broad back resting against the pillar, stood thinking
of the woman’s face tinted by the light reflected from the crimson
lining of her hood. Her eyes had challenged him even as they had done in
that narrow passage when Percival lay senseless in the dust. They
puzzled Tristan—these same eyes; for they had no depth to harbour pity,
and their shallow glances spoke of no high mood. Different was Rosamunde
from this pale, sensuous dame whose scented garments perfumed the very
church.
Tristan was roused out of his reverie by a small hand plucking at his
sleeve. By the pillar stood a dark-eyed girl, half child, half woman,
thin, and a little sad. There was a timid smirk on her childish face as
she looked at Tristan and gave her message.
“Follow my mistress,” were her words.
Tristan stared down at her, his ugly face bathed in the sunlight that
streamed from above.
“Whom do you serve, child?” he said slowly.
“Lilias the Duchess,” came the answer.
“What would your lady ask of me?”
The girl tittered and coloured before him, shamed, as it were, by the
man’s straight stare.
“You are Tristan of the Bishop’s guard?”
“I am Tristan,” he answered her simply.
“You are to come with me,” she persisted, touching his arm.
The man’s mouth hardened as he considered her message, still leaning his
weight against the pillar. What was Tristan to Lilias, or Lilias to
Tristan? She was a woman, and a bad one, so he had gathered since he had
sojourned in the city. Yet she ruled Agravale, and in her ruling was
wise in the secrets of the south. In some vague way he even imagined
that he might win news of her whom he sought.
Thus Tristan followed the girl from the church, and crossing the great
court that lay without, entered the gardens of St. Pelinore. Mulberry
trees towered above the lawns, studded thick with ripening fruit.
Weeping ashes glittered there, and figs and cedars cast their shade over
broad beds of mint and thyme.
The girl watched Tristan as she walked beside him, holding a little
apart, with one hand to her cheek. She was a sharp wench enough, and
Agravale had taught her to take the measure of a man. Therefore she
studied Tristan’s face, that she might read his strength or weakness
therein by the dogged set of the strong jaw, the keen eyes, the firm,
clean mouth. She began to speak to him as they crossed the gardens with
a coy simplicity that was well assumed.
“You are strange to Agravale?” she said.
Tristan looked at her slantwise over his shoulder, for she seemed but a
child untouched by guile. Her glances wandered over the great trees, and
the flowers that grew in the short grass.
“You would prosper?” she asked him tentatively, casting about in her
mind how she might win his trust.
“I have begun passably,” said Tristan, with a smile.
“For you humbled Percival. Ah, how strong you must be! I am almost
afraid, sir, when I look at your great arms.”
Her mild eyes trembled up innocently to Tristan’s. The flattery seemed
so spontaneous in her words that it would have puzzled a young man to
have uncovered her cunning. Nor was Tristan unwilling to seem strong to
her, for youth takes pride in its great strength. For the moment he was
half tempted to question her concerning Rosamunde of the Seven Streams.
“You may be a great knight in Agravale,” the girl said to him, with a
shy smile.
“How so, sister?”
“Ah, sir, are you blind? Know you not that a woman loves not a beaten
man?”
“So.”
“You trampled down Percival. The Duchess would have you serve her in his
stead.”
“That is not possible.”
The girl stared at him, and for the moment lost her mask of innocence.
“Are you not ambitious?” she asked.
“I am young, good sister.”
“And a mighty man, though young.”
“You seem zealous for me.”
“I serve my lady. Why, it will be all plain for you. Is it so strange a
thing to serve a woman?”
They had left the gardens and come to a high stone wall that skirted the
precincts of Lilias’s palace. Cypresses and bays showed above the stone,
while a great cedar cast a broad shadow there. In the wall there was a
little door studded over with iron nails. The girl took a key that hung
at her girdle, unlocked the door, and pointed Tristan in.
“Enter, sir,” she said, with a glib smile and a slight bending of her
body.
Tristan stood and looked through under the lintel. He could see a garden
spread within, the grass sleek under the noonday sun, beds of flowers,
purple and red. At the end of a lawn stood an orange thicket, and under
the trees a woman walked, clad in crimson, with her white arms bare. She
wore sandals of gold stuff on her naked feet and her hair hung loose
about her neck.
But Tristan turned back from the door and looked full into the girl’s
dark eyes. She coloured a little under his gaze, as though half guessing
what was in his heart, and that he knew the part she played. Nor was he
slow to read the truth that shone for him on her thin, pale face.
“You will speak to my lady for me,” he said to her, casting a swift
glance into the garden.
The girl looked at him, but did not stir.
“What, sir, shall I say?” she asked.
“That I will not enter yonder place.”
“Not.”
“No, for the youth in me will not serve.”
Her face changed suddenly like a fickle sky, and she began to mock him
as he stood before her, thrusting her tongue out and beating her hands.
To Tristan she seemed like some sly elf changed from a child to an evil
imp, as he turned and left her by the wall with a grim frown on his ugly
face.