When Tristan returned to the Bishop’s palace, he found two horses
standing saddled and bridled in the inner court. One of them was
Tristan’s, a raw-boned roan with one white foot and a white muzzle. A
man-at-arms, half asleep on a bench at the bottom of the guard-room
stair, scrambled up when he saw Tristan, and opened a great mouth with
the gusto of a news-teller.
“Hallo, laggard! Ogier has been calling for you this hour or more,
blaspheming you till the stones blushed. Above with you, if you would
hear good downright cursing.”
Tristan passed through the guard-room, found Ogier striding to and fro
in his closet, armed for riding, the froth from a tankard still on his
beard. He unbosomed himself when Tristan entered, like a volcano to whom
periodic outbursts were the natural vent of much accumulated spleen.
Tristan let the giant’s cursing pass over him like water. He gained time
by sitting down before Ogier’s table and finishing the remnants of that
gentleman’s dinner.
“Feed away, my son,” said the giant, with his hand on the tankard; “you
can keep your mouth shut, I guess, when it is a matter of discretion.
You and I ride out with Jocelyn.”
“Am I not an image that beholds and sees not?” said Tristan from the
table.
“Ha, lad, you will stand in need of blindness to-night. The Bishop will
amuse himself. And to be honest, he can out-devil all the Gadarene swine
when the fit is on him.”
“The good saint.”
Ogier laughed.
“My son,” he said, “I am getting grey, and I have seen many strange
sights in my time. It has always puzzled me to discover where the devil
all that virtue hides itself which the priests prate of, mostly to the
women. Silence. Behold the virtue, my son, necessary to the honest
fellow who would fill his pockets from the coffers of the Church. Come,
now, I hear the trumpet in the court.”
Jocelyn, Bishop of Agravale, had possessed himself of some persuasions
of piety in the hearts of the innocents to whom he ministered. He was a
man who believed at least in cleansing the outside of the pot. To rule
by means of the prerogative of righteousness, a man needs some little
reputation for that virtue. And since the robes and insignia of office
were scrupulously cleansed and burnished, Jocelyn found opportunities to
pander in secret to the inner man. There was a subtle conviction in him
that to be able to resist the devil, one must bow down and propitiate
him at stated intervals. The occasional lapse made the intervening
virtue the more easy. Priest that he was, he could not pose eternally,
even to himself, as a species of waxen image in which the virile blood
had been turned to milk.
It was publicly acknowledged in Agravale that the good Bishop rode
regularly into the wilderness to eat grass like Nebuchadnezzar in order
to purge the brain of the vain follies of human pride. He held long
vigils in the woods, so his people believed; played the hermit under the
winking stars. It was whispered that celestial visions had been spread
before his eyes, that St. Pelinore had come down and walked the earth
with him to his great comfort. Like Elijah in the wilderness, he was
sustained by the grace of heaven, and by the dew of sanctity that
descended upon his soul.
Thus Ogier and Tristan followed him that day from Agravale, two stalwart
exemplars of the Church Militant. The Bishop rode a mouse-coloured mare,
trapped with red harness and a saddle of carved ivory. He wore a plain
black robe with a sable hood and a black mask over his face. Ogier rode
a great white stallion, a huge beast, the only horse in Agravale who
could bear his bulk. Tristan, with his red shield strapped between his
shoulders and the episcopal white surcoat over his hauberk, rode beside
Ogier on this saintly pilgrimage.
The three sallied from Agravale, leaving its white walls that climbed to
the very verge of the great southern precipice. Its towers and turrets
ascended towards the blue. Northwards the woods bristled under the sun,
a glitter like blackened steel under the summer sky. The road wound
under ancient trees. Many a huge ilex cast its gloom over the grass. The
stone pine towered on the hills above the dense woods of beech and
chestnut, and the valleys were full of primeval oaks, whose sinewy limbs
stretched far over the sun-streaked sward.
As for Tristan, his mood partook of the silence of the woods. He was
thinking of the Duchess Lilias, that she was not a dame to be flouted
with impunity, nor one who could forgive the starving of her desire.
Though the summer was flying he had no news of Rosamunde. So utterly had
she vanished from the ken of the world, that some Old Man of the Sea
might have mured her in a cave under amber-bosomed waves. That she was
dead Tristan would not believe. There was an instinctive faith within
his heart that Rosamunde lived, perhaps to her greater misery. Ogier
himself might have the secret locked in his ungainly carcass, yet
Tristan had no desire to betray his quest before he could mend matters
to his credit.
Jocelyn had little to say to the pair as they rode through the wilds
together. Once free of Agravale, he had put the mask from off his face,
and rode with his cowl turned back, his sleek and sensuous face white in
the sun. Tristan saw him smile often in a prophetic way, as though the
pilgrimage were much to his liking. In a wallet at his saddle bow he had
a flask of red wine, and the churchman’s lips were often puckered round
the mouth of the flask.
As the day declined, they came to a wilder region, where pines grew
thick and cranberries tufted half-hidden rocks. The track was a mere
grass ride, two cubits broad, where Ogier and Tristan followed Jocelyn
in single file. A desolate valley opened gradually before them, steeped
on every side with the black umbrage of the woods. To the west a craggy
peak smote the setting sun. In the lap of the valley lay a mere, an
island rising black and dim above the silvered surface. Grassland gilded
with asphodel dipped towards the water. Yellow flags grew in the
shallows; there were lilies floating beyond the rushes.
The sun sank down behind the crag as the three crossed the grassland
towards the water. Blood-red streamers streaked the sky; a golden mist
ascended towards the woods. The island in the mere grew black as ebony,
overarched by a canopy of scarlet clouds. Tristan could see a stone
building rising from the island’s thickets, and the place breathed forth
mystery towards the hastening night.
Ogier took a bugle horn that hung round his neck, and blew three blasts
that set the wild woods ringing. At the sound a boat put out from the
island and moved over the smooth water towards the bank. A strange babel
of wild voices seemed to fall as from the sky. Cries came as from lost
souls tortured in a burning pit. While Tristan listened with a frown on
his face, the cries died down into the woodland silence.
The barge was rowed by an old man, with a beak of a nose, fierce,
restless eyes, and a mouth like a flint. As the barge ran to the stage,
the old man let a horse-board down. The barge could bear but one of them
at a time. Tristan and the giant waited at the water’s edge while the
boat bore Jocelyn over the water, to where the island rose sable as the
night.
Tristan’s brows were knotted above his eyes. The mystery of the place
had set him musing, casting about for Jocelyn’s reason in riding into
such a wilderness. He questioned Ogier as they watched the barge.
“Where have we come?” he asked, with a keen stare into the giant’s face.
Ogier grinned and licked his lips.
“Men call it the Mad Mere,” he said. “Yonder house is a hospital for
such as froth at the mouth when the moon is full.”
“And that clamour when you blew your horn?”
“The mad folk squealing. Old Nicholas chastens them often with his
whip.”
Tristan still gazed at the island under his heavy brows.
“And my lord the Bishop?” he asked.
“My son,” quoth Ogier, with one of his grins, “if you are ambitious,
keep your tongue from stealing the truth.”
“Have done with your damned riddles.”
“My son, Master Jocelyn refreshes himself after the dull services of
sanctity. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. You shall behold how
frail are the feet of the holy.”
“I grow wise—in time.”
“Ten thousand devils, man, you shall see such sights as shall make you
grow green as an unripe fig. Keep your mouth shut in Agravale, and you
will prosper.”
The barge drifted back to them, and Tristan took the next passage,
waited by the landing stage while this grey Charon ferried Ogier and his
white horse over. Tristan had cast rapid glances round him as he waited.
The place was built of rough-hewn stone, walled in on every side, with
narrow squints for windows. Cypresses and yews grew close about the
walls. The gate was flanked by a stone tower, standing black and sullen
against the sky. Ever and again an eerie whimper came from the place, or
a wild medley of voices, more like the chattering of a band of apes.
There were three more horses tethered in a roughly thatched hovel under
a walnut tree. A man was asleep there on a pile of hay.
Ogier landed, dragged the white stallion from the barge by the bridle.
The ferryman took the horses, when he had made the boat fast to a great
stake by the stage. Ogier knew the ways of the madhouse well enough;
Tristan gathered as much as they passed in together under the low arch
of the gate. A narrow courtyard held the centre of the building, with
barred windows opening upon it on every side. In the centre of the court
stood a great whipping-post with iron wristlets dangling from a rusty
chain. Tristan saw all these things as his eyes darted rapid glances
hither and thither in the half gloom.
As they passed through the court, a sudden clamour arose at the narrow
windows overhead, where white faces were pressed against the bars. The
grated windows seemed filled with mad eyes and dishevelled hair. The
beings mured there were as wild beasts starving in a cage. Their cries
reverberated through the well of the court, dinning their frenzy into
Tristan’s ears.
Ogier passed into a room opening by a short passage from the court. It
looked like a species of guard-room or antechamber, leading by a flight
of low steps to a larger room above. A door fitted with an iron grille
closed the stairway at the top. In the lower room a fire burned upon the
hearth; a meal had been spread on a rough table, and the place was lit
by a single iron lamp hanging from the ceiling.
Ogier unbuckled his sword and flung it with a crash upon a wooden
settle. He was hot and out of temper. Drawing a stool to the table, he
began to eat like a hungry wolf.
“Fall to, my son,” he said, flourishing a pot in his right hand; “we
shall be on guard all night. Come, keep up your courage.”
Tristan joined him. They ate in silence, listening to the vague and
unhallowed sounds that echoed now and again through this habitation of
the mad. Tristan was debating with himself as to what had become of
Jocelyn the Bishop.
As they sat at meat, the sound of a melody played by a rebec and flute
quivered down from the upper room. A thrill of laughter stirred in the
air; streaks of yellow light poured betwixt the hinges and under the
planking of the door. The music increased, as though some blithe company
descended to a feast; while within, a man’s gruff voice broke forth into
a song. The crabbed and grizzled ferryman came in from the court, and
sat down on a stool before the fire.
Tristan leant over the table, laid a hand upon Ogier’s wrist.
“Are yonder folk mad—also?”
The giant grinned and held up a pot.
“Mad, my son, most mad,” he said; “when the wine flows, you will hear
them cackling.”
A woman’s voice rose in discord to the music, a wild and abandoned
scream of inarticulate laughter. Half a dozen tongues seemed to gather
in a chorus. The laughter died down, rose again into a squeal of mirth.
“The Bishop and Black Benedict enjoy themselves,” said Ogier, licking
his lips.
Tristan rose up, thrusting aside his stool.
“By God,” he said, “I will look through yonder grille.”
Ogier plunged forward and barred his way.
“Wait, my son,” he said, with a bending of the brows, “wait till they
are drunk enough. Then, by my soul, you shall look at your leisure.”