At Sanguelac the Tower of the Dead was lit with many cressets. Pierced
with a hundred ruddy stars, it lifted its grey parapet to the sky, while
the bells clashed in the belfry near. The men of the Seven Streams were
mourning for Samson their leader; they wore black scarves over their
hauberks, and had painted black bands athwart their shields. Tristan had
set the bells of the town tolling, in memory of the great heart that
beat no more. Samson’s mantle had fallen on Tristan’s shoulders; as for
Blanche the Duchess, she was content to follow him.
It was night; and in the abbey in the town, whence such monks had long
fled who had not turned heretics under Samson’s preaching, the Duchess
Blanche was housed with her knights and nobles. Tristan was with her in
the abbot’s parlour, also Lothaire, her chief captain, and the knights
of her guard. They had framed their plans for the march on Marvail,
where Jocelyn had left Count Reynaud encamped, while he, proud
regenerator of the Seven Streams, had ridden towards Holy Guard to obey
St. Pelinore. The Bishop had left Count Reynaud at Marvail, both to
overawe the heretics and to preserve him in ignorance. So pious a knight
might have used his honour to weigh the balance against Jocelyn’s
romancing.
With the conference ended, Lothaire and his knights went to their
quarters, leaving Tristan and the Duchess alone together, save for two
women who had attended her from the north. The night was clear, and
through the open window the winter stars were shining; beneath the abbey
a hundred roofs gleamed down to the midnight of the woods. Blanche had
drawn to the open window, and Tristan stood by her leaning on his sword.
The two women were stitching a black cross in the midst of the Duchess’s
banner, a cross that commemorated Samson’s death.
Blanche, in the rich autumn of her woman’s heart, had drawn nigh unto
Tristan, even so as to renew the springtide of her youth. There was that
fierce and uncompromising honour in him that made him doubly strong in a
woman’s eyes. Moreover, he went heavily through life that winter season,
yet with the grim fatefulness of a man possessed. Blanche’s heart had
opened to his, half with a maiden’s love, half with a mother’s.
Tristan was morose that night as he stood beside her staring at the
stars. On the morrow they were to march on Marvail, to smite those men
who had crucified Samson beyond the river. Storm clouds were massing
over the Seven Streams, and many a fierce soldier had sworn dire things
to his own heart.
The Duchess Blanche was troubled for Tristan as they gazed at the bare
woods dark under the stars. There was that strange tenderness upon the
woman’s face that illumines the countenance of one who loves. Her eyes
were kind under her silvery hair.
“Tristan,” she said, “must a man live for vanished days alone?”
He turned his eyes from the heavens, leant more heavily upon his sword.
“The past is ever with us,” he answered her; “the dead haunt me, stand
round my bed at night. I see not flesh and blood alone, but the grey
faces of those who cry to me for vengeance. They are not dead, these
ghosts—Columbe, nor Samson, nor the martyrs of the Seven Streams.”
The woman leant her head upon her hand, and gazed out into the night, so
that Tristan saw but the curves of her proud face and bended neck. There
was pathos in her attitude, the pose of one who yearned for that which
life had never fully given.
“You live for the dead,” she said again.
“Many whom I love are dead,” he answered her.
She threw a glance at him, her eyes bright with the wistfulness that she
could not hide. Tristan was blind to that which was in her eyes. For the
moment he thought only of Rosamunde, walled from the world in Holy
Guard.
“Tristan,” she said.
“My lady.”
“Are all the loved ones dead?”
He caught a deep breath, did not answer her speedily and frankly as was
his wont.
“As the heart goes,” he said; “the rest is nothingness.”
“Nothingness; there you belie your soul.”
His eyes gleamed suddenly, as though he heard some mocking trumpet cry
and the trampling squadrons of his foes.
“Before God,” he said to her, lifting the weight of his body from off
his sword, “he who has lost friends to death, finds no soft
resting-place to ease his soul. A little while—some months ago, not
more—I leapt like a boy into the storm and strife of life. My youth is
past, my manhood forged beneath the mighty hammer of God’s fate. When
dreams elapse, the strong man grips the sword.”
“Strange words,” she said, “for one who is not old.”
He leant his hands again upon the pommel, sighed, and retorted to her
with the solemnity of one whose hopes were fierce, whose thoughts ran
deep.
“There seems a season in man’s life,” he said, “when all is wrath,
passion, and great pain. Youth passes in a year. The world grows full of
storm winds, anguish, and huge travail. Battle breathes in the blood. A
man must fight and labour, or grow mad.”
“And yet——”
“And yet,” he said, catching her very words, “my heart gives out at
seasons, and I yearn, even I, to be once more a little child weeping my
woes out on my mother’s knees.”
The Duchess turned to him from the mild stars, held out her hands, a
woman whose heart was open as the sky.
“Ah, Tristan, is it a mother’s heart you need?”
He looked at her sadly, knelt down and kissed her hands.
“Come, let me comfort you,” she said.
Lifting his rough face to hers, he smiled, the smile of a man grateful
yet not appeased.
“Winter is here,” he said; “as yet there is no peace upon the woods, no
singing of birds, no white clouds in the heavens. For me—battle and
tempest. I shall not rest till many deeds are done.”
On the morrow they marched from Sanguelac, with pennons tossing over
hill and moor. Tristan bore a black dragon on a gilded shield, the
device Dame Blanche had decreed to him after her sword had touched his
shoulder. Three thousand spears, a strenuous van, pricked with him hotly
through the winter wilds. Morose and fierce of face, Tristan held on
towards the south, with Blanche the Duchess at his side. They were
riding on Marvail to take it by surprise, fall suddenly upon Count
Reynaud and his men.
It was well towards evening on the third day of Tristan’s sallying from
Sanguelac that the watchers on the walls of Marvail saw scattered knots
of horsemen cantering towards the town. The gates were thrown open to
take them in. Even in the farther meadows on the rim of the woods the
townsfolk could see the flash and glimmer of pursuing spears.
Mud-stained, sullen-faced men rode in to Marvail, confessing defeat in
every desperate gesture, some with wounded comrades laid across their
saddles, their shields splintered, their lances lost. That morning Count
Reynaud had sallied out to give the heretics battle. His scouts had
found them marching south, and had misjudged their numbers, since
Tristan and the Duchess had masked half their companies in the woods.
Count Reynaud had cantered out with horns blowing, shields aglimmer,
spears aglint. The men of Marvail had watched them sally, promising the
Church more victims before the sun should set.
Two leagues from the town, on a hill amid the black billows of the
woods, Tristan stood at the head of his main squadrons, gazing round
over the place where their hot charge had left the wreckage of Reynaud’s
arms stranded on the hillside. The west was afire above the pines,
crimson swords smiting through the clouds. It had been a battle of
horse, grim, swift, and furious. Tristan had ambushed a thousand spears
under Lothaire in the woods. They had charged home on the Papists’
flank, crumpled their squadrons, hurled them back up the hill. Tristan
and his men had come in like the sea. Sword and shield were witnesses to
this.
Tristan stood amid the wreckage of the fight, with the Duchess beside
him on her great white horse. The banner with the black cross drooped
amid a grove of spears. Far to the south, through the dusky woods,
Lothaire’s spears still flashed and smote at the flying foe. On all
sides were the dead and the dying, piled in sheaves, the grim harvest of
battle.
At Tristan’s feet lay the body of Count Reynaud thrust through with a
spear. Before him among the slain stood some dozen monks guarded by
men-at-arms. They had followed Count Reynaud from Marvail to bless his
banner and to see the heretics put to the sword.
Tristan le Sauvage leant upon the long handle of his axe. A prisoner had
been brought to him, an esquire of Reynaud’s who had been taken in the
fight. Tristan’s eyes were fixed upon the man’s slashed face as he
questioned him concerning Jocelyn and the main body of the southern
host.
“Come, sir, let us have the truth.”
Several of the monks lifted up their hands, charging the man to seal his
lips.
“Parley not with a heretic,” said one.
“Receive martyrdom,” cried another, “and be blessed in heaven.”
Tristan turned on them with a grim scorn. He was in no mood for
argument; that priests were mischievous rogues was his honest
conviction.
“These are they who slew Samson,” he said, pointing at them with his
axe. “Guards, take and hang them in the woods. Every priest shall hang
who falls to me in the Seven Streams.”
The men obeyed him with no mean zest, fierce to be avenged on Samson’s
enemies. Twelve frocked figures were soon jerking and struggling under
the trees. Tristan, stern about the eyes, turned once again to the man
before him.
“Come, friend,” he said, “this is the fortune of war. We are rid of
these skirted fools; as soldier to soldier I offer fair terms. Tell me
of Jocelyn and the men of Agravale, or hang beside the monks on yonder
trees.”
Reynaud’s squire was young and lusty, not ripe for death either in years
or spirit, and Tristan’s challenge worked his conversion. He began to
confess such things as Tristan had desired.
“The Bishop has marched on the west,” he said, “even, sir, because he
was so guided by St. Pelinore in a vision at Agravale. He had some three
thousand spears following the Sacred Banner of the Golden Keys.”
Tristan nodded and smiled the man on.
“The vision, friend, tell us that.”
Reynaud’s esquire was white and faint from the blood lost to him by his
wounds. Tristan cheered him on, bade the two guards support his
shoulders.
“Ten more words, man, and we will see to your wounds,” he said. “Whither
has the Bishop marched with the spears of Agravale?”
“Sire, to the abbey of Holy Guard.”
“By God, for what purpose?”
“To destroy it, as he was bidden in his vision by St. Pelinore.”
The man fell forward fainting in the arms of his guards. They laid him
down beside dead Reynaud, began to search his wounds and to pour wine
between his lips. Blanche the Duchess was watching Tristan’s face. She
saw his eyes flash and kindle, his mouth harden into a grim line. It was
as the face of a man who heard of the dishonouring of one he loved.
Tristan stood motionless, leaning on his axe, gazing far into the
burning west, and once his lips moved as though he uttered a woman’s
name.