Over the madhouse in the mere the noon sun had travelled, drawing the
grey mists up from the meadows, glistening upon the pinnacles of the
wooded hills. No wind was moving—the withered sedges were silent in the
shallows, and no ripples barred the water with dim gold.
From the island came a solitary cry, the scream of a living thing in
pain, shrill, piteous, and discordant. All the dismal babels of the
place seemed to wake at the cry like the screaming of birds when some
savage spoiler haunts the woods. The impassive trees moved never a
finger, though echo veiled among the hills.
In the court, with the grey stone walls and the barred windows rising
round, Nicholas the keeper had betaken him to his whip. A girl, naked to
the loins, stood chained by her wrists to the wooden post in the centre
of the court. She was a mad creature, given to wild outbursts of
delirious violence. Old Nicholas had taken her when exhausted after some
such fit, had chained her to the post for the chastening of her temper.
Though the red weals showed in the white skin, her outcry and her
writhings availed her nothing. The whip was the old man’s one appeal to
those contumacious creatures who needed discipline.
In a long, low-ceilinged chamber under the tiles sat Rosamunde of Joyous
Vale, listening to the cries that came from the distant court. The room
was richly garnished in its way with hangings and carved furniture, and
lamps of bronze. The three windows opened on the western sky, the wild
crags above, the woods and the calm water spread below.
The Lady Rosamunde was seated on a carved bench, gazing out on the woods
steeped in the double mysteries of sunshine and of mist. Her hands were
in her lap, her undressed hair falling in gold upon her shoulders. The
look upon her face spoke of deep misery, of passionate degradation, and
shame of soul. Her proud neck was bent like the stem of a sun-parched
flower. She sat motionless in the shadow, gazing solemn-eyed upon the
empty world.
Near her, throned on a scarlet cushion upon the floor, a pale-faced girl
peered at herself in a small hand-mirror, while she combed her black
hair with a silver comb. She was studious and deliberate in her toilet,
perfecting it with a flippant airiness of gesture that told of a
sensuous and cheerful vanity. Ever and again she would cast quick,
bird-like glances at Rosamunde before the window, smile to herself with
a world-wise pity in her hazel eyes.
“Hey, sister Rose, be merry, be merry. If I were an escaped nun, I
should be laughing till the sun looked big as a great shield.”
There was a certain hollowness in the girl’s merriment, as though her
tongue were blither than her heart. Rosamunde half turned to her with
the air of one burdened with utter weariness of soul and body. Life had
seemed a black dream since that wild night in Holy Guard when Jocelyn
and his men had hounded the nuns into the wind and rain. The memory of
that violent midnight lived with a vivid horror that haunted her soul.
At dawn she had been taken through the wilds, brought to the river,
thrust into a galley, and rowed upstream into the depths of the woods.
For two days and a night she had heard the plash of oars, watched the
banks swimming by under a dreary canopy of mist. Then the men had landed
her, set her upon a horse, brought her through leagues of woodland to
the madhouse in the mere.
The girl Miriam who shared her chamber with her was a little Jewess,
volatile, passionate, and warm of heart. A child of misfortune, cursed
with the bane of beauty, she had suffered many things at the world’s
mercy. Yet under the mask of vice and ignominy, the passion and fervour
of her race still burnt unquenched. At Rosamunde’s first coming she had
taunted and gibed at her. Later, the utter misery in the elder woman’s
eyes had disarmed her vanity and touched her heart. Different as gold
and wax, the pair had become friends by common necessity in their prison
chamber under the tiles.
“Sister Rose,” said the girl again, “I have never yet won a smile from
your lips.”
“Who can smile, child, when one hears the cries of those in pain?”
“Ah, the mad folk, they suffer always; it is their curse.”
“And we, Miriam?”
“We only suffer when our souls are sad.”
Rosamunde had heard from the Papists of Samson’s death; the tidings had
shocked her, yet not with the profundity she would have dreamt of months
ago. He had been her spiritual father and the great regenerator of the
Seven Streams. To Rosamunde those later months he had been more of a god
than a mortal; Tristan, outshone at the first, had brought back her
heart from a garden of impossible dreams. From Jocelyn and his men she
had won no other news save that their spears were set against Tristan
and his heretics. They had taunted her with the promise to bring a
sackful of ears taken from the detestable degenerates who had defied the
Church.
“My soul, but you are as sorrowful as Rachel,” said the black-haired
girl, twisting near on her cushion and half resting against Rosamunde.
“I have been a poor fool,” said she, with one hand on Miriam’s head.
“We women are all fools; the men cheat us into bondage. Once I was clean
and pure. Well, well, what if I have an old heart in a young body?”
Rosamunde held her peace for the moment. The cries had ceased in the
court below; the babel of mad voices had given place to silence.
“Have you thought of death, Miriam?”
The Jewess started, stared up into Rosamunde’s face. It was white and
hard, the eyes full of a passionate pessimism.
“Death, sister!”
“As a Roman woman would have died. Ah, my God, is it then a sin to end
such shame?”
Miriam struggled to her knees, her arms thrust over Rosamunde’s
shoulders. The warm Jewish blood in her had taken fire of a sudden. Her
pale face looked into Rosamunde’s, her dark eyes glittered with an
earnestness that was almost super-natural.
“Sister, what words are these?”
“Shame or death—I halt between the two.”
“Death, but how?”
“A steel point, a mere bodkin prick, and then the end.”
The younger woman clasped her arms about Rosamunde’s neck, looked
steadily into her face.
“Sister, you frighten me. Why then should we die? Is there no hope left,
no gleam of a new dawn?”
“There is hope in prayer, perhaps.”
“Ah, my fathers have prayed of old and have been answered. The Great God
reigneth, though I, His daughter, have erred in the tents of men.”
The misery melted out of Rosamunde’s eyes for the moment. She touched
Miriam’s hair with her fingers, drew a deep breath, inspired new
courage. Her mouth softened; she kissed Miriam upon the lips.
“Forget, child,” she said; “it was a moment’s weakness with me, and it
has passed.”
The little Jewess took the kiss, broke forth into sudden weeping. Her
heart was warm yet under her gay gown; the faith of her fathers was not
dead within her breast. The spirits of Ruth and of Rachel might have
wakened echoes in her soul.
“Ah, I have felt such fearful thoughts of old,” she said, “when I was
drawn down into the dust and men trampled on my honour. Yet hope
revived, and I lived on. Often I have thought that shame has broken all
my heart, that I am too sinful to look into the face of God.”
Rosamunde kissed Miriam’s lips a second time; it was her turn to
comfort, and the instinct gave her courage. A long while she spoke to
her, telling of the Christ, pleading as the saints had pleaded in the
past. As for the girl, she threw her mirror and her silver comb away,
plucked the bright brooch from off her breast, sat listening at
Rosamunde’s knees till evening fell.
That night the Lady of Joyous Vale lay long awake, thinking of Tristan
and his great love. Her heart cried out for a strong man’s chivalry, for
the passionate tenderness of such a homage. Holy Guard and Jocelyn had
broken her pride; she was as a child once more lifting her face to the
lips of love. To be saved from shame, this was her prayer.
Lying awake in the moonless gloom, tossing under the coverlet with her
hair spread around, she listened to Miriam’s quiet breathing. The
casements showed grey in the wall before her. Feverish, she rose up from
her bed, drew a cloak round her, knelt by one of the open windows. The
night air played upon her face. Overhead a thousand stars were shining,
while the silent lake glimmered beneath.
Rosamunde bowed herself over the sill, leant her head upon her arms, and
wept from sheer pain and weariness of heart. Life seemed sealed against
all hope. Violence and infamy hemmed her in; she was mewed in this
island amid mad folk and worse, the idle sport of a worthless priest.
She had become again as a little child, hungry for love, afraid of the
dark. Her heart cried out for Tristan there, that rough face lit by its
honest eyes, that strength that no single arm could stay. He was the one
man who could win her soul, guard her from all terror and the world’s
evil leer.
As she wept that night under the stars, she made a passionate prayer to
Heaven.
“O God,” cried her heart, “send Tristan hither. Grant that he may love
me as he loved of old. Hear this my prayer, O Father of heaven. For lo,
I have broken the pride in my heart, and lo, I love Tristan, and would
be his wife. Hear me, God, and save me from shame.”
She knelt a long while gazing up at the stars. The tears came no more to
dim her eyes; a sudden wind stirred the trees in the garden. The sound
seemed as a still voice answering her prayer, a voice that whispered—
“Peace, God has heard thee.”