CHAPTER VI
Many a year had passed since the rough folk of the Seven Streams had first murmured against the sleek and masterful priests whose god seemed the god of wine-bibbing and of greed. Arrogance and luxury and all manner of uncleanness had spread through the abbeys of the land, staining the robes of the Church with scarlet, tainting every holy place. Charity had become as naught; lust and avarice had walked hand in hand; tyranny and violence had reigned together.
Thus through many long years there had been a great sundering of the sympathies of the people from the tall towers and gorgeous palaces of the Church. Not openly had the slow change come, but with stealth, even as the earth’s crust is mined by the tunnelling of subterranean streams. Celibacy, that perilous plant, had cast its unclean tendrils over the land, bearing dark fruit in many a solemn haunt, making vain show, hiding the bane beneath. Slowly all reverence had elapsed, and fear had been swallowed up in hate. From the broad lands and the dark forests teeming with wild beasts, murmurings, like the moanings of the wind, had spread and gathered through the Seven Streams.
Then Samson had come, like some tall demigod out of the dark unknown. Was it not told that all the wisdom of the East had been hoarded and stored within his brain? The philosophic lore of Greece was his. The sages of Egypt and the grey fathers of the Church had poured their mystic learning into his soul. Plotinus and Augustine, philosopher and Christian patriarch, had mingled in him their spiritual zeal. Half priest, half poet, half soldier, and half seer, he had lifted his voice in the Seven Streams, preaching Christ crucified, even as the Galileans had preached of old.
To him the rude instincts of the peasantry had risen, eager and passionate, hungering for the truth. Serf and lord had mingled in one cause. Many a good married priest, condemned because his heart was a father’s heart, had come to Samson, zealous for the faith. Then the deep thunder of the Great Pontificate had echoed over the streams and mountains. Synod and council had dared the strife; church and grave had been sealed up fast; anathema and interdict had followed on. The dead had been buried in unhallowed ground; the bread and wine had been denied the land. Still Samson had preached, so that the province followed him, even till the great abbeys were empty and in ruins, the shrines and churches given to the dust. So fierce and turbulent had waxed the storm that monk and priest had fled to the far south, fearing the people and the people’s enmity.
That same evening when Tristan came to Joyous Vale there was a gathering of the peasantry on the castle terrace to hear Samson the Heretic hold forth. He had ridden in towards vespers, a big man, cowled and cloaked, on a gaunt grey mare. By custom, a room had been set apart for him in Ronan’s tower, to serve as an oratory and cell. Here he could retreat like a hermit to his cave, and refresh in solitude both the flesh and the spirit, like the reasonable Christian that he was.
Above the terrace, the grey walls of the tower, crusted with lichen, rose towards the azure of the evening sky. A great silence covered the valley, save for the bleating of sheep in the meadows, the cry of the lapwing from the marshes. Distance purpled the far horizon; the woods stood wondrous green and fair. Peace prevailed over garden and garth; as yet there was no muttering of war beyond the hills.
Rosamunde sat in a great carved chair, draped at the back with scarlet cloth. Ronan her husband stood at her side. He was a lean man, with prominent shoulders, shallow eyes, and a cold mouth. The peasant folk sat on the benches before them. Rosamunde’s women were at her feet.
Tristan had throned himself on the wall where cactuses grew in urns of stone and gillyflowers flourished, yellow and red. He was watching Rosamunde and Ronan her lord. The man by the chair pleased Tristan little. The hollow chest, the sullen eye promised nothing virile in the matter of arms. It puzzled Tristan how he had won such a wife, for they were as a rose and a mandrake bound up together.
His cogitations were ended by the opening of a door. Samson in his black robe came out on the terrace. A wooden cross hung at his girdle; he wore leather sandals and an iron chain round his neck. Waving the peasant folk back as they thronged him, he took a stool of cedar wood that stood by the wall. Putting back the cowl from off his face, he gazed round on those who awaited his words.
Though a seeming monk, he wore no tonsure; the black hair was cropped close to the massive head. Seated there in the western glow, he looked like a Homeric hero with the face of a Jove. The eyes were black, bright as polished stone. The long jaw curved prominently under the thin, straight mouth. The brows met in a black line over the nose. A mass of passion and virile power, he faced the peasantry like a prophet of God.
As Tristan watched him, he began to speak, moving his hands to time his words. His voice bewitched from the first sound, and the simple folk before him were as still as stones. Even Tristan forgot Dame Rosamunde’s face.
Samson’s theme was simple and strong, yet grand in its bold simplicity. He expounded the pure spirit of the Christian creed, brushed aside dogmas, denounced outward forms. His convictions were great, his scorn as powerful. Greed in high places, luxury and lust, pride and simony, these were his victims. Casting Christ’s ideals against the pomp of the Church, he mined the rotten fabric with his tongue.
“People of La Vallée Joyeuse,” he said, “clean hearts avail with Heaven, clean souls, clean lives. Labour in the fields is a prayer to God. Live that you may not fear death; live that your lives may demand entry into Heaven. Actions build the stairway up to God, good deeds, pure thoughts. Believe not those who promise you salvation with hired prayers and the melting of much wax. Gold cannot bribe God. The Church’s wings cannot waft you into paradise if you are weighted with the iron girdle of your sins. Pardons, penitences, the ringing of bells, these are but mummeries to deceive your souls. Serve God in your hearts, and you will have no need of a Pope.”
Tristan’s eyes had wandered from the preacher to Rosamunde’s face. Its expression stirred him, even as a falling star smites the vision of one watching the night sky. The woman’s eyes were fixed on Samson’s face, with a certain passionate intentness that made Tristan wonder. The half-petulant curve had vanished from her mouth. A warm radiance seemed to burn upon her cheeks; her eyes were more bright than the stones at her throat.
By sudden instinct Tristan glanced at Ronan, who stood beside Rosamunde, leaning on her chair. The man’s narrow face was half in shadow. He was watching his wife with a curious stare, fingering his chin, his thin lips working. He appeared to be studying the play of thought on her face, shifting restlessly from foot to foot. More than once he cast a rapid glance at the preacher, like the glance a jealous hound casts at a rival.
To Tristan there was a strange underchant to the song, a secret movement he could not catch. Samson’s eyes were on the people before him, Rosamunde’s eyes on Samson’s face, Lord Ronan’s on the face of his wife. Tristan watched the three with his instincts groping in the dusk. He listened no more to the preacher’s words, but watched in silence the play before him.
The sun had ridden low upon the hills. In the gardens and thickets beneath the terrace a hundred birds made their vesper song. Shadows, purple and gold, increased on the lake. In the west, the moon was heaving up a broad shoulder above the world. A great silence descended like dew out of the heavens. Odours of rose and myrtle flooded the air.
From his vigil, Tristan woke to find the peasantry moving, Samson standing alone by the wall. The man had drawn down his cowl and re-knotted his girdle. He passed back slowly towards the door, walking gravely with his chin on his chest. Tristan was watching Rosamunde’s face. He saw her take a deep breath under her robe, her hands hanging limp over the carved rails of her chair. Her head seemed to droop on the scarlet cushion, as she watched Samson under half-closed lids. The town showed dim in the green gloom beneath, like white coral glimmering under the sea. An hour passed, and found Tristan on the terrace. Far beneath the lake shimmered, touched by the rising light of the moon. The cry of wild duck came from the shallows. In the thickets a choir of nightingales had broken the silence together.
On the terrace, Tristan had drawn beneath the shade of a cypress, that rose like a spire from the garden beneath. He was leaning his chin on his crossed forearms, staring out over the scene. The valley was as a battleground betwixt moonlight and gloom. The hill-tops led the silver host on, the water gleamed with the beat of their feet. In the deeps of the woods and the hollows of the hills the gloom kept the banners of the night unfurled.
There was a rough melancholy in Tristan’s mood. Samson’s words were as the noise of swords dinning perpetually within his brain. A vigorous zest breathed in the creed, a flash of the green woods, a scent of the sea. The bold truths of the man’s harangue were woven in his thought like a crown round Rosamunde’s brow. Her large eyes haunted him, wistful and brave. He remembered also her husband’s face, with its lack-lustre malice, its cold distrust. There was some romance in this heretical crown with the great stones set in its band, the treacherous opal scowling yellow and green, the sapphire blue and bold in the sun, the ruby red with its passionate fire.
Two voices came to Tristan out of the gloom, as he loitered on the terrace under the stars. Hunching his shoulders, he drew towards the tree. The voices came from the garden below, where there was a yew walk by the wall.
The first voice was Rosamunde’s; Tristan caught the mellow tones out of the dark. Anger flooded it, to judge by its temper. A second voice echoed the woman’s, a cold drawl, vain yet bitter. It was the Lord of Vallée Joyeuse who walked with her under the yews.
“Madame, I may claim some reverence from you,” came the taunt. “God knows, I am only your husband; a poor reason, it seems. This braggart preacher bulks too large in our house.”
“He is a man, messire. You are jealous, eh?”
“You suggest, madame wife, that there is cause for the passion.”
Silence held a moment, a pause as for breath. Tristan’s mouth hardened. It was the woman’s voice that sounded next, a ringing scorn in it that made Tristan’s eyes glitter.
“Is marriage a surety for insolence?” it said.
“Insolence! Is the truth insolent?”
“Shall I suffer this, though I am your wife?”
“Husbands, madame, suffer no tricking of their honour, save when they are blind bats and fools.”
There was again a pause. Rosamunde’s words came clear and passionate as the notes of a well-tuned harp.
“Man, you have said enough to me, though you are my mate.”
“Regret it, madame, as much as you will.”
“Ha!”
“But beware of trickery.”
“These lies, I’ll not brook them——”
“Cultivate discretion.”
“Silence! I am no puppet, though you have wedded me.”
The voices passed westwards under the yews, growing faint as the angle of the terrace came between. Tristan stood up, and spread his broad shoulders. There was an ugly look in his eyes, a firm closing of his iron mouth. He tightened his sword belt, passed from under the stars to the hall, spoke little as he sat at supper with Ronan’s men.