CHAPTER VIII
Rosamunde, pale and silent, rode through the thickets that clothed the castle hill. Not a word had she spoken either to Tristan or to Isabel since she had parted with Samson in the wood. Her face seemed frozen into an unnatural calm, as though she strove to mask the passions that worked within. There was a deeper significance in the adventure than either Isabel or Tristan had imagined.
They wound through the gardens where the sunlight slept upon the lawns, and came through a myrtle thicket to the great gate. The place was deserted, steeped in the noon silence. Tristan, clattering in at a word from Rosamunde, woke a groom sleeping on a bench in the stable court, and sent the man out to take the horses. Rosamunde stood under the shadow of the gate. There was an angry calm upon her face, a statuesque scorn that seemed to prophesy of what should follow.
“Come with me—be silent, both.”
These were her only words to them as she turned towards the terrace, white above the green gardens spread below. At the entry of the passage leading to the great hall and the tower she turned on Tristan and Isabel with a rapid stare from her unwavering eyes. There was deep meaning in that glance of hers. Tristan felt it, even as a bolt piercing his hauberk. With it she challenged his faith, his loyalty towards her as a woman. Laying a finger on her lip, she beckoned them to follow.
Following in silence, they passed the gallery, climbed a short stair, found themselves in a dark entry set back in the thickness of the wall. A streak of light showed where a door stood. Rosamunde, lifting the latch, peered in and entered. Tristan and the woman followed her. They could hear nothing else save each other’s breathing.
A long room stretched with lessening shadow towards a tall window opening on the south, and hangings, green and gold, covered the walls. Eight carved pillars ascended towards the dark vault above. At a table near the window sat a man with his back turned towards the door; the table was littered with fragments of glass, colours, brushes, and illumined scrolls. The man by the window was bending over a glass panel, enamelling a red rose thereon with unsteady hand. He seemed oblivious of the three who watched him from the doorway.
Rosamunde, with her torn robe gathered in her hand, moved into the room, with a glance thrown at Tristan over her shoulder. Following, he stood behind her in the shadow, watching her every movement. She gestured to him to strike one of the pillars with the scabbard of his sword. As the clangour sounded through the room, the man by the table twisted on his chair, sprang up and stared at them, dropping his brush on the stone paving at his feet.
There was a significance in the scene, tinged as it was with the love feud of these two. Rosamunde, tall as a white lily, stared the man down with an imperious scorn that betrayed the truth. Tristan, watching the Lord of Joyous Vale as he would have watched a wolf, saw him pale under his brown hair before the damning figure of his wife. His eyes wavered, his jaw fell. He seemed to stoop, to contract, as a tree shrivels before the breath of a forest fire.
Rosamunde, still gazing on his face, advanced towards him across the room. The man would have fallen back before her had not the table barred his way. Her splendid height, her towering courage, seemed to cast into contrast his cringing guilt.
“Sir, thanks to Heaven, we have returned.”
There was so suggestive a scorn in her voice that the high roof seemed to quiver at the sound. Ronan, moistening his dry lips, frowned and found no answer. The poor smile that he conjured up was as a moonbeam flitting over ice. His blood ran cold; he was afraid, and showed his fear.
“Sir, we have returned,” she said with the slow torture of an unpitying tongue. “For your good welcome, husband, we give you thanks.”
The man bowed to her stiffly, clumsily, like a wooden doll jointed at the hips.
“Madame is ever welcome,” he said; “her prerogative demands it. Need I emphasise the truth?”
She laughed at his words, a laugh that seemed as foreign to her beauty as the cracked cackle of some shrivelled hag.
“Sir, your courtesy bribes me to silence. I see we but hinder you; trifle with such lordly cares as befit your temper. Pick up your brush, sir. Playing with crafty colours upon brittle glass, the pastime pleases you. I would commend it to a man of courage.”
His eyes flashed for the moment, grew dull again like treacherous water. He reached for the brush, to hide his face from her. Rosamunde, gathering her green gown, swept by him with scorn. At the door she turned and cast a last taunt at him over her shoulder.
“Samson the Heretic is well,” she said. “He sends you, sir, his great good will.”
All that noontide Tristan stood on guard at the door of Dame Rosamunde’s room. She was as a white bird in the nest of a snake, and for all his jealousy Tristan’s blood ran loyal in her service. They were Ronan’s men who had fallen upon Samson and Rosamunde in the wood that day. The Lord of Joyous Vale was no open and courageous smiter, for poison suited his senses better than an honest blow. That Rosamunde was in great peril Tristan le Sauvage knew right well. It seemed that his one buckler covered her from the world, nor was he sorry to sustain the feud.
Tristan, keeping guard before the door, watched the sun sinking towards the western hills. The light smote through the narrow casement in the rough stone wall, played and gleamed upon the laced rings of his hauberk. There were warring instincts in the man’s heart. Jealousy still stirred in him. Yet over his finer self there shone that luminous reverence for a woman’s name. Tristan, half savage, half Christian in his untempered youth, strove with his deepening manhood towards the finer faith.
As the gold mellowed in the west, the woman Isabel came out to him from her lady’s room. The morning’s adventure had sobered the wench’s mood; she had dropped her coquetry at her mistress’s feet. Drawing Tristan in, she barred the door, stood by it listening, pointed the man into an inner room. He noted the great bed with its rich hangings, the carved panels, the coloured cloths about the walls. There was a rich and mysterious savour in the air; even the flowers upon the casement ledge seemed brighter than their fellows in the fields below. To Tristan the place was as some rare shrine, whose odours and gleaming dyes breathed about the face of Love.
Rosamunde sat at the open window looking towards the lake. A bank of gillyflowers bloomed upon the sill. There was still the same proud pallor upon the woman’s face; solitude had not bribed her to salve her care with tears. Hers were not eyes that wept at the first kiss of anger or of pain.
Turning, she looked long at Tristan, like one who would be sure of the faith she needed. The man’s shoulders were broad; they might bear her honour. Woman that she was, she was the more eager for his comradeship, since jealousy had snatched at the red jewel over her heart. No doubt she thought it easy for the man to serve her, seeing that she imagined no bitterness upon his ugly face.
“Tristan,” she said, looking deep into his eyes.
He met the glance squarely, like one sure of his own honour.
“Tristan, to-day I have trusted you,” she said; “this morning you promised faith to me. I would try you further. Am I wise in this?”
“Madame,” he said with blunt simplicity, “you are apt at making servants. I obey you still.”
She rose, stood at the window, pointed him to the lake. Tristan drew to her side, gazed out as she told him of her charge.
“See, there is an island yonder, covered with trees.”
Tristan bent his head.
“There are boats on the strand below the town; go alone and ferry over. On the island there is a ruined chapel. By the altar, under the ambry in the right-hand wall, you will see a stone marked with a trefoil in the floor. Under the stone there lies a casket of black oak. Take the casket; sink it in the deeps of the lake.”
They gazed into each other’s eyes questioningly, like two mutes over a grave. Rosamunde was the first to break the silence.
“Tristan, you will take oath to me?” she said.
“By my sword, madame.”
“The casket goes unopened to the deeps?”
“I swear that.”
“Then, I am content.”
She stood forward suddenly, and stooping a little, kissed him upon the brow. It was done in a moment, but the shaft had sped. Tristan, red to the lips, went back from her with a strange light in his eyes. He was hers from that moment, body and soul.
The sinking sun had built a golden highway over the water when Tristan came to the lake’s rim. The woods stood wondrous green against the sombre purple of the hills, and the reeds and rushes glittered like silver wire. Water-fowl winged from out the shallows as he unmoored a boat that lay half grounded by a stone stage. Thrusting out and setting the water spinning at the prow, he was soon deep in the golden pathway towards the west. Two furlongs away the island cast its gloom upon the lake. The water lay black and deep about its rocks; the stunted trees were bannered with crimson and gold. Tristan was soon under their shadows, where he ran the boat aground in a small inlet, clambered out, and sought the chapel.
The place stood ruinous, plunged deep in weeds, festooned with ivy and many lusty plants, choked thick with brambles. A fallen pine tree lay across the roofless porch. Briers and nettles cumbered the floor. Tristan, struggling through in the half gloom, had to draw his sword where the chancel began. A great thorn tree flourished betwixt the roofless walls. Tristan clove a pathway through the prickly mass, trampled the nettles, climbed the low steps towards the altar. Crouching, he sought for Rosamunde’s stone. It was some while before he tore the rank herbage aside, and found the trefoil carved beneath. The slab had been glued by damp and moss. It was smooth and heavy, giving no vantage to his fingers. Working with the sword point, he prised up the stone, thrust in his hand, and drew the casket out.
Night had fallen and the west drew dim. Hardly had he huddled the casket into his bosom, turned back the stone over the hole, when an uprush of gruff voices rose as from the dark thickets of the place. Tristan, starting up with twitching sword, fell back against the altar, alert and grim. The plash of churned water broke on the evening silence, the creaking of sweeps in the rowlocks. Scrambling out towards the gate, Tristan saw the tall mast of a ship stride black across the sky. It skirted the island, towering over the trees, a scarlet streamer afloat from its gilded vane. Like a great finger it seemed to stretch towards the sky, held aloft as in silent warning.
Threading the thickets with the oaken casket under his arm, Tristan came to the island’s rim. He looked over the water towards the west, and saw that the lake seemed peopled with shadowy ships, striding solemn and silent out of the night. A thousand oars seemed to churn the water. Bulwarks glimmered, armour shone. Like giant ghosts the ships crept on, sable and strange against the fading west.
Sudden out of the gloom leapt the cry of a horn, its voice echoing from the hills. A vague clamour came from the shore. In the town, torches were gleaming like red moths in a garden. From the castle the alarm bell boomed and clashed, for the Papal fleet had descended on Joyous Vale.