CHAPTER XIX
Tristan and Ogier sallied at dawn, old Nicholas ferrying them over the mere one by one. The man had recovered his wits, if not his good will, and his small eyes darted furtive gleams at Tristan, as though he were ready to knife him if the chance had offered.
A wind had risen in the night, brisk and eager as a blithe breath from the sea. The clouds raced athwart the blue; shadows scampered over the grass; the trees shook their heads and laughed. The water was smitten into a thousand golden wrinkles by the wind. The lilies danced in the shallows; the rushes shivered as the ripples plashed amid the sedge.
As Ogier and Tristan got to horse, a last shrill clamour reached them from the madhouse in the mere. A swift swirl of sound, wild and wordless; it was the wailing of the wretches mocked in their dark dens by the ever-returning dawn. To Tristan the air seemed cleaner since he had crossed the water; the dawn had a deeper gold, the sky a richer colour. The trees cheered him, waved their dark green shields. “Rosamunde, Rosamunde, Rosamunde!” cried the wind. All the alleys and wells of that deep wild seemed to breathe adventure and to mouth romance.
The valley, with its dark pines and stunted olives, sank back under the dawn, while the madhouse stood like black marble in a sheet of gold. Rabbits scurried into the thickets. A herd of swine ran from them, squealing and grunting into the gloom. Wild life was with Tristan, the solitary piping of the birds. The wilderness seemed part of his own soul, where strength and grim nature flourished in the good prime of youth.
Ogier was in a coarse, boastful mood that morning. What little spirit he had seemed to smack of the wine-cask and the brothel. He twitted Tristan, jested against the Bishop, let his loose tongue revel over unclean food. The man was a mere mountain of flesh, corrupt and noisome, and Tristan glanced over his carcass with the grim glee of a smiter. He marked the man’s fat and ungainly girth, smiled when he pictured his good sword falling across the giant’s throat.
“Come, lad,” said Ogier, in his ranting mood, “what though I am a butcher’s son, I am not ashamed of the shambles. I have eaten good meat in my time, and drunk such wine as warms the belly. This great carcass of mine has served me well.”
“A stout arm, comrade, and a stout sword.”
“Man, there is not a fellow in the south who can match me in arms. Goliath, why, I would have cloven that Philistine to the chin. As for you, my little one, I could break your back as I could wring the neck of a pigeon.”
“Doubtless, doubtless,” said Tristan, with a smile.
He was content to listen to the man’s vapourings, for if Ogier waxed garrulous, so much the better. He might betray himself and Jocelyn also.
“To serve the Church, sir,” Ogier ran on, “you must play the pander and keep your mouth shut like an alms coffer. I have been purveyor to the Bishop. Wine, meat, gold, glory, love, and the like—why, sir, I have played with them all, and to my credit.”
“You have the needful wit in you,” said Tristan, with something of a smile.
“Youngling, well said; you could do worse than follow my lead. A heavy hand and an iron heart; these things serve. Nor have I stinted myself in obeying the Bishop.”
“You farm his taxes, eh?”
“And take my own toll, man. Jocelyn’s none the wiser. I play the Bishop before him, and he pays the cost.”
The land dropped before them to a wooded plain, grassland and thickets interspersed together. Great cedars grew there, and huge primeval oaks. Tristan printed the map upon his mind, as he rode on Ogier’s flank, keeping his bearing by the sun. To the north a line of hills towered up, wooded below, bare-fanged above. All about was the blue gloom of the far unknown, and the wilderness smiled under the hurrying sky.
“This second hermitage,” said Tristan, playing with his bridle.
Ogier licked his lips with his great red tongue, smoothed his coarse beard.
“Therein, sir,” he answered, “Jocelyn has caged his latest captive. Mark the quip, my friend. She is a white heretic from the Seven Streams. Scold that she is, I have great hopes of her.”
He laughed and grimaced in Tristan’s face.
“Another damsel queened it there before, brother,” he continued. “Of her, I guess, there was some tragic end.”
“How so?” asked Tristan, growing the keener as he listened.
Ogier edged his horse round a fallen tree.
“Before Lententide,” he said, slouching lazily in the saddle, “I was sent by ship with certain priests to a northern province to treat with Blanche the Bold, who is a duchess there. Ha, but she would have none of our treaties. Sailing home with a good west wind, we ran by an island—Purple Isle, as my sea-dogs said, far out to sea. Our casks were low, so we landed to win water. By a spring near the shore my fellows caught a chit of a girl with as pert a face and as trim a body as I ever saw in Agravale. ‘So ho,’ thought I, ‘here is good merchandise to please the Bishop.’ Ha, brother, but I sold her to Jocelyn for two hundred silver crowns.”
Tristan, with a sudden grimness in his eyes, twitched at his bridle and drew a yard nearer to the man on the white stallion. So tightly were Tristan’s lips pressed together that they formed a pouting line above his chin. The muscles were knotted about the angle of his jaw. He would not trust his tongue for the moment, lest the truth should out.
“A good bargain, comrade,” he said, grinding his teeth, every sinew of him taut as the fibres of a wind-rocked tree, “a good bargain. And the girl, what of her?”
Ogier laughed. His great red mouth gaped above his beard, and there was an unclean glint in his wolfish eyes.
“She was good food,” he said. “I had my fill before she came to the Bishop’s table. Bah! we soldiers have our turn.”
Tristan’s hand was on his sword. The muscles of his arm tightened, then relaxed. He shut his eyes for the moment, saw blood against the sun. Yet, from mere molten wrath, his vengeance hardened to metal at white heat.
“What of the girl?” he asked again.
Ogier puffed out a deep breath, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
“The devil knows,” he said, jerking his thumb over his right shoulder. “For a month she was in the madhouse yonder; the girl was too much a lamb for the she-wolves there. Jocelyn had her sent to the haunt we ride to. She was no longer flaunting it when the White Heretic took her place.”
“Dead?” said Tristan, with a great gulp of fury.
“Ask Jocelyn, my son,” quoth Ogier, with a callous sniff.
They had come to a great wood that climbed into the blue distance, clouding the bosoms of the hills. From the dense and mysterious umbrage of the trees a broad stream glittered, winding southwards into the green. A narrow grass ride delved beside the water into the woods. Ogier plunged in, with Tristan at his heels.
“My son,” said the giant, over his shoulder, oblivious of the sword that tingled in its scabbard, “if the Bishop’s business takes you this way once more, follow the river; it will guide you straight.”
“Thanks, comrade,” said Tristan.
“We shall have fun anon.”
“With the White Heretic, eh!”
“By my bones, lad, she is as cold as a block of marble.”
A broad glade opened sudden before them, its grassy slopes shelving on the east towards the river. Great oaks canopied it on every hand, the sunlight sifting through in a thousand streams. The mossy trunks stood hord on hord, while the plash of the water played through the stagnant air.
There was the upflashing of a sword, and a hoarse challenge startled the trees.
“Guard, devil, guard!”
Ogier, his great mouth wide, twisted round, saw a furious face glaring dead white front under the shadow of a shield. A sword streaked the sunlight. Ogier blinked at Tristan as at one gone mad.
“Damnation! What’s amiss, my son?”
“By the love of God, I have you now!”
“Fool, are you mad?”
The hoarse voice echoed him; the eyes flashed fire.
“Guard, ravisher, guard!”
“Ten thousand devils! What have we here?”
“Tristan of Purple Isle, avenger of Columbe; Tristan the Heretic, Tristan of the Seven Streams.”
Ogier growled like a trapped bear. He whipped his sword out, put forward his shield.
“On with you, traitor!” he roared. “Join your sister under the sods.”
“Ha, say you so?” said Tristan, closing in.
There was a brief blundering tussle on horseback under the trees. Ogier’s stallion seemed overweighted by his bulk, and was slow to answer the bridle as a waterlogged ship the helm. Tristan caught Ogier on the flank, so that the giant could not use his shield. Their swords flashed, yelped, twisted in the air. A down cut hewed the dexter cantel from Ogier’s shield. The giant’s face, with a gashed cheek, glared at Tristan from under his upreared arm. So close were they that blood spattered Tristan’s face, as Ogier blew the red stream from his mouth and beard.
Tristan broke away, wheeled, and came again with a cry of “Rosamunde!” He lashed home, split Ogier’s collar bone even through the rings of his hauberk. The giant yelped like a gored hound, dropped his shield, parried a second cut, smote Tristan’s horse above the ears. Tossing and rearing under the trees, the brute was unmanageable for the moment, and Tristan slipped from the saddle, sprang back against a tree as Ogier charged at him. The sword point whistled a hand’s breadth from his face. Before Ogier could wheel, Tristan was on him like a leopard. The giant, gripped by the girdle, toppled back and came down with a crash, his sword flashing from his hand in the fall.
The pair were at grips upon the grass, where Tristan, quick as a cat, came up on Ogier and straddled his chest. The giant heaved at him, gripped him by the knees. For one moment Tristan fell aside, but he was up and above again, with one hand on the other’s throat. Ogier, straining, panting with his burden of flesh, went down again under Tristan’s weight. He fought with his feet, rolled to and fro like a rudderless ship. Tristan, shortening his sword, ran the point into Ogier’s throat. The giant’s hands clutched and gripped the blade. There was a spasmodic heave of the great body, a tense quivering of the limbs, as the sword ran through, smote a cubit or more into the grass beneath.
Tristan, breathing hard, with his mouth wide open, rose up slowly from the giant’s body. Ogier had his death stroke; the red stream told as much as he twitched awhile and then lay still. Tristan, wiping the sweat from his forehead, plucked his sword out by the hilt. Columbe of Purple Isle was avenged of one foe.