CHAPTER XLIII
All that day and the next Tristan and the Duchess rode south from St. Geneviève’s shrine, through the woods and meadows, rich with the magic of many flowers. The tall grass seemed as a rare robe shot through with threads of diverse colours. In the woods the ilex and the beech lifted their broad domes towards the blue, and in the pastures a myriad aspens shivered in the breeze.
Towards the noon of the second day the lowlands stretched back towards the north. Tristan and his men came to a wilder region, where the woods grew dark beneath the shadows of the mountains. Through a multitude of poplars whistling in the wind, amid fields spread with poppies, yellow and red, the road curled through dense thickets of chestnut and of beech. Higher still, under the deepening darkness of the trees, the road dwindled to a grass-grown track, so that the armed men rode in single file, a silvery snake that wavered through the green. Higher still, the spruce and larch fretted the blue dome of the sky, and heavenwards towered the silver firs and great pines, sombre and huge of girth.
Under the shade of a thicket of pines Tristan halted at noon to rest his men. A spring played by the roadside, where the thirsty riders drank from their palms, and led their horses to drink at the pool. Meanwhile, Tristan and the Duchess went forward with the guide to a great rock that was perched upon the hillside, and whence the man promised them full view of St. Isidore’s Pass. Above the trees the mountains towered, crag on crag and cliff on cliff, till the mighty tops, aureoled with golden vapour, clove the canopy of the sky. Here and there a snow-capped peak gleamed and flashed against the cloudless blue. Black gulfs yawned everywhere, edged with a thousand glittering crags, hoarse with the thunder of a thousand streams.
Before them lay St. Isidore’s Gate, a colossal rent betwixt two mountains, full of gloom even under the noon sun. Tristan and the Duchess scanned the pass, while the peasant told them how the road ran. At one point it dwindled to a narrow track, on the one hand a precipice plunging down, on the other the bluff shoulder of the mountain rising straight towards the sky. A great rock half closed the narrow track, and the gap was known as St. Isidore’s Gate. It was a point that could be held, the peasant said, by twenty men against a thousand. Nor could they be outflanked save by one wild track that led over the mountains towards the east.
Blanche laid a hand on Tristan’s shoulder.
“Let us give to Bertrand, my best knight, some eight score men to keep this path over the mountains. You and I, Tristan, can hold the pass together.”
The man looked into her fearless eyes, at the face so strong and yet so tender. Once more he besought her to consider her safety, and to remain with Bertrand on the slopes above.
“You are of greater worth,” he argued, “than we rough men, whose business it is to make play with the sword.”
But in Blanche’s soul deeper thoughts were moving towards the coming crisis. She loved Tristan, and in that hour when death was spreading forth his wings she took less pains to dissemble the truth. In the half-wistful sacrifice of herself she lost none of the dignity of her heart. Her rare womanliness seemed to stand the higher, even because her love was a noble thing.
“Tristan,” she said to him, “am I better than my men? Think you they will be the worse for having a woman in their ranks?”
“God knows,” he answered her, looking in her eyes, “we shall fight the better if you are with us in the pass.”
“Therefore,” she said, smiling a little, “you argue against your own plea. Is it not a woman’s joy to stand fast by those whom she has loved?”
“Madame,” he answered her, colouring to the lips, “would we were worthy of so great love.”
That night, when the round moon stood full upon the mountains, a line of spears glittered on the road that threaded the pass. On high the great peaks shone amid the stars, splashed with the moonlight, ribbed with deep shadows. A hundred torrents foamed in the ravines, their massed thunder rising like the hoarse cries of a multitude. Above, the peaks seemed monuments of silence, sublime and tranquil as they communed with the stars. Far below on the northern slopes the moonlit forests beat like a sea upon the bases of the mountains.
Tristan and Blanche rode side by side, the peasant trudging before their horses, an oaken staff over his shoulder. There were deep lines of thought on the woman’s face; it seemed wreathed in shadows, though the moonlight played upon her eyes and on the silver stephanos in her hair. The sublimity of the scene had constrained them to silence. Man and his machinations seemed infinitely small under the grand calm of the towering peaks.
Tristan’s thoughts had flown to Rosamunde and all the turbulence of those short months since he had sailed from Purple Isle to seek his sister over the sea. Glimmerings of death seemed to steal on him that night; vague voices called from the bleak cliffs above; mystery encompassed him and the strange twilight of the unknown.
“Lady,” he said suddenly, turning towards her in the moonlight, “how these torrents thunder. Methinks I hear the voices of the dead crying among the mountains. ‘Brother,’ they call me. Never have I known this mood before.”
Blanche’s eyes were fixed upon his face. She saw no fear there, only some sadness round the dogged mouth, a vague melancholy in the deep-set eyes.
“Who would not remember the dead,” she answered him, “amid these great mountains under the moon? Yonder white peak I would name the Christ. Does he not shine on us out of the night?”
“Even strong men die.”
“Not so,” she said; “the great ones never die. There is life in death for such as live like men. Can knightliness and honour end in dust? Nay, for they stand like these great mountains, rare spirits fronting the evil of the world, standing for God until the judgment come.”
“True, true,” he answered her; “and should a man grudge his poor dust to the All-Father who has made us men?”
“Never would I mourn for one,” she cried, “who died in some fair battle for the truth. They are not dead these great ones who have stood like mighty sentinels upon the towers of heaven. Joy is the incense we should give to such, not empty weeping and rebellious grief.”
They had left their horses on the lower slopes, and by midnight had reached the summit of the pass, where the road narrowed rapidly under the shadow of the cliff. A great rock hung like a bartizan over the precipice, narrowing the track still further so that a natural gate gave passage betwixt two walls of stone. A storm-twisted pine, clinging to the cliff, cast a broad shadow over the path, while over the thin grass the blue gentians grew even to the edge of the great ravine.
A sudden cry topped the far thunder of the torrents. Tristan’s guide stood beyond the rock, his tall figure outlined by the moon. He was pointing with his staff towards the south, beckoning them on with eager gestures.
“The Saracens, the Saracens!”
Tristan sprang up beside him, his melancholy gone in the flash of an eye. To the south a broad valley stretched up betwixt the spurs of the mountains, flooded by the tranquil light of the moon. Crag upon crag fell away to the distant scene where torrents ran like strands of flax into forests that stood like early bracken. From the dim depths where the pass began amid rolling woods there came a sense of movement under the moon. Columns of steel like shining beetles crawled up the rugged slopes from the edge of the forest. Nearer still under the bluff shoulder of a cliff the mountain road lay clear before their eyes.
Tristan whistled and laid his hand on his sword, for there to the south in the pale moonlight came long lines of armed men toiling up the pass towards the Saint’s Gate. Buckler and lance caught the moonbeams from afar; white tunics splashed the sable rocks; glittering corselets were merged together till the long columns of moving men seemed like dragons of steel climbing the mountains. Above stood the calm and silent peaks steeped in the stillness of the heavens. Below, the many torrents muttered, as though they cheered on the advancing host.