CHAPTER XXXIII
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.”