CHAPTER XXXVII
When Tristan had kept the vow he had sworn in the past over Columbe’s grave, he was as a man who had battled at night through a stormy sea, to behold once more the calm and broadening splendour of the dawn. Jocelyn his arch-enemy was dead. The clouds had lightened about Tristan’s soul; his heart hungered for Rosamunde, and for that golden head bowed down beneath the pathos of the past.
Tristan rose at daybreak and took leave of Blanche, who walked early in the island garden. There was a sadness on the woman’s face, the noble fortitude of one whose heart was hungry and whose dreams were dead. Yet she could play the mother to Tristan in his love, even as a good woman who imprisons herself seeks joy in the joy of others, contentment in their content. Her eyes grew full of light as Tristan came to her and commended Columbe’s body to her care.
“God-speed ye, Tristan,” she said, with her deep voice, “in the good quest that fires your heart to-day.”
“Madame,” he answered, ignorant of her full sacrifice, “the night that Samson’s death was told us in the wilds, did I not show you all that my heart held sacred? We have avenged him and my sister here. By your good grace, and my great gratitude, we meet again before the walls of Agravale.”
“Even so,” she said, stretching out her hand, “may your quest prosper. As for a grandam like myself, I regain my youth in the youth of others. Your little ones shall clamber at my knees anon; her children, shall I not love them for their father’s sake?”
Thus Tristan took his leave of her, and rode for the Mad Mere with a hundred men. Rosamunde, Rosamunde, Rosamunde! Spring was in the wind, though the blackened forest would spread no more its green canopies against the moonlight. All the old memories awoke in Tristan’s heart with a great uprushing of tenderness. He remembered Rosamunde in a hundred scenes: moving through Ronan’s town with the children at her heels, bending to kiss him in her castle bower, sleeping in the woods on the way to Holy Guard. Her deep eyes haunted him; her rich voice pealed through all the avenues of thought. Tristan’s heart rejoiced in its passionate and rekindled youth. He prayed to God that he might look on Rosamunde’s face again.
He rode at the head of his men that day with a fine light playing in his deep-set eyes. His very soul seemed enhaloed about his face; his voice rang clear as a trumpet cry as he gave his orders and cheered on his men. As the reeking ashes smoked under their horses’ hoofs, the bronzed veterans jested together, bartered their rough gibes, caught their captain’s spirit. They loved Tristan for his fiery strength, his huge activity, his undaunted zeal. The story of the Lady of Joyous Vale had gone round the camp fires on many a night.
Tristan was guided by the distant hills, for he had noted their shape that summer day when he rode with Ogier to the Forest Hermitage. To the south, gaunt crags rose above the trees, three towering pinnacles, huge, natural obelisks cleaving the blue. Tristan kept to the higher ground. It was well past noon before he saw water glimmering in a blackened hollow, the island swimming fresh and green in the glassy waters of the mere.
A great silence wrapped the valley, and there was no smoke rising from the house, no boat moving over the lake. The ruinous woods were dark and still. Yet as they rode down through the trees, Tristan’s man, a youth whose kinsfolk had been slain in the province of the Seven Streams, held up a hand, with a warning cry. A long, low howl came pealing over the water, a note in keeping with the desolation of the scene.
“Sire, a wolf’s howl!”
Tristan drew rein, and scanned the island under his hand. A swift shadow had fallen upon his face, wiping out the radiance, dimming the light in the eyes. His men halted around him, their spears towards the sky, their shields shining in the sun.
“Sire, look yonder.”
A brown thing trotted out from a small thicket on the island, stopped with nose in air with one paw up, and broke into a wild howling that woke the hills. Wolves, brown and grey, came hustling out from the yawn of the great gate. They cast about from side to side, snarling and snapping at each other, filling the valley with their uncouth clamour.
“Wolves, in truth,” said Tristan, looking grim.
He shook his bridle and, shouting to his men, cantered off over the scorched meadowland towards the water. The brutes upon the island, catching sight of him, gave tongue more fiercely, and howled in chorus. Tristan’s horse pricked up its ears, snorted, swerved, and would not go forward. He slipped out of the saddle, and, stopping his men with uplifted sword, bade them tether their horses.
They passed down to the mere on foot, and took counsel there, for old Nicholas’s boat was moored fast by the wooden stage that ran out from the island into the water. Tristan’s eyes searched the silent house. Of a sudden he pointed with his sword to a window overlooking the garden, where a white cloth waved under the red tiles.
What boots it to tell how Tristan swam the mere, and brought back the boat over the water? It was sword and spear for the brown beasts of the forest. Only when Tristan’s men entered the great gate did the unhallowed horror of the place give them the challenge. A few wolves still lurked amid the dead, the shredded relics of that night of slaughter. Tristan had the gates clapped to after they had put these last beasts to the sword, for fire alone could purge such a charnel house.
In the wall of the garden there was a little postern, its lock and bolts glued by the rust of years. Tristan broke the gate down with an axe, and, pushing in over the broken wood, found the garden within calm and green, unsullied by death or by the beasts of the forest.
His men had remained without the gate, prompted by a rough chivalry that gave Tristan honour. On the top step of the stair that led from the upper room stood a woman clad in a black robe, her hair loose upon her shoulders. There were deep shadows under her eyes, and her face was white as the face of the moon.
Tristan stood at the foot of the stairway with the axe still gripped in his great brown hands. It was not the Tristan who had served of old, but rather a man whose neck was stubborn, a man whose pride would suffer no yoke. The eyes that searched the woman’s face were sterner than those she had known of yore.
“Madame,” he said to her almost roughly, “you are free once more to go where you will. By God’s good providence, I have cheated death for you.”
She swayed a little where she stood as she looked down on him and watched his face.
“I am ever your debtor,” she said slowly.
“I claim no usury,” he answered her, with a queer smile; “what is duty to me comes as a mere command.”
“Tristan——”
“Madame——”
“Have you no better words for me than these?”
She swayed forward suddenly, and Tristan saw that she was faint. He threw down the axe, sprang up the stairway, and stretched out his hands to her with sudden pity. Hunger and fear had done their work. He bore her back like a child into the room, and laid her on the bed where Miriam the Jewess knelt in prayer. Then, going out, he left the women alone together.