The day after the night attack, on Marvail, Count Reynaud marched south again to the Lorient, leaving two hundred men to garrison the town. He was eager to bear so precious and notorious a burden beyond the river, to deliver Samson to the mercies of the Church. The Heretic was brought bound upon a horse, Reynaud’s men massed round him, tauntingly exultant, flinging mud and mockery at his head.
The strong soul in Samson rose that day to meet the doom he knew must follow. There was no hope for him save in a rescue, and though a few scattered followers were dogging Count Reynaud’s march through the woods, they dared not ambuscade so powerful a force. Samson was in the hands of fanatics, nay, in the hands of usurers who extracted bribes from the souls of men. He had dealt too mightily with these hypocrites with his tongue to expect much mercy at their hands. He knew full well that the priests were as vultures, ready to rend and to destroy.
They forded the Lorient well before noon, their horses trampling the water, the men smiting spray at Samson with the shafts of their lances.
“Leper, be cleansed,” they cried, laughing and mocking him.
“Behold, here is Jordan; cleave a path for us, O saint.”
Samson took the taunts in silence, girding his spirit for this great trial of the flesh. He gazed at the river, believed that he would be dead before the water that they forded reached the sea. All hope lapsed as the Lorient rolled behind and as he neared the southern bank. The wooded slopes glittered with steel, for the soldiers of the Church had thronged down to see the Heretic brought back in bonds from Marvail. A fierce, mocking outcry rose from the thickets, a clamour as of wild beasts tongueing to the slaughter. The road to the ford seethed with men, a mass of squealing, frenzied beings, more like the brown savages of primitive ages than cleansed and baptised Christians. Even Samson on his death march pitied them with some measure of pure scorn. He rode unmoved through the mocking mob, with pale, calm face and steadfast eyes.
He knew this to be the end of all his struggles, of his strenuous preaching, his Heaven-inspired zeal. He had sought to seize the people from the grip of the priests, men who had traded and fattened on the frailties of mankind. Had he not pointed them heavenwards to the great All-Father, and to the Son who had redeemed the world with the passion of self-sacrifice? He had preached against those who had usurped the portals of heaven, who had blasphemed the Great Spirit by claiming their own bodies to be the sole channels of grace. He had cried that man stood face to face with his Maker, that the Holy of Holies was in the heart.
As Samson rode amid the railing mob that played around him on the road, his thoughts sped to Calvary and the crosses there. Should he flinch from what the Christ had suffered, and from what the martyrs had rejoiced to bear? The strain of heroism deepened in his soul, and a divine patience purged out wrath. It was the fate of prophets to seal with their blood the truths they expounded to mankind.
Had he laboured for nothing? No, the seed had been sown, and, like a good husbandman, he could go to his rest. There were strong men who would take up the challenge, and seize the torch from his dying hand. He remembered Tristan, that youthful Titan, who would preach with the sword what he had preached with the tongue. The Duchess Blanche had breathed the true spirit, and there were scores of heralds in the Seven Streams. Samson was strengthened by such thoughts as these. He feared not death, since death was not the end; they could slay the body, but not the soul.
Samson was brought before Jocelyn’s tent, torn from his horse, dragged before the chair where the Bishop sat. Helmets, wave on wave, swayed on the hillside; a thousand faces dwindled into the gloom of the woods. One heavy hand had buffeted the Heretic’s mouth, yet he stood before Jocelyn with pale, firm face, blood on his lips, his eyes unwavering.