When the second grave lay deep under the tree, Tristan, striding to the trunk of the cedar, ordered the torches to be brought near.
“Bishop,” he said, “chant your own death Mass, even a Mass for her whom Ogier slew.”
No mercy did they show to Jocelyn that night. When they had made an end, they laid him in the coffin, covered it with the Sacred Banner, and lowered the whole into the open grave.
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.