On Blanche’s face there was a mysterious light, as though she rejoiced over some heaven-sent boon. Her dark eyes shone under her silvery hair; her voice rang deep as she gave Tristan her answer.
“Not fifty, but a hundred shall you have,” she said, “and I, Blanche, will stand at your side.”
Tristan’s eyes met hers in one long look.
“Nay,” he said, “you are too noble a soul to be risked against Serjabil’s sword.”
“I am a woman,” she answered him very simply, “a woman who loves to stand by those who do not flinch when the wind blows keen. Am I better than my men, who give their blood for Christ and the Cross? No, I trow not. Who fears death when those most dear are on the brink of the grave?”
Tristan answered her not a word, for he was glad at heart of her great courage. He could have blessed God for such a woman. Did not a deep voice cry within him, “If only Rosamunde had spoken thus!”
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.