“Nay, send not to Holy Guard,” he said, “for days will elapse in the coming and going. And the lamp may be quenched before they return.”
“What would you, then?” she asked him again.
“Lo,” he said, “does not the great Gloire run from Agravale towards the sea? Set me, I pray thee, in a boat, and let them row me down to the sea.”
“What of your wound?” she asked once more.
“The blood,” he said, “flows from me still, though I lie here on the chapel floor. Therefore, I pray thee, bear me hence, that I may come to Holy Guard before I die.”
“So be it,” she said. “God grant thee life to behold thy love’s face.”
CHAPTER XLVI
They bore Tristan from the shrine of St. Geneviève northwards towards Agravale and the waters of the Gloire. All one day and a night they were on the road, riding slowly, since Tristan’s wound would stand but little jolting of the litter. Ever beside him rode Blanche the Bold, sorrowful at heart for Tristan’s sake, and for the last hours that she grudged to another. Had she not played the nobler part and contrasted her pity with Rosamunde’s pride? Yet to Tristan the end would be bitter if he looked not again on Rosamunde’s face, for the red stream never ceased to flow from where the barb was buried deep.
It was dawn when they came to the great Gloire and saw Agravale tower on the heights above, smitten with the sunlight from the east. Very peaceful seemed the green meadows where the tall poplars barred back the dawn. All the world seemed bathed in dew; the odours of flowers breathed in the air.
By the old stone bridge they found boats moored to the grey quays above the river. Blanche chose a black barge that lay in the shallows, and by Tristan’s desire he was set in the prow with his face turned towards the west. Twenty of Blanche’s men manned the barge, stout fellows who had held the thwarts in the north when the Duchess’s galley put out to sea. She herself was in the prow, where Tristan had been laid on the narrow deck.