“Lie still,” she whispered, “while I dress your wound with the gifts God has given me in the night.”
“God?” he asked her.
“Even so,” she answered, “for as I slept the Christ appeared and bade me believe, and in my dream he showed me the place in the chapel above us where relics were buried. Yet, if this dream fails me at this hour, I shall never believe in Heaven more.”
Therewith she kissed him on the lips, with tears brimming in her eyes. Tristan watched her silently as she took the phial and poured the red liquid into the wound. Mingling there with the living blood, it sent forth an odour through the room as though all the spices of the East, spikenard and myrrh and wondrous balms, had spent their perfumes on the air. Then Rosamunde took the mystic veil, and pressed it deep into the wound, where it grew red with Tristan’s blood.
Leaning back against the chair, she half sat, half knelt beside the bed, watching the man with all her soul. The streaming sunlight flooded in, playing upon Tristan’s face with its hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. In either heart was poised the chance of life and death that summer dawn.
Very slowly the minutes passed, as though Time halted in his stride. The lamp had burnt out on the wall, and birds were awake in the thickets beneath, their shrill orisons greeting the dawn. Rosamunde, filled with unrest, watched no longer beside the bed, but rose and paced from wall to wall, gazing out through the ruined window at the Gloire gleaming amid the woods. For the moment she dared not look at Tristan, lest the last hope should prove but a dream. A cold hand seemed on her bosom, pressing heavily on her heart, while the distant clamour of the sea came like a dirge into her ears.
Suddenly Tristan called to her, his voice strong and resonant as of old, not the half moan of a dying man.
“Hither, Rosamunde,” he said; “come to me. What miracle is this?”
She turned instantly and was at his side, bending over him with her eyes afire. And lo, the blood had ceased to flow, and the red veil seemed clotted fast over the place where the barb was buried. There was a faint colour on Tristan’s cheeks, and his eyes had the lustre they had lost of late. Rosamunde knelt and gazed at his face, as though half fearful of trusting the truth.
Then with a low cry she bowed her head, and laid her hands on the man’s shoulders.