Tristan pulled for the bank where a thicket of larches rose near the water. Climbing out, he splashed through the shallows, moored the boat to the stump of a tree. Strenuous stanzas were astir in his brain. What of Rosamunde in her husband’s tower? Swords were yelping about the place, torches tossing, spears aslant. Could Samson the Heretic save her now? It was the sword’s turn, and Tristan rejoiced.
Leaving the wood, he crossed the meadows that ran to the dark roofs of the town. There was no wall or ditch about the place; the streets could be swept by a charge of horse. A whimpering uproar rose towards the stars; there was fighting afoot. Tristan soon gathered as much. Going at a trot over the meadows, he blundered suddenly on a knot of armed men, a Papal picket guarding the road. So intent were they on watching the town that Tristan fell flat, and escaped unseen. The men wore white crosses over their hauberks, a blazoning adopted to distinguish their cause. Tristan, plunging on into the gloom, won a stretch of garden ground that dipped towards the meadows. Flowers bloomed pale-faced in the dusk. The scent of thyme and roses burdened the air.
The Papal levies had ended the tussle as Tristan gained the fringe of the streets. Houses were ablaze in the western quarter, flinging a red canopy over the town. Swords and pikestaffs swirled in the streets. Bronzed, sweaty bravos were looting the houses, letting lust loose in attic and cellar. Now and again a quick scream wavered from some darkened house, a scream followed by oaths and unclean laughter. Women and children in their nightgear ran headlong into the streets, to be hounded down and taken, or driven away into the woods. Now and again there was a scuffle, as men met and fought out the death feud in doorway and in garden.
Tristan, passing up an alley under the deep shadow of a wall, ran full face into the arms of a soldier who came stumbling out of a hovel with a wine skin under his arm. Seeing the white cross on the man’s chest, Tristan seized so kindly a chance. His great arms went round the man like the coils of a python. The wine skin burst under their feet as they struggled by the wall. Tristan lifted the soldier shoulder high, dashed him down on the cobbled path, where the man rolled on his side, lay still in the shadow. Tristan, kneeling down, unlaced his surcoat, stripped it off, and tumbled it over his own head. The white cross would serve him as well as his sword.
The road towards the castle teemed with steel, and torches flared through the thickets. The castle walls started pale and fitful out of the gloom, their battlements gleaming above the gardens dark under the stars. A hot burst of cheering came down into the town. The troops thronging the road shouted in answer, as they pressed on to share in the sacking of the place. Clarions blew a triumphant fanfare. The strident chant of a company of white monks rose from the market square. They were singing a “Gloria” as they wound in procession through the town, a great cross and a silver reliquary borne in state before them.
Tristan had joined himself to a company of archers who followed a knight in a green surcoat, bearing a scarlet leopard on his shield. They came by the black thickets and the silvery lawns to the broad entry of Sir Ronan’s hold. A bunch of pikemen held the gate, where broken beams told of the late assault. Three dead men lay by the guard-room door, slain there when the gate had crashed down. Tristan shouldered in with the rest, unquestioned since he wore the white cross on his breast.
The great court was packed from wall to wall. The Papists had dragged a horse-block into the midst, and were beheading such of the garrison as had escaped unscathed in the fight. Tristan saw a mere boy dragged forward by the wrists, forced down on the block despite his screaming. The fair hair was soon dabbled in blood. Near by stood a tall ruffian with a severed head on his spear. Even in the torchlight Tristan knew the face, for it was Ronan’s head on the soldier’s lance.
Shuddering still at the thought of the lad’s screams, he pushed on towards the terrace with the green knight’s men. His massive shoulders gave him the van. There was a great press in the gallery to the hall, as those on the terrace jostled in towards the door. Cries of “Back, sirs, back! reverence for the Lord Bishop,” echoed under the low-pitched roof. Tristan, putting brute force to good use, thrust his neighbours to the wall, the men’s oaths falling like water from his broad back.
Within, the hall was lit by flambeaux, borne by the guards about the wall. Grim, iron-shirted men packed the place, their surcoats turned up over their girdles, their swords bare to the red flare of the torches. In the waist of the hall a grove of spears tapered towards the smoke-wrapped rafters, their points like dim stars seen through clouds. Before the daïs had gathered a great company of knights and captains, ranged in long ranks against the walls. The many painted shields, azure, green, and red, shone in a rich array under the gloom-filled roof.
On the daïs in dead Ronan’s chair sat a man in a robe of black velvet, a gold cross hanging by a chain about his neck. He wore a cap of purple silk over his tonsured scalp. There were jewelled rings upon his plump white fingers; he had a belaced and perfumed diaper in his lap. At his right hand sat a burly lord with a black beard and a face of iron, Benedict, Warden of the Southern Marches, debauchée and despot, whose very winepresses ran blood. Christopher, Canon of Agravale, the episcopal secretary, was pointing his quill on the Bishop’s left.