“And Rosamunde?”
“Can one bound to God, even as I am bound, turn to look on a woman’s face? Nay, Tristan, my brother, the dream is thine, a dream to set thy young blood stirring.”
Tristan looked long into the Heretic’s eyes.
“You love her?” he said.
“I have loved her,” Samson made answer, “even as others have loved her, because one cannot look on her unmoved. It is her privilege to be loved, yet may not my eyes confess the truth. Yours is the hand that must seize the torch, yours the sword that shall cleave the spell.”
“And you——”
“I am Christ’s man, brother. What I do, I do with my whole heart.”
CHAPTER XIV
Tristan and the Heretic rode south-west towards the sea with their hundred lances aslant under the summer sky. They were as men challenging a kingdom with their swords, and they tossed their shields in the face of fate. The fine audacity of such a venture set the hot blood spinning in their hearts. To raise the banner of liberty aloft against Pomp and Power! To hurl damnation in the mouth of the Church!
The Papists had left garrisons in many of the strong places of the Seven Streams. The main host had recrossed the river known in those parts as the Lorient, and had camped about Agravale, ducal city of the Southern Marches. They had raided the province of the Seven Streams into a desert, so far that life seemed absent. A great silence had descended over the land. Hamlets were in ashes; towers stood mere blackened shells upon the hills. As to the lords and gentry of the province, they had either fallen or taken like outlaws to the woods. It was such desperate men as these that Samson coveted to swell his company.