“I ride south,” said Tristan, with a smile.
“Take ten men with you. I can spare no more.”
“Brother,” said Tristan, “I am content with my own carcass.”
“What devil’s scheme has caught your heart?”
Tristan laughed, spread his great chest.
“Samson,” he said, “believe me no traitor when I go to take service in the Bishop’s guard. I shall prove a good smiter, doubt it not. Master Jocelyn shall not complain of my sword.”
CHAPTER XV
The ducal city of Agravale queened it in the south amid the gloom of her ilex woods and the perfumes of her pines. The city stood on the verge of a great precipice that plunged to the sweeping waters of the river Gloire. Southwards from this line of precipices, crowned in the centre by the towers of Agravale, stretched a broad valley spreading many leagues to the great mountains that closed the Marches from the nether south. The plain was a vine-clad Arcady, rich in olives, painted thick with flowers. Purple and green and gold, it swept to the sombre bosoms of the mountains, whose snowy peaks smote like moonlight through the clouds.
On the north a wilderness of woods covered the plateau that ended in the great precipice above the river. Black was the tincture of this wild, a gloomy green like the sullen depths of some unsailed sea. Here the ilex made midnight in the valleys, and the stone pine lifted its beseeching palms towards the sky. Holly and cedar, cypress, oak, and yew, a torrential wilderness of trees choked up the valleys and concealed the hills. Here the wolf hunted and the wild boar rooted in the glades. Only the wind made music, while the shadows danced and quivered on the grass.
Agravale, proud city of the south, lay pale and luxurious under the southern sky. Its white walls stretched like marble veins into the sombre green-stone of the woods. It was an opulent city, sleek, sinful, and magnificent. Colour enriched its many gardens, where vines clustered and roses revelled. The pomegranate thrust up its ruddy blooms, and glowed with the gilded roundness of its fruit. The orange burdened its green canopies with gold. The arbutus bled; the oleander blushed against the blue. Like wine poured from heaven were the sunsets upon the white pinnacles of the mountains. Northwards flowed the woods, beating with leafy billows on the walls.