“What now?” said Tristan, breathing hard.
Ogier grinned and gripped his hand.
“You are the man,” he laughed, cracking Tristan’s bones in his paw. “We will set you on Percival, the Duchess’s lion. By my bones, you will break the man over your knee.”
Tristan, lodged within the gates of the Bishop’s palace, used eye and ear to gain some glint of Rosamunde’s fair head, some breathing of her name. Like a mirror he had to receive what passed before him, silent and unstirred. Caution bridled him, and he played his part like the dogged adventurer that he was; had an open hand for every man, scullion or squire, a smile for the womenfolk who came out into the stable court to giggle and gossip with the grooms and men-at-arms. Ogier had taken him with some pride to Bishop Jocelyn in his state closet. The churchman had felt Tristan’s limbs with his soft, womanly hands, and smiled over a strength that was as prodigious as his own conceit. He was a champion who should give Dame Lilias’s men the lie.
Of that proud woman, Rosamunde of Joyous Vale, whom the Papists had snatched from him in the gloom of the woods, Tristan won no word or whisper. The men-at-arms of the palace spoke often of their march through the province of the Seven Streams. Many of the ruffians had carried torches in the sacking of Ronan’s tower, yet of Rosamunde and her fate the world seemed to have no care. Tristan, with his ugly face inscrutable as the face of a sphinx, watched and listened, bided his time. If Rosamunde was in Agravale, he would carry the gates of her prison off their hinges, and set her free. Once again he would look into those deep, wistful eyes, upon that face whose petulant splendour haunted him night and noon.
There was great love in his heart for Rosamunde. It had grown and fed upon the stoutest fibres of his heart. Her very name had taken root about him, even as a red rose clambers about a grave. Tristan was no visionary, no melancholy worshipper of the stars. Life to him was action, a bluff buffeting of waves, a gallop with the wind. He was alive and lusty from the iron sinews of his ankles to the corded muscles of his throat. Superbly young, yet older in passion than of yore, he took life cheerfully, knew no defeat.
As for Rosamunde, he loved her, and was not ashamed of this same love. It was no enigma to him, no subtle riddle begotten of a poet’s brain, for to Tristan this love was as natural as life itself. He loved the woods with their mysterious shadows, the sea for its hoarse splendour, the flowers—even because they were fair of face. In the same spontaneous fashion he loved this woman, whose face was beauty and whose lips were life. Above and beyond this impulse towards joy, the deeper truths were mellowing Tristan’s soul. He began to find new glories in his strength, to cherish his manhood, to build fast his honour. Since Rosamunde was Rosamunde, should he not consecrate his manhood to her?
The moon had not changed her scimitar for a silver shield before Tristan was proven both in arms and faith. The women of Agravale were bounteous beings, buxom and boisterous, red fruit to be plucked from the tree of virtue. A red gown trailed more than once round Tristan’s feet, and youth had tempted him to merge youth in youth. Yet he had shut his mouth, stiffened his head on his massive neck, for Rosamunde’s face shone high in the heavens.
As for his courage, that was another matter. Tristan could thrash a man, if he would not kiss a woman, and Ogier took him often through Agravale with half a score bravos at their back. They swaggered through the streets, loitered in the taverns, ogled such women as came their way. More than once they met the Duchess’s men, and shouldered them roughly to the wall. Ogier, the butcher’s son, had a tussle in view, and Percival of the Red Beard was to be brought to his knees.
From the square before the ducal palace, with its pomegranates studded with golden fruit, its rose trees and its acacias, ran a narrow passage-way leading to the gardens of the abbey of St. Pelinore. It was a shadowy place, flanked by high walls of stone, arched above by the dense foliage of chestnuts and great cedars. The path gave the shortest track to such of the Duchess’s men who returned from the lower city to the palace. Ogier had watched this “run” of late, eager to catch Knight Percival in a lane where there was no turning.