CHAPTER XXI
A stout and ungainly being appeared round a thicket of bay trees, like some stout god Pan footing it in Arcady. It was the figure of a little man with a toad-like face, protruding blue eyes, and a great slit of a mouth. A double chin flapped to and fro under his ugly but good-tempered countenance, and his legs were bowed like the staves of a cask.
Pandart, good soul, was a mild man, a man of milk, who feared the Bishop and Ogier his knight. Slow of wit, he took life calmly, and was amazed at nothing so long as he had food. He stopped short when he saw Tristan standing by the White Heretic of the Seven Streams, and blinked his eyes under their penthouses of fat.
The salutation that was accorded him hardly tallied with the good man’s temper. Waddling over the grass like a fat and amiable dog, he was taken of a sudden by the throat and hurled flat upon his back. A whirlwind seemed to fill the place. Above him lowered a pale, set face, while a sword’s point rested over his heart.
Pandart, shrewdly scared and beaten for breath, lay and blinked at the man who held the sword. His shoulder had been disjointed in the fall, his arm lying twisted under his body; yet, despite the pain of it, he dared not stir, seeing that the bare steel weighed on his ribs. The silver circlet was thrust into his face. Pandart’s eyes seemed bewitched by the thing, while Tristan watched him as a dog watches a dog.
Slowly he forced the truth from the man concerning Columbe, whom he had sought from over the sea. Under the point of Tristan’s sword, Pandart told what had passed in the hermitage, Columbe’s coming and her shaming there, and, last, how she had died by Ogier’s hand, to make way for Rosamunde of the Seven Streams. It was a grim tale for a brother’s ears, but Tristan heard it to the end.
Then it was that Rosamunde, who watched him, saw his face become as the face of a devil. He reared up his sword over Pandart’s carcass, heeding not his whimpering nor his outstretched hand. Rosamunde, waking as from a dream, sprang forward and seized on Tristan’s arm.
“Slay him not,” she said. “Shall the man suffer for the master’s sin?”
Tristan flashed round on her.
“Betwixt them they have slain my sister,” he cried. “Am I a woman to snivel and forgive?”