CHAPTER III
Tristan le Sauvage slept that night in the woods. He had discovered a flask of wine and a well-stocked wallet slung to the horse’s saddle, an added boon to the day’s capture. The air lay mild that night as a June kiss on the earth’s round cheek. Tristan, with his saddle propped against a tree, and the stars glittering above the forest, fell asleep thinking of Purple Isle and the far faces of his kinsfolk.
With the first pulse of dawn in the east, he was up and astir with the zest of the hour. The woods were full of golden vapour, of dew and the chanting of birds. A stream sang under the boughs, purling and foaming over a broad ledge of stone into a misty pool. A blue sky glimmered above the glistening tree-tops; the dwindling woodways quivered with the multitudinous madrigals of the dawn.
Tristan went down and sprang into the pool. He tossed and turned, smote wheels of spray with his great arms, ploughed and furrowed the quaking water. The blood leapt in him at the cold kisses of the pool. Ruddy and buoyant, he clambered out into the sunlight, his naked strength glistening with the clean dew gotten of his swim. The muscles rippled under the gleaming skin. Tossing his great arms, expanding his deep chest, he ran barefooted over the mossy grass. A drooping bough swept low to tempt his fingers. He twisted the limb from the trunk, tossed it like a lance from hand to hand, leaping and glorying in the splendour of his strength.
Anon, he armed himself, knelt down beside his horse to pray. A quaint calm fell instant upon his shoulders; the boisterous temper of his mood sank like a sea beneath the benediction of a god. It was in solitude, by sea or forest, that such a man as Tristan opened his heart to Heaven. His was not a soul that bartered through carved screens for penitence and peace. His face caught a radiance from the vaultings of the trees. St. Cyprienne, with her dusky eyes and martyr’s crown, received the woman’s portion of his prayer.
When he had broken fast and watered his horse at the pool, he sallied from the thickets with the breath of the dawn beating upon his mouth. Around him ran wooded hills, streams, and pastures dusted thick with flowers. The odours of spring burdened the breeze. In the distance the purple of the heights that circled La Vallée Joyeuse clove the azure of the sky.
As Tristan rode through the wilds that day, following a grass-grown track that marked the grave of a Roman road, he came to a little stone shrine, standing by the wayside under the arms of a granite cross. A larch thicket hedged the place with a thin gloom. A fountain bubbled near, oozing away amid green rushes and mossy grass.
At the foot of the stone cross squatted a man in a grey cloak, with a bell at his girdle and a bag of undressed ox hide in his lap. Tristan stared with unstinted but momentary disrelish at the figure beside the shrine. The man was a leper, and hideous even in the grip of a more than hideous disease. His swollen and distorted face was grotesque as some evil head carved by a mason’s chisel. The brows were swollen over the watery eyes, the mouth disfigured, the skin, mined by many sores. Even the hands were cankered and deformed; the man was as grim an image as misfortune could display.
Tristan, out of sheer pity of heart, drew rein to gaze at this outcast with furrowed brows. Though the tide of youth ran strong in his body, he was not the slave of that selfish health that ignores despair and comprehends not pain. The man by the cross held up his bag with a mute gesture of appeal. Tristan, fumbling in the depths of his purse, drew forth alms with a flash of pity.
The leper, keen to scent honour upon the thorny track of life, gathered the tokens of charity from the grass with hideous hands. He lifted up a cracked and husky voice, blessed Tristan, and wished him God-speed.